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Systems & Processes: Stop Losing Money & Sanity in Your Practice · The Millionaire Dentist™

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  Hello, everyone, Welcome to the Millionaire Dentnis Podcast, brought to you by
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  Four Quadrants Advisory. On this podcast, we break down the world of dentistry,
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  finances and business practices to help you become the millionaire dentist you deserve to
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  be. Please be advised we do speak with an honest tongue and may not
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  be safe for work. Hello and welcome. This is Casey Hires back at
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  the Millionaire Dennis Podcast in studio with co host Jared Bridgeman. On this rainy
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  day, Hey, Casey, how are you? I'm good. I can't
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  be out in the rain. You know, I can't be out in those
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  commons. That's exactly, yes, well here I have to have perfect conditions.
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  Well it's it's certainly a nice drop in temperature comparitive yesterday. Yesterday was
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  high eighties. And Sonny and I told you, I told you earlier.
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  Like my son who's in kindergarten, played his first baseball game ever. Uh
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  he didn't even know where first is, which is fine, But he hit
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  the ball a couple of times and I basically melted and and burned myself to
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  death out there. Vitamin D man, that vitamin D. I should be
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  good for the rest of the year. Now you don't look that burn.
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  Thank you. I came home and my wife thought I was had eaten something
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  else the larger two. That's how right I was in the face. I
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  was like, I'm fine, little takes care of that's right, that's right.
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  Right. Hey, see, you're heading out to Minnesota this week,
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  actually the Great Land. You peaked at my schedule. That's news to me.
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  Yes, I am. So you're going to Minneapolis, yes, hard,
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  it's a wonderful city. I haven't been there in years. Claude City,
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  DJ's aren't they from that area? Sure, come on ride that train.
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  Remember no, no, come on ride the train Minieapolis. That was
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  Prince as well from there. Yeah. Yeah, that's for the purpose of
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  presenting continuing education on the business side of dentistry. That's gonna be a wonderful
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  time. You're gonna be at a really nice, really nice restaurant. Whether
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  it's gonna be like a little cocktail class and some tastings. But the important
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  part is you're going to be educating and informing some impressionable young dentists and some
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  older dentist too, of of what we do and things that can improve their
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  practice. Yeah, no doubt tough underserved topic and dentistry that it's a big
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  deal. Yep. So Casey, kind of going off of that, I
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  want to talk to you today about systems and processes those That's something that you
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  and I discuss a lot of off air, especially dealing with what we do
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  in particular. Yeah, that's a big term around here internally for what we
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  do, also in practices and what they do. Yeah, that's a broad
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  one. Where do you want to go with it? Well, I kind
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  of wanted to start with if you know, everybody knows that they're important,
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  they may think they have a good system in place. That doesn't necessarily mean
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  that they do. If you don't have a system in place, it's very,
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  very very easy to lose your place, or misplace things, or have
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  things dropped by the wayside. My system, for example, is I have
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  to email myself my weekly and daily lists of things to do. If I
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  don't do that, I don't remember what to do next. Now, that's
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  not the greatest system on the planet, and I'm sure there's a much better
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  way to do it. No, but you have one right. You have
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  to have order. You have to have a roadmap. You need systems and
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  processes. So think about dentistry. Right, in dental school, they learn
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  how to do certain procedures, the clinical flow right, but even clinically right,
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  there are systems and processes to how dentists and specialists provide patient care.
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  Then you think to your the team or the staff. Here's where it gets
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  tricky. Right, A lot of times there's not systems and processes in place,
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  and that can be really really hard for assistance and hygienists and office managers
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  and all the team and staff that are involved. And they could have a
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  very very high learning curve well, no doubt, and when there's no system
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  or process in place, then it's up for interpretation. Then there's a lot
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  of miscommunication right then, the culture, the staff, the attitude, it
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  really can be harmful. Just like again go back to the clinical exploit.
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  If you didn't have any order or systems and processes and you were haphazardly doing
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  dentistry, you probably have some some problems some pretty unhappy patients there well,
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  and it can one messed up system, one messed up process can start a
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  snowball. Effective as you said, it could cause issues with not capturing the
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  amount of money you need to capture. It could turn into miscommunications where yeah,
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  just on getting paid accounts receivable, what's that process? Well, the
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  patient told me a sad story and the office, you know, person that
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  collects the money was having a bad day and wasn't sure what to do,
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  and so heart the heart, you know, the emotions overtook and they just
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  kind of let it slide. And little things like that absolutely snowball. That
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  was a good point in a lot of places, are krickt is saying that
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  after ninety days, they usually just kind of gets swept under the rug.
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  I don't I don't know how to ask that question. Well, you know,
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  you hate to say it, but I mean there's after a certain period
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  of time you have a decision to go after said person or you're probably not
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  going to get that money. But more importantly, when that occurs in an
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  office, empowering your people, here is our policy, right, I guess
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  that's another word, what is our system or process for handling all these things.
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  When that's spelled out clearly, that's helpful. And if they if there
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  is an emotional reasoning that comes up, at least your front office person has
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  something to fall back on as in this is our office policy, well,
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  no doubt about it, and with what we do, it's twofold. Internally
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  as a firm, we have a lot of systems and processes that helps everybody
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  pull towards the same direction to help our clients in an incredible way. But
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  when you think about what we master, let's take it out to a listener
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  who maybe doesn't work with us. Hi, how are you, guy,
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  yl come simply something as simple as income. If you don't have a system
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  and a process and a strategy around how income is structured within your practice,
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  it's not going to be ideal, but it's not gonna mac it's not going
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  to give you the most opportunity to save for retirement and have the least amount
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  of tax liability. Maybe a spouse is frustrated because there's no consistency, because
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  there's no there's no order around your income. And this is where you fall
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  into the trap of oh, I'm just gonna take whatever's left over at the
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  end of each month. Oh, that makes me sad. And if you
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  have a poor, poorly performed month, you're not breaking home very much at
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  all. Yeah, Now, that's that's one of the big things that we
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  see all too often and I and I know for myself personally that whenever I
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  get some extra extra cash in my bank account, it's not really getting saved,
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  it's it's, oh my god, guys, we've got an extra couple
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  you know whatever, I'm gonna buy myself something nice with it. Well,
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  and and going back to systems and processes again, even with tax tax management.
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  You know, if you're if you're CP does not have systems and processes
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  in place around helping a dental practice of your size and stature, then they're
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  a historian. Right. A lot of CPAs who are nice people and know
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  how to do accounting that work in a dental or help dental practices. When
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  we look at the stuff, they're more of a historian. They look at
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  things and they tell you what's happened in the past, but they're not giving
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  you proactive advice for the future. And if you don't have systems and processes
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  around that, you're gonna have a problem. I mean, they're constantly worried
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  that the British are coming. You know, you gotta worry about the things
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  in the now and things in the future, not the past. Well,
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  and then personal finances. Again, if it's just a wild wild West,
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  there's going to be some heartache. But if there's some systems and processes in
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  place, that's helpful. Doesn't mean you can't have nice things, but ultimately
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  that that's important. When there's no order, then there's chaos, and then
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  that's problematic, and so so many, so many people they don't you know,
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  we talked to We've seen numbers where wow, they bring in nine hundred
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  thousand dollars in household income for the year. Sidebar, they spend one point
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  one five every year, you know, So there's there's no nice to make
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  that much money. But if you're spending more than that, there's there's no
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  order that there's no order right. A lot of times it's not what you
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  make, it's what you spend. Unfortunately, a lot of dinners should be
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  making double what they're making. They don't know how to get there. They
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  don't have the systems and processes in place. Let's take this another step,
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  and this is more internally sure. When we go through our betting process with
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  people, we have agreed upon target d dates for different steps. We like
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  to have our data so that we can help people. So we do what
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  we preach. That's what you're saying. What do you mean we have our
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  own system in place? Do you even bring on somebody? Absolutely like,
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  yeah, practices need systems and process. We have them. We know that
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  they work. But it's interesting a lot of different practice owners. They'll be
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  like, well, you know, I'll just I'll get you that next month
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  or I'll do that. It's in re education for them. Of no,
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  No, we have these in our firm. We have these in our process.
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  You don't get to get away with being the busy dentists or specialists.
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  Guess what all we work with are busy dentists and specialists that have, you
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  know, lots of unique things going on, and the longer it takes you
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  to get your stuff in, the longer it takes us to do our job.
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  On top of that, Yeah, well, from a tax perspective,
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  they're used to having extensions and being behind, so that it's oh, what
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  do you mean you want a P and L and balance sheet by next week?
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  Well it's gonna help you. We're trying to help you. But a
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  lot of times it's kind of breaking that mold of what the patterns people are
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  used to being in of I'll do it when I can, I'll do it
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  when I'm not busy. And like again, for us, for us to
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  help people, we have to create a roadmap for them and ultimately, when
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  they follow it, even if we don't end up working together, they learn
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  a lot about their current situation. And that's why I wanted to point out
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  too, is it's you have to start somewhere. All of this is always
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  evolving. Things can be fine tune, things can be changed, but you
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  have to have a place to even start before you can make corrections and adits
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  us be order. Yeah, so let's bring it back in. Are there
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  companies out there that offer handbooks, employee handbooks and policy and procedure? There
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  are, They're not hard to find, They're not hard to get that.
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  That's a nice starting spot for a practice. Like attorneys, there's too many
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  of them and only a few good ones right right. Practice management, there's
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  a lot of practice management out there, but there's a place for practice management.
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  We're not say necessarily promoting or not promoting it, but it can provide
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  order, right answering the phone, scheduling, collecting money. I know people
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  that have paid companies, have paid tons of money for training on just how
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  to answer a phone. Yeah, that's out there. I mean I learned
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  to do it work in a blockbuster video. But you just see what happened
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  with that. You just dated yourself right there. But but just you to
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  your point, building blocks, have manuals, have systems, have processes,
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  not just with the clinical but with everything. I've been in a tennis office
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  where that I mean there's earpieces and they know when patients are there, and
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  it is efficiently run and you're in and out about the time. You imagine
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  others can just tell there's no order and those people are twenty minutes behind,
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  and just it's kind of messy. The culture, the attitudes. We've seen
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  that ourselves, and so you know, the take home is, have systems
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  and processes, have order, have a roadmap. As the practice owner,
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  it's on you to do that. And if you're not sure of all the
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  areas that could potentially use work, it wouldn't hurt to talk to your staff.
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  Maybe your front desk lady knows or mail man you know, might have
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  an idea in mind of Like I've noticed this has been a consistent issue.
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  What are your challenges? What do you need? Right? Yeah, right,
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  and you know, with all the free time practice owners have. Yeah,
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  that's actually really important for them to do. I say that tongue in
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  cheek, but but yeah, trying to do all that yourself is bad news.
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  Bears Walter Math out for you right there, Casey, listen here,
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  dude. I've already looked at your schedule. I know where you're going to
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  be. I like to keep my eyes on you at all times. So
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  you're gonna be hosting a class in Indianapolis. After that, you'll be popping
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  up in Hughton, Texas and September as well as the Chicago Land Naperville area.
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  Those should be Those are two completely different sides of the country there,
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  but it should be good time. Yeah. The tastings at a venue called
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  Spoon and Stable, which apparently is top of the line five star, an
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  amazing venue. We like to pick good places to go over important subject matter,
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  but this place it's pretty spot I'm pretty jealous. I look at the
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  photos of the menu online and I might have to stuff myself in your suitcase.
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  We know what's rough. When I do these, I eat two hours
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  before yea, and I want to be as sharp as I can be to
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  present this subject matter. So I watch everybody consume all the goodness and then
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  you know, get a take home for ninety five back in the hotel.
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  But anyway, cry I got it. Hey, no sympathy here. We're
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  excited to get to Minneapolis and go over some important subject matter. And again,
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  systems and processes have order. If you don't have it, how are
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  you gonna expect your your stafford team to be successful. Make sure you go
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  to four Quadrants Advisory dot com slash events and check out where we're going to
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  be. We update that constantly. Also, if you're a god a subscriber
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  to our podcast, go to our podcast page and fill out the form and
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  get added to that as well. Feel free to give us some likes,
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  give us some comments, and recommend us on whatever social media platform you use.
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  Well, you'd appreciate it. Thanks Casey. That's all the time we
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  have today. Thank you to our guests for their insight and for sharing some
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  really great information. And thank you to you the listener for tuning in.
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  The Millionaire DNNIS podcast is brought to you by Four Quadrants Advisory to see if
• 13:37
  they might be a good fit for you and your practice. Going over to
• 13:41
  four quadrants, Advisory, dot com and see why year after year they retain
• 13:43
  over ninety five percent other clients. Thank you again for joining us, and
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  we'll see you next time.