Latest / My Dental Playbook / 032 3 Reasons Your Collections Plateau After Buying a Practice

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032 3 Reasons Your Collections Plateau After Buying a Practice · My Dental Playbook

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: I want to be everything to everybody.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's what I hear from you right now.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's like you want to do everything.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: You want to be the clinician.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: You want to build the business.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: You want to do the dentistry.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: You want to build bring on the associates.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like you can try, but I can tell you right now it's not fun.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like I did that.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to another episode of My Dental Playbook.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your co-host, Gary Bird.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Along with my friend Dr.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Blake Hamblin, we're going to be giving you a special episode today.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: We had a fan who reached out to us, Dr.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Patrick Lynn, and he let us know that he loves the podcast and we invited him on.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: We are going to dive deep into his practice to help him to continue to grow.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: He's a new practice owner out of Seattle, Washington.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: And this was a great episode.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Not only is he doing an amazing job of turning this practice around that he bought, but he's going to continue to grow and we're going to be giving him advice along the way.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you're going to love this.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: This is a new format.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: If you are a practice owner and you would like to come on and learn about what we're doing to help people, reach out to us, DM us, let us know.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: We would love to help your practice.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: We want to hear from you.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: No strings attached, no cost.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: As always, we have a mastermind down below as well.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: And make sure you check out our sponsor, Cherry.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not using Cherry, you are missing out.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: The people who use Cherry, not only do they get a discount by signing up through our podcast, but the offices that are using it correctly are collecting 30% more when they implement Cherry and offer it to every single patient.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: We have a whole training on that.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: If you're interested in that, just comment down below or you can check out the link.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Stay tuned for this episode.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure you let Patrick know how good he did.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he did an amazing job.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: It was very brave of him to come on, get on the podcast, and just share about his practices.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Amazing episode.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: We hope to do more like this.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Stay tuned.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_02: So long story short, I uh graduated from USC.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: Then I worked with my mom for two years, New Jersey.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_02: She retired, and I moved back to Los Angeles during COVID time, worked as an associate dentist for five years, couldn't find a good practice to buy into.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: And then my girlfriend at the time lived in Seattle.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: So it ended up moving to Seattle, found the practice there.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: And then now I am uh an owner at an office in Seattle since April this year.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: I've been an owner for around 10 months now.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: And how does that spam?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's awesome.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh great, great job.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, how's that going so far?
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, uh, to be real with you, it was pretty stressful in the beginning.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_02: And then it's it's been getting better.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, a lot of things are like going uh in motion now, and then it's been going a lot better.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's just like it's it's it was a lot at first just because I moved from Los Angeles and then I didn't know anybody.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_02: And then like the top of that, ownership was just like it was it was very honestly it was very difficult in the beginning.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's a lot of different kinds of problems, right?
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a lot of you open up a bunch of can of worms that you didn't realize were kind of sitting there in the other practices you were at.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because you you do your due diligence and you kind of have an idea, but like once you get into the weeds of things, you you realize like, oh, like this is a lot more than you kind of expected.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I I think in an end day in a good way, like looking back into it, I wouldn't have done anything differently.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_02: But obviously, there's like like you said, there's a lot some bottlenecks and there's some stuff you gotta go through.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: And then like I feel like every day I'm kind of like putting out fire, like it, like anything from like, oh, one day the computer broke, or like, oh, my staff calls out, or like all of a sudden I gotta make sure all the bills are paid.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, sir.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: We call that uh CEO chief everything officer, where you're just like and and there's a phase in entrepreneurship where you turn into a firefighter where you're just like that's what you're doing.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I've been through that.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Dr.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Blake's been through that.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Of course.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: I still get uh we just had a an issue this last week that I was a firefighter all for for like 72 hours straight.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: So it it definitely is part of business.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: What what are some of your goals for this year for your practice?
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_02: For the most part, I think obviously bumping up collections is the biggest part.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: I think implementing more like procedures into my practice.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: Like right now, I'm not doing too many implants, I'm not doing too many like aesthetic cases.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: So doing that, and then um just just making sure nothing is like I'm not plateauing basically.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: Because right now I did at the end of the day, I did bump up my collections from before the practice was um like before I bought the practice.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_02: So I kind of want to just maintain it.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't want to like because I hear stories like after six months it starts to plateau and then the collections go back down, and then my overhead is already kind of high.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: So I need some.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: So you got you need to you need to grow basically, right?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: You need collections.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I need to go.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_02: How much?
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: How much are we talking about?
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: Well, when I bought the practice, the club the the office is doing around one.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_02: So then this year, I think I'm projected to do like 1.4, 1.5.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: So I want to be able to sustain that.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_02: That's like one of my main goals.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just afraid that like after a while, like I heard like it plateaus, and then like I don't know, then in the word like a staff quits or something and I don't know.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: I just like that's like kind of my fear.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: So basically just maintaining and sustaining like my growth right now.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: So uh you you mentioned that you want to increase collections, increase your kind of higher dollar procedures and the frequency of doing those.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: What does that look like for you?
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: Is that implants?
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: Is that cosmetic?
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: Do you feel are you trained in all that stuff?
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: How do you plan on actually getting to that next that next level?
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: That's something you have to really think about.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: So right now, I'm not doing too many implants.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: I took like a course like a couple years ago in Mexico, and then since then I haven't placed that many implants in my office in LA.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_02: So I didn't get that much experience.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't feel like really comfortable doing on my patients right now.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: So most of my collections are from like bread and butter stuff, uh, root canals and extractions.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: Some aesthetic cases.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_02: I don't do too many veneers, I don't do too many, like full, I don't do any full mouth stuff, all in extra stuff.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_02: So it's basically just coming from bread and butter and root canals and extractions.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: So my plan this year is to I do want to take another course, like an implant course, um, this summer, and then maybe like right after that, have a couple cases lined up so I'm more comfortable, more confident.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: So what I what I would say is it's uh it's really, really sexy to want to do that stuff.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: I want to do more of that stuff, right?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so um right now you've got so you've got so many new things coming at you.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: You've got a new city, a new state, you've got a new practice, you've got um new problems, you've got all these new things, and then you want to be the cosmetic guy and the end plant guy and everything else.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so I can tell you like I've been there.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: I've been like I've been the one that wants to do everything.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: And when I met Gary was right after I said, you know what?
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: I have total total clarity on what I want, right?
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you want to be that guy, then be that guy, but believe it and know why you want to do it, right?
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I wanted to do everything for everybody because I wanted to make more money, right?
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: But then I found out I couldn't do that.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like I couldn't even get patients through the door to do general dentistry, much less implant and cosmetic dentistry, right?
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was like, well, what if I just built the practice around hygiene?
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then eventually over time, I'll get to do more of that stuff.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so I know people just like you that bought a practice and went the all in X route, and they're successful and they can do it.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't want you to get lost in the weeds.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want you to want to do everything for everybody and not know why you want to do it.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: So the so the why is super important.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing on the flip side of that is the business model itself.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a lot of times dentistry, nobody talks about this, but in in simple sense, every patient, everybody in where you live, like everybody knows one thing.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: They're supposed to get their teeth cleaned every six months.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: All the other stuff, they don't know.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: So it's the easiest thing to market is emergencies and hygiene.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the easiest kind of patient to get into your practice.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: And they're the most likely to stay with your practice and buy treatment.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's the easiest thing.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: So, I what I always tell people to do is from a business standpoint is focus on that first.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: If you can't figure that out, implant marketing, sedation marketing, all these other things are way more complicated.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: They're way harder.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: And you have a lot more people who are just in general, just you know, kicking tires, so to speak.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: They're just like, oh, I wonder what this, you know.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so you might get 100 leads, but get very few people who actually turn into a patient from that.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so starting a GP is where you get your foundation and where you build your safety net, so to speak, because it's a recurring business model.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the other thing that most people be uh uh miss out on.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: I call it the Netflix model.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Netflix makes a bunch of money, and it's because everybody pays them, I don't know, what what is it now,$14.99 or whatever.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: They keep up in their price.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: But everybody pays them$15 a month over and over and over again.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's the hygiene model.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: You're getting them back every six months.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: They know they're supposed to be there, they love you, they love their hygienist, and they keep buying treatment from you.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then once you've built that foundation, you can then do all the treatments that you want and you have a stable income coming in or stable revenue coming in from that source.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_02: So I like one of the main things I was trying to um implement in our office is a reappointment rate.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_02: So like we get the patient in, try to get as many new patients in and then reappoint them, and then make sure before they leave they have another appointment set up.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_02: So smart.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: What's your rate at?
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: What is it at right now?
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I try to aim for at least nine out of ten patients.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_02: So I mean, there's always gonna be that one out of ten patients that don't want to schedule no matter what, sure.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_02: Until they just say, Oh, it was just calming.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_02: So we're not we don't force them, but like usually nine, I would say around nine out of ten patients now get source sort of uh reappointment, especially the new patients.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_02: Because before my front office manager, like if they would just like they would just let the new patient leave, or like if they need to go like a specialty, they'll go to specialty first, but then they'll never come back after the specialists.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm like, oh, why don't you get a reappointment right for exam cleaning and and then you can you can get appointment with the specialty at the same time?
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: So I've been trying to implement that.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and then I think that's better because then I feel like more patients they'll they'll stay.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I have more patients in my patient pool in a day, and then more patients to fill the hygiene schedule.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_02: And then my front doesn't have to like call all these patients and they to fill a schedule when it's already on the schedule six months later.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: Could you uh could you tell me what you feel like if if everything aligned the way you wanted to?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: What does your practice look like five to ten years from now?
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like how many provide how many providers do you have?
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: What's your doctor mix?
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: What's your hygiene mix?
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think that'll help us guide you.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: So I have six operatories right now, and then I have another one that's plumbed out, ready to go.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_02: And then in five to ten years, I do want to add another associate because to be honest with you, I can't see myself doing the things I'm doing right now for 10 years, just in terms of like doing all the fillings and everything on all these all my patients.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so I would like to have an associate to help me out and then have like a couple in-house specialists because right now I refer all the hard root canals, all the hard extractions and implants, I refer out.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_02: So it'd be nice to have an in-house specialist.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then obviously I would need another operatory.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: So I would need to build that operatory out in like five to ten years.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: And um ideally have two to three hygienists.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: Because right now, one I hope hygienists still watch this, but that's my biggest bottleneck is managing hygienists, to be honest with you, Seattle.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: Don't yeah, don't don't worry.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's every you're not saying anything that you're gonna do.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, but especially Seattle.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's it's really bad, yeah.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, because Seattle they get paid the highest.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, what is it, like a hundred and something dollars an hour, I think is the average.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: No, that's for assisted hygienists.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_02: So right now my hygienists get 75 an hour, and that was more than I was making as a new grad dentist.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_02: So 75 an hour benefits, and then on top of that, they get two operatories to themselves.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_02: So right now, I I have six, and I'm working in two, and both my hygienists are working in two operatories, so that's six in total.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: And how many new patients a month are you seeing?
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_02: Right now I'm seeing around 35.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_02: Before I bought the practices, it was around 20.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_02: So 30, 35 is I mean, it's not a lot, but it's it's a lot better than what the practice was doing before.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: And then at Seattle is kind of a competitive area too.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, I'm getting around 35.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_02: So I would ideally like to bump it up to 40 and 45 and then try to get associate in like five to 10 years.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: So what I what I would challenge you is, and we actually just finished up a mastermind call and I talked about this.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: Was there's there's four different avatars in dentistry, and you've got a social doc.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: So a social doc is the well, a lot of like like the older doctors, right?
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: The guys who um just get along with every patient.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: They want to give away, you know, the fillings for free.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh J Julie comes in once a year, but it's it's his best friend, you know.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and then you've got a professional doc.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: So a professional doc's gonna be more of someone who um really wants to scale and grow a business.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: And and um uh then you've got a financial doc who is is like, I don't care how I do it, I don't care if I have to prep 4,000 crowns this month.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: I want to make this much, and this is the thing that drives me.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then you have a clinical doc, a doc who really gets in the weeds, goes to COIS, does a spear, like wants to know the how to dial in the occlusion and and this, that, and the other.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so what I would say is usually that you're a blend of two of those, right?
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: So figure out what blend you are and then merge what you want into that, right?
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're a social clinical doctor, okay, so how do we blend those two things together?
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: Versus I want to be everything to everybody because that's what I hear from you right now.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's like you want to do everything, you want to be the clinician, you want to build the business, you want to do the dentistry, you want to build, bring on the associate.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's like you can try, but I can tell you right now it's not fun.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like I I did that, you know what I mean?
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so what I would impart on you is like I would love to hear, you know, three, four or five months from now the total and radical clarity that you have in what you want to produce, not just this this year, but three years from now, five years from now.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_02: Like so you're basically saying instead of like trying to do everything at once, just trying to focus, like kind of hone in on what like one specific, more specific things, or like what you like, you feel like I'm just trying to concentrate on too many things at once.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: Is that what is that what you're saying?
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you don't have to answer this question, but are you the guy that wants to build and develop doctors and just scale practices?
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: So do you like in your future, do you want to own 10 practices?
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because to do that, it's very different than owning one practice that does three million dollars and you're the sole provider that does 2.2 million of that, right?
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so just really understanding what is it that you want to do because it takes different skills to do all of those things.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: I I see I don't know the answer to that question, right?
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: No, and you and you don't need to.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: This is more of like this is kind of woo-woo, right?
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: But it's like I've I've fallen in the trap that you're in right now, and I'm throwing a ladder down to help you climb out.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's so yeah.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: So, what would be the next steps then, Dr.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: Blake?
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like how would you walk through this or how did you walk through this?
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was trial and error for me, um, which which is like how you create a lot of brush fires behind you.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but if if you if you love it, sounds like it sounds like you really love clinical dentistry right now.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like it sounds like you really you really want to improve your clinical skills, you really want to build that um that clinical suite, then I would, if I'm you, I'm diving into that.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't sound like you get really fired up about onboarding associates and developing associates right now.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds like that's kind of a drag to you.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I would, I would dive in, I would go get really good at surgery, I'd go to Colorado Surgical Institute, I would go to implant pathways, I would, I would do all the surgery stuff that you're excited about, right?
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: And get really, really good at that, get really good at extraction bunga, get really good at wisdom teeth, get really good at placing implants, and then take the next step.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, now I'm gonna learn sinus lifts and all on X.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: And and get there.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: And what what you'll do is you'll end up building a really awesome job for yourself.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: You'll you'll pay yourself a lot of money to do that job, but then you're gonna be beholden to that job.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: You're not gonna be able to go on vacation.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: When you do on vacation, go on vacation, you're gonna have to shut your practice down.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: And then things may change.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: You may have kids, you may whatever, and you may say, you know what, I don't value this like I did four years ago.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: Now I value this.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so it may change and migrate, but I think in this season of life, what I hear from you is you really enjoy clinical.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I dive into the clinical.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's such I I love that advice.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: And as you were talking, Dr.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: Blake, I think back to my own entrepreneurship journey.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: When I started, I did everything, just like you, Patrick.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: Everything in my company.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: There was nothing that I didn't do.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I learned everything.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, man, if I could just get to the point where I just managed a team, that would be amazing.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then I realized I hate managing people, like hate it.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to manage anybody.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then I was like, well, if I could just work on just do sales, if I could just sell all the time.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I did that for a while.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then I was like, I hate this.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so I built out the systems to have somebody else do it.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: If I could just do marketing, all I did was marketing, that would be amazing.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Or all I did was meetings.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: I used to, there was one point in my journey, I just had meetings upon meetings upon meetings.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: If I could just do the technical stuff on the back end, what I realized about myself is I just like to do new stuff.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so you can the cool part about being a dentist is you can create whatever future you want.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: And the thing I love about your advice, Dr.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: Blake, is like you get to go through and do what you're what you love right now, and then you could give yourself uh permission to pivot.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: I wish I would have known that early on in my journey because it would have made, you know, it would have made me more happy faster.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: But now it's like I've built the job that I love doing and I get to do it every single day.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so, Patrick, for you, you if you could niche down and just focus on that clinical side because that's what you love to do, and then give yourself permission to pivot.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but uh everything else, you're you're doing great.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you you bought a practice doing one million, you've already grown it by 40%.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, that's a projection.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's amazing.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you continue to get the new patients where they're at, and you continue to do that, you're gonna hit that.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like you, there's no, there's not gonna be a slump because you're you grew the new patients, and if you can keep those consistent, that's really good.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, one area that I think that you are gonna struggle with that every office in America struggles with, is the hygiene issue.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's gonna be something that you're gonna have to do even if you don't like doing it.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: There's certain things about being a business owner that you gotta do, even if you don't like them.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that you gotta figure out that hygiene side of things.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because you're gonna need hygienists.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: Because that's like my uh I I look at my PL every month, and that's like my biggest overhead expense.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_02: Uh is the high, yeah.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_02: Cause I think hygiene is supposed to be around like six to eight percent or something.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_02: Uh maybe even less.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_02: Mine's at like 12, maybe 10 to 12%, if not more.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean, for the amount that they're they're great hygienists, don't get me wrong.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_02: For the amount they produce, I mean, I think it's supposed to be like three times or something, right?
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_02: I I don't even think they're doing like two right now.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: So how could we help them with that, Dr.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: Blake, with the combination of like cherry and bonus systems and things like that?
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, more from like a broad perspective.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: The only way that the only way that you particularly from an hourly perspective are gonna be able to afford a$75 an hour hygiene is is to outproduce your way to it.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like you you're not gonna cut enough expenses to make that dollar amount change, but doing the things that you said you want to do, like getting better clinically at extractions, bone grafts, implants, getting better at closing treatment.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: So like the biggest thing that you can do is learn how to communicate more influentially with patients.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: So if you've never re read the book Exactly What to Say, I would buy that book today on Amazon and read it.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's fantastic.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's got about 20 different kind of isms in it that you can take.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: And what I did was I read the chapter.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: Each chapter is like two or three pages long.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: I read the chapter, and then I wrote down five different ways that I could utilize that ism in the practice.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: So how would you feel about blah blah blah?
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_02: The book is called exactly exactly what to say.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's called exactly what to say.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I think getting really good at communication and um and really sales is the key to your success because you're gonna have to outproduce a hygiene problem.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna have to replace what what normally like 30% of the production and in a typical practice would be from hygiene.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: Your practice is gonna probably look more like 80 20.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like you're gonna need to just outproduce that problem so that you can afford to keep the the flywheel going that they're gonna help you with, that you just need to get really, really good at getting treatment out of that flywheel.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: Are you are you using patients?
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Financing?
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm using Cherry and well, before my office using CareCredit, so I implemented Cherry.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: So I've been doing Cherry and CareCredit now.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: Are you uh are you leading with monthly payments with all treatment?
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: No, but I should be.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I should be.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_02: That's probably a good idea, honestly.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a huge competitive advantage because no one just like it's probably 1% of dentists do this.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone we've told to do it so far, Dr.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: Blake.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: We and I've told every I post about it on Facebook all the time.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: We do podcasts about it, we do our mastermind.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody's like, man, this is a game changer.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because what it does is it eliminates the insurance conversation, which is what everybody wants.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: So it just kind of gets rid of that.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: And now you're focusing on monthly uh payments and it increases case acceptance.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: We've seen it from 30%.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen all the way up to Dr.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: Blake is 100%.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, everybody, like not without exception.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so what you do is you just it's and it's also easier for the patient.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's easier for you, it's easier for everybody.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: The fees are high, right?
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: So it does cost money, but the amount of treatment that you end up closing that you wouldn't have closed anyways far outpaces that, where it totally makes sense.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: So that is something that I would highly recommend.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: We have a whole training on that.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've seen it or not, um, but I can give that to you.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_02: So how would the language exactly go?
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_02: It would just be like, so say like the patient needs to pay$2,000 out of pocket.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um, because I know you have to you have to run them through chair, you don't know exactly the monthly payment they need to make, but like how would the language go in terms of like case acceptance?
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_02: Like it'd be like, oh, your monthly payment would be around$100,$200 a month or something.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_02: And then Yeah.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: So we we have a form, and I I believe it's on our website that you're welcome to download and use.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it's incredibly helpful for patients.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: But we move basically whatever shows up on your open dental or eagle soft or whatever you use, you transfer it over to this Google Doc, and then we use iPads, you can print it out.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: But it gives you a rough estimate of what that dollar amount would be to finance.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not gonna be exact, but it's gonna the point of the the whole point of it is to determine do these people want to pay with cash, credit card, check, or do they want to finance treatment?
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so it'd be real easy.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, Patrick, um, do you have any questions about the plan that Dr.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: Hamlin went through with you?
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: No, I don't.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, awesome.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: So to do this crown, it's gonna cost about$2,000 or as little as$250 a month.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: Which of these options works better for you?
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then don't say anything.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: The rule, the role with that, a sales rule, and I know dentists hate this, but this is this is sales and this is a rule.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: First to talk loses.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: So in any presentation, when you're presenting uh something like that, and in like if I was selling you marketing and I said, okay, the marketing is gonna be$5,000 a month.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: Here's everything that you're gonna get.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: Boom, boom, boom, and you can pay for it this way or that way.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: First to talk loses.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: So if you my goal is to get you to talk first.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason for that is then it get I can, you know, you can give rebuttals and explanations, and you're gonna get to the root of the actual problem.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna tell you what they're actually thinking now.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I'm scared of the treatment.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: I've I don't know if I'm gonna qualify for the treatment, my credit's bad, whatever it is, you're gonna get to the actual root of it.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we we had a we had a situation today, actually, that we had a patient that came in for the$49 cleaning, or hygienist diagnosed that he had periodontal disease or at least had you know gingivitis and um recommended a superprofi, which is basically just a deeper, I forget what the code is, but anyways, so superprofi is what we call it.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: And um it doesn't qualify for the$49 cleaning.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: So hygienist comes comes to get me.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, uh, I've already talked to him about doing a deeper cleaning.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: He doesn't want to do it, um, but he wants to talk to you about some other stuff in the future.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: He wants to do some cosmetic work, you know, of course.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so I walk in, we talk about, you know, doing invisalign and veneers and stuff like that.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, Well, what about the cleaning?
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Oh, well, she told me you didn't want to do the cleaning.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he was like, Yeah, I mean, I came in for the$49 cleaning.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, Well, that would that'd be great.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I wish you qualified for that, but you have periodontal disease, you've got you've got bugs living in your gums, we've got to clean up.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: And he was like, That's great phrasing.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: And he was like, he was like, Well, I came in to the$49 cleaning, and I and I was like, Oh, okay, so if we made this affordable for you, would you want to consider it?
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: And he was like, Well, I'm not gonna qualify.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: I already know I got I got low credit, I'm not gonna qualify.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, All right, well, we we can try.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, Well, I don't want my credit score to get hit.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, oh no, it didn't do that either.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I walked out of there thinking there's no chance that this guy's gonna do anything.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: And lo and behold, I come back like 30 minutes later, and he's still sitting in the chair when he has teeth waked.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: And it it does that.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: So, like, that was a small example.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: But like, what happens when a patient can do Invisalign or do implants or do the things that you're wanting to do when you can say, Hey, let's just see what you qualify for?
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: You may you may get$3,000 at zero percent interest, but who's not gonna take that?
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so um, there's a lot of power in leading with it.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: Who does it most of your treatment presentation now?
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have a TC?
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah, my office manager.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_02: So I mean, basically me, my hygienist will kind of like do the case acceptance a little bit, and then she'll input everything into their system in the front, and the patient will walk out, and then she'll explain everything to them.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_02: And then if they want to get scheduled, they get scheduled before they before they leave.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I want to challenge you with something uh the way you phrased it, I want you to be in control of who closes the treatment.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: Your treatment coordinator, your office manager, I promise you, she is too busy to care if that treatment gets closed.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: But you're not, right?
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so you should stay in that room and get so good at communicating.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I recommended the book, right?
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: Get so good at communicating that you know before the before you leave that room that that patient's either saying yes or no.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: The rarity, like the story I just shared, when the treatment coordinator can come in and save you, it's so rare.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: You have to create the value.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: The job of the treatment coordinator is to fit it in their budget.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: So you create the value, they fit it in the budget.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: And and when you believe that and you've got a good person on the team that can actually come in and fit it into their budget and have empathy and do all the things that a great treatment coordinator does, that's when you soar.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: So you gotta you've gotta own the clothes.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:43
  unknown: Yeah.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_02: I think I think I gotta do a little better and could job in doing that.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_02: Cause sometimes I do it, but then I have like two or three other patients.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_02: So like I don't even like think, I just like sometimes I I'm like really busy and then I go to other rooms and then all of a sudden the patient leaves and then I ask my office managers, like, oh, do they schedule?
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_02: They're like, oh, don't think about it.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, oh.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I think I think we've come full circle, right?
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: So clarity.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like, like you just said, you're so busy doing all these other things.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: What do we want to build?
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: And how do we want to do it?
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think I think if we slow down, you'll speed up for sure.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: So if there were two main takeaways, it's focus on the clinical side of things, clinical skill.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's gonna open you up to do more treatment, which is gonna help you with the heavy burden of your PL, especially on the hygiene side of things.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then the other thing you can do to speed that up even faster is implement cherry, leading with monthly payments and really taking ownership of treatment presentation um just in the short term and getting really good at it.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: You do those two things, you'll blow your, you'll blow your goals out of the water really fast.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I have one last question too about the follow-up, follow-up treatment.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_02: How often do you guys recommend to follow up with the patient if they're like if I feel like they're a little hesitant, but they seem like they're really interested, but they don't end up scheduling due to various reasons.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so we we follow the 222 model.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: So two days, two weeks, two months.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that works really well for us.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: Frankly, you've got to have somebody that owns that.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's really hard because right now it sounds like your team's pretty small and your team wears so many different hats, and your expectation is gonna be that when they have downtime, that they're gonna spend it every waking minute calling those patients that were supposed to close, right?
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I can just tell you because I've been in that spot, you'll be frustrated because that doesn't happen.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so it might be that you take a hit on your PL because you need to, you need to staff out more people to make those phone calls if that's something you really care about.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: But that's again why I want you to get really clear about like, do you want to just create volume?
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: And if they say no, who cares?
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because I'm gonna get, you know, 50 more new patients walking through the door just like them.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: Or do you want to slow down and make sure that each and every person is treated a certain way?
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: And handled a certain way.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: And you're gonna get lost, you're gonna be spiraling until you do that.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: This is really good.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: I get I can tell you're thinking, Patrick.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, thanks for all the tips.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah, I'm always taking, but I appreciate the now that I got certain advice from you guys, I'm gonna think about it a lot more.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I appreciate all the advice.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, man.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is really cool.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate you watching the show.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate you coming on.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: Most dentists would not do this.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I know you're gonna be successful the second you DM me and you were like, hey, here's what I'm working on.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I'd love to come on and just talk about my practice.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, this dude's gonna be successful.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna hit all your goals.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: If you're willing to ask questions and and uh work through problems, you're gonna do great.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so as long as you keep doing that, you're you're gonna figure it out.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: Dentistry is one of those businesses that has a low fail rate, very high success rate.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really just about are you willing to work through the bottlenecks?
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: So you're gonna you're gonna crush, man.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I and I appreciate that.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_02: And then also I'm a big fan of your podcast too.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_02: I and I learned a lot from all your different podcasts and stuff.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_02: So a big fan of you guys as well.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_02: Awesome.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: Appreciate that, man.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: We we literally do this to help people.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: So when we hear that, that is special to us.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate that.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thank you, man.