Latest / My Dental Playbook / 043 5 Pillars Every Dentist Needs Before Location #2 - Part 1

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043 5 Pillars Every Dentist Needs Before Location #2 - Part 1 · My Dental Playbook

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: You've gotta get past that.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: You've gotta get past the like the scarcity mindset of oh my gosh, I'm gonna have to pay jury like phenomenal amount that you're paying.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: You don't understand how many people are walking out of your office wishing they could afford the dentistry that you're recommending.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: And all you have to do is just put a cheating problem that shows them that it's possible.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to another episode of My Dental Playbook.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your co-host, Gary Bird.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Along with my friend Dr.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Blake Hamblin, we're gonna be diving deep into his office and how he's doubled his collections in just under 12 months.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: We're also gonna be talking about his journey to a$10 million practice and what he needs to do to get there.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna see behind the curtain, and Dr.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Blake is amazing at sharing the hard details that you need to know so you can do the same too.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to grow, this is the show for you.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Stay tuned.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: All right, we are live for another episode.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: And today we're gonna be talking about the five things that you have to do before you open your second location.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: I cannot tell you, Dr.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Blake, how many times I've seen dentists absolutely take amazing situations, amazing offices, and absolutely ruin their life by opening a second and third office.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: I just had a practice I talked to, and this dentist had a really successful, really profitable practice, and he got burnt out.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: And he was like, man, I don't want to sell.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'll just open three more practices because I'm burnt out.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, oh, I said that didn't go well, huh?
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, no, like it fixed it for a little bit because I was doing different work, but I got a different kind of burnt out right behind that.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so you're going through this right now, and you're going through and building this amazing flagship that you're doing 500,000 roughly in collections a month, and you're you're you're thinking through, okay, what do I need to have in place before I go to the second practice?
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: So this is going to be a really good episode, and we're going to go into great detail, and we're going to also link a bunch of resources down below.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll you can check those out as I reference those down below.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: And also, even more important, and we'll mention this in the show as well, our our sponsor, go check out Cherry.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not using Cherry yet, you're you're missing the boat.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: You need to be using it with every single patient.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's amazing.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: It'll increase your collections by a minimum of 30% if you just implement it and use it on every single patient.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I dare you to try it.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I no one has come back to me and said, oh, it didn't work.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody's collection goes up.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: So go check them out.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: We have a discount down below and a training.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: So let me just work through these really quickly, Dr.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: Blake.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: So these are the things that you're focusing on that you want to have in place before you go to your next practice, even though your practice right now is successful, but there's things that aren't there yet that you need to have there, like fully built out, because you already know you're gonna have a headache if you go to a second location without these.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: So, number one is systems, and then there's five systems you got to have in place.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna go over those.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Number two is profit, and actually, how do you define profit?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because that starts to shift when you start to hire more associates and you're bouncing between practices and CEO time.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Number three is marketing.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have a marketing plan and does it actually work?
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna talk about like how to track that and know that.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Number uh four is a practice leader that's gonna go to the new location with you and isn't gonna hurt the old location when they leave.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's a big one.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then lastly, and most probably most important, is uh attracting and retaining dentists.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: If you can't do that, then you don't have a dental practice.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: So let's this is gonna be two parts.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: So let's just do the first part now.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: What are the five systems that you have to have in place before you go to the second practice?
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna work through these really quickly.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: We have number one, hygiene, number two, AR and billing, number three, your TC and your treatment coordination uh setup, your front desk, your SOPs, like your general SOPs, and then general expectation and culture.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: So let's just start at the top of those.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Let's start at hygiene, because that's like your your driver, your engine.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: What do we need to have in place in system-wise hygiene before we even think about opening a second location?
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I think one one of the main things is I I'm convinced day day in and day out, the dentistry is more and more just a people business.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh like I I I don't I don't think that much else matters outside of how you make people feel.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so having a general rallying cry that your team uses to communicate amongst each other, but uh especially the patients is is incredibly important.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, down to like where where are the people standing when we're having these discussions, right?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so we we talk about those things all the time.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: We want to be uh we call the patient triangle.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: We want the patient at the tip of the triangle and doctor and hygienist on either side uh kind of speaking to each other across the way, but in front of the patient.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: So we're not having conversations back behind the patient uh as if we're trying to tell each other secrets.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: We want the patient to be able to see everything that we're doing.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but also and we've talked about this before, but awareness and concern.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, we talked about that this morning in our huddle, reminding our team um that that it's important to use those those words because uh it elicits a different emotion inside of the patient when you tell them that you're concerned about something.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so um, as much as hygiene is very much a hopefully a profit center in your practice, they are also incredibly important in enrolling treatment in your practice.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: And they need to understand the role that they play in that and how important it is, and you as the as a doctor have to uh unfortunately continue to remind them that they are in fact very important to that process.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, super important.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: And if I I very rarely see a GP practice that grows when hygiene becomes a restraint.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, you need a dentist, but if you you can do a lot with four hygienists and one dentist, like you can get really cute with the way you set up your schedule and you pump people through.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I've seen offices be really, really successful with one dentist and several hygienists.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: I very I don't ever really see practices that are successful that the dentist is the hygienist, and like you can get started, but it's really hard to get traction.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, how important is how your hygienists are motivated or incentivized?
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: Is it where do you rank that on the system?
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: Man, great question.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: I I think that I could probably make both uh both a non-incentivized uh hygienist work just as well as an incentivized hygienist in our office.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: I th I think what it comes down to is managing the expectation that you have for that hygienist.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm totally cool with if we've got a hygienist that really really needs to feel like they're delivering a different level of care to the patient and they need to spend X amount of time.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm okay with uh managing and massaging that a little bit, as long as they understand that we have to we have we still have to fit within the boundaries that our practice runs.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like you can't have four hours to do a cleaning, like you still have to have to do it within the hour.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I'm also okay with like if if they're cleaning, if one cleaning takes 45 minutes and the other cleaning takes 20, I'm okay with that.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: But I I will say that if you're um if you're you can track that when you incentivize people generally you can follow the result that follows the incentivization, right?
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you've got a hygienist that is incentivized to take the x-rays that they're expected to take, that is incentivized maybe even on treatment acceptance.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: I know with a lot of these softwares you can even track the combos that are used.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: So like Dr.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: Hamblin and Ana, like how how how well do they accept treatment?
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: What is their acceptance rate?
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: Which is kind of a cool thing that you could get lost in.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I wouldn't say go do that, but nonetheless, it it does make a difference and you can track all that stuff.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: So um I think if you have an incentivized hygienist, you can certainly extract more value monetarily out of them because uh the business is aligned with the outcome as well, and so a lot of things make sense from that perspective.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and then you did a whole podcast with your TC, which is really, really good.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: And you went through the whole bonus structure and you had her explain it from her point of view, which I it helped me being non-clinical, hearing from another hygienist like, okay, this is how I viewed it.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: These were my fears, this is why I didn't want to do it, this is what convinced me to do it, and that was really, really good.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll put that down in the resources below.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so that's the first pillar.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: We gotta have hygiene.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: And if we don't have hygiene, then it's gonna be really, really hard for you to go to that second location because you're gonna be scrambling.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then your other what ends up happening, and I've seen this so many times, is like you go to that second location, and then your hygiene schedule falls apart over here because you're not gluing it together.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then it it puts so much stress because now the new practice is sucking life from the old practice, and you just took a really profitable situation where you were making really good money, and now you're actually in the negative every single month, and not that and that's that's like nightmare scenario from a business standpoint.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: Practice one, paying for practice two happens.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's a time.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's really good.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's really good.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so now let's move on to number two.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: So AR and billing.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: So what the five systems that you have to have in place, number one, hygiene before you move to your second location.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, AR and billing.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we we for a long time didn't have a system for this.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: And we would struggle with uh patients showing up even for the doctor appointment.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: And a simple thing that we did was just taking a simple hundred dollar down payment uh to reserve the time uh on the doctor schedule, and that that's worked really well.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: But also, what is your collections policy?
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: Are you collecting uh before you use spin a burr or are you collecting after you spin a burn?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we've just found that it's it's way easier uh to collect money and collect payment up front versus try to catch them on the back end on a phone call because as we all know, our front team is just spinning their wills trying to reach out to patients.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: Hey Gary, uh your insurance unfortunately didn't cover$200 of the crown that they said they were gonna cover.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so now we need to charge you, right?
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: And it it it's just really, really hard.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so if we can collect up front as best as we can with the as much of the information that we can get from our insurance breakdowns, that's a really easy system to implement.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: And it it saves so much time on the back end.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like if we've talked about this, but if you can over or underestimate what insurance is gonna pay for, and potentially the patient pays a little more up front, the amount of time that it saves your front office on the back end is just it's astronomical.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like it it like your team will thank you for that, and so that's just one system, but there's so many rabbit holes you can go down.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: You've got 30-day AR, you got 60 day, you got 90 day, how are you gonna handle each of those troughs?
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like, are you gonna send a text?
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: Are you gonna send an email?
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: Are you gonna call them?
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: What are you gonna do?
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so thinking through and getting granular about how you want to uh approach each um situation is critical, in my opinion, because you've got to be be able to take all of these things and go and dump them in the next uh practice, and they've got to work and be proof.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and again, it can't be you reminding Susan that, hey, you forgot to text these people, hurry up and we need money coming in right now.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like it that can't be your system because what a lot of dentists miss on this is that when you go to the second location, you no longer have pulse on the first location.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: The reason that your pre business works is because you're there all the time and you literally can feel, oh, this isn't gonna be a good month, or oh man, this is gonna be a monster month.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: You feel that in like two days going into your practice, already knowing that without even looking at any numbers or anything like that, you lose all that when you walk out the door.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: And and so now you need to have some kind of spreadsheet or dashboard or something.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, just on this point, I was just looking through our resources.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: You actually did a masterclass on this how to collect every dollar you produce without being pushy, because I know Dennis hate that, but that was literally the title.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll we'll put that down below if you want 20 minutes of Dr.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Blake just like diving deep into that system.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: And he actually gives several of his resources he uses in his office.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: Go check that out.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, okay, so five systems you got to have in place before you open your second location.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, hygiene, number two, accounts receivable and billing.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: Number three, this is my favorite, because this is where the magic happens, is your TC.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so critical.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: For a long time we didn't have that.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: We had our office manager um doing it, we had our assistants doing it, we had whoever wanted to do it do it.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: And um as as good with communication as I thought I I was, um, it really came down to did we have someone else on on the back end being able to close that treatment.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: And the the very simple system that we found to work is using a a simple Google Sheet, uh transferring the data over from OpenDental or whatever software you use, and um putting it in a in a form that the patient can digest.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: Have printing out OpenDental or EagleSoft or whatever you're using, um the the sheet that says you know, two surface resin composite, blah blah blah.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: The patients just glaze over.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: They they want to know how much is their insurance gonna cover, what's their out of pocket, and how can they pay for it.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's what this financial menu has done.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's really simplified it.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: And frankly, it it makes it it's not about the treatment.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like we as dentists, we sit there and we think it's about the composite or the crown.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: They don't really care, they just know we don't know.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Let me just tell all the dentists out there.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: I have no idea what the dentist is saying to me when they're like I'm just like my transmission doesn't work and I need to know how to fix it.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: I just want to know how much is it gonna cost and how can I pay for it?
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: So, quite literally, the biggest thing on our financial menu is how you can pay for it monthly with charity, right?
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like so, what percentage of your collections right now are patient financing?
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh probably around it it it fluctuates, but anywhere between 15 to 25 percent.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: I just you you know Dr.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Talon uh Davis, he he just started working with us a couple months ago.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Super competitive market in Dallas Fort Worth.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: And he had his best new patient month.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: He had 100 new patients.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: He did three, he just told me this on a podcast so I can share it publicly.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: He did 346, and I said, best collections month ever.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um he produced 360 something.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, dude, that's really good.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like you got up there really quickly, and he said he's doing 30% of his collections through patient financing.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of the magic number, right?
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: If you can get to that 20 to 30 percent somewhere in there, you will like how much let's how much less do you think you would collect if you didn't do patient financing or you just offered it on the back end?
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I would I would say if we if we said my average month is at 500,000, we would probably need close to probably high 380, 390.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: So 100 to 150,000 less.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: But but you're paying fees, you're paying a lot of fees, but it's a boatload of of treatments, so much money.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's not even that much fee.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like it it to me, you've gotta get past that point.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: You've you've gotta get past the like the scarcity mindset of oh my gosh, I'm gonna have to pay Cheerie, like the nominal amount that you're paying.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: You don't understand how many people are walking out of your office wishing they could afford the dentistry that you're recommending.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: And all you have to do is just put a sheet in front of them that shows them that it's possible.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but so many people are so afraid of losing money.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you, just like with marketing, you're losing money by not doing it.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like you're you're you're losing like the ups you've got to think, like we both are Bitcoin guys.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like, think about the upside, not the downside.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's risky not holding Bitcoin right now because of everything going on in the world.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like, it's just like, what else are you gonna hold?
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, don't want to get off topic, but uh we could quickly turn this into a Bitcoin podcast.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: For sure, for sure.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: But I I just think like thinking about like the the wild growth that we've experienced in our office simply because we decided to do two things find a marketing company that worked really well and implement patient financing.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like the phone calls that I can answer with those two questions is almost 90%.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how do you grow?
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: You find a good marketing company and work with them, and you utilize patient financing to make it affordable for patients.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: If you do those two things, you will absolutely crush.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm saying it, not you.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: You're the marketing guy.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm the dentist that doesn't know anything.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like, if you do those two things, you will crush.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: I totally agree.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so let's go to SIS.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, actually, if you want the training, Dr.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: Blake did an hour and a half training with QA with a bunch of dentists and his treatment coordinator there who helped do the training.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: He has it's all outlined for you.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: You can literally roll it out today, implement it in your office tomorrow.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's very simple, and it'll like probably out of everything, this will have the biggest impact on your practice.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: We have the training right down below.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: Go check that out.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: The next system is the front desk.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, you've I've got a I've gotta double-click on the resource that you've you've got, Gary.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um having a having a system for phones is so important.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, thankfully, we're having to rely less on humans these days than we have in the past, uh, which for people like me sometimes is good, right?
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but um we've we've been implementing your your AI uh answering service uh or AI answering um agent, and it's been great.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: I you just told me we're performing at 80%.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: 81% this month.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: And you you're crazy.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like I can't even get people to use AI.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, I'm not gonna let AI answer my calls.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, can AI answer all 200 of my new patient calls and schedule all of them?
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, we're seeing 200.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: I know you're seeing 200.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's like, yeah, we can do that if you want, so we're doing it, and it's performing like an A plus human.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the part that kind of drives me nuts about this.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: Just like everything in dental, there's like 500 bad actors, and then there's like 10 good actors, and it's new, especially with new stuff, and especially with buzzwords like AI.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: There's so many bad AIs.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: I just looked at one yesterday.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: This dentist had uh 15 patients that called.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: The AI answered it, scheduled none of them.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: The team never got back to them because it was too late.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: They lost all those new patients.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like that, and that's like it, that's like$3,600 of marketing dollars just washed down the drain, more than that.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: It was even more than that.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so you are absolutely you're pioneering this, literally.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think there's anybody else in the country doing this.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: So um, you're pioneering this is so cool to see, and you actually like it.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: So it's amazing.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and and also like we do have have to remember that there are also going to be humans answering the phone, and so having them understand that you know they're on stage when they answer the phone.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: Always we talked to our team about you know, answer the phone with a smile on your face, like physically smile, right?
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: And people can feel that.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, also just knowing, you know, um so much of our our job is relational, like I said earlier, and getting ahead of the problems that are coming.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: So, like we, for example, we've got a we've got a case going on, and we've had issues with the lab getting it and they this, that, and the other.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm just like, guys, if we just let them know, if we just call them and we say, hey Gary, just want to dive to you, talk to the lab today, they're working on it.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna follow up with you in two days, let you know where we're at, they're gonna be happy.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: But if you sit there and you just wait and then a week goes by and they call us, oh man, we're in trouble now.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: You're in trouble.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's when you're dealing with the issues.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: So the rule on this, I've explained to my team, is if you're proactive and you explain to the client you are a genius at whatever your job, if you're marketing, if you're a project manager, you're a genius and you're in and they you're looked up to.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: If you say it afterwards, if you're reactive, you're an excuse maker.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: Even though it's the same exact thing, like you don't have to change any of the words or any of this anything.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's just like just the timing of your communication makes all the difference in the world.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: I actually have a whole training on this uh for the phones that you guys have used.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that will be right down below.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta have your front desk dialed in.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: If your front desk is not dialed in, you will bleed to death and it will ruin your life.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: You're you will be very unhappy.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it's and it's hard to go and change that.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um okay.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: Number uh this is gonna be number four.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: System number four, you gotta have in place before you open a second location.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: Your general SOPs.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, just just in general.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like how like what's your uh how are you gonna set up rooms?
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: How are you going to clean rooms?
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: How are you gonna break down rooms?
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: How are you going to see the patient?
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: What's the expectation there?
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh how are you going to process instruments?
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: How are you going to all the little things?
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: What you don't want to do is uh Sally is The gatekeeper of all of the information and Sally's not moving to the new location.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh all of a sudden you get there and you're like, wait, I thought that thing that's been running all on its own was just gonna happen again.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: What happened?
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Sally doesn't exist there.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: So you either have to find another Sally or you document it all and systematize it.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: And and this is never ending.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: So you just gotta keep building them.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: Dr.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: Blake was like bringing people in on off days, paying them overtime.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like, we're making SOPs today, guys.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like, we gotta crank these out.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta have these in place.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because here's here's what it boils down to.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: If you have team members that come in and they're a players, they will always notice if you don't have proper training.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: And now uh that was me early on in business.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: I've learned that I gotta have training.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now people say we have too much training.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: People are like, okay, bro, this is overkill.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't need to know how to like wake up and brush my teeth in the morning.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: I need to know how to do my job.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so we have all these SOPs upon SOPs.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: If you want an SOP on how to make an SOP, because if you're like, what is an SOP?
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how to make them, I've never made them, how do I even train my team?
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: I have a whole document that's literally a step-by-step that'll teach you how to teach your team how to make an SOP.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: And just for the audience, because we're using acronyms, standard uh standardized operating procedure.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's just here's a step-by-step how to do this, and then you just hand it to people, you never have to explain it again.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's beautiful.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's once it's built, it's wonderful.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: And with AI, it's pretty easy to build these now.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and if I can add one more thing, because this is something that we've been doing, is a lot of times you'll do this and then they live they live in a silo and they don't get read or they don't get used, or you forget about 'em.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so what we're doing even more so is trying to make the SOPs, but also putting them in the location that they they need to be.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: So so for example, we've just onboarded a ton of new uh assistants to our office and setting up a room has been documented in a text format.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: But what we did was we said, hey, it might be better just to like get on Canva and draw a tray and put the things where they're supposed to be.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so literally in all the runes, they're on a little ringed little binder ring deal, and they hang them on the hook.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: And when we're doing a crown, they can flip to the crown, pull it out, look at it.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, the cotton rolls go here, the anesthetic goes there.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: And literally, Gary, you could come in and set up a room.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that that's what the SOPs are for.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you're a little bit of a couple of things.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: The SOP is so good that even a dummy like Gary can do it, you are nailing it, bro.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's amazing.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's actually really smart.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: So SOPs aren't always in words, they could be in pictures.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I absolutely love putting them in the place that they need to be.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: So, like if you've got if you're doing uh milling in house and you need a system, they need to know how to change the water.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: We'll put the system for that next to the CERIC machine so that when they need to know.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: We're at the front desk if you're on the phone and there's like three questions you have to ask, and this is the flow that we always use, and we have to have this information, then you put the three, put it by the phone, like just put it there, laminate it, and and leave it there, and then and then you make updates as needed.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's a beautiful.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, last one.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: So we got hygiene, AR, and billing, TC, front desk, SOPs in general, and then this one was interesting.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: You said general expectation in like culture things, which is different.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: SOP is like how you do things, culture or general expectations more about like why we do these things.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: We we have a rule in our office, we don't want patients waiting more than uh about three minutes and in our in the lobby.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like we we have this big, beautiful office with plenty of rooms.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: They should come in, be greeted, uh answer any questions to the to our greeting coordinator, and then they should be back asap.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: If they don't sit down in the lobby, that's better than them sitting in the lobby.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like the lobby should we should almost not even have a lobby, right?
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: And that's just a general expectation we have in our office.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: You want to see a really angry Dr.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: Hamblin, I see patients waiting 15, 20 minutes in the lobby, I go berserk.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because and then so and and the reason that you have that rule is that if I'm sitting in the lobby, if my appointment's at 11 and I'm in there till 1115, you I'm now like you're late, you're just wasting my time.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: Why did I come early, et cetera, et cetera?
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: But if you just simply move me into a chair, even though you're still late and everything's running behind, but the second I get in the chair, I'm like, oh, they're on time and this is normal.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like I have to sit.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: I just sit in the dental chair for 10 or 15 minutes.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's fine.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then I sit on my phone.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's the same thing, but you just changed the mood of the patient.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the perception of the patient, yeah.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: For sure.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so that that's probably the the biggest thing that I've seen with practices that just are absolutely killing it.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like when when I think of some of the doctors that I really look up to, they've they've spent the time thinking about those little things.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's well, we we still may be running behind, but at least if Gary's teeth in the chair, he feels like he's there.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: And and we've I've felt this.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like when I go get a physical done or I go to the doctor, just put me in the room.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: I just put me, but nothing irks me more than I go there and I sit there in the lobby, and now it's 30 minutes past my time, and I'm like, man, did they forget about me?
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: Let me go check the front desk.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but all in all, just just having general culture roles and expectations so that uh the worst thing that can happen with both our team and our patients is surprise.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like no one should ever be surprised at anything that happens in our office because the general expectations should always be so abundantly clear that they they've gotta they've gotta stumble over themselves to do it the wrong way.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're so if you're a practice owner and you don't have any of these things documented and you don't, you just you don't really care, your team doesn't care, it's gonna be you're gonna have like the most toxic environment when you go away to that second office.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be like prisoners running the jails, the jail, and it's gonna be really bad because uh if you don't create the tone, someone will.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it's usually the aggressive toxic people who will grab the bull by the horns and say, I'm running this thing, and this is how we're gonna do it.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: So a rule that I've learned around culture is you know your culture is working when um your team is calling each other out for when they're doing the things that they're supposed to, hey, good job on making sure that patient got seated and you don't even have to say it.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: But to get there, you have to document it and you have to talk about it.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so once you build that in and it's part of your culture, when you go to your second office, everybody already knows.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, we don't do that.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: They don't sit in the lobby.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a long list of these kinds of things.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: So this was really, really, really good.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, all those resources are down below.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the end of part one.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: We will in part two, we'll actually go over the five pillars.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: So those are just the five system pillars.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna talk about profit, marketing, practice, leader that goes to the new location, and attracting and retaining dentist in part two.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: Stay tuned.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: I love it.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: I can't wait.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: Let's go.