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Beat the Dental Slump: Tips to Thrive During Slow Months · The Millionaire Dentist™

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  Hello, everyone, Welcome to the Millionaire Dentist 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 Dentist Podcast in studio with co host Jared Bridgeman. Casey, how
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  are you doing thriving? Thank you for asking. It's a lovely, lovely
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  day today. Who whoo hoo. Let's give our listeners some juice, man,
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  Let's give them something. Given that juice, juice them up. I'm
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  into it, Casey. Listen. You know every every business has a what
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  we call it like a slow period. Hold on, you just said every
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  I thought, my wife, there's no absolutes. Most I've had absolutely before.
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  First of all, that's delicious, Okay, you probably make a mixed
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  with like peache, like a peach, absolute mountain dew. Just don't put
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  right in there. Back to college years, so many businesses, a lot
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  of business owners would would recognize patterns within their business, and some of them
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  would say, yes, there's certain times of the year that things may be
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  a little slower than normal, be it back to school time, vacation times,
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  you know, more than likely, you know, the holidays. And
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  yes, there's other months that could potentially make up for that. You know,
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  you're early busy times, but sometimes those slow months or those slow weeks
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  can potentially hurt your business quite a bit for you know, let's say payroll
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  or anything like that. Casey, are there things that we can you know
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  and still and then and tell our listeners here that may be good ways to
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  help with that how your practice can survive or thrive during a few slow months.
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  I wrote that down. I love it. Is that what you're trying
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  to say? Sure, yeah, no, Well, this is an interesting
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  topic because there's ebb and flow to everything. There's trends, there's patterns,
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  and we have a lot of practice owners in a lot of different areas and
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  states, and for example, the ones in Florida right, well, there's
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  snowbirds and there's some seasonal things there. We have folks, a lot of
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  practice owners in Michigan or if you take into account all the lake homes and
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  people there in the summer, but maybe not in the winter. So there's
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  a lot of geographies where there are slow times in heavier times. Some are
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  built in, like you said, for all those reasons, and they're opposite
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  of other areas. Right here in Indiana, people go on vacation and leave
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  the state. Well, right, And when I talk to these practice owners,
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  even though they've lived in these areas and practiced in these areas for a
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  while, they're always like, well, it's just always slow here, or
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  it's super busy here. But it sounds like they're frustration is annual. They're
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  annually frustrated typically, and if you've only owned, possibly for just a few
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  short years, you may not have a system in place to alleviate those those
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  downtimes. Well, yeah, what we want to talk about today is if
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  you're a practice owner and you experience some mountains and peaks with business whatever,
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  you attribute it to the areas we just mentioned, But how can you prepare
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  right? So prior planning prevents problems? Those are four pas Okay, four
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  peas. I've been saying prior planning planning prevents problems. Problem, that's big
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  time stuff. I love it. I don't give that out all the time.
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  Keep some stuff for the personal life. That's what the four peas in
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  your back is for. Yeah my shirt, right, Yeah, that's right.
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  Yeah. So I would say one of the big ones could be is
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  if if your fet and your family like to take vacations, it may not
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  be a bad idea to plan a vacation during a time you know it's gonna
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  be slower. Well, you just said it. Planning. The best way
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  for this not to bother you. Every gear is to plan appropriately, right,
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  And you're exactly right. Everybody wants to not everyone, I caught myself.
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  Most people would like to go on a vacation, go see some friends
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  or family, and so schedule those things. Again, some of this sounds
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  like a mister or missus obvious statement. But align your schedule with the ebbs
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  and flows of your practice schedule, right, I mean, take a look
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  at you know, usually fourth or July week is a big week for that.
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  I think people like to leave town. Um, yeah, for certain
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  industries. And again this is you know, right, a dental podcast,
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  but it is. But yeah, no, there's that. Yeah, schedule
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  vacations, schedule things when you can look. But but the key is know
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  your data. We talk about that all the time financially, but from a
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  scheduling perspective, No, your ebbs and flows of your schedule draw some correlations.
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  You can't just go off one year for example. No, you need
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  three or four yep, right, yep. And so look at three or
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  four years of data and find those areas and in boom, now you have
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  a time where you could potentially schedule vacations. Wooo. Well. And the
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  nice thing about that too is once you have that data in place and you
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  it almost becomes expected for both you know, you, your family and your
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  staff to be like, hey, we're gonna be closing the office during this
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  week during this time, which is good, you know, because you know
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  most people like to have consistency of Hey, I can even start planning now
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  for next year's vacation because I know roughly when it's going to be, so
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  it's always a bonus. Casey, would you what's another way that you think
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  we can help alleviate downtime like this? We have three more right right?
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  You probably want me to go in order, I'm gonna throw your curR ball.
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  How about reactivation campaigns? That sounds great, Casey, What the hell
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  is that. Well, So so let's say you've you've there's three times a
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  year or four, I guess in this example, where there is some downtime
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  where you can have opportunities for other things reactivation campaigns. You have patients who
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  they haven't been in for a while, maybe they fallen through the cracks.
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  That's a nice time for your staff or team to get in touch with them,
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  maybe for a cleaning or a checkup, or just touch base with them,
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  right, and so hey, spend a year. Yeah, most offices
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  have that data where they can pull here are people who have not been in
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  for X amount of period of time, let's reach out to them. Obviously,
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  have strategy and verbiage and all of that thing and all of those things
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  mastered. But that can be a nice time for a reactivation campaign. You
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  mentioned. It's as simple as like cleaning and and stuff like that, or
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  even you know, more of an operation, right, like you can schedule
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  that in now I'm like, hey, this is we have time available on
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  June Yeah, fifth through the twelfth. Well, and that kind of runs
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  into run promotion. So if you think about it, let's say you do
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  a reactivation campaign and you know what you have seven percent hit success. All
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  right, so let's say you've got you know, sixty new people that go,
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  yeah, actually I would like to commit. Maybe part of your reactivation
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  campaign is that you're running in promotion during this period of time that is typically
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  slower. So maybe you're giving them twenty percent off of right cleaning. Now,
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  there's always fine print where maybe if they're certain insurances that you're already getting
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  scalped with, they might not qualify. But if they're a maybe a fee
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  for service paying person, then they not. You're only not only doing a
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  reactivation campaign, but you're also running a promotion to entice them back in.
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  But there's a lot that you can do with reactivation campaigns, running promotions,
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  scheduling your vacation. You mentioned cutting hours, right, so it's a double
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  edged sword. If if you know different periods of time, maybe you're going
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  to condense some hours during two weeks or four weeks over the year. Condensing
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  hours can help with overhead because you're paying your hourly employees. Less that being
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  said, some of the employees might not like that, So you know,
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  that's one you have to look at strategically and really balance for yourself. But
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  no one could work to your favorite sometimes if if one of your hygiendas or
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  somebody is looking to take some days off in that time period. Anyways,
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  potentially. But the biggest one with this, all this planning, and you
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  mentioned it off off Mike, was when you plan for something, you can
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  build in that safety net. You can build in the cushioning with your cash
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  flow in the practice and at home and all those things so that you know
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  you're you're in a better position. And with that just again being proactive,
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  um and as you said, planning, so proactive planning are planning prevents problems
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  set Oh my, there's five. But having having you know, strong cash
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  flow, having h your safety now built in, you know, money wise
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  could also help alleviate that, UM casey with all these things that we've been
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  talking about, if someone needed more information, we want to talk about this
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  stuff, they could always come and see you when you're speaking UM or talk
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  to you. You know. Vfwas always he's available twenty four seven. UM.
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  But you're going to be somewhere soon. You're going to be with uh,
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  you're at the Georgia, the Georgia DINSL Convention. Yeah, yeah,
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  we're when that's in Georgia. Right, we're presenting at the Georgia the state
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  meeting. Yes, it's in the state south of theirs Texas, Florida obviously,
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  but you're but you're gonna be on stage right talking, talking it up.
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  Yeah, there's a podium, there's an elevated surface, and no,
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  it's good, it's good stuff. We just came back from another state meeting.
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  But that subject matter is really important, a business side of dentistry,
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  and so we'll be presenting it there. We're also presenting it an implant course
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  outwest. So yeah, a lot of people. Um, we had a
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  lot of things coming up. I know, we're gonna be doing a tasting
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  and uh and a top golf events in um Saint Louis and August as well
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  as Minneapolis. So well, and you're gonna laugh. But it's interesting how
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  many people, again we joked they come to these events because they're ce junkies
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  or plate liquors. And then it's the you know, the specialist that comes
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  up and is already making half a million bucks and they go casey like,
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  how do you know? Yeah, like, yes, I struggle with this.
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  I want to get better. Let like, let's go I think are
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  already crushing it, just like last episode. Yeah, they're already doing pretty,
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  but they also know that they're not mastering all these areas, and they
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  would be like, hey, if I can, if I can, I
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  want to, but I love that person versus the loudest cries come from the
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  cheap seats. To coin a phrase from our founder and had another point,
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  we already kind of wrapped up. I'm sorry, that's fine it listen,
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  It's fine that you you can't think for yourself. Um, neither can I
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  at the moment. But Casey, I want to thank you for your time
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  and good luck with your with your presentation. I know you're going to kill
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  it and crush it. Casey, your advise, your presentation has been great
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  so far. Thanks. That's all the time we have today. Thank you
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  to our guests for their insight and for sharing some really great information. And
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  thank you to you the listener for tuning in. The Millionaire Dentist Podcast is
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  brought to you by four Quadrants Advisory to see if they might be a good
• 10:48
  fit for you and your practice. Going over to four Quadrants Advisory dot com
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  and see why year after year they retain over ninety five of their clients.
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  Thank you again for joining us, and we'll see you next time. Boom one