Latest / My Dental Playbook / Special Episode: $200K to $750K Per Month — What We Learned in One Year of My Dental Playbook

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Special Episode: $200K to $750K Per Month — What We Learned in One Year of My Dental Playbook · My Dental Playbook

• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: When Dr.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: Blake and I first met, his practice was collecting around$200,000 a month, and we decided to document the journey of his growth.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: And over the last 52 episodes, if you've been following along, you've seen recently that he collected nearly$750,000 in a single month as a GP office in a super competitive market, fee for service.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: Now, that's amazing.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: But we have something special for you today.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: We have taken the top six things that we've learned over the last year that if you apply to your practice, these six lessons will help you grow tremendously.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: So check out this episode, celebrate our one-year anniversary, and thank you so much for following along.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: And we got a lot more to do.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: So next year is even going to be more crazy.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for tuning in.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: Stay tuned.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: What's something inside of you that had to change to become the dentist that could 10x their new patients?
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_06: Uh, I think fear of failure, and that that's been my my crux all along.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_06: You know, even growing up in sports, the reason I was decent at sports was because I was just so scared that I was gonna strike out three times.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_06: You know what I mean?
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_06: Um, and I think like learning how to harness that and use it to um give me energy and give me a purpose was good, but I also think that a lot of times it it left um it left a hole in me that didn't allow me to really reach my full potential.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_06: And for me, like in dentistry, I I I had a moment where I was like, okay, I've got to get over that hump.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_06: Like I can't just let that continue to dominate me.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_06: And marketing was a big part of that.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_06: Um, being afraid of like, oh my gosh, I don't want to waste$5,000.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_06: And that seems like a lot, but then like when you're in the position where I'm at, spending what I'm spending on marketing, like$5,000 seems like a drop in the bucket, right?
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_06: And I just had to get past to like, oh my gosh, if this doesn't work, it's gonna end our business and it's all gonna come crumbling down.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_06: And what I've learned is like all of this is reversible, like all of this can be undone, and we can go up and we can go down and we can it's literally a water hose, and we can turn it on, or we can turn it off, or we can just slow it down a little bit.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_06: And so I had to get out of that mindset of like I'm gonna destroy what I've built because it felt so comfortable.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_06: I think on the last podcast I shared, like the most comfortable I ever felt was when we were at about two million dollars and I was spending the most time at home.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_06: And I think in this season of my life, like I love being at home with my family, but I also love growing the business, right?
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_06: And I know that there's gonna be a season.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_06: Um, my kids are five and twin uh three-year-old twins, but like there's gonna be a season really soon where like they're gonna need me at the ball field at five o'clock.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_06: But right now they don't.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_06: And so now is my time to like pull these things out of me and try to try to grow in a way that's gonna help support the life that I miss coming in in the next couple years.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_06: Uh, this may be off topic, but like the the quote is strong can strong convictions loosely help, right?
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_06: And like the people that I know and like where I've gotten, but when I think of like some of the names that I mentioned, they have really, really strong convict convictions about maybe their model or how they've decided to grow or whatever, but they hold it really loosely.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_06: They're like, you could convince me in a weekend to do something different, right?
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_06: And it goes back to the curiosity, it's like they're they're curious to know other ways of doing it or other ways of growth, or how can I how could I prep this tooth a little bit differently?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_06: And I think a lot of times, and I I felt the same way, um, was we we feel we have we have no agency.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_06: Like my my coach, um, I kind of like life and business coach, he talks about having agency.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_06: For so long in my life, I had no agency, meaning I was just doing what I thought everybody else wanted me to do.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_06: I I didn't I didn't believe that uh the way that I want to present treatment is this way, and I believe in it so much that that's how I'm gonna do it.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_06: I've got to do it like no, I've got to do it like that guy.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_06: And it just wasn't authentic, right?
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_06: And like when you're truly authentic with how you present treatment or how you build your practice or how you show up every day at work if you're an associate, or like that shines through, and that's what draws people in, right?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_06: But when we when you start to try to be like, well, I'm gonna be a little bit of Blake and a little bit of Khan, a little bit of like it just doesn't work because it's not you.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_06: You know what I mean?
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_06: So I I'll lead with uh I don't have any original ideas, uh, and I want to give credit where credit is due.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_06: Uh these are these are rules that my mentor uh has kind of beaten into my skull uh because I I need these rules.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_06: I need these rules with my team, I need these rules with my wife, I need these rules with my kids, um, and I can very quickly get to they they want to sabotage this place and and they don't care, right?
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_06: And and that's generally not true, and I think at the end of this we'll talk about when you do have to drop the hammer, but these two rules have meant a ton to me and have really changed how I approach a lot of conversations, and we've all been there, right?
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_06: Like we don't problems don't frustrate us, it's old problems that frustrate us.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_06: It's it's the fact that we've asked Julie 35 times to make sure that when she unlocks the door that she keep that she flips the switch so it stays in like we've asked, you know what I mean, and and we we get so irritated and we believe that it's because these people don't care.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_06: And it's just not true.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_06: Uh and these are rules that honestly, if you could call me every day and just remind me of them, it would make me a better person.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_06: Uh, because I struggle with these daily, but they're great rules nonetheless.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, for sure.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_06: I I think that like a lot of this stuff goes into another thing that's not my idea, but uh it it leads right into what's uh a framework of of what's called omission and commission, and we we have kind of like uh a vernacular within DSI that we talk this way.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_06: But um the beautiful and I and I I do omission commission with every new hiring, and then I do omission commission directly after any team member might be let go, right?
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_06: And the reason I do is because I want them to r I want to remind people that they're in charge of their future.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_06: And so these two rules play directly into that where we talk about omission, and those are things that are missing, right?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_06: Those are things that uh could be improved.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_06: You don't you don't have enough cassettes to be able to see the patients that we have coming through the door.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_06: You don't know how to set up the room correctly, you don't have enough iPads to get consent in a timely manner, like like things that are missing.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_06: And the beautiful thing about omission is that it's 90-10.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_06: 90% of the responsibility responsibility relies on on uh on me, and then 10% of the responsibility is just you coming to tell me or the leader that this thing is missing.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_06: I don't know how to do this, right?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_06: And then we can fix that problem.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_06: Now, co mission is a totally different thing.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_06: Co-mission is when you're choosing to do something.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_06: And the beautiful thing about co-mission is it's zero one hundred.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_06: You get to choose one hundred percent of these things.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_06: Are you gonna gossip with your team members about the person who's always late or whatever?
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_06: Are you going to choose to leave the trash on the floor even though you walk by it 15 times?
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_06: Like those little things.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_06: Um and it just reminds it reminds people that they're in charge of their future.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_06: And I always say, I will protect I will protect the practice for you, but if the time comes, I will protect it from you.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_06: Right?
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_06: And it just lets them know that you're in charge of your future.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_06: And I I found the best leaders are the most curious people, because what you do is you just ask a lot of questions, and this is where I've got to improve so much, is I can quickly just go and start throwing stones and arrows at people.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_06: Whereas I think the best leaders go in and they say, Hey Gary, I've noticed this is happening, and I I think we both understand that the expectation is that we're able to do XYZ thing.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_06: Can you explain to me why that's not able to happen?
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, that's really good.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_06: Oh, well, it's because the iPads are broken.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_06: Well, nobody's told me that.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_06: How long have they been Well, the past five months.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_06: Oh, well, that's great.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_06: You know what I mean?
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_06: No, I I I think it's more of a philosophy thing.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_06: Uh in my in my opinion, a lot of times the practice owner is probably the best closer.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_06: And there can be different um there can be different situations that arise.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_06: But in from what I've seen from practices around the country, is the the practice center closes the best.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_06: And so if you close the vest, then that's where you should spend most of your time.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_06: There's less value in you prepping a crown when you could go treatment plan for more, right?
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_06: And so um I I think some of it comes from the unwillingness of providers to have those tough conversations.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_06: Like, I know that probably wasn't a super fun conversation to have, and it probably was a little bit awkward, you know, talking to another another human and saying, like, hey, cuz because the way that I would have probably approached that conversation, I would have been afraid that I would have hurt their feelings, that they weren't that they weren't good enough to do the exams, and that that's just not the point.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_06: The point is that you wanted your your practice to succeed, you want him to succeed.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_06: Um, and all it takes is just uh extreme vulnerabil vulnerability um and really good leadership.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_06: Um and so I think you you guys nailed it.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_06: Um and I I wish more practices did this.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_06: You know, I I talked to a buddy the other day about having this exact problem.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_06: And I mentioned, like, hey, maybe we consider that, and it it's just really hard to get providers to understand that this isn't um eat or be eaten world.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_06: Like it's it's like you truly do want to see your colleagues succeed, right?
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_06: And that's what makes your practice so beautiful and so successful.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_06: And um until a practice can get there, I think they'll be stuck in that world of uh I have to do every exam because if I don't do it, then it's not gonna get put on my schedule or this, that, and the other.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_06: And you're just like, no, I close the best, your crowns are great.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_06: Why don't you put this crown?
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so those that's the slow side, that's the slow, painful side.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh what was good when it was slower growth?
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: What were some of the good things from that?
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: Was there was there positives?
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, I would I would say probably the most uh I had the most freedom in my office at that point.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_06: At that point, I was truly only working three days a week.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_06: Um I had very little outside time.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_06: Like when we talk about when do you work on the business is like really didn't need to.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_06: It kind of like just was easy, you know what I mean?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_06: Um and now it's a very different story.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_06: Now like we're we're back in um you know, I I was at DSI this weekend and Mark Costas gave a really good talk, and he just talked about seasons and uh how you have the you know spring, fall, summer, winter type of deal.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_06: Uh and it was like your spring season is you're you're going, going, going.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_06: And and and a lot of us kind of got lost in the sauce a little bit because we were like, okay, the goal is to get to winter, and like all you're doing in winter is just hanging out eating hot or drinking hot chocolate.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_06: You know what I mean?
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_06: But this is all cyclical.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_06: Like there's parts in your business where you're gonna be growing, and then you're gonna be in this like maturation stage, and then you're gonna relax, and then you're gonna have freedom.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then you're gonna when you get freedom, you're like, I can do this new thing, and then guess what?
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: You go back through that process again.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: I've done this like multiple times personally.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_06: Then that that was when I had the most freedom from my office.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_06: Now my office still revolved around me.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_06: If we closed the office closed, but I didn't feel the need to be everything to everybody.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_06: And as yeah, in addition to like totally blowing my marketing budget out of the water, I I built a a massive 6,000 square foot facility um that needed, you know, double, if not two and a half times, the amount of team to operate it.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_06: And so um, man, like this is what I I I feel like everybody has to go through this.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_06: It's kind of like when your mom and dad tell you don't do that, and then you do it, and then you realize when you're 25 that they actually do have a brain and they're smart, right?
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_06: And so, like, people don't talk about this, and that's kind of why I wanted to talk about this on the podcast.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_06: Was like, we moved and I felt like a really bad leader because we I would we had roughly 80% turnover when we almost almost immediately when we moved.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_06: And it wasn't because people didn't like me, it wasn't because we had bad culture, it wasn't because of any of that stuff.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_06: It was just even though our small practice was going large and we were still that close-knit uh family boutique style practice, we were a very different practice.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_06: We were a practice that was trying to scale, trying to grow.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_06: Expectations were roughly the same, but they were a little bit different.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_06: And some people just decided that that wasn't for them.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_06: And then also we had to decide like you're not a fit for us bidding for it as well.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_06: And so, really, like my leadership over the past year and a half is like quadrupled because I've had to learn how to have these really tough conversations.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_06: I've I always like joke around as like business in business you lose your soul because it's like you even though you love this person, uh, you sometimes have to make the really hard decision of like, hey, I I want the best for you, but the best for you isn't here, right?
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_06: Um, and so we've uh we've you know uh doubled our marketing budget, have have a bigger building, we're doing everything we can to try to maximize our growth here.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_06: But in those seasons, what we've had seasons where we've been uh overstaffed, we've had seasons where we're just perfectly staffed, and we had we've had uh probably over the past three or four months where we're wildly understaffed.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_06: And uh I think some of my team members listen to this, and I just want them to know that like I'm so grateful.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, well working on it, but also so grateful for the ones that buy into the vision, buy into the culture, because we couldn't have done this uh this past four months without them.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_06: Um and so we've we've been you know looking for the right people and our teams like, oh my gosh, we're so understaffed, but they're not it.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_06: And so, I mean, literally uh as a percentage of my payroll, we try to stay around 20 to 22 percent, and we we've been as low as 13 percent, which which from a profitability perspective, dentists around the country are like, yeah, let's go, but you don't yeah, you don't understand how stressful that's been.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_06: You don't understand how you're growing, yeah.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_06: Right, yeah, so I think it's uh and it really goes into the financial menu, but it's just understanding the patient understanding what everything is, and so uh when we when we do anything, we want to make sure that we have both written and verbal uh consents and whatnot, and that also goes for financing.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_06: So um when we present treatment, we have them sign, and even if they don't sign up for treatment, we have them still sign the financial menu stating that they understand what we run through and they understand that the crown costs X amount of dollars.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_06: That doesn't mean that they're saying yes to treatment, they'll sign the consent form when they show up for the appointment saying they understand the risks and the alternatives, but they're signing the financial menu saying I understand financially what's going on.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_06: So where that comes into play, because we've all had these situations where you know Jenny comes in and she says, Well, I didn't know that the crown was gonna cost$1,500.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_06: And you're like, it's really weird.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_06: Like Casper must have snuck in and signed this form for.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_06: Um, and so it's really easy to like combat some of that stuff when um you've got a digital record of that, and you can just say, Hey, I totally understand.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_06: Would it be helpful if I sent over the forms that you had that you sign that that states that you understand the stuff, and I I can understand if we need to walk through that again.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: But it backs them off.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a rule, Dental doesn't use it, but it's in all other sales industry, there's a rule in sales that buyers are liars.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't I do I think that sometimes people lie, yes, but I what really what it means at its root is most people forget what they agreed to and they build out their own narrative and they have their own memory of it.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the things that we do at our company it that's similar to that, and it's different because we're B2B, but we record every conversation.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: And knowingly, everybody knows we're recording this, you know, this call may be recorded type thing.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so I can't, every single month, there's a doctor, very smart.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: They're smart people, they make good money that tell us, no, that's not what you told us.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: You told us this every month in the sales process.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: You promised us X, Y, and Z.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: And we go back to sales and we say, hey guys, they're saying that you never said this, that you said this, which is totally against our process.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: You guys know we're not supposed to say that.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: Can you pull up the call?
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: And we pull up the call and we show them and we send it to them and we say, Hey, this is where it was told.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: I just did this last week, where a dentist said, You promised me I would get 50 new patients.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: And we're like, we don't promise new patients.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: We we can't.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's impossible.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: We promise the phones to ring, and then you get new patients from that if you do A, B, and C, but that's not what they heard, right?
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so we've gotten to the place where it's just like we just record everything and it does, it helps the doctor go, oh, okay, I I misunderstood.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: Which then you can work on that, but you can't work from you promised this and didn't deliver when you really didn't ever promise that.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, you've got such a backstop.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_06: Like it's almost gotten to the point in our organization to where like if we don't if we if we do that, we just end up having to take the word of a patient because it's not worth it's not worth a bad review for 500 bucks or whatever.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_06: And so it's just like, hey, learning lesson here.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_06: Like, next time make sure you've got the financial menu sign so that when this comes up, it's a really it makes the conversation so easy.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_06: Like it's so easy.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_06: Otherwise, you're just running in circles.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think that blocker is that's not allowing Dennis to get over it?
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: Is it literally the insurances and the way it's structured?
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: Is that it?
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, and I and I get it.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_06: Like I I have an incredible privilege of being out of network, and um there's a lot of work that's gone into that.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_06: In fact, we were talking about that for the call of just how hard it is to be out of network and how you know it's not for everybody.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_06: Uh, but if it is for you, then it can it can work really well.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_06: Um, but it's just really hard to pay a hygienist 50, 60.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_06: I know in California I've heard or Oregon, I've heard like$85 an hour when the insurance is paying$40 for their cleaning, right?
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_06: And so um it's a real challenge.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_06: And so you've got to sit down and see like how do you how do you change the script so that you can onboard the best of the best in your city.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: So, Autumn, what are your thoughts on this and kind of the how your office approaches it maybe versus how you've seen it approached before?
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: So before I met Dr.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: Hamlin, I had always been on hourly.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: I've never done commission.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: I was nervous about it, I didn't want to do it.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: I had lots and lots of questions.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: I just wanted an hourly rate, but I took the leap and I'm glad that I did because I 110% am getting paid more now than I would just hourly somewhere else.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think there may be in the very beginning that I didn't probably the very first paycheck that I didn't make bonus, and I'm not doing anything out of the ordinary.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just doing my job and I'm helping the patients the best that I can, and then it all comes with it.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_06: A lot of our decisions run through our core values.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_06: So uh do you have a commitment to excellence?
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_06: Do you uh have extreme ownership in what you do?
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_06: Do you have are you are you innovative in how you think and and live life?
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_06: So like if if a problem comes up, are you just gonna throw your hands up and say, I don't know, or are you gonna get creative and see how you might be able to solve that problem?
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_06: And so we'll just walk through different scenarios with people and ask them in the in the past how have you handled X, Y, or Z thing.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_06: And it comes it becomes very clear when you have five or six uh guiding principles that run your organization, and when you can very uh tactfully ask some questions.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_06: Surrounding those to the applicant and say, How would you handle this situation?
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_06: Have you been in this experience before?
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_06: What have you done?
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_06: It becomes very clear what they do.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: Now, one other tip that I want to give people is it's important to remember when people leave bad reviews, the most the most recent reviews don't actually pop up at the top.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: So just because if someone goes on and says, this place is horrible, they don't uh clean any of their instruments, you're gonna catch a disease.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: Let's say that's the review somebody leaves, you're gonna freak out, right?
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like you're gonna freak out that they said that.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: Don't worry, that's not gonna be the first review that pops up.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: On Google, the reviews, how the algorithm works, is it's done by the most relevant.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: You say, okay, well, what does that mean?
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: Most relevant is what review has been like the most.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: So, like for you, you have a review that was left four months ago, and six people parted it, and they left a picture of you sedating a little girl.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so this was like people, it says, wow, wow, wow, from the booking of the appointment to the walking in afterwards, everyone was friendly, knowledgeable, and thorough.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: I love that all the equipment and techniques are all new, state of the art, and most current technology available.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm also incredibly grateful for the time and the patience they took to make my three kiddos feel welcome and at ease throughout their visit as well.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: I cannot recommend this practice enough.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: If you're looking for a dental practice, look no further.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: Doctor or uh uh or Hamblin dental is the best there is.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then they put a picture and then six people hearted it.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: The reason that's popping up first is because there's a picture and the six hearts.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you want your other picture or your other reviews to pop up, all you have to do is just go in and heart them yourself.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: And you can get you and your team to do it, and those will pop up first, and you can get your 10 or 20 best reviews to pop up first.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if a negative review is popping up first, it means that more than likely they somebody went in and they liked it and other people agreed with it.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: So you need to that's probably something you need to work on.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, no, that's great.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_06: And we've actually done that.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_06: Uh, I remember you posted something a while back, or maybe it was a conversation we had, but we went through and we our team went through and hearted and liked the reviews.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_06: I I sent them screenshots of the ones to go like, and that's what they did.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_06: Um it's it's worked great.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_06: And the other thing is too, is is is if you I know this isn't necessarily a positive Google review episode, but for the reviews, if you can ask specifically uh when they leave a review, if they did Invisalign or they did veneers to say that in the review so so that um when other people looking for Invisalign or veneers come to the site, they'll see that in the review and it'll it'll populate for them.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_06: And and that's key.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_06: I I know that that's a big push for us um as of the past year and a half or so.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: Staying on top of AR.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: You had a funny story on this one.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_06: Um, so I think our AR has always been in control, but I think the reason it's been in control is because we've outproduced it.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_06: And so uh that's a good and a bad problem because it only just grows your AR.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_06: Um, but what we've been focusing on is I've I've now got one of my uh most tenured uh team members, she's really focused on this, and that's kind of gonna be her main role.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_06: But we've got a new process and all that stuff, and so we're going through an account actually this morning, and uh it was from 2023.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_06: And that was like, oh gosh.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_06: Um, and so I I'm not 100% sure if we've been trying to follow up with it or not.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_06: But anyways, so she the question came up that's like, Do you want to send this collections?
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_06: And I was like, not two years later, I know.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_06: You know what I mean?
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_06: Like that to it to what we talked about earlier.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_06: It's like that's just a bad taste, and what one must like I'm billing you for something two years.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: Is it worth a really bad Google review?
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_06: So it's like I was just like, write it off.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_06: But like ideally in the system that what what we're trying to do is at that 90-day mark, we have a decision on what we're what we're gonna do.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_06: So and and really, even at that 60-day mark, we're going into the that that last 30 days saying if we don't have uh payment by this date, then this is gonna be our game claim moving forward kind of internally.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_06: And so uh in addition to that, you know, most associates, if you're a multi-doc practice, you're paying either on collections, but most likely adjusted production.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_06: And so what I found um as we've been growing doctors within the practice is if you never adjust the account, well now you're back to the first point, you're paying on production.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_06: You're not paying on adjusted production if you never make adjustments, right?
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_06: And so you have to be on top of that as the owner, and you gotta have somebody else going through that with you to help to help guide and uh nurture that.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_06: Because ultimately the goal is is for me, what I would get the most fulfillment out of my job of being a dentist, isn't actually doing the dentistry.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_06: It's coaching the dentists that are doing it.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_06: Um problem arises, and I get to go help solve that problem, or they're they're struggling and uh and closing treatment, and I get to help guide them on the path of how we can improve that.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_06: Like, that's what would wake me up every day.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_06: You know, we did a podcast with Jason Tenoria not too long ago, and he said something uh about along the lines of like just doing the dentistry didn't get him out of bed anymore, right?
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_06: And I'm not there yet.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_06: Like, I still love doing the dentistry, but I can see the world, and part of what how I get compensated is looking six months, twelve months, twenty-four months ahead.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_06: Um, and I can see a world in which the practice doesn't need me to produce the dentistry, it needs me the best use of my time is to help grow and lead other dentists, and that actually aligns really well with what I want, right?
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_06: And so that's the beautiful thing is not only have we experienced growth, and people love to see that, and they they're like, oh my gosh, you're gonna go to the meme type of deal, but it's like, no, I'm actually striving for a goal that's bigger than me.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_06: You know what I mean?
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: Creating opportunities for others.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: I uh there comes a certain point in business, and and I've I've gotten here uh a couple years ago.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: I got to this place and it it felt really good, and then we took a couple steps back and then had to re-rebuild and and as one does.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, as one does business does too.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's always humbling, right?
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then um, but it's when I love setting other people up for success.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like I it it it is a really good feeling.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a short-term dopamine hit, like being the superhero and doing all the treatment or answering everybody's questions, but the long-term dopamine hits from it is just like it's really satisfying.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_06: When you bring on new team members, uh they're gonna make some very what will seem very like simple, simple tasks will get messed up, and things that should flow really well will will not happen.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_06: And so they your team can has two choices.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_06: They can either sit there and say, Oh, why'd we hire this person?
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_06: And they're they're they can't figure it out, or they can understand that they once two were in that same position, and they had a loving uh friend or coworker come along and teach them how to do those things.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_06: And so that's one thing that we try to do is make sure that when we do have a new hire, that we put a partner with them to help them, especially in those first couple weeks, to really help and guide and shape and mold, and they don't always do a project, but there's a lot of things that get picked up uh just even by osmosis of watching this other person and hearing how they talk.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_06: So then they wanted how our our office talks to patients, seeing how they interact with patients, then they they pick up all these little things.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_06: It's just come a long way of creating a culture that uh I mean, one of our one of our uh core values is servanthood, and so like how can we serve each other as well?
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: Are you leading with monthly payments with all treatment?
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_04: Um no, but I should be.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I should be.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_04: That's probably a good idea, honestly.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a huge competitive advantage because no one just like it's probably one percent of dentists do this.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone we've told to do it so far, Dr.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: Blake.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: We and I've told every I post about it on Facebook all the time.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: We do podcasts about it, we do our mastermind.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody's like, man, this is a game changer.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: Because what it does is it eliminates the insurance conversation, which is what everybody wants.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: So it just kind of gets rid of that.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: And now you're focusing on monthly uh payments and it increases case acceptance.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: We've seen it from 30%, I've seen all the way up to Dr.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: Blake is 100%.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, everybody, like not without exception.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so what you do is you just it's and it's also easier for the patient, it's easier for you, it's easier for everybody.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: The fees are high, right?
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: 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.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: So that is something that I would highly recommend.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: We have a whole training on that.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you've seen it or not, uh, but I can give that to you.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_04: Sure.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_04: So, how would the language exactly go?
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_04: It would just be like, so say like the patient needs to pay$2,000 out of pocket.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_04: Um, because I know you have to you have to run them through cherry, 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?
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_06: Like it'd be like, oh, your monthly payment would be around$100,000,$200 a month or something, and then yeah, so we we have a form, and I I believe it's on our website, that you're welcome to download and use.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_06: Um, and it's incredibly helpful for patients.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_06: But we move basically whatever shows up on your open dental or eagle software whatever you use, transfer it over to this Google Doc, and then we use iPads, you can print it out.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_06: Um, but it gives you a rough estimate of what that dollar amount would be to finance.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_06: 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, right?
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_06: And so it'd be real easy.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_06: Hey Patrick, um, do you have any questions about the plan that Dr.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_06: Hamlin went through with you?
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_06: No, I don't.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_06: Okay, awesome.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_06: So to do this crown, it's gonna cost about$2,000 or as little as$250 a month.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_06: Which of these options works better for you?
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_06: And then don't say anything.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: The rule, the role with that, as sales rule, and I know dentists hate this, but this is this is sales, and this is a rule.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: First to talk loses.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: 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.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: Here's everything that you're gonna get.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: Boom, boom, boom, and you can pay for it this way or that way.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_01: First to talk loses.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: So if you uh my goal is to get you to talk first, 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.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: They're gonna tell you what they're actually thinking now.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I'm scared of the treatment.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: 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.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_06: 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 gengivitis and um recommended superprofi, um, which is basically just a a deeper I forget what the code is, but anyways, so superprophy is what we call it, and um uh doesn't qualify for the$49 cleaning.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_06: So hygienist come comes to get me.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_06: Hey, uh I've already talked to him about doing a deeper cleaning, he doesn't want to do it, um, but he wants to talk to you about some other stuff in the future, he wants to do some cosmetic work, you know, of course.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_06: And so I walk in, we talk about, you know, doing invisalign and veneers and stuff like that.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_06: He goes, Well, what about the cleaning?
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_06: And I was like, Oh, well, she told me you didn't want to do the cleaning.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, he was like, Yeah, I mean I came in for the$49 cleaning.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_06: I was like, Well, that would that'd be great.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_06: Uh, I wish you qualified for that, but you have periodontal disease, you've got you've got bugs living in your guns we've got to clean up.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_06: And he was like great phrasing.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_06: And he was like, he was like, Well, I came in for 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?
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_06: And he was like, Well, I'm not gonna qualify.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_06: I already know I got I got low credit, I'm not gonna qualify.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_06: I was like, all right, well, we we can try.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_06: He's like, Well, I don't want my credit score to get hit.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_06: It's like, oh no, it didn't do that either.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_06: And uh I walked out of there thinking, there's no chance that this guy's gonna do anything.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_06: And lo and behold, I come back like 30 minutes later, and he's still sitting in the chair when he goes too fast.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_06: And it it does that.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_06: So, like, that was a small example.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_06: 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?
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_06: You may you may get three thousand dollars at zero percent interest.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_06: Who's not gonna take that?
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_06: You know what I mean?
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_06: And so, um, there's a lot of power in leading with it.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: Who who does it most of your treatment presentation now?
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: Did you have a TC?
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_04: Uh yeah, my office manager.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_04: So, I mean, basically me, my hygienist will kind of like do the case acceptance a little bit and then she'll and put everything into their system in the front, and the patient will walk out, and then she'll explain everything to to them.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_04: And then if they want to get scheduled, they get scheduled before they before they leave.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_06: So uh I want to challenge you with something.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_06: Uh the way you phrased it, I want you to be in control of who closes the treatment.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_06: Right?
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_06: Your treatment coordinator, your office manager, I promise you, she is too busy to care if that treatment gets closed.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_06: But you're not.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_06: Right?
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_06: And so you should stay in that room and get so good at communicating.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_06: That's why I recommend the book, right?
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_06: Get so good at communicating that you know before the p before you leave that room that that patient's either saying yes or no.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, let's move on.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: This is like the the uh like thorn in my side.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: Answering your phones.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta answer your phones.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, we can move on.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_05: Just like you you can't get new patients if you don't pick up the phone.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_06: Uh I I I think like answering the phone along with understanding how to communicate with patients is super important.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_06: Um, in fact, I talked with a guy last night and he was asking questions about that.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_06: I said, you know, to get the most out of your marketing, you have to not only answer the phone, but you gotta spend time with your own office working on how to answer how to answer the questions that you know you're already gonna get.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_06: And um, if you do that, you're gonna get a way better ROI than everyone else who wants to just uh abdicate that responsibility um and just kind of forget about it.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_06: And then they want to gripe to the marketing company about uh the return they're getting when their close rate or schedule rate is less than 40%, 30%.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_06: Like yeah, of course it's gonna be bad.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: And you're not gonna you you just can't compete.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's too much of a drag on your business, and it doesn't it almost doesn't matter what you spend on marketing at that point because the opportunity for Lyft there is so big, it's just like a black hole that's sucking money down the drain and nothing gets off the ground.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: So that one's pretty simple.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: Make sure you do that.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: If you're not doing that, then I think this is kind of the backbone to make that happen is your systems because if you have systems, then that allows everybody to know what's going on.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: And there's two there's two parts of this, and they're kind of separate.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like you have expectations, which is more culture, that's you hey, that's not the way I want it done.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: This is the way we need to do it.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, is everybody aligned on that?
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: These are our core values, that glues it together.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: But then there's the paper systems, which are your SOPs, which standard operating procedures, which allow people to know how to take out the trash or whatever, you know what I mean?
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: So how do you balance those two?
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because I know you're you're in flux with those as we speak and adding and learning and those kind of things.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd love to hear from like like how you're managing those.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, so I we're we're currently, like you mentioned, working on all of that stuff, and um I my personality lends itself to really want to have those paper systems, and I I I truly believe that those are super important.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_06: Like Toyota has a hundred-year business plan, and they're one of the only companies that has that.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_06: And like to be great, I believe that you have to have a game plan, and that's what those written SOPs are.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_06: But like you mentioned, there are also just just general uh things within your practice, like your core values, like excellence.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_06: We get everything with everything with excellence.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_06: Um and people know that if there's a piece of paper on the floor and you walk by it, that's not doing it with excellence.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_06: And so that, like you mentioned, that's a culture.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_06: You can't really write that down in a handbook.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like you can, but it would be it would be an endless handbook, right?
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: Of how to not do things that aren't excellent, right?
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_01: That it it's too big to put in a handbook, but one word.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_06: What I've found is like the the written systems I think are incredibly valuable for onboarding new new hires.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_06: Like you can you can shrink the time that it takes to bring someone onto your team if you've got it written down, and you can just say, hey, right now we actually don't have time to dive into all the intricacies, but if you just follow this four-step protocol, you're gonna get you're gonna do this about 80% of the way, and that's gonna be good enough for today.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_06: And tomorrow we're gonna link up and walk through how to how to do it 100%, you know, that kind of thing.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_06: Um, but I think if the team is aware of like these are generally our systems, like we don't let patients waiting in the lobby for more than three minutes when they arrive.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_06: Like that's that's one of our systems, right?
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_06: Um we don't we don't want people sitting there with um x-rays up on the front screen.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_06: When we're done presenting the x-rays, bring it back and let them look at something nice, or if we're talking about cosmetic stuff, leave the ugly photo up on the screen.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_06: We want them to stir that ugly, right?
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_06: Um, and so they when your team understands that and that's part of your system, you're gonna have better conversion, you're gonna have better production, you're gonna have better efficiencies, you're gonna have all the things that we want, and that creates freedom.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_06: My goal is for you to understand your own problem.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_06: My goal is to lead you to your own problem because the numbers already say that there's a problem, and it's clear that that that it is, but I want for you to understand where the problem is, not for me to self-diagnose it.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then so the a good a good associate will be able to open up to you, right?
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: If I get defensive, like, no, it's because and I start blaming everybody, that's a problem.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: But um, if I say, you know what, Dr.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_01: Blake, you're right, and you know, I have been struggling with this, I'm glad you brought this up to me.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_01: Here's what I'm struggling with, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_01: Then you can help coach them through it and tell them, like, hey, I noticed on the last call that you did, you said that you let the associates shadow you so they can see how you're doing certain things.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_01: Is that is that kind of the next step after the talk then?
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, no, I think that would be a great idea.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_06: Uh, assuming that you're the best communicator in the practice, that would be the way I would do it.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_06: If your treatment coordinator is the best communicator in the practice, then they should go listen to the treatment coordinator.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_06: Um I think creating a culture in the organization of of doctors helping doctors is is the is not the only way to grow, but in my world it makes a total a lot of sense to do that.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_06: I don't think it should be weird.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: Our team shouldn't I don't know if you want the marketing people teaching uh the doctor's clinical uh clinical clinical stuff, right?
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't know if there's I don't know if there is any other way.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I I think you're on to something there.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, so I I think um I don't think our team should be surprised if Dr.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_06: Hambling is in there helping, looking watching uh Dr.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_06: Farrell do an extraction, or vice versa.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_06: I think that should just be the culture in our practice.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_06: Um and as we grow, more and more doctors, they um they do the same thing.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: So the first the first step is the metrics.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_01: You've got to have those.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta, if you're not tracking them, start tracking them.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh from there, you have to create a baseline for yourself.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_01: Now you have a baseline for to work with your associates.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: And through that, you need to start building a culture of like, hey, we need to help each other, we need to watch each other.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of practices don't have that.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's the number one complaint a younger dentist is like, I don't have a mentor.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_06: The big problem in the elephant in the room is that insurance reimbursements are standing in the way of what doctors can afford to pay hygienists and what hygienists are uh wanting to make um as on an hourly rate.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_06: And so uh what we found to be really helpful is um number one, the hygienist understanding that they're no longer flack pickers, but they're actually like mid-level providers.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_06: They are serving the patient in a way that the dentists, frankly, like we're I'm unqualified at this point in my career.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_06: Like, I haven't clinged teeth in, I don't know, like five years now.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_06: So like Autumn's gonna do much better clinging teeth than I am, and and frankly, even just understanding exactly where the patient may be.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_06: And so we've empowered them to do that in our office.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_06: Um I also think that with that, they've they've also understood that as a provider in the office office, there's other expectations expectations for them outside of just being an hourly employee.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_06: Um and so in our office, um Autumn and our other IGENS have an hourly base, which is um not commiserate with the market, it's it's below market.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_06: Um They have uh they have a commission bonus on top of that.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_06: It gets them well above whatever uh the hourly rate might be in your in your city.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_06: Um my hygienists are incredibly expensive.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_06: Uh but that's also because that's also because exactly.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_06: Uh they they they produce at a really high level um a lot of our full time.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_01: You're happy to pay them because of how they're producing, right?
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's not because a lot of dentists are out there like, I'm paying the dentist the hygienist X I'm not gonna say a number because it's different all over the country, but X number of dollars per hour, and I'm I'm not gonna be able to make it as a business.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so they're not happy because of the output that they're getting, but you are happy with the output that you're getting.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, so the general rule that that you need to consider if you were to consider switching from an hourly uh hourly hygiene comet uh competition to a either even a commission or a hybrid, which is what we do, um, is you need to understand that hygienists gotta produce about 3.3 times their pay.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_06: And so you've got to look and see, okay, with what you're doing now, is that even possible?
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_06: Like some in some offices maybe not.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_06: But then I think we are we as dentists are very quick to say, well, we just can't do it.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_06: In our office, what we've said is like, how can how can we do it?
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_06: Right?
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_06: So we implemented laser.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_06: We bought the we we bought the microscope so that we can have better, more effective conversations about uh why laser would be helpful or why seeing them uh three times a year instead of two times a year might be helpful uh for their health, um, why fluoride is beneficial for them.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_06: And so you can have adjunctive procedures that the hygienist can do and add value to the practice that sometimes maybe insurance doesn't isn't even uh a part of, that now they can actually hit their hourly goal just by doing the laser, right?
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_06: Like they don't even have to do the cleaning, and so all of that just pads their stats, and they get to the end of the month and they're really happy.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_06: Um, and so I wish that more dentists understood this because I think it would create a really good environment for all the providers that that helping them streak.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_06: A lot of our decisions run through our core values.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_06: So uh do you have a commitment to excellence?
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_06: Do you uh had extreme ownership in what you do?
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_06: Do you have are you are you innovative in how you think and and live life?
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_06: So like if if a problem comes up, are you just gonna throw your hands up and say, I don't know, or you're gonna get creative and see how you might be able to solve that problem?
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_06: And so we'll just walk through different scenarios with people and ask them in the in the past how have you handled X, Y, or Z thing.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_06: And it comes it becomes very clear when you have five or six uh guiding principles that run your organization, and when you can very uh tactfully ask some questions surrounding those to the applicant and say, How would you handle this situation?
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_06: Have you been in this experience before?
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_06: What have you done?
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_06: Um, it becomes very clear what what they do.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's how you attract an A player, but we all know attracting them is only part of the game.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_01: Then you have to keep them there.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_01: I very rarely see a GP practice that grows when hygiene becomes a restraint.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, you need a dentist, but if you you can do a lot with four hygienists and one dentist.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like you can get really cute with the way you set up your schedule and you pump people through.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I've seen offices be really, really successful with one dentist and several hygienists.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_01: 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.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_01: Now, how important is how your hygienists are motivated or incentivized?
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_01: Is it where do you rank that on the system?
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_06: Man, great question.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_06: 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.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_06: I th I think what it comes down to is is managing the expectation that you have for that hygienist.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_06: 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.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_06: I'm okay with um 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.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_06: Like you can't have four hours to do a cleaning, like you still have to have do it within the hour.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_06: 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.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_06: 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?
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_06: 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.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_06: I know with a lot of these softwares you can even track the combos that are used.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_06: So like Dr.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_06: Hamlin and on like how how how well do they accept treatment?
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_06: What is their acceptance rate, which is kind of a cool thing that you could get lost in.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_06: Uh, I wouldn't say go do that, but nonetheless, it it does make a difference and you can track all that stuff.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_06: 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.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, and then you did a whole podcast with your TC, which is really, really good.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_01: 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.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_01: 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.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll put that down in the resources below.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so that's the first pillar.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_01: We gotta have hygiene.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_01: 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.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_01: 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.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_01: 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 a nightmare scenario from a business standpoint.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_06: You're gonna hit a point in which you just get overwhelmed and you're like, I I need someone else who understands what I'm going through.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_06: And that practice leader can often be that.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_06: It it it may not, and and I'm a big fan of having a dentist be a leader in the practice, but you still need somebody that gets it from the operational standpoint.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_06: You need somebody that gets like what you're mentally and physically going through when you have to have that tough conversation with Sally because she's late for the 15th time.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_06: Like, those are the hard things that wear on you.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_06: And if you try to do it on your own and try to split it, you can do it.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_06: You're just gonna pay a price for that.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so anybody who's a parent's gonna understand this statement.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_01: Anyone who's not's not gonna understand it.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_01: You have to have good cop, bad cop.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_01: You have to.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_01: There's somebody that needs to be able to come in and say, hey, you shouldn't have done this.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_01: This was bad, and here's the punishment.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_01: But then you need somebody to come back in on the back end and be like, hey, we love you, we're here for you, we're gonna turn this around and get this going because those relationships break.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_01: And that and sometimes you can swap, right?
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's the mom's a bad guy, the dad's a good guy, vice versa.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_01: Depends if you're dealing with a daughter or a son, how their emotional temperament is towards certain things.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like all of these things matter.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_01: So when you're in an office and you're the only leader, you have to do it all, and you're doing dentistry, which is super hard.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_01: So you don't really usually have the time to sort through all the emotions and all the all this kind of stuff.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_01: When you get that second leader, they can go in and be the bad guy and you can go to clean it up as the good guy, or vice versa.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_01: You can go in and lay it, and then they come back in and clean it up and say, Hey, we all we want you here.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_01: Dr.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_01: Blake wants you here.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_01: He talks about how great you are all the time.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's just we got to get this thing right because the office can't function without you doing an amazing job.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_01: So um I think that's huge.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_01: And having somebody that you can take with you without getting the other office.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_01: So building, start building that person now.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like, who's that person gonna be?
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe even build two people.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_01: And something that I've seen that works really well with this, if you want to start developing these next like level two or tier two leaders, is start to give them duties or jobs, not the whole job and not don't dump all the work on them, but give them one project that a leader would normally do and tell them say, hey, I want to give you this.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think you're ready for it.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_01: I want to see how you do, and then I want to work through it with you and I want to help you with it.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_01: And give them a leader opportunity and an opportunity to lead and see how they do.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_01: And if they do well, it's and you can do that with two people.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_01: I've done that where I'll have two people running simultaneously, like giving them leadership opportunities and seeing how they respond.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_06: The best leaders are the most curious people because what you do is you just ask a lot of questions, and this is where I've got to improve so much is I can quickly just go and start throwing stones and arrows at people.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_06: Whereas I think the best leaders go in and they say, Hey Gary, I've noticed this is happening, and I I think we both understand that the expectation is that we're able to do XYZ thing.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_06: Can you explain to me why that's not able to happen?
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, that's really good.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_06: Oh, well, it's because the iPads are broken.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_06: Well, nobody's told me that.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_06: How long have they been well the past five months?
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_06: Oh, well, that's great.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_06: You know what I mean?
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I really, really like that.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_01: I like that framing, and um, it allows you to a lot of room to be able to respond correctly.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because there are times your third point on this was like once you do these two things, once you assume the best, everybody wants to do a good job, and that any errors are an error of just misunderstanding or misalignment.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_01: But once you get all those clear and a person just sandbagging, it becomes like uber clear.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_01: You're not guessing.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_01: And it I that's what I love.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I one other framework that I've learned that helps with this is telling stories that saying that I might be wrong.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I did this today.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_01: I said, hey guys, I might be totally wrong on this, but I feel like this is something that might be happening.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_01: Are you guys seeing that too?
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_01: And by saying it's a not, it might be a wrong story, it's fine.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_01: It allows everybody else to frame their story and then it allows you to come to a really quick conclusion, especially with a group of leaders.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that is another like framing of that, it's the same, same kind of thing where you're you're not assuming, you're asking.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_06: Right.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_06: And where where I know I can get the most frustrated and what is when I try to like teach people or tell people things, I found that when what if we can go on a a mission of co-discovery, that's when real change happens.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_06: Like when people can understand when when you can use your words effectively to guide them to the answer you already know, but you can just help them take the next step, and then all of a sudden they're like, Oh, yeah, like this is the decision.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_06: And you're just sitting there nodding your head and you're like, Thumbs up.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_06: You know what I mean?
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because you you that's ultimately what you want to do, is you want to change their mind to what your mind is, and at times you need to change your mind to what their mind is, but they don't know how to articulate that to that to you because you hold all the power in their relationship.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_01: So they don't know how to express, like, hey, you told me to do this this way the first time.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like, um, so you have to you have to keep playing that.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_01: I kind of look at it like a game.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_01: You have to keep playing that game over and over and over again.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then what ends up happening, um, and this happens with your kids, your wife, your people will bring you things when they know that they're not gonna have their head chopped off.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_01: So, hey, I just noticed that the iPads haven't been getting changed, and I figured out why, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_01: And you're like, oh, that's awesome.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that you found that, and now that you're bringing it up and you reward it with positive feedback, that's how you know you're doing this right.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_01: The way to get that to stop, I've learned, is someone brings you bad news and you absolutely just dunk on them and just, ah, bruh.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, nope, never again.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying anything, and I'm just gonna do my job like a robot.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_01: And you end up in no one wants to tell you anything.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_01: And and that's I think a lot of dentists and a lot of entrepreneurs too, but dentists, especially because they're doing dentistry all day, uh, get stuck in that, and then their teams get stuck in that.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_06: One of the best summits to go to just because the quality of speakers, it's uh it's not it's not a event that you're really trying to be sold anything, though there are a ton of vendors there.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_06: Um, but I think Mark uh Costas has just done a great job of curating speakers that speak to uh real life challenges that you may face in dentistry, but also um like last year Ryan Holiday was there.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_06: So it was like I love it.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, it was it was really cool to like um to learn about philosophy, and then of course Alistair is there as well, which if you've never heard Alistair speak, like it's a master class, and he can talk about the sky being blue and you'll be drawn into the conversation.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_06: So um I really just uh learned a lot from going, but also the quality of person that's there.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_06: Um I've made so many friendships with people that are just absolutely killing it in dentistry, uh, where they twist my kaleidoscope and I really learn how to do different things um in dentistry that I never would have thought of on my own.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_06: And so a lot of the conversations that happen uh at night after the conference at dinner or uh in the breaks are are really, really beneficial.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I know you have a lot to do with these groups, they have masterminds, right?
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_01: And you guys go to them and you talk to them, and I know that people changed your minds about some things, and that's how you've grown so much, and now you're changing other people's minds.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_01: Is that right?
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, no, it's it's a lot of fun.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_06: And and what I've what I've learned is like the best leaders are just curious people, and that's how I approach uh coaching or mastermind that even we run is like asking a lot of questions, trying to figure out the why behind the question.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_06: You know, a lot of times it'll it'll be like, hey, Dr.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_06: Hamlin, how did you how did you grow up from 20 to 200?
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_06: It's like, well, why do you want to know that?
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_06: You know what I mean?
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_06: Like what's your end goal, right?
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_06: Um, and so that's what people did to me.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_06: They they really um pulled out of me what I was really searching for.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_06: Um, you know, we're we're really just all kind of chasing each other's goals, if that makes sense.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_06: Um but I think if you can figure out a way to put a persona behind those goals, so uh for example, um I look at you know Andrew Valo as somebody who has taught me a ton of a ton of uh valuable things in dentistry, but also like he's incredibly wise when it comes to how to scale and grow, especially with second gen offices.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_06: And so when I think of second gen, I think of Andrew Valo.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_06: And then when I think of uh how do I grow a practice by you know scaling an ultra hyper hyper uh hyper growth market, like I think of Colin Meyrick.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_06: You know, he's he's really scaled and growed grown his business in in the unique community that he's in.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_06: And so really putting a persona behind that has helped me.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_06: And I wouldn't have been able to do that if I wasn't a part of groups like this that I can connect with dentists that aren't just showing up and want to prep the crown and go home.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_06: These people, they these people really want to learn and grow.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I agree.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, everybody that I've met has always just been curious and they just want to know why are you doing that's always the first question they ask is why?
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_01: And and I know they get that from Mark because Mark always does it like, why do you want that?
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so that's huge.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then also when I think about 10xing new patients, I think about you, Dr.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_01: Blake.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_01: Now I think you're one of the guys that people think about.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_01: You went from, I think just under a year and a half, you went from literally 20 new patients, and this month, when we're recording this, you're gonna hit 200 new patients.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's insane.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's insane growth of one practice.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_01: I actually posted about it online, and people are like, what?
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_01: What are you doing?
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_01: Why are you doing that to yourself?
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah, no, it's it's been a fun journey, and honestly, I've learned more over the past year and a half about my practice, myself, uh, how I can lead better, how I can be a better dentist, how I can get more efficient in exams, how I can treat patients uh more efficiently, um, and still still deliver a really good experience.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_06: And so it's been a blast.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_06: I think we're gonna keep going.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_06: I think at some point we'll have 300 new patients in that.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_06: Um, and the beautiful thing is is like the why behind it for me, and we've talked about this a lot, is like it's is because we can, and I I feel like it's my duty to serve the most amount of people possible.
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_06: Because ultimately the goal is is for me, what I would get the most fulfillment out of my job of being a dentist, isn't actually doing the dentistry.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_06: It's coaching the dentists that are doing it.
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_06: Um problem arises, and I get to go help solve that problem, or they're they're struggling and uh and closing treatment, and I get to help guide them on the path of how we can improve that.
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_06: Like, that's what would wake me up every day.
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_06: You know, we did a podcast with Jason Tenoria not too long ago, and he said something uh about along the lines of like just doing the dentistry didn't get him out of bed anymore, right?
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_06: And I'm not there yet.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_06: Like I still love doing the dentistry, but I can see the world, and part of what how I get compensated is looking six months, twelve months, twenty-four months ahead.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_06: Um, and I can see a world in which the practice doesn't need me to produce the dentistry, it needs me the best use of my time is to help grow and lead other dentists, and that actually aligns really well with what I want, right?
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_06: And so that's the beautiful thing is not only have we experienced growth and people love to see that, and they they're like, oh my gosh, you're gonna go to the mean type of deal, but it's like, no, I'm actually striving for a goal that's bigger than me.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_06: You know what I mean?
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_01: Creating opportunities for others.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_01: I I there comes a certain point in business, and and I've I've gotten here uh a couple years ago.
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_01: I got to this place and it it felt really good, and then we took a couple steps back and then had to re-rebuild and and as one does, yeah, as one as business does to you.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's always humbling, right?
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then um, but it's when I love setting other people up for success.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like I it it it is a really good filling.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a short-term dopamine hit like being the superhero and doing all the treatment or answering everybody's questions, but the long-term dopamine hits from it is just like it's really satisfying.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_06: I wasn't gonna allow growth to reduce the the product that we that we provide.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_06: Um But I I think the fear was getting over getting through the fear was just leaning on people that had been through it before.
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_01: Got it.
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I see how you had that together.
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_06: I I I remember before I bought the building, um, I called a family friend of mine that I trust a lot, and I walked him through like what it was gonna look like to to buy the building and then potentially build, rebuild the building.
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_06: And that number still to this day is like massive.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_06: It it like feels overwhelming, right?
• 1:04:33
  SPEAKER_06: Um but he literally his his response to me after like 20 minutes of looking at it was like, if you don't buy it, I am.
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_06: And I was like, Well, you're way smarter than me.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_06: If you like it, then I need to just get over my fear and do it.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_06: And so a lot of it is kind of like where we talked started this whole conversation was being in groups of people, uh, like you're you'll find a DSS or that you'll find a DSI or even our mastermind group of people that think and do and live life just a little bit different than you, um, but maybe have maybe have experienced that, that you can leverage for your benefit uh to get you basically, and we've said this before, to fold time, right?
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_06: Like that's the whole point.
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_06: How how quickly can we get to the to the end point, right?
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_06: And that's what I think these groups are good for.
• 1:05:21
  SPEAKER_01: Really good, yeah.
• 1:05:21
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's and it's folding time, but it's also breaking through your limiting beliefs because we all have limiting beliefs.
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_01: So when I got into business, I had all the limiting beliefs of why things couldn't be done a certain way.
• 1:05:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it took a it takes a long time to break those walls down personally, but other people that you respect, so you can look at them as a dentist and go, clinically, I respect this person.
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_01: They do great dentistry, but they're doing business in a different way that I thought you couldn't do, plus do great dentistry.
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of assumptions.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_01: You can't have 200 new patients and do great dentistry.
• 1:05:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's not possible.
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_01: Well, why not?
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like, why is that not possible?
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_01: There no one's ever done that before.
• 1:06:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's a lot of these limiting beliefs in the dental industry that just uh I think they block people.
• 1:06:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I love that you've figured out how to break free of those and you're sharing it with uh the audience here, creating opportunities for others.
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_01: I I there comes a certain point in business and and I've I've gotten here uh a couple years ago.
• 1:06:22
  SPEAKER_01: I got to this place and it it felt really good.
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then we took a couple steps back and then had to re rebuild and and as one does.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, as one day as business does too.
• 1:06:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's always humbling, right?
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then um but it's when I love setting other people up for success.
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like I it it it is a really good feeling.
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a short-term dopamine hit like being the superhero and doing all the treatment or answering everybody's questions, but the long-term dopamine hits from it is just like it's really satisfying and it's really good.
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_01: And and then and then you go through like people leave and people don't don't appreciate it, but it just it still feels good.
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_01: It feels still still feels awesome to set people up for success.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of the reasons I love dental marketing so much, is because I get to work with people like you and watch them uh reach their business goals.
• 1:07:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's so satisfying.
• 1:07:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's amazing.
• 1:07:12
  SPEAKER_01: It it creates a whole nother thing of uh problems like we're talking about, but it's just really satisfying to grow.
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_01: I enjoy growing.
• 1:07:18
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate you because you're always growing, and that's that's actually our company why is always growing.
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_01: And my personal why is I always want to be growing, I always want to be growing uh um spiritually, um with maturity, um, with my I want to grow my family, you know, all that kind of stuff.
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so um I just love it.
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I appreciate you coming on today and sharing this.
• 1:07:41
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're still watching this, uh that means that you enjoy the content.
• 1:07:45
  SPEAKER_01: And we have a mastermind.
• 1:07:47
  SPEAKER_01: We just had like, I think like ended up being like eight doctors in there or something like that.
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um a lot of people there.
• 1:07:53
  SPEAKER_01: The people in the mastermind are growing and they're growing fast.
• 1:07:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so I we just had a doctor come on and do a podcast that will be dropping soon.
• 1:08:02
  SPEAKER_01: They actually it was the last episode, I believe, when this one comes out.
• 1:08:06
  SPEAKER_01: They went from a hundred to two hundred thousand dollars in ninety days.
• 1:08:11
  SPEAKER_01: Insane.
• 1:08:11
  SPEAKER_01: Insane.
• 1:08:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh in collections, in collections, they doubled or more than doubled their collections um in 90 days.
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't because they came in and spent a bunch of money, they just made some small tweaks, and those small tweaks absolutely absolutely rocket shipped them.
• 1:08:25
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, thanks for all the tips.
• 1:08:27
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, yeah, I'm always taking, but I appreciate the now that I got this third advice from you guys, I'm probably gonna think about it a lot more.
• 1:08:34
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely.
• 1:08:35
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I appreciate all the advice.
• 1:08:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, man, this is this is really cool.
• 1:08:39
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate you watching the show.
• 1:08:40
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate you coming on.
• 1:08:41
  SPEAKER_01: Most dentists would not do this.
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_01: 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, and yeah, I'd love to come on and just talk about my practice.
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, this dude's gonna be successful.
• 1:08:53
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna hit all your goals.
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_01: If you're willing to ask questions and and uh work through problems, you're gonna do great.
• 1:09:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so as long as you keep doing that, you're you're gonna figure it out.
• 1:09:04
  SPEAKER_01: Dentistry is one of those businesses that has a low fail rate, very high success rate, and it's really just about are you willing to work through the bottlenecks?
• 1:09:13
  SPEAKER_01: So you're gonna you're gonna crush, man.
• 1:09:15
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you.
• 1:09:15
  SPEAKER_04: And I and I appreciate that.
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_04: And then also I'm a big fan of your podcast too.
• 1:09:19
  SPEAKER_04: I and I learned a lot from all your different podcasts and stuff, so a big fan of you guys as well.
• 1:09:25
  SPEAKER_04: Awesome.
• 1:09:25
  SPEAKER_01: Appreciate that, man.
• 1:09:26
  SPEAKER_01: We we literally do this to help people, so when we hear that, that is special to us.
• 1:09:31
  SPEAKER_03: I wouldn't trade living in uh Yakimov for someplace else uh just because of the family connections we have.
• 1:09:37
  SPEAKER_03: It's been fantastic for my kids and my family and the quality of life.
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_03: And also I get to wake up every morning, I see Mount Adams and Mount Rainier in the background.
• 1:09:44
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, it's uh it's a gorgeous place to live.
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_03: Now, was it an acquisition or was it a just a startup?
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_03: Man, so uh I bought a dumpster fire of a practice.
• 1:09:54
  SPEAKER_03: Uh literally my first year on operator chairs catch on fire.
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_03: Literally.
• 1:09:59
  SPEAKER_03: Literally, they're like different Chinese chairs that barely worked.
• 1:10:02
  SPEAKER_03: And we came and it smelled like smoke, and we opened up one of the panels and one of the chairs that it laterally caught on fire.
• 1:10:08
  SPEAKER_03: Uh it was 100% Medicaid when I bought it.
• 1:10:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um it was doing about a million dollars a year, but your net gross on that was not a lot.
• 1:10:15
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:10:15
  SPEAKER_03: And so I bought a million-dollar practice.
• 1:10:18
  SPEAKER_03: It was, I mean, I could have probably made the same amount of revenue on a half, like a$500,000 I practice.
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_03: We had four operatories, the building was in shambles, uh, it was brown, it hadn't been updated since 1985.
• 1:10:29
  SPEAKER_03: Uh like it was just so it wasn't a bidding war, is what I'm hearing.
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_03: No, no, I actually was there for a job interview, and they said, What do you want to do in a year or two?
• 1:10:36
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, Well, I want to want to practice.
• 1:10:38
  SPEAKER_03: They go, How would you like to buy this one?
• 1:10:40
  SPEAKER_03: We'll give it to you.
• 1:10:42
  SPEAKER_03: They I I walked in, I had a number in my head when I paid for it, and it was like, I was like, I'll bid$380,000 for this.
• 1:10:48
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, and they're like, How about$240,000 and I was like, Yeah, I guess that works.
• 1:10:52
  SPEAKER_03: It's like Wow.
• 1:10:53
  SPEAKER_03: And so yeah, I bought for$240,000, and then I was lucky enough to buy the building from the doctors that used to own it in town for$280,000 back in uh 10 years ago.
• 1:11:01
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah.
• 1:11:02
  SPEAKER_03: So it was uh that was great, and that was the start of my entrepreneurial career, was right right from the get.
• 1:11:07
  SPEAKER_03: So I never knew not owning a practice, and so I've always been I never got the luxury of being an associate, which I would have loved to do actually, had like a year.
• 1:11:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but uh in that respect, uh it's been a great growth pattern.
• 1:11:18
  SPEAKER_03: And just after that, I just wish I would have had a group like DSI and had more friends like Blake uh and Colin that I could have talked to through this experience that I would have rock a field.
• 1:11:28
  SPEAKER_03: Even from when I joined uh with these guys a few years ago, I mean I was doing 250 a month and we double that in in the course of like three or four years.
• 1:11:36
  SPEAKER_03: So if you actually look at my trajectory, it was very slow then L-shaped, like a J-shaped curve.
• 1:11:40
  SPEAKER_03: Hockey, hockey, uh hockey stick, yeah.
• 1:11:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:11:43
  SPEAKER_03: So I mean, getting up with people like you guys that help with marketing and getting people that can help you increase that curve, it doesn't have to take 10 years.
• 1:11:51
  SPEAKER_03: So you have to grind it out like I did.
• 1:11:52
  SPEAKER_03: You could actually do it in two or three years.
• 1:11:55
  SPEAKER_06: Well, and you and you can do it one of two ways.
• 1:11:57
  SPEAKER_06: Uh like Colin talked about, just being in the right market and knowing, okay, there's not enough dentists to serve all these people.
• 1:12:04
  SPEAKER_06: The most the the smartest thing you could do is open up practices if people are just overwhelming practice one, two, three, and four, right?
• 1:12:11
  SPEAKER_06: Whereas in my market, going and adding more practice to an already uh saturated market can be a struggle, right?
• 1:12:19
  SPEAKER_06: That's a tough road.
• 1:12:20
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:12:20
  SPEAKER_06: So for me, it's been how do I spend more money to do that, right?
• 1:12:24
  SPEAKER_06: Um, but it it it returns.
• 1:12:27
  SPEAKER_06: Like if you do if you're doing the things right, it's not an expense and then it's an investment.
• 1:12:31
  SPEAKER_03: It's an investment, yeah.
• 1:12:32
  SPEAKER_03: I think people look at marketing completely the wrong way when it comes to industry.
• 1:12:35
  SPEAKER_03: They took it as like a line I'm expense that's taking money from them.
• 1:12:39
  SPEAKER_03: And I mean, there's obviously a like a metric for everybody, like maybe in your town you have to spend thirty, forty thousand dollars a month.
• 1:12:44
  SPEAKER_03: In my town, maybe four to five thousand makes sense for the same size practice, the same size kind of things.
• 1:12:49
  SPEAKER_03: I actually I still do old school postmarketing campaigns.
• 1:12:52
  SPEAKER_03: I use I use postcards out because those old people love these postcards.
• 1:12:55
  SPEAKER_03: They came in all the time.
• 1:12:56
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, how'd you hear about my practice?
• 1:12:58
  SPEAKER_03: And I have 20 of these cards coming in.
• 1:12:59
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, I don't understand how this works.
• 1:13:02
  SPEAKER_03: But people love it.
• 1:13:02
  SPEAKER_03: They go, I've been watching your whole family grow up over the 10 years.
• 1:13:05
  SPEAKER_03: I'll watch me and my kids on it, and they're like, they feel like they know me because they watched my my whole family grow up from one baby to two babies to three babies to little kids as they're getting bigger.
• 1:13:13
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, you know, especially in a small town, they love that kind of stuff.
• 1:13:16
  SPEAKER_01: So so tell me a little bit about your growth from a new patient standpoint.
• 1:13:20
  SPEAKER_03: When you bought it, how many new patients?
• 1:13:21
  SPEAKER_03: So it's a handful of new patients.
• 1:13:22
  SPEAKER_03: No, I mean, since we were a Medicaid practice, we couldn't, it didn't matter.
• 1:13:25
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:13:26
  SPEAKER_03: You just you open your, you say I accept Medicaid, you're gonna have 130 new patients.
• 1:13:29
  SPEAKER_03: But they're the not the patients, not saying the people themselves are the wrong type patients.
• 1:13:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:13:33
  SPEAKER_03: But I was getting reimbursed$33 for an occlusal filling,$33 for an extraction.
• 1:13:38
  SPEAKER_03: I can tell you.
• 1:13:40
  SPEAKER_03: I can tell you, I can tell you right now how hard you have to work when you want to do$5,000 in a day making$60 an extraction.
• 1:13:46
  SPEAKER_03: Plus, people needed four to five of them, but you're so I'm making$300 a patient because I'm pulling five T.
• 1:13:51
  SPEAKER_03: Oh man.
• 1:13:52
  SPEAKER_03: So that's something you're still doing Medicaid?
• 1:13:54
  SPEAKER_03: Or no, we're we're we're out of Medicaid thing.
• 1:13:57
  SPEAKER_03: But the thing it did teach me is kind of mixed blessing is I gotta get really fast.
• 1:14:00
  SPEAKER_03: So I can get really fast at doing dentistry.
• 1:14:02
  SPEAKER_03: So now when I'm seeing a better patient base, as far as like people can do more work, man, I can fly.
• 1:14:08
  SPEAKER_03: So like sometimes you always say your greatest problem is currently your greatest strength later.
• 1:14:11
  SPEAKER_03: Well, being in a hundred percent Medicaid practice, where I literally was doing hundreds of fillings, hundreds of extractions every week.
• 1:14:16
  SPEAKER_03: Now when I'm like, oh, you want to do an extraction?
• 1:14:18
  SPEAKER_03: Like, this is gonna take me about 35 seconds.
• 1:14:20
  SPEAKER_01: I I know you think of these patients as patients and you're always gonna take care of the best, best you can of the people that are in front of you.
• 1:14:26
  SPEAKER_01: But when you talk about it from like a marketing avatar standpoint of Medicaid versus fee for service or PPO, like it's a radical change of what you're dealing with.
• 1:14:37
  SPEAKER_01: How how did you deal with that transition?
• 1:14:39
  SPEAKER_03: So it was it was just slow.
• 1:14:40
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, because I couldn't kill off the goose that was paying my life.
• 1:14:42
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you gotta like you gotta pay the bills.
• 1:14:44
  SPEAKER_03: So I couldn't just be like, all right, I'm cutting off all Medicaid, it would have drowned me.
• 1:14:48
  SPEAKER_03: And I was also a little slow, you know, because it is a small town.
• 1:14:51
  SPEAKER_03: I do like the people that are coming in.
• 1:14:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:14:53
  SPEAKER_03: And whether they're what assurance they had didn't really matter, but it was a hard for me to actually turn that off.
• 1:14:56
  SPEAKER_03: I've been seeing patients for four or five years, right?
• 1:14:58
  SPEAKER_03: And little kids I've been seeing for years, and I didn't turn off a kids' Medicaid thing for like two years ago.
• 1:15:04
  SPEAKER_03: It just was hard for me to say no to these group of like 15, 20 kids.
• 1:15:07
  SPEAKER_03: I know it was a bummer.
• 1:15:08
  SPEAKER_03: We had a lot of upset patients, so I finally stopped it.
• 1:15:10
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:15:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but the it was just kind of I started.
• 1:15:13
  SPEAKER_03: I remember when I got my first insurance patient on the schedule.
• 1:15:16
  SPEAKER_03: I was so happy.
• 1:15:17
  SPEAKER_03: And we're still we're still we're still at PPO mostly practical.
• 1:15:20
  SPEAKER_03: Let's still only get 50%.
• 1:15:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:15:22
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, I I remember we I would be like, guys, we had a different color on the schedule.
• 1:15:25
  SPEAKER_03: This is a patient that has insurance.
• 1:15:28
  SPEAKER_03: Let's go.
• 1:15:28
  SPEAKER_03: Like, yeah.
• 1:15:29
  SPEAKER_03: So like we would like we would move patients around like to get them on.
• 1:15:32
  SPEAKER_03: So it was just kind of like one to two to three to four to five, and then you know, we hit 50, 60, 70.
• 1:15:37
  SPEAKER_03: So now we do about 120 new patients a month.
• 1:15:39
  SPEAKER_03: Um we still need to get more um new patients just because we have the capacity to see right uh more.
• 1:15:45
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so that's what we're working on now is trying to figure out that metric and what we need to do to get that.
• 1:15:50
  SPEAKER_03: But it's at this point it's different strategies.
• 1:15:52
  SPEAKER_03: You can't just do one.
• 1:15:53
  SPEAKER_03: I think you have to be multimodal about how you market, right?
• 1:15:55
  SPEAKER_01: And it can't just be just Google, it can't just be this, it can't it can't be Especially in your kind of market, you're you're a lot more role, so there's only so many people searching for a dentist.
• 1:16:04
  SPEAKER_01: Or if you run Facebook ads, you could hit everybody in one month.
• 1:16:08
  SPEAKER_03: Do like a hundred times.
• 1:16:10
  SPEAKER_03: People complain that they see me too much.
• 1:16:12
  SPEAKER_03: Like they're like, I know you know how do you know you?
• 1:16:14
  SPEAKER_03: You're on my Facebook all the time.
• 1:16:15
  SPEAKER_03: A thousand dollars of Facebook ads that yak about you there's like get off my feet.
• 1:16:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so you have to hit a lot of different angles.
• 1:16:22
  SPEAKER_01: You have to hit the people who aren't on those platforms, who aren't searching for a dentist, or are you reaching outside of your community, like pretty far?
• 1:16:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we go, I mean, for our specialist stuff, we do all in arch cases and dentures and implants.
• 1:16:34
  SPEAKER_03: So we actually go uh sometimes as far as 100, 110 miles away.
• 1:16:38
  SPEAKER_03: Because like we go, we back up the mountain range, so those small mountain communities either go wet uh west of Seattle or east to us, and most people rather come down east to come see us than go to the building nightmare of Seattle.
• 1:16:49
  SPEAKER_03: So it's uh you have to kind of broaden, but it depends on the market.
• 1:16:53
  SPEAKER_03: Traditional patient die for implant patients, we have a water scope, right?
• 1:16:57
  SPEAKER_06: Spend more money in different markets, so you just got to kind of pick and I think I think just knowing we we as dentists we don't take the time to really figure out what's working and then double down on that.
• 1:17:07
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:17:08
  SPEAKER_06: Like we're we think, oh, we wasted three thousand dollars on that mailer campaign.
• 1:17:12
  SPEAKER_06: Well, did we give it enough time?
• 1:17:13
  SPEAKER_06: Did we try it?
• 1:17:14
  SPEAKER_06: Did we have an offer that was actually worthwhile?
• 1:17:17
  SPEAKER_06: Like, that's what I found with working with Gary and SMC is like the problem was the offer.
• 1:17:22
  SPEAKER_06: Nobody cares if you have a$399 cleaning.
• 1:17:25
  SPEAKER_06: That's still expensive.
• 1:17:26
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, nobody cares if you're giving away free widening.
• 1:17:29
  SPEAKER_06: What they care about is can they come in and get the service that they think is really valuable for next to nothing?
• 1:17:35
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:17:35
  SPEAKER_06: And yes, you're gonna have people that don't want the service or they they think they want more value out of that service, but most of the people that come through the door, they just they just needed a way to be able to come in and know that it wasn't gonna cost$400.
• 1:17:49
  SPEAKER_01: Because they wanna because how the dentists see it a lot of times, you can correct me if I'm wrong, is that hey, I went to school for all this time, I invested all these loans, bought the business, and now I'm giving away this portion of treatment, right?
• 1:18:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it's kind of like a slap in the face.
• 1:18:01
  SPEAKER_01: But how the patient sees it is, hey, I just want to come in and see if I want to go with this dentist.
• 1:18:06
  SPEAKER_03: And how do I do this without paying thousands of dollars or hundreds of dollars?
• 1:18:10
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I mean, if you think about it, if you could try something before you buy it, that's that's all the time.
• 1:18:14
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, for free ten dollars for the first month,$20.
• 1:18:17
  SPEAKER_03: And so if you give a patient a low barrier to entry to come see her the first time, and you're right, your conversion rate on those patients is gonna be lower than like an insurance patient.
• 1:18:24
  SPEAKER_03: I can tell you for a fact that it's we're about 33% conversion rate for actually them accepting treatment for a cash patient coming on a$99 special versus we're like an$85 with an insurance patient.
• 1:18:33
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:18:33
  SPEAKER_03: But you know, the thing is, like, when half the people don't have insurance, you're basically saying, like, I'm only gonna cater to the half the people that have insurance.
• 1:18:41
  SPEAKER_03: No, you got to cater to everybody.
• 1:18:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's a big powerful point.
• 1:18:44
  SPEAKER_03: There's also the other point, too, that you also get market for the bigger ticket items like the all-in-x case and stuff, and those are by and large cash patients, even if they have insurance, it's basically a cash patient.
• 1:18:52
  SPEAKER_01: And the conversion rate's nothing, but the ROI is like they're the same.
• 1:18:56
  SPEAKER_06: What I've found too is a lot of these patients that even have insurance, they see the$49 special and they still come in because of the$49 special, right?
• 1:19:06
  SPEAKER_06: But what you're really doing is you're building a practice that can revolve around both insurance because you take it and non-insurance because now the people that don't have insurance have have a way of getting in the door.
• 1:19:18
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:19:19
  SPEAKER_06: You know what I mean?
• 1:19:19
  SPEAKER_06: And so you can quite literally build a practice that the rest of the dental world will say that you can't do because they they don't take your insurance.
• 1:19:27
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:19:27
  SPEAKER_06: Well, no, you just have to give them a way to make them pay, yeah, make them feel that they can afford the dentistry.
• 1:19:32
  SPEAKER_03: 100%.
• 1:19:33
  SPEAKER_03: I I try to make it a little more sticky too with a membership plan.
• 1:19:35
  SPEAKER_03: So maybe we don't get a lot of the cash patients converting, but we probably got 150 people now on a on a membership plan.
• 1:19:41
  SPEAKER_03: And that makes them a lot more sticky because once they've already paid into the system, they show up for their cleanings.
• 1:19:46
  SPEAKER_03: And I think for me, uh, I'll let you listen to Axemothy who was talking about this, is that getting them back to the second visit is the most crucial step.
• 1:19:52
  SPEAKER_03: And that's actually what I've been focusing on recently is how do I get you back for a second visit?
• 1:19:56
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't care if you didn't spend any money.
• 1:19:58
  SPEAKER_03: How can I get you back for a second visit?
• 1:20:00
  SPEAKER_03: So that's that's actually what I'm dwelling my little head on right now.
• 1:20:03
  SPEAKER_03: How do I get more of those patients only show up for one?
• 1:20:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because your retention rate goes through the root roof once you get to the second, so you have to remove all the friction in the first step and the second step.
• 1:20:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'll tell myself like, well, we should give them a$99 patient special again if that really is gonna help.
• 1:20:14
  SPEAKER_03: Like, how can we get them to be a little stickier?
• 1:20:16
  SPEAKER_03: So that's that I'm working on right now.
• 1:20:18
  SPEAKER_03: So that's good.
• 1:20:19
  SPEAKER_03: I cracked that and I'll let you know.
• 1:20:20
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 1:20:20
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so uh I want to know for there's dentists out there, there's a lot of dentists, and Mark Mark actually talked about this this morning that are really struggling because the game has changed as far as dentistry goes.
• 1:20:31
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 1:20:32
  SPEAKER_01: Insurance is a reimbursing less, labor's up, inflation's up 32%, patients are accepting less treatment overall.
• 1:20:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's harder to keep your team.
• 1:20:40
  SPEAKER_01: So the game that we were playing clear pre-COVID is not the same game as we're playing.
• 1:20:44
  SPEAKER_01: Now, from a business standpoint, what what would you tell to those dentists that are out there that are kind of stuck in that old model and now we're having to move to the new model?
• 1:20:52
  SPEAKER_01: What would what would you say to them to help them change their paradigm shift?
• 1:20:55
  SPEAKER_03: I would say the core things I recognize in most new dentists that I I feel that they need a shift in their own thing is first off, their own skill sets.
• 1:21:02
  SPEAKER_03: I have I can't tell how many patients people I've talked to that refer out indo.
• 1:21:07
  SPEAKER_03: And I go, you're referring out molar endo, and you're telling me you can't make money in your practice.
• 1:21:10
  SPEAKER_03: How many cases do you refer on this this month?
• 1:21:12
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I've heard up 15 cases.
• 1:21:13
  SPEAKER_03: I go, so you just let$15,000 walk out and you're saying you're having struggling?
• 1:21:18
  SPEAKER_03: So that's$180,000 a year.
• 1:21:19
  SPEAKER_03: So you just said you don't want your kids to have an extra$180,000 a year.
• 1:21:22
  SPEAKER_03: That's great.
• 1:21:23
  SPEAKER_03: So you want to learn molar indo.
• 1:21:24
  SPEAKER_03: It's boring.
• 1:21:25
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, it's boring.
• 1:21:26
  SPEAKER_03: And I get it.
• 1:21:27
  SPEAKER_03: Molar endo is boring.
• 1:21:28
  SPEAKER_03: But like, you know, same thing.
• 1:21:29
  SPEAKER_03: But skill set up on an implant, skill set up on yourself, and then you can also communicate that to the rest of your team, and you can teach and coach your associates so they come on board.
• 1:21:37
  SPEAKER_03: And so you like, no, I'm the guy that knows how to do everything, so you can fall back on me.
• 1:21:40
  SPEAKER_03: That's going to help the long term.
• 1:21:41
  SPEAKER_03: In the short term, I mean if you have a patient walking in that needs an implant and you're referring that out to the to the down to the oral surgeon, you're just getting the crown when you can have the implant, bone craft, extraction, guided tissue, and all one bundle, and you can do it the same day because they walk in and you finance them with cherry and you're slam dunk that case with six grand, that is what you need to be doing.
• 1:21:58
  SPEAKER_03: So if you don't have that skill set, right, you don't have even that opportunity.
• 1:22:01
  SPEAKER_03: So you don't even get that back because you can't even swing the club.
• 1:22:04
  SPEAKER_03: So let's make sure you have enough tools in your tool set first.
• 1:22:07
  SPEAKER_03: Then you can also say I need to layer on the rest of the marketing and uh manager.
• 1:22:11
  SPEAKER_03: But man, if you gotta be an animal when it comes into the chair, you gotta be able to do like 99% of stuff.
• 1:22:15
  SPEAKER_03: I get you don't want to do sinus lists, I don't like them either.
• 1:22:18
  SPEAKER_03: Fine.
• 1:22:18
  SPEAKER_03: But you should be able to do implants and molar endo and feel very comfortable in those procedures and be able to talk to the patient, communicate that because that patient's in pain and that's same day treatment today.
• 1:22:27
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna put some implant on you today.
• 1:22:28
  SPEAKER_03: Let's try not tomorrow, not in three months, not in six months.
• 1:22:31
  SPEAKER_03: Today, all you want to do today?
• 1:22:32
  SPEAKER_03: I got my comb beam, let's go.
• 1:22:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 1:22:34
  SPEAKER_06: I think for me, um Sounds full right there.
• 1:22:37
  SPEAKER_06: No, yeah, it's great.
• 1:22:38
  SPEAKER_06: I think for me, specifically for the owners, what I see are people that don't really know their numbers and they're they're intimidated by what those numbers will be.
• 1:22:46
  SPEAKER_06: And we live in a world now where you can get an answer in ten seconds if you just get on cloud or chat and just put your PL on there and tell ask it to show you where the holes are.
• 1:22:57
  SPEAKER_06: And that's where I've had the biggest change in my business, is where I can really look at my numbers and say, if I turn this knob just a little bit, it makes a radical change change.
• 1:23:08
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:23:08
  SPEAKER_06: And I think if more dentists understood that more profitability is sitting right under their nose, if they just made a few changes that their life every practice is sitting on money, like a boatload of money that just for sending a text or an email or different treatment.
• 1:23:24
  SPEAKER_01: Also, you said something that you said on stage that was very powerful.
• 1:23:27
  SPEAKER_01: You said focus on one or two numbers.
• 1:23:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think dentists are very analytical by nature, they because you have to be to be a dentist, right?
• 1:23:34
  SPEAKER_01: And you get all these numbers and you try to fix all the numbers, you're cooked.
• 1:23:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like you just because one number goes up, what does it do to the other number?
• 1:23:41
  SPEAKER_01: It makes the other number go down.
• 1:23:43
  SPEAKER_01: So just figure out what the most important one or two numbers are and go all in on those.
• 1:23:46
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 1:23:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:23:47
  SPEAKER_03: What are your one or two numbers that are I mean, you're getting pretty big these days, so like what's your one or two numbers that really you're well Gary knows this, but I'm focused on active patient count.
• 1:23:56
  SPEAKER_06: Um and that that's really all that matters.
• 1:23:57
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, chill on the new patients.
• 1:23:59
  SPEAKER_03: I need more activation.
• 1:24:00
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, okay.
• 1:24:00
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:24:01
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:24:01
  SPEAKER_06: So like to me, that that's the only thing that matters to me right now.
• 1:24:04
  SPEAKER_06: Uh I've gone as far as telling him like I don't even care what the ROI is, which I don't know if if that's necessarily true.
• 1:24:11
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:24:11
  SPEAKER_06: But I You get your point, I guess.
• 1:24:13
  SPEAKER_06: What what I mean is that like at the end of the day, even if I broke even, which w we wouldn't, but even if I did, I would be okay with that because I know the snowball is getting so much bigger that I'm building for like what Colin was talking about.
• 1:24:26
  SPEAKER_06: I'm building for a future for tomorrow and today.
• 1:24:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, if you have a big hygiene department, you you you own the future.
• 1:24:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's you have a recurring business model that's gonna work now.
• 1:24:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 1:24:36
  SPEAKER_01: What what um for you, Dr.
• 1:24:38
  SPEAKER_01: Michael, what is um what does the future look like for you?
• 1:24:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like what are the numbers that you're focusing on right now and what's your kind of next step in business?
• 1:24:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, so for me right now, uh, you know, I'm looking at personally, I want to step back a little bit from the chair because you know having those I did basically 10 years of dentistry and three years when I first started, so I'm already feeling it.
• 1:24:58
  SPEAKER_03: Um but how many doctors do you have?
• 1:25:00
  SPEAKER_03: We got three of us.
• 1:25:01
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, and so my main goal is actually to get my doctors to be me as far as in the chair.
• 1:25:06
  SPEAKER_03: I want them to be the animals out there, you know, having a great time doing the big complex cases.
• 1:25:11
  SPEAKER_03: I don't want to be taking from them.
• 1:25:13
  SPEAKER_03: I want them to be having the skill set and the excitement.
• 1:25:15
  SPEAKER_03: So that's that's part of it.
• 1:25:17
  SPEAKER_03: As far as kind of like just practice growth and where that's going, I just want to continue to make our systems better.
• 1:25:22
  SPEAKER_03: I'm a big believer in like a one big location kind of guy.
• 1:25:25
  SPEAKER_03: So we have 12 offs.
• 1:25:26
  SPEAKER_03: So we're a decent sized practice.
• 1:25:27
  SPEAKER_03: I don't really know.
• 1:25:29
  SPEAKER_03: We have seven right now.
• 1:25:30
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, one's a restorative hygienist, which if you can have restorative hygiene, that's huge in Washington.
• 1:25:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:25:34
  SPEAKER_03: It's like having a mini associate paid.
• 1:25:37
  SPEAKER_03: Uh not quite as much, but still quite a bit.
• 1:25:39
  SPEAKER_03: Um, yeah.
• 1:25:39
  SPEAKER_03: So I for me right now I'm focusing on new patient count, trying to get a new patient count so we can make sure that we can keep all the columns full, busy.
• 1:25:46
  SPEAKER_03: We've seen a little bit of decline in Washington state, especially in our area, the it's rural, like I said, and we're we're it's the expenses are going up, things people are getting paid less.
• 1:25:54
  SPEAKER_03: So we've made it.
• 1:25:57
  SPEAKER_01: And that's driving things up, isn't it?
• 1:25:58
  SPEAKER_03: No, it's it's just uh cost of gas.
• 1:26:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:26:01
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, like just fuel.
• 1:26:02
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, if you think about it, if you're a person that makes twenty dollars an hour, I was talking to somebody about this other day.
• 1:26:06
  SPEAKER_03: You make twenty dollars an hour, gas is six bucks.
• 1:26:08
  SPEAKER_03: So it's again just to fill up your car costs you a day's worth of work, and then I'm telling you you need a five hundred dollar crown and you just and uh and you went from three dollar gas to six dollars gas.
• 1:26:16
  SPEAKER_03: It sounds simple, but realistically, and you have patients living on the line, yeah, the average person can only afford a$400, can't even afford a$400 emergency.
• 1:26:23
  SPEAKER_03: Correct.
• 1:26:24
  SPEAKER_03: So they're walking to my office, I'm telling them it's two grand and they can't afford$400.
• 1:26:28
  SPEAKER_03: So like whenever you have these marginal changes, now we're working in this new field of what can we do as the economy is getting tighter, at least in my market, what can we do to continue our growth while things are shrinking?
• 1:26:40
  SPEAKER_03: So that'll that means more volume, chasing better uh.
• 1:26:42
  SPEAKER_01: Are you doing patient financing?
• 1:26:44
  SPEAKER_03: Do you do oh yeah?
• 1:26:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, how do you do that?
• 1:26:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like, uh walk me through that.
• 1:26:47
  SPEAKER_03: So we actually pre-qualify everybody that walks to the door because you can do that with cherry.
• 1:26:51
  SPEAKER_03: You can uh you can know just with their name, birth date, you know, no social security number, anything like that.
• 1:26:55
  SPEAKER_03: You can find out if someone buy it or not.
• 1:26:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um so they're already pre-qualified before they even walk in the door, or at least we know they can get it.
• 1:27:00
  SPEAKER_03: Every patient gets offered financing every time.
• 1:27:03
  SPEAKER_03: We I don't care if it's for a$50 family.
• 1:27:05
  SPEAKER_03: Like, would you like financing for that?
• 1:27:06
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 1:27:07
  SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, people say no, but the thing is it happens too.
• 1:27:10
  SPEAKER_03: If you offer financing to everybody, they'll tell you no.
• 1:27:12
  SPEAKER_03: When they I can't tell you, tell me no, I'm gonna pay cash.
• 1:27:15
  SPEAKER_03: Then they walk in the day of and they say, Hey, can I hook up that cherry?
• 1:27:18
  SPEAKER_03: If you didn't offer them that financing, they didn't know that was an available option, then they're then they're gonna cancel their appointment, not keep it, but they know in the back of their head, hey, that water here just blew up, but I still don't get this too fixed.
• 1:27:28
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:27:29
  SPEAKER_03: They have financing.
• 1:27:30
  SPEAKER_03: Let's go monthly payments, guys.
• 1:27:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so monthly payments is also a big focus because I don't want I don't want to talk to people about 10 grand.
• 1:27:36
  SPEAKER_03: I don't want to talk about it's gonna be a hundred dollars a month.
• 1:27:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:27:39
  SPEAKER_03: Blake actually is the one that turned me out of that.
• 1:27:41
  SPEAKER_03: He sent me this whole little like packet and it was beautiful and looked great.
• 1:27:44
  SPEAKER_03: And so I stripped it down and made it worse and uglier.
• 1:27:46
  SPEAKER_03: And then you got a lot of different colors on it.
• 1:27:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, I did.
• 1:27:49
  SPEAKER_03: I pretty much just copy paste, and then I'm like, hey guys, we have this great thing.
• 1:27:52
  SPEAKER_03: Here's a system.
• 1:27:53
  SPEAKER_03: Look what I did, yeah.
• 1:27:54
  SPEAKER_03: So I mean that's the great part about you know, actually, you know, Mark was talking about getting in front of people.
• 1:27:59
  SPEAKER_03: Nobody's gonna send you that over at because he's you're on a like a Facebook group together.
• 1:28:03
  SPEAKER_03: But if you're talking to somebody live and you're looking in the eye and like, hey man, can you help me?
• 1:28:06
  SPEAKER_03: And they're like, Yeah, man, let me let me send you something.
• 1:28:08
  SPEAKER_03: That's so good.
• 1:28:08
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah.
• 1:28:09
  SPEAKER_06: Any more questions?
• 1:28:10
  SPEAKER_06: I think it's great.
• 1:28:11
  SPEAKER_06: I love Mike.
• 1:28:12
  SPEAKER_06: He's a great dude.
• 1:28:13
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, he's built he's built a great business.
• 1:28:14
  SPEAKER_06: I know you're shy, so I appreciate your appreciate us.
• 1:28:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, I really quiet.
• 1:28:18
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's what the humbling part too is that like I'm 42, you know, Blake's in his early 30s, and I just see their career trajectory.
• 1:28:25
  SPEAKER_03: Like, by the time you're my age, they're gonna be like world domination.
• 1:28:29
  SPEAKER_03: I always say I just can't wait to find the G5 for me.
• 1:28:31
  SPEAKER_03: So, like, you know, just come pick me up.
• 1:28:34
  SPEAKER_03: We have a small airport, it's fine, guys.
• 1:28:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's so awesome.
• 1:28:37
  SPEAKER_01: You're crushing it.
• 1:28:38
  SPEAKER_01: I pr really appreciate you coming on.
• 1:28:40
  SPEAKER_01: This event is awesome.
• 1:28:41
  SPEAKER_01: And uh hopefully other dentists can watch this kind of content and learn from it and figure out that you can be really, really successful.
• 1:28:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard, but it is out there, and it doesn't matter where what market you're in or what model you have, you can make it work.
• 1:28:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, those are fun too.
• 1:28:54
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:28:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's way business to be way more fun.
• 1:28:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:28:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, money always helps.
• 1:28:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, money helps.
• 1:29:00
  SPEAKER_03: They would say they can't fix problems, but I find that to be very untrue.
• 1:29:02
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it fixes problems, fixes all the money.