Dental A Team w/ Kiera Dent and Dr. Mark Costes

When it comes to scaling smarter, not scattered, there are three mistakes owners make that hurt efficiency, profitability, and leadership. Kiera talks about how Dental A-Team helps practices simplify methods so that success is humming across all locations. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and I hope you are having such an amazing day. Today is podcasting day and I actually did a little reel for you guys to come and enjoy getting ready for me on podcasting day. My husband and I, we did this funny thing when I got like amped myself up and we're like, I love my life. I love my job. I love podcasting. And I don't know if you guys have seen that little girl.   who does that where she gets so excited about life and it's like, I love my bed, I love my hot tub, I love my view. And truly I love all of you. And I'm just super excited to be here with you podcasting, to be talking about great things in dentistry. And today I think that this one's going out to our multi-practice owners. And these are three costly gaps that I've noticed within multi-practice ownership that really try to highlight some of the gaps because at the end of the day, the podcast was created   to help all dentists elevate, to help all of us rise, to positively impact the world of dentistry in the greatest way possible. And that's what we're about. That's what our mission is. That's what I'm about. And so today going out to those multi-practice owners, or for those of you thinking about multi-practice ownership and do you want to do this? do you want to like, what are some of these gaps that maybe could also impact solo practice owners? So at Dental A Team, do work with solo practice owners, multi-practice owners. We work with...   like from basically one million, you know, you're maybe at that 650, one million range, all the way up to that 10, 15, $20 million range as well for practices. And there is a no one size fits all in Dental A Team I'm very, very, very, very big on who we hire and who the people are within our company. And with our clients that this is your life. This is your dream. There is no ultimate destination that we're trying to get all of our practices to. There is no final   You've got to hit this in order to be excellent within Dental A Team. is what is your life? We have some owners that are working at two or three days a week. We have some owners that are working six days a week. We have some that want multi-practice ownership. have others that want solo practice ownership. We have some that are solo practitioners doing 4 million in one location of about six to seven operatories. We have others that are in multi-locations doing 2 million. So really there is a no one size fits all. It's more what do you want to be? And we call this the yes model. So where do you   personally and professionally want to be. stands for earnings to make sure you're profitable and S stands for systems and teams to support that. So really making sure that way you can say yes to your life, yes to the things you want in life. That's what we're about. So with that, like when you look at multi-practice ownership, it does not necessarily mean adding more profit. I've talked to several multi-practice owners that are actually making less money in multi-practice ownership than they are.   prior to expanding to multi locations. Think about it. You've got one location that's doing really well, the other one's not doing so well, well, your good one has to then support your not so cash flowing one. So sometimes it actually can be a lot more costly for you. And so for you to just realize that some of the ways that we can do this will actually impact solo practitioners. ⁓ And so the three things that we're gonna work on today are like,   things that hurt efficiency, they hurt profitability and they hurt leadership. So when we look at this, doing a deep dive on that, that's really what I want you to look at of like how you can scale smarter and not scattered because really with multi-practice ownership, I remember the day we opened our second location. Our first practice was doing, it was 500,000 to 2.4 million in nine months. And then we opened our second location and you better believe that it was like just adding more fuel to this already burning chaos fire. I think that's really, really clear. And I hope you heard that it was adding more fuel.   to the chaos fire, not to the profitable fire, but to the chaos fire. ⁓ And that was really, really, really struggling. ⁓ It was hard on me. It was hard on our practice. It was hard on the team. I was not showing up as a great manager. I was not showing up as a great ⁓ leader. I was not showing up as a great partner. ⁓ I was not showing up great in my marriage. It was like literally just trying to swim through and feel like I was trying to survive rather than doing it smart. And so that's something really big that we've been wanting to do for all of you is   to give you this smarter way. Dental A Team was really here for you. It was built by people who are just like you, who have been in your shoes, they don't just understand you, but have actually been in your shoes, who's walked the walk, talked the talk, and we've done it very successfully. So I love to help offices. Hopefully we're helping you. ⁓ And if you love this podcast, please be sure to like it, start, share it, because that's how we're able to help and influence more people. number one, the biggest number one miss is no centralized operations. So that means ⁓ we don't...   we don't have a central plan and instead our practices are individual islands. This was very much my practices. We had our one and it was doing certain things and we had our second one and it was not doing certain things. And so going from each practice felt like I was going to multiple different locations, multi different pieces and that really gets hard. And so we have inconsistent systems which means we have unpredictable outcomes. And then on that, like we did not have a set way that we'd schedule. So we'd schedule one way at our first location another way at our second location.   Our billing was not the same. The way we were insurance verifying, our fee schedules weren't even the same because we were in two different cities. And so we had different fee schedules. ⁓ Reporting was not the same. We did not have leaders in both practices. We did not have SOPs that could scale. Like truly our operations manual was not done and we just thought buy another practice and let's go through this. Rather than having a set standard, and this is something I'm really big on when people want to go to multi-practice ownership or they're already in multi-practice ownership. This is really where we start. There's a practice that we're working with and   I think about them, were, the solo doctor was running around to every single location, trying to out-produce the problems instead of fixing the problems at the base level. And that's going to be through this of like centralized systems and getting systems in place and like having our scheduling and our billing and our cashflow consistent and looking at each of the individual practices ⁓ to make sure that they are centralized. And so when we work with multi-locations,   What we do is we actually simplify it down. So you don't necessarily have to have centralized billing or scheduling like right away. Once you get to that four or five, usually it's very recommended to have centralized billing or I've got some practices that are multi like it's one location, but they have about 15 to 17 operatories. Well, that does count in my opinion as multi ops, multi practices, cause a lot of times multi practices are like five ops or more. So you think about a 15 op practice that's like three practices, but just under one roof.   So even in this larger practice, I often recommend we start to centralizing. So we have a set standard of how we're doing billing. We have different reporting metrics. You've got to have the KPIs. We've got to have the set system. So what we started to do is we standardized the operatories. So all ops are the same. We standardized how we're scheduling. We're all in the same softwares. We have an SOP. So we've got our front office, our back office teams, and we do the exact same way. So how we're doing it. We had both practices auditing each other so that we standards were not getting missed and it wasn't.   Well, this practice does it this way and this one does it this way. No, we're trying to make these standardized. that way, again, it's not so that way we can't have our own flare and variety at the different locations, but it's so that way when practices show up and doctors show up, we're actually able to be efficient and effective because we're able to have it be the same. It's like, could you imagine ⁓ if your practices were like everybody's varying different houses? So the way I put my silverware in my house might be very different than where you put your silverware in your house.   So just imagine we've got five different houses, how much easier it would be if we all walk in and we all agree that silverware goes to the right of the dishwasher. Well, now, no matter where the dishwasher is placed in a house, we know silverware will always be to the right of the dishwasher. Just like when we walk into an operatory, we always know that the ⁓ disposable, so our gauze, our cotton, is always to the right of X. It all practices. So as much as we can get them similar, so that way it's just more efficient, it's more streamlined, everything is working together rather than against each other.   but truly getting centralized operations in multi-operatories or multi-locations is going to be one of the biggest ways to cut costs, to save time, and to make it more efficient for a better patient care all the way around the board. So really look at your practice and see, do we have inconsistent systems? Are we doing things differently? Do we have different flares and flavors? Do we have like five different houses within our multi-practice ownership? And what could we do to unify it across all of the practices this quarter? And usually when I'm starting with an office,   I'm going to look for the scheduling because that's usually the fastest. Then the operatories will be my next piece that I'm going to go for. And then after that, we're going to go into our billing tactics and making sure that goes into it, which leads me right into point number two. And this is gap number two and it's profit per location is not being tracked. A lot of times when people get multipractices, what they do is they just keep it all under one tax ID number. I understand your reasoning. I did that when I started my multiple businesses. It actually gets really hairy scary. And so ⁓   Yes, like let's untangle this. I'm not a CPA. My job is not to be giving you financial advice. My job is just to help you as a consultant. We pair really well with CPAs. And so miss number two is when we don't have profit being tracked per location, but overall as total revenue, but not knowing which practice is profitable and which practice is struggling. That's a really, really, really big miss as a practice. So helping you just understand that you've got to a hundred percent.   make sure we're looking at the profitability and breaking it apart. So each practice has its own tax ID number. Yes, this is annoying. Yes, you have to fix the billing pieces for it, but each practice needs to be treated like its own individual business unit. within the bigger whole. So it's like we have the same standards, we have the same operatory setup, we have the same softwares, we have the same billing tactics, but what we have is we make sure each practice is profitable.   So we know how much are we paying for all the fixed versus variable costs and we're tracking those within each location. When team members travel between each location, they're actually paid out of two separate entities. So they could be technically putting in more than 40 hours, but if they're only putting 20 hours here and 30 hours here, technically that's not over time. It's like working two different jobs. Now you have to be careful with that to make sure that those employees are not overworked.   But making sure that like when I've got team members going to multi locations, I am tracking it per location. I am tracking it per practice. When I've got regional managers separating out that regional manager salary amongst all the locations to make sure is this practical profitable? And if not, what are the underperformers? What are the root causes? How can I get this profitable? Can we do block scheduling in there? Can I work on my costs? I've got two practices right now and their rent is much higher in one location. Well, if I've got higher rent over there and higher costs,   I have to produce more in that practice than I do. So I can't have the exact same block scheduling in both locations. I can still block schedule similarly, but I have to make sure that I'm hitting my correct overhead percentages and that each practice is profitable. We have separate credit cards for each location. So we're ordering on those separate credit cards. So it is per location. We have different bank accounts for each location. So the money's coming in so we can see what it is. And what's crazy is when offices actually do this, what they find is   they're actually able to quickly identify what the root causes of that practice. They're able to bring it up to par. like one practice, they're losing money due to not having hygiene reappointments in there. So like the hygiene team is not as profitable as they should be. So we laser focus in on that. We fix the systems across the board, but we laser focus on the practice that's struggling. And we're actually able to boost them by 400,000 per year just by fixing that one small problem, because we're not looking at the organization as a whole. Yes, you do need to look at the organization as a whole.   but you do need to like scope it down to how each practice is performing. And this should be weekly, monthly, quarterly to then assess how we're doing. ⁓ When people get into multi level DSOs, you better believe they're looking at their top performers and their lower performance. And a lot of times they cut those lower performing offices out because that's hurting their overall profitability of the business. So many offices have really high producing practices and they're dumping it to go save the other ones. Just like thinking about a real estate portfolio.   they're looking and rebalancing those portfolios, but for you to rebalance it is to make sure you're tracking the profit per location and we're fixing the issues at the base root problem. ⁓ And so really what it should be is you should A, make sure you're running them individually, B, do a P &L by location and let's figure out where our gaps are within the finances to see how can I make each location profitable and set that as the target as the goal for your regional, for your office managers.   This is the goal per location. I work with an office and we have six locations that we go to quarterly. And we are looking at their scorecards every single week, every single practice. And then we look collectively at the whole to make sure organization as a whole is profitable. Yes, when we started new and of course we're going to be dumping money into it. But the goal is for that new practice to be profitable. Six months to one year max is when they need to start breaking profit. And so when teams know this, when office managers know this, what happens is the whole   portfolio actually does better and the businesses are running much more effectively, efficiently with better patient care, better team awareness all around. So that's miss number two, ⁓ gap number two. Miss number three is not having consistent accountability. So when you have it, oftentimes it's just this chaos. Like I said, like we're adding more fuel to a chaos burning fire. And so ⁓ when we have that there's no roles, there's no structured check-ins, there's...   It just feels like hope and pray. And then we're trying to like get the profitability margins. We're trying to do all those pieces. So we've got to have cadences in there of weekly calls, having weekly scorecards and quarterly reviews. ⁓ And so when you have leaders at each location, what they do is they, get all office managers together on a weekly call. They look at the scorecards for their practices. They look cross company so they can look at all the other offices. So if I'm struggling with a profitability, but this office over here is doing really well.   office managers sync up, let's have you two work together, let's have you see what you're doing differently. That way everybody's able to be profitable. So that really helps. And then you empower all the leaders to own their KPIs and report back. So they're owning their teams, they're owning their departments, they're owning the profitability of their practice. And then this way we're able to have metrics that are the same across all locations. So having a set scorecard that's used, when we do it within our company, we have practice A, practice B, practice C.   Right now I've got an office I'm thinking of and practice A is super profitable and practice B is not. And they're just looking at it collectively as a whole versus saying, my gosh, we've got to get like practice B profitable. Practice B is not producing and it's not collecting what it should be. A lot of times also that profitability margin is hurting because we're not collecting. And so one practice is very much collecting, paying for the other practice, but it's just due to broken systems and not having that O-M responsible. And it's because we're spread across trying to be   ⁓ efficient, which is true, but we have to have individualized centralized accountability frameworks in each location. So it reports up. People know who's ultimately responsible for that practice for the different pieces, rather than it being we're all responsible for everything. That means nothing is actually truly being tracked. So ⁓ when we've implemented these scorecards across practices, usually what you start to see is you see an increase in profitability, an increase in collections, an increase in case acceptance, because everybody's looking   Like we're looking side to side, it's like Sudoku. I'm looking to see how am I comparing with my other practices and how can I get the support where I'm struggling? And then you also start to create cohesiveness as a unity. You start to create cross collaboration. And this is a huge, huge, huge mess in multi-practice ownership and even in bigger practices. So when you look at this and you have that weekly reporting rhythm, you have this weekly accountability, and then you start to empower your leaders to meet with their team members once a month.   and then have quarterly cadences where we're looking to see how we're doing, you start to see teams rise up. Because now it's like, great, we know what the scoreboard is. We know what we're aiming for. know everybody knows what they're accountable for. There's no more of this confusion of what should we be doing or should my practice do this, but your practice doesn't. You try to get them as standardized as possible. And what I will tell you is working with multiple multi-practice owners, this is not a dream. This is a reality that you should be striving for and that you can do. I love to work with Mac.   multi-practice owners because I love to take the chaos and turn it into simplicity. I love to help you see which like it's like a ball of yarn and you're like, my gosh, like pull this string or pull this string or pull that string. And like, we don't know how to untangle what we've created. And so doing these three misses of not having centralized operations. So making sure we're centralized across the board, making sure each practice is profitable and then having accountability across the board. When you streamline those across all your locations,   instantly things get better. Scaling is not great when it's chaos. Scaling is great when it's tightened, when it's predictable, and when it's consistent. That's when it becomes fun. That's when it becomes fun to be multi-practice honored, but it is not fun when it is the chaos. And so when we do this, this is something that I'm obsessed with. This is something I love to help offices. This is where I love to help regional managers figure out how to do this because a lot of times they don't even know. They've never done it before. They've just been a great office manager and doing one baby versus five babies.   We all know as parents and siblings and aunts and uncles, we know that one baby is a lot easier than five babies. However, five babies can actually be easier on certain levels when we have set standards and we have set processes and we have set things in place and we've got rhythms and we've got routines that actually sometimes can be easier than just one because it forces you to actually rise up. It forces you to be better than what you've been. And so with this, just know these are some of the three big gaps that we see in multi-practice ownership or large practice ownership.   These are some of the areas that we really expert help. And hopefully for you to just have a quick like checklist of like, where am I doing on my standardized ops? How am I doing on profitability of each location? And how am I doing on accountability, KPI tracking, scorecard accountability, weekly check-ins, implementing just a few of these things will radically help you. But sometimes it's so hard to lift your head up out of the bubble when you're living in the bubble. And so if you're struggling with that, reach out.   Like let's just have a conversation. Let's see if we're a right fit. If nothing else, we'll give you a lot of gaps, a lot of tools, a lot of tips and help you out. reach out, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. Go to our website, TheDentalATeam.com and click on the book of call. This is what we do. We create structure for scale, clarity for leaders and profit for every location. Like that is what our obsession is. And so I'd love to help you out. As always, just know dentistry is the greatest place we could ever possibly be in. We are so blessed to be a part of dentistry.   And I just want you to remember like if multi-practice ownership or larger practice ownerships on the horizon, these are things to do. If you're already in the weeds of it, you know, it's a lot harder to actually do than you thought it was. And so reach out. There's no reason to do this alone. The industry is hard as it is. So there's no reason to do this alone. Reach out. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.  

Fostering leadership growth within a team takes intentional execution. Tiff and Trish discuss what it takes to lead a team versus managing, including self-awareness, delegation, team-wide trust, and more. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review

Operatinging a practice is very, very different from owning a practice. Kiera walks listeners through what the path to CEO ownership looks like, including the difference between the clinical and business sides, how performing a time audit will get you started, the ideal approach to establishing a vision, and more. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent (00:01) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and today is a great day. I am so excited for this podcast. I am excited to be chatting with you. I feel honored. Where are we at? Are we hanging out? Are we going on a walk together? Are we getting ice cream together? Are we picking up the kids? Are we driving to work? Are we driving home from work? Are we sitting in traffic? Wherever we are, I hope it's a great day. And I hope that even if it wasn't the best day that you're choosing to make sure that today is going to be an epic day, that you're choosing yourself, that you're choosing happiness.   that you're choosing this incredible life. And you remember at one point, at one point, the life you're living is the life that you were dreaming of. And how blessed are we to be able to live this magical life that we get to. So today I just wanna walk you through how to go from a practice operator where you're doing all of it to a true CEO and what needs to change to be able to lead at the next level. So I think this is so fun because owning a practice is very, very, very different than   operating a practice, would you agree? And so like if you're still in the weeds, you're still doing the day to day, you're not yet the CEO of your practice. And so this is something where I wanted to kind of walk you through like, what does that even look like? Because for some of us, we don't even know what the destination looks like. So we're like, well, I can't even visualize it. So therefore I can't even like create it. And I want to make sure that I help you see what that path can be, help you understand what it can look like if you choose that you want to do it.   This is something where Dental A Team's mission is to truly help doctors stop running on survival mode and start leading strategically. So whether you want to be the CEO where you're out of the chair, whether you want to still be the operator where you do some dentistry, but you have the options because you know what that can look like. So that's what we're about. And today it's going to be going from busy operator into visionary, going from day to day to the big picture. And so fun because I actually was talking to a client this morning who actually it's been about a three year journey has now   rounded the bend to where they had their last day of clinical dentistry and they're stepping fully into the CEO role. And as we were chatting, we talked about how it's a mind trip. It's a full blown mind trip and how I told them, said, it's crazy because I'm actually doing this podcast today. I had already planned that I wanted to talk about this. It was so serendipitous that we chatted today. ⁓ But I said, isn't it wild how like what we dreamed of, like you go through dental school and you go through all these things. ⁓   to walk away from that, have associates, to have different people. Just like me, I consult, I still do some consulting, but I do a lot more of running the business, owning the business, and not as much in the day-to-day anymore. And I'm so grateful for the team of Dental A team that allows me to be in my sweet spot, the visionary role, to enjoy it and to allow them to be in their sweet spots. And this doctor and I, were chatting and he just said like, Keir, it's weird.   I don't even know what being a CEO looks like. And I have another doctor and he said, Garrett, it's so weird to go from being clinical all the time to working on the business, but it's so fun to work on the business and to be the CEO that can look. And as I was talking to the doctor this morning, they're thinking about doing a DSO and wondering what they want to do with that. And he's just like, you know, I don't even know. So we started talking and we were rattling off all these things. And he was like, that's what I need to be doing as a CEO. That's why I need to have the time not in the chair is so that way I can.   I can drive this business in the direction it needs to go. And so again, today's podcast is not to say that you need to step away from the chair. As you can see, there's one client who is completely out of the chair. There's another client who works one or two days clinically. Myself, I still do ⁓ a day of consulting and then I still do podcasting and I do the things that light my fire that I still enjoy doing. But there's a path of how do you get there? And it was kind of like when I used to be a treatment coordinator and a dental assistant and I became an office manager and I'm like,   I don't even know what I'm supposed to do. All of these are different layers. I almost want you to think kind of like the wifi symbol. Like you just, you go through different layers and it's different identities. And it's kind like you pop through and you look around and like, don't even recognize this neighborhood. Like I don't even recognize the neighborhood of CEOs. I don't even recognize the neighborhood of working two days of clinical. I don't even recognize the neighborhood of where my leadership team does the bulk of all the pieces that I'm doing. Like I don't actually have to do the hiring and firing anymore. I don't have to do all the one-on-ones anymore.   you pop your head up into a different neighborhood and it's a loss of identity and it's a taking on of a new identity and it's a morphing. I remember talking about this, gosh, this is like in the archives of podcasts. If you wanna go look, go to TheDentalATeam.com, click on podcasts and type in like sloughing and snake and you'll probably find it. But I talked about this years and years ago of how when you evolve from being this operator to this owner, it's kind of like a snake and you have to like literally like slough off.   the old version of you to allow space to become the version that you need to be. And so just kind of going through like, what does it even look like? And if I wanted to, or just maybe propose or think about, because I always believe like the more knowledge you have and the more, I think vision or maybe just like thought, right? Like I never even thought about it. Like I never even thought that my practice could make a hundred thousand. Like what if it made 200,000 a month or what if it made 300,000 or.   There's a practice doing 550 a month or there's a practice who's literally doing a million a month. I have an office that like all their offices are producing. They've got multi offices and they're producing between 350 and 450 a month. Every one of their offices. And I say this not for you to compare and to beat yourself up and say like, my gosh, I'm not even there, Kiera, I'm only doing 30,000. I want all of us just to say there are other neighborhoods, there are other visions. And I wanted today to just show a picture.   And then you get to pick up whatever you want or don't want from this vision. There is no right you have to get here. It's just, I want to show you and paint a picture in case you're thinking about it. So that way you look at life, look at your practice, look at your decision-making differently at whatever stage you are in your business. So there's no judgment. There's no expectation. That's something I love about Dental A Team is I've got clients that are producing 7,000 a month and I've got clients that are producing, oh gosh, like 1.2 to 2 million a month.   It's insane. I've got clients that are at 80 % overhead. Don't worry, they're brand new. All the way down to a 35 % overhead. All of us are in different journeys, we're on different paths, we have different priorities. And there's not a one size fits all in Dental A Team. It is a one size fits you. And then let's just make sure that we expand your knowledge base. That way you're making decisions educated rather than placed upon you. So step one, as you're kind of shifting into this role, is going to be...   shifting from doing to delegating. And this is something where I think as founders, as owners, myself included, we build the, like we've built this so we know how to do all the pieces and it's very hard to let go. The CEO builds the machine, they don't run every part of it. And so really thinking about that, like your job is to build the vision, your job is to do these bigger partnerships, your job is to build the culture, to be the lighthouse on the hill, but not the one rowing the boat. And so,   The way we do this is kind of like a time audit. So we write down every single thing that we're doing and we look to see who could do this 80 % as well as I can that we could delegate. And there's ⁓ in some of our other podcasts and on our summit and in some of our things, we talk about a delegation ladder. And basically we like look at administrative tasks and scheduling tasks and TC tasks and then all the way up to marketing and leadership tasks. And so how can we start to delegate these tasks out? And so you're not doing them all.   And then what we do is we have leads and we have scorecards and we have ⁓ decision pieces to help people understand what decisions they can or can't make. And what happens is when doctors start to let go of this, empower their team without letting go, so they're still in the reins, they're then able to work on growth and strategy and you're able to build the vision. You're able to have the time to go to those big networks. Like the doctor here, like Kiera, all the people you told me like, that's why I need to go make phone calls with. making those phone calls are big decisions for the business.   don't happen between patients and they're not happening after hours. They can, but when you really do shift from this, it's crazy because you start to actually have the time, the bandwidth, the depth, the breadth to be able to even think in this way. And so my suggestion is like whether you want to become this CEO that's owning the business rather than operating the business, I want you to truly look at this to see what's one task that you could delegate or even do a dump. Like this is how I first learned that I needed to hire a personal assistant.   I did a dump and I looked at every single thing on there and I like took a pink highlighter and we're like, what are the that only Kiera can do? And I realized that my list are like three out of like 50 that truly were only things that I could do. I just was obsessed with doing it. People are like, but Kiera, you let someone book your travel. You better freaking believe I let someone book my travel. I don't even know where I'm going half the time. Can I still do it if I had to? Yes. But is there someone who can do it way better than I can and can also help me have time to do other things that they can't do?   The answer is yes. So I want you to just like look to see what are you doing all the time that maybe you could delegate. Start there. This is for CEO or non-CEO. This is for every single team member, business owner out there. Dentist is literally do an audit and see what we can delegate, what we can shift to make sure that we're optimizing ourselves in the best way possible. And then number two is going to be ⁓ the CEO's job is to   literally set up the one, three, 10 year vision of the company. It is to set the culture. It is to make sure that you're evolving it. And so what you're doing is you're helping your team rally around these one, three, 10 year goals. And then we use our weekly meetings to align on those goals rather than like being constantly on fires. Like truly, there was a team I was working with and I'm like, okay, we're talking in fire land all day because we have no clue where we're going.   We're just walking in the desert with no destination. And so you have a vision for your team and you're just constantly harping on that. And so what happens is like as a CEO dentist, what you start to do is you start to do vision. We run this off of traction as my preferred method by Gina Wickman. And you start to set then quarterly meetings and weekly meetings where we're focused on this bigger vision rather than on the fire. So you really go from like,   I don't know, like head in the sand almost and like trying to just figure it out to like, where are we headed? What are the biggest issues? Like that practice, were walking around in the desert with no destination. We gave them a destination. There's still all these fires, but we can then prioritize which things need to get done this quarter and actually start to move the boulders, move the practice, move the progress ⁓ without it just being, I don't know. just, like, I use a really great analogies. It's just a like,   we're focusing on goals rather than on fires. We're going about priorities rather than like just in the minutia. And so when you start to shift this out and the way to have this is like, my question to you is what is your one year goal? What is your three year goal? What is your 10 year goal? Does your team know this? Do you know this? And I don't care what they are. There's no right or wrong, but we start to have it to where we're building it this way. We're moving in this direction. We're not moving in a, it's like a swirl when your head's   like walking in the desert, right? You're just swirling around. You don't know if you've made progress. You don't know if you're going forward or going backwards to where there's a lighthouse. There is a direction. We're moving in that way. And without that teams feel very lost. And so you start to move in that where you're, that's your focus. And then you have your meetings and you get all your departments going and they have department leads that are running them. They're all in line with the vision. And your job is to keep expanding this vision, to expand the pieces. And that does not necessarily mean expanding more practices.   but it's expanding the vision of your location of what you're doing. And then number three is ⁓ there's scalable systems in place that are not dependent upon you. And so what it is is there's consistency. So we've got consistent new patient exams, we've got consistent treatment planning, we've got consistent marketing, we've got consistent ⁓ billing and AR, we've got consistent hygiene protocols, we've got consistent room setups for all of our dental assistants, we've got consistent onboarding for associate dentists.   All of our associates are doing the same type of dentistry. And you really have these scalable systems that are in place, not necessarily put by you, but are guided by you. And so you've got these key players. So when you become the CEO, you've got to also have key players. So you've got an incredible office manager or regional manager. You usually have a personal assistant or executive assistant that's with you. You have your hygiene lead. You've got your dental assistant lead. You might even have a marketing team, depending upon if it's outsourced or internal. ⁓   But those are the players at the table. You have a clinical doctor at the table. And so we have these scalable systems where they're constantly able to be able to have the same results without the effort of needing to recreate it every single time. Like I remember Tiff and I, when we would bring on new hires, it was like, gosh, like build a new thing and build a new thing. And I was like, no.   we have onboarding documents, we've got videos, we've got the way we do it. And there's still so much autonomy within all of it. But these are systems to where at a $1 million practice up to a $20 million that these can scale. So like the way you onboard at 1 million versus the way you onboard at 20 million will be very different. And I just want you to see like, this is where we actually can assess, we can grow, we can evolve. And we've got these scalable systems. I recommend two times a year that you actually assess them. So we look at   What's our operations manual? What's our onboarding? How are those? we need to change them? Do we need to adapt them? Do we need to morph them? And so this is where we start to build it out. This is where operations manuals become very paramount because as a CEO dentist, your job is to delegate more. So you've got more time to vision. You lead with that vision and you help make sure all your leads know where they're going. They're leading and empowering their team. And I have this quote over here by Gandhi that says, a sign of a good leader is not how many followers you have, but how many leaders you create.   So as a CEO who stepped out of clinical dentistry and you're now owning the business, you're creating, you're delegating, you are leading with vision and having your ⁓ leaders in your practice and everything is systematized. Like literally everything is systematized and automated as much as possible to where the business really is running whether you're there or not. And that's the true thing. Can I remove you?   Keep the vision, so your job is to keep the vision, but I take you out, slide you out, and you're not there for a month, for two months? And would the business still perform? Would the quality care and the patient care still be as optimal? Would the billing and the overhead and the accounting, would those all work, whether you're there or not? And if we lost a key player, could we replace them with another key player and it would still run? This is how you start to create a business rather than a job. This is how you start to have team members that know   how to scale and how to evolve and how to help and serve more patients with the same quality of care that you've set up. This is where it's no longer dependent upon you being a part and like having your hands in every single pot to make sure everything's going because the pots get too big. There's too many pots for you to be able to handle. And so whether you want to become the CEO visionary owner or you want to just have less like dependent upon you, these are very tangible and tactical for you today right now where you are.   So this is where it's like, if I'm exhausted and I'm tired of running on fumes and I would prefer to have more time in the visionary role and less time in the doing role, that doesn't, again, it doesn't mean that it's wrong. It just means that you're morphing. Like again, we're popping through a new neighborhood, a new vision, a new level for you. Then this is where we just, we choose one of these things or something in all the areas and we start to implement small little changes.   that start to make big changes over time. They say the days are long, but the years are fast. And so how can we start to put little things into place to help you scale, scale your impact, scale your bandwidth, scale your time and help empower other people that are going to be able to scale right along with you. So this is a sign for you to just think a little bit differently, to start looking at the broader vision, the bigger vision, the what could be possible, and then start to put things into place today.   I do not care what your vision is. do not care what you want to do. I do not care any of those things. Whatever your vision is, is perfect for you. I just wanted to paint a picture of what could be. What are other people doing? What are maybe some possibilities to where you start to think differently, you start to create differently, you start to hire differently, you start to train differently, you start to lead differently, you start to become the next best version of you because you knew you wanted to evolve into this. No person wants to be doing every single thing and burnt out and burnt to a crisp.   No person does. Everybody wants to feel balanced, feel satisfied, to feel happy, to feel growth. Growth equals happiness. And so evolving into the next version of you is something that I feel is very paramount for you and your team to do. So think about this, on this. This is maybe a sign to think differently. And for all of you out there, I hope that you're thinking differently. And if you need somebody to coach you, to guide you, to get your team on board, you're like, gosh, I like, don't want to be in the chair as much, but I don't know how to get my team on board with that. That's what we do.   This is what we're experts with. So reach out. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. We're happy to help you. And today I hope you just think a little bit differently. Maybe question a few things. What could I delegate? How could I look at this differently? Do I have a vision for my team? Do I have scalable systems? And if not, pick one or two that you can do. And as always, we're here to help you. We're rooting alongside of you because your ultimate vision is our ultimate. Like that's what we're passionate about. We want to help you get your ultimate vision.   So reach out Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.  

When it comes to assessing practice success, understanding various returns on investment is critical. Kiera and Kristy explain what the Dental A-Team is looking for when it comes to understanding the success (or lack thereof) of various investments. They specifically touch on the power of five different KPIs that'll keep your practice in line. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: K iera Dent (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and today it's the KK podcast. Kiera and Kristy hanging out today. Kristy, how you doing today?   DAT Kristy (00:10) Good, it's a good day.   Kiera Dent (00:12) It's a great day. you like, I feel like I want to like KK. I mean, it's not, it's only two K's everybody listening, but I feel like it's like the Kit Kat. I don't know. It feels kind of like that between you and me. don't know why, but yeah, double the, or we could be like double mint, like double the flavor, double the fun. It's Kieran Kristy on the pod. Like there's just the two of us cause there's no other K names in the consultant world. It's just Kieran Kristy. So I mean, we got   DAT Kristy (00:36) That's right.   Kari and Kristy, you got it.   Kiera Dent (00:40) Kiera and Dana, so that could be my initials, cute. Then there's Kiera and Trish, but there's Trish and Tiffanie. Then there's Kiera and Brittany, no BS, Britt, she's on her own realm. And then we've got Monica. So, see, it's the two Ks, it's the double the, like, we're just gonna have fun here. Like, you get two of us, two brilliant brains. And believe it or not, Kristy and I actually might just be rivaling for like some of the biggest gains this quarter, so.   DAT Kristy (00:55) Yes, it does.   Kiera Dent (01:07) ⁓ not that we're here just for gains on clients, but Kristy does give me a run for my money, which all the consultants do. And Kristy's just like, she's, she's coming on hot this, this quarter. So I thought it'd be really fun, Kristy, for us to kind of dig into. Like either quarterly or twice a year annual reviews that we kind of do with clients and how you assess it. And we show the ROI that clients are getting, just cause I think it's important for clients to see like, what should you be assessing in your practice quarterly or two times a year?   How's the practice going? And Kristy, I think you're really, really strong in this. And I think you're really talented at looking at the practice and about their numbers and about, like, you love that. You and I will geek about numbers all day long, which is why it's the KK club, the KitKat club. Like we're here for the numbers. We're here for the fun. ⁓ But yeah, Kristy, kind of take it away of how do you set this up? What do you look at with clients when you're assessing their practices? Because always client style is like, I want ROI on consulting. And you do like,   amazing job at showing that ROI. So kind of take it away of what do we look at? How do we determine ROI? And I know this is your jam. This is what you love to do.   DAT Kristy (02:15) I love it. You're right. I do. You know, we all.   Kiera Dent (02:18) Do hear that little   giggle? I hope everybody heard that. Like that's Kristy's like. Kristy lives for this stuff and it makes me so happy because I do too. Like it's fun. It's fun to get the gains.   DAT Kristy (02:28) Yeah,   absolutely. Well, you and I have talked about this before. So many doctors just look   their bank account to see if they're on track or off track. And it's such a false sense of security looking at or lack of security, one of the two. with that being said, ⁓ there truly is like five   Kiera Dent (02:36) you   Mm-hmm.   DAT Kristy (02:48) KPIs that we're going to look at. And a couple of them are lag measures. A couple of them are lead measures.   ⁓ first view would be production net production collections. Yeah.   Kiera Dent (03:01) Yeah, don't even get into that gross. We don't want gains that are fake all y'all, okay? Like get   out. ⁓ Jason and I were talking the other day about guys, there's this, okay, Kristy, I'm gonna go on Tanger for a second. There's this really attractive actor on this show we're watching and I'm like, truly I was so disappointed when they kind of cut him from a couple episodes. I was like, no, she's gotta get back together with this guy because he's so good looking. And my husband and I, we look, because he looks pretty short.   DAT Kristy (03:13) you   Kiera Dent (03:28) So I like scoped him and I was like, how tall is this guy? And he says he's six foot and Jason's like, there's no way he's six foot. He's like, but do you ever hear some guy come in and they're like, yeah, I'm like 5'11". He's like, no, they all push them to the six foot. And I feel like that's what gross production is. It's like all of us are like, yeah, like I'm basically six foot. Yeah, I'm basically like a millionaire. Yeah, I'm basically there. Like, so we're talking, no, get out. We're here for like actual gains that you're actually getting net production.   my little side tangent, it's okay. It's okay if you're 5'10". It's okay if you're 5'9". It's okay if you're 5'11". We in production want to know the real number that we can actually collect, not the artificial one that makes you feel good when you're chatting with friends. You can fluff your height, but don't fluff your production.   DAT Kristy (04:15) love that 100%. So we got the net production and then the collections,   Kiera Dent (04:16) you   DAT Kristy (04:22) dollar for dollar percentage. Obviously we want them to be 98 % or higher. And then on the flip side, where are we diagnosing? What's our case acceptance? And so many people just look at the percent of case acceptance, but I also want to look at the dollars of what you're diagnosing because is it enough to reach your goal?   you know, where's your profit point at and what do we need to hit? Because we can celebrate 100 % case acceptance, which I don't think anybody ever has 100%, but you know, if you're getting 50 % case acceptance, which is still a very good percentage, 50 % of what? If we need to hit 150 every month and we're only hitting 100, it's not enough to get us there. So those would be the main five KPIs that   ⁓ tell us the health of your practice, right? And go ahead, care.   Kiera Dent (05:18) I   was gonna say, and Kristy, as you said that, diagnosing, don't think people realize is as important as it is. For whatever goal you wanna hit, there's a industry standard that you need to diagnose three times what you wanna produce. So if you wanna produce 100 grand, you need to be diagnosing 300,000 minimum to be able to get there, and you better hope you've got a great treatment coordinator who can close. And this is actually like...   I'm gonna like give a little secret away that we'll see if people are smart enough to pick up on in future years. This is the number one thing I actually look for in a consultant. I look to see, do an interview, we give them some stats and if a consultant cannot pick up this practice like without fail, they come in and they wanna talk block scheduling, they wanna talk other things. But I need a consultant to be able to see that a lot of times the reason a practice is not hitting their goals is due to a lack of diagnosis. And another reason we do that is because   Kristy and I are not dentists and we're not here to tell you how to diagnose. We're just here to help you see that based on industry standards and what you should be diagnosing of a healthy practice. If you're not getting enough diagnosis and doctors, you've got to hear this. If you are not diagnosing enough, this is a doctor issue and we're not saying to overdiagnose, but you have to diagnose enough. If you're not diagnosing enough and there's not enough treatment coming through, your practice will not grow. And that's not your team's fault. That's a you problem.   And so making sure that you, your hygienist, you use AI, but Kristy, I'm so glad you brought that up because production collections are always easy. But what impacts that, like you said, is the diagnosis, then the case acceptance, the new patients. And that's where it says lead and lag. Like everybody's looking at the lag of production collection, but it's like, what did we do to get there? And Kristy, I love that you bring these five things up every single quarter, every single, like twice a year with your clients, because people don't realize your bank account is a lag measure.   of what you've been doing in the practice. And then like another one is your overhead and what are you spending? Because if those things are in check, but we're spending everything we're making, we're not saving for taxes. Well, yeah, that's a real fun moment. Your bank account's really gonna look bleak, even if everything's working in the practice. So I really hope people take note because it's such a good thing for people to be aware of.   DAT Kristy (07:09) .   Absolutely. to that point, Kiera, like so many people think if that number isn't where they want it, let's go get more new patients. And then they want to spend more money on more new patients. And nine times out of 10, this is exciting time of the year because we're halfway through the year. Take a look at what you did treatment plan. I mean, I see a lot of practices, you know, let's for easy math, they're diagnosing a million dollars and we've closed 500,000. Holy cow. Even if you captured, you know,   percent of that difference like what would that mean to your bottom line and this is a perfect time to take a step back and go my gosh we have five months left in the year what would that look like break it down chunk it down to simple   pieces that your team can digest and you guys have fun with it. It's all about getting patients healthier. Let's face it, you're not diagnosing things patients don't need. So let's go get it. Let's get our patients healthy and gamify it. See one more crown a day or one more implant a month. What is it? Right?   Kiera Dent (08:35) Yeah. And Kristy, I think something you do so well that I hope people heard is you're not going for the big gains. You're going for the little like squeeze the juice, like get the last bit of toothpaste out of the tube of toothpaste. And I don't think people like that's not sexy. It's like, hey, I heard this podcast that I'm supposed to like go look at these small things versus we're getting all these new patients and we signed up for marketing. Well, but like this is where the elite practices shine. This is where the like really superior   Practices go people are like here. How do you do it? How do you guys like add? 20,000 40 that I Kristy I was looking at some of your stats girl. You're like, like I said, I love a good hustle and some of your practices you're adding like 50,000 a month to their practices and that's Incredible and people like how you do it Kristy's literally telling you it's through squeezing the tube of toothpaste in these small little moves that actually are not that hard going and getting new patients and signing up for marketing and all that that to me is actually hard fixing your diagnosis   getting your whole team on board, looking to see at what our production collections are, making sure our collections are tight. Those things are way easier. They're not as fun, they're not as sexy, but way easier than having to go like hunt and fish for new patients, even though it's way more fun to tell people you signed up for marketing. It's not fun to be like, yeah, we got a new billing thing in place. Like we got our AR fixed. That's not fun to admit, but it's way fun on the bank account and the profitability side too.   DAT Kristy (09:58) Yeah,   100%. And again, ⁓ so going back to the new patients, they want to spend more money to get it. But then have you looked at like, how are we answering the phone? How are we capturing the patients that are calling? Maybe you really don't need to spend any more money to cap, you know, they're coming in, we're just not capturing them, you know, and I'm always a fan of, you know, there's the internal marketing and external.   everything Fred Joyle said it best right everything is marketing we are marketing so get real intentional and get in relationship with your patients figure out what they want and tie their care back to it you know   Kiera Dent (10:39) Mm-hmm.   Yeah, I think it's brilliant. And I think it's like you said, everything we do is marketing. And so if we realize that and so many people want external marketing, and I think to me, the reason people want external marketing, and I'm not here to say not to do external marketing, I think it's a, it is a piece and a part of it. But I think it feels like a diet pill sometimes, like, let's just let's just throw money over there. And let's hope it fixes our problems. Let's out produce our problems rather than fixing our problems. And I really want people to realize like,   elite business ownership and being part of the elites, and we're not talking big practices, there's no right size to it. That all comes actually from doing these small little things and internal marketing, once again, is so good. These patients already love you. You already have a base of people that love you. And if you treat those people really well, rather than constantly going to try and swoop and get more people in, those people then refer, they refer better people to you.   It's easier. I have a practice and it was wild. They're like, Kiera, we signed up with marketing and we're trying to get it. And again, this is not a bash on any marketing companies. It is definitely necessary. ⁓ but they're like, but we're just not getting more, more new patients. Talk to another client. They're like, we, we just signed up with a marketing company and it's actually gone down. And I'm like, well, tell me what were you doing before to get patients? And they're like, we were at the church, we were in this magazine. And I'm like, well, get back in that because it was, it was showcasing the good things you're doing. It was being this like,   more B2B, it was being more connected rather than just trying to go for the masses and it's wild because internal marketing can be so much more effective if done right. And like you said, be in a relationship with your patients and know what they want. And great Google reviews, great Google reviews are your fastest, easiest marketing. So pay with Swell, like let's throw another plugin for Swell. It's been a few months since I put them in.   Go to Swell, SwellCX.com. Tell them Dental A Team sent you. Literally Zeke and I met when he founded the company. So you still get like founding prices, because that was the promise he and I made that you guys would get that. But honestly, just get your Google reviews up. Save the money. I don't know. Kristy, you and I are such birds of the same feather. That's why we're KitKat over here. We just think very similarly. And I think that's why we get very similar results as well.   DAT Kristy (12:55) Yeah, I think that the other big thing here is to recognize so many people are afraid of numbers. The members just start to tell a story and what we fail to realize is there's a system behind every one of those numbers. And if the number isn't where we want it, we need to pull up that system and figure out the system's a recipe, right? It's our cookbook. If it's not where we want it, then let's go back and figure out, did we mess up the recipe? You know, or   is the recipe, we're following it to a T and we just need to change up and find a new recipe because it's not getting the result. So ⁓ I love digging into those numbers because that tells us where we need to focus on this quarter to get the results we want.   Kiera Dent (13:40) And I really love that you said numbers just tell a story and there's a system behind the number and this makes it so much easier like going back There's a podcast I did a little while ago where I talked about the yes model and Dental A Team to help you say yes to more It's focusing on you as a person your vision which Kristy alludes to like are we on track or not for that vision and then E stands for earnings and profitability and S stands for systems and if you put them in that order So you've got your vision then we look at the numbers just like Kristy said   then you put into place the systems based on what those numbers tell you, it becomes a much more manageable and easier to digest process rather than being like, I need all the systems. And it's like, no, no, no, you just need the systems based on what the numbers tell you because I'm sure you're doing a lot more right than you think you are.   DAT Kristy (14:25) Absolutely. And I also think, you know, it's a good time to take a step back and evaluate where you are on the culture scale too, right? Happy team creates happy patients and happy patients pay and refer. So it all goes hand in hand.   Kiera Dent (14:39) Good   thoughts on there. Okay, so what else do you go? You go through the production collections, diagnosis, case acceptance, new patients, lead lag measures. Then you move into, we on track, off track for our goals of where we're at this year? What are the things that we could do now to get there by end of year? Are they still relevant? Are we still on track? What else do you look at with your clients when you're doing these assessments, Kristy?   DAT Kristy (15:02) Yeah, well, I always like to start the year off with projecting where we're going. And so also calculating back to that. And you and I talked about overhead. If we take what our average overhead is for the year, are we on track for meeting that or not?   Right? Because we can project all day long. I can want to make $3 million, but this $3 million cover overhead expenses and our savings for the year. So always measuring back to that. And if we're off track figuring out how can we get on track, right? Did doctor take off more time or do we need to add in a Friday to get to goal? You know, those types of things. Or are you, ⁓   okay with where we're projected to land and you feel confident about that. You know, once in a blue moon, well, I shouldn't say once in a blue moon because you and I do get them up there, but you know, it also relieves them and they can maybe even take an extra week off or a few days off because they're ahead of goal. Yeah.   Kiera Dent (16:06) Totally.   And those are the fun ones. That's what we want. We want to be ahead. We don't want to always be behind. And I agree with you, Kristy. The offices that are ⁓ diligent and consistent at looking at these, we look at these monthly, we look at these quarterly, we look at these annually, we assess, we redirect. It's like, I don't know. I feel like what you do is there's a plane. I just flew back from Greece, which was a very long flight. And it was very fun. This is where I watched.   DAT Kristy (16:13) Mm-hmm.   Kiera Dent (16:35) so many of these shows of this very good looking actor. I thought I was like, how tall is this man? While my husband's sitting next to me, it's okay, it's all right. We're allowed to have a few celebrity crushes. ⁓ But on our flight back, it was like a 12, 13 hour flight home. And I think about if that pilot would not have checked to see if we were a few degrees off, I could have easily ended up somewhere else. And that's just by a few degrees. And so what I feel you're doing, Kristy, on these quarterly, these monthly, these annual check-ins is making sure   that we're still navigating towards Greece or towards wherever we're trying to get. And are we on track or like you said, do we need to do a small navigation at a Friday, change this, look at our spending to be able to end up there at the end of the year or like, are we so far off course? So we need to like correct a little bit and then get back on track for next year. But the hope is that we catch that soon enough because we're never gonna go in a straight line. It will never be perfectly across. There will always be hiccups, there will be turbulence, there will be.   things that you gotta go around, you gotta redirect places. But if we're constantly looking at it, we stay much more on course and charter to where we want to go rather than like hoping and wishing we end up where we actually set out to go.   DAT Kristy (17:43) Yeah, 100%. And sometimes it's also looking, where are we spending? Right? Is there something that crept in there? We talked about this before too, with, you know, the subscriptions or, I mean, it's funny because the very first doctor that   I remember him telling a story about an airline and I was just sharing this recently with a client. I think it was like American, you guys could probably Google it and find it, but it's back in the day when they would serve meals to everybody and this airline decided that they could cut one olive.   Kiera Dent (18:17) Hmm?   DAT Kristy (18:17) and it cut their bottom line by a ton. Like what is the cost of one olive? So where can we tighten the ship a little bit? Those things are kind of, again, have fun with it, gamify it. Get your team involved. Let them be part of the solution.   Kiera Dent (18:37) Yeah,   and Kristy, I love that because we talk about this olive, the FedEx trucks and then chicken nuggets. And going back to it, the black olive airline cut, it was one olive, saved them $40,000 annually. I just pulled it up to sea and it was on American Airlines. And Tiff and I talk about the chicken nugget, like they used to serve five chicken nuggets, which was the right amount. Well, they dropped it to four. Four is not enough, so now you...   Upsell to 10 and I'm like that's one chicken nugget. This is one olive and I agree with you Kristy for me This is the fun of business like how can I go find that one olive or that one chicken nugget Tim and I get really excited when we find a whole chicken farm. Like that's a good one I'm like, wow, that was that was like a really good idea or a whole salad But again, it's to cut costs but improve patient care. Like what are they? mean even today Kristy, Shelbi, Britt and I were going through our expenses in dental a team   DAT Kristy (19:25) Mm-hmm.   Kiera Dent (19:30) and we looked and we have Adobe and we still use Adobe for contracts. But Shelbi looked at it, we're paying 65 and we use Canva and our marketing team doesn't need all the entire suite of Adobe anymore. But that was something we put into place like five years ago. We've been paying 65 bucks every single month when we only need to be paying 19. Not that that matters. And so many people are just like, well, here it's 40 bucks. And I'm like, okay, you want to play a game with me? I'll play a game. It's 65 minus 20.   DAT Kristy (19:57) me.   Kiera Dent (20:00) Okay, so 45 times that by 12 times that by five years is 2,700 bucks that I've been overpaying just on a subscription that's doing nothing for our company that I could have cut. And I'm like, I know you might not get out of bed for 2,700 bucks, but I'm like, you find that subscription, you find this subscription, you find that one, all those little, do you think someone really was excited on American Airlines to save $40,000 when it's a multi-billion dollar business? But 40,000 here, 20,000 there.   DAT Kristy (20:26) Right.   Kiera Dent (20:29) 50 bucks here. also think Kristy, to me, it's the discipline of auditing, of looking. It's more than I think the olive or the Adobe subscription or the chicken nugget. It is the constant innovation to look, to be the most savvy business that we can possibly be. And then we flip to the other side and give the best service that we can as well.   DAT Kristy (20:51) 100 % I agree with you, Kiera. Yeah, it's just those small incremental things. And it's about being intentional versus doing it by default, right? Let's do it intentionally so that when we get to the end, there's no surprises.   Kiera Dent (20:52) you   love that because I hate surprises in December as a business owner. Oh, I used to dread December's like and it's a great time to travel. It's a great time to hang out with family. But I used to cry like beginning of December, it was tears every single year. And then by the end of the year, I was exhausted. had nothing left for family and it's supposed to be such a fun time that I agree with you, Kristy. It's like no tears. The projections are there we were prepared. I don't know there really is a saying like if you are prepared, you will not fear and I'm like, it really is that case and also   Like CPAs, I'm gonna rag for a second. They rag on consultants. This is a love relationship we have with CPAs and consultants. I get so annoyed that like CPAs don't tell you till December. And I'm like, no, have the meeting in July. Have the meeting in October. Figure it out because you still have time to pivot. And that's what Kristy and I wanted to come on today is there's still time to pivot if you look at these items, you look at the things we're discussing, you look to see what can we do. There's still time. It's like, we're not at the 11th hour.   hoping to try to make up time in such a short amount of time. call your CPAs, find out where you're at on your tax liabilities. Are you on track for saving that? There's so many times that we have our meeting with the CPA and he's like, Kiera, I need to up and increase and start cutting. And I'm just annoyed every time, but I'd rather do that over the course of six months rather than one month, because I still have time to make that correction with it, not hurting as much as it could.   DAT Kristy (22:30) It's so true, so true. And the efforts to get there are a lot smaller when we can dilute it over five months versus two weeks, because we didn't look till the end of the year.   Kiera Dent (22:42) especially the two weeks in December where we're not producing so we're not even collecting and we have to pay more. It's just a really like nasty path. So I'm like, no, no, no, just don't plan for December. Have that be your gravy slush time. Get it all done in 11 months. But like even that kind of thinking, Kristy, I don't think is common. I think it's very abnormal to think, well, if my December is only going to be two weeks, why am I banking on that as a full month? Why don't I bank on? And this is back to mine and Kristy, like we love the projections. We love to think of like   DAT Kristy (22:59) No.   Kiera Dent (23:12) How could I get this done in 11 months? How can we give you vacations? How can it be done in this many weeks? And that's something, Kristy, I really do feel like it's the Kit Kat Club over here. Like we really do think in such a similar way, but I want you to realize like this is how Kristy and I are able to throw gains. We're able to help practices get to where they want to be, but also with it being easy, happy teams, happy culture, not a lot of stress, ⁓ and just kind of doing the small minutiae things that actually make insane gains.   for a practice. We help find the olives, Kristy. Every so often we might get a tomato, but it's the small olives that actually make the huge impact for a practice.   DAT Kristy (23:42) Right? Yeah, let's get the olives. Yeah.   100%, 100%. And hopefully we can show it's easy. It's not hard. It truly isn't hard. It's one patient at a time and just capturing a little bit more.   Kiera Dent (24:03) Yeah. And then Kristy, I think it's really fun what you do for your clients too, is you show them the ROI that you brought to them through AR, through production, through overhead savings. So that way a client, regardless of their bank account saying, can literally see that in the course of working together, this is what we've been able to accomplish together. Because I think as a business owner, it is so easy to forget like what it felt like when I couldn't lift 20 pounds, now that I'm lifting 50 pounds.   Like it's so easy because 50 pounds becomes your new normal, but you're like, no, no, no, no. Remember how we started and you couldn't even lift like five pounds. Then you got up to 20, then you got up to 50. I think it's very easy for clients to forget where they started because their new norm is where we've grown them to.   DAT Kristy (24:48) Yeah, it's so true. mean, you know me, I love analogies and it's almost like your periopatient that's been coming in every three months and now they're healthy and so they want to push it back out and it's like you forgot it's this effort coming every three months that's gotten you healthy and the minute we change it, things start to slide, you know, so. ⁓   Yeah, mean, hopefully, hopefully we can always show that value in it. They still have to do the boots on the ground hard work, but you know.   even Tiger Woods has a coach, right? And that coach can see around corners to see things a little bit faster maybe when things aren't moving the same. You your swing's off, what's happening, what's going on, you know, and to keep you back on track. it's fun, it's fun partnering with clients and being able to see that and course correct and help them achieve their goals.   Kiera Dent (25:43) ⁓ I love it. Kristy, I agree with you. And I think that that's why we have the passion for consulting. We have the passion for practices. We have the passion for wanting you to strike. It's crazy because like, I don't know, we have a tagline, which marketing told me I need to get rid of because it's more about me than it is about you. And it does not make sense to me. ⁓ where it says like your success as a practice is truly Dental A Team's passion. Like this is what gets me and Kristy up out of bed. This is what makes us want to get on a podcast and share with you is   you being successful, you getting your dreams, you hitting these goals is what we are obsessed and so passionate about. So I think it's so fun. So I'd say, Kristy, if practice is listening right now, what would be kind of like your bow on our podcast today that you'd say like, okay, from everything we've talked about, what do they take away? What can they go implement? ⁓ Because sometimes it can feel like, well, what's my first step to be able to get on this path of slight course corrections to get to my final destination with ease.   DAT Kristy (26:42) Yeah, well first off, if you haven't figured out your goal, maybe look at what you finished at last year and at least strive for 10 % above that because we know that that's at least keeping up with inflation. Again, I don't know if that's meeting your overhead needs, but at least it's a good point. And then reverse engineer it. See how far you're off track from that for the year.   and ⁓ what's one more day or one more thing every day. Hopefully you're doing some sort of morning huddle and ⁓ inside of the morning huddle, everybody has a part to play, right? So admin, look, is there any balances that need to be collected?   ⁓ patient wise in doctor's schedule, is there anybody that could come back in through hygiene? Hygiene, if we have undiagnosed treatment and we know there is, because we see those numbers every day in morning huddle and it's almost like crazy alarming the amount. Usually it's more than what you're even producing for the day. So, gamify it and try to turn those patients into healthy patients by converting their treatment. ⁓   know just those simple things right there is going to make a big difference to your year end.   Kiera Dent (27:55) I that. I love it, Kristy, so much. And I love that you have the passion and the love. I love that you will also sit down with your clients. And I think that that's the discipline and maybe like the fast track of using a consultant is, Kristy, you prepare these for your clients. You think about it. You're looking down the line of things they're maybe not even considering doing. They're not thinking about midway. How are we doing? What are our projections? Are we on track? Are we off track? Where are we at? And I think having a consultant, like you said, with even Tiger Woods,   looking around the corner, looking down the line. Kristy and I are both like, we're watching the clock. We know we only have so many more months in the year. Where are you at? How can we make sure that we're constantly keeping you on track to get to your goals? Where maybe you're just having a fun summer vacation or you're just coming back. Like we know that that's our job is to be looking down the line for you, watching out for you, projecting for you, course correcting with you. ⁓ Even when you're in the day to day problems. And I think Kristy, that's just a   a shout out to you and a shout out to consultants because this is why we do what we do. So if you, if you are like most business owners, including myself, when I first started and you hate numbers, that's why there are people like Kristy and myself that exist because we love to get into the nitty gritty. We love to look for those olives. We love to help you go do the dentistry and we're going to sit here and help make sure your business and your team and your practice is flourishing. So that way the hard work you put into being a dentist pays off for you in the end. So Kristy love this, love what you do for our clients.   Love being the, the KK Kit Kat, whatever we want to be over here. mean, it might stick. We might be Kit Kats for Halloween. You never know, but Kristy just super appreciate you and all that you do for our clients and for our company and you as a human being, you're just a gem. And I'm so freaking lucky to work with you.   DAT Kristy (29:28) Yeah.   Thank you. It's my honor and you know what? We're stronger as a team, I have to say. So no matter what consultant you have in our company, you get all of us. So we collaborate, we cheer each other on, just like hopefully you're cheering your team on. So happy to help.   Kiera Dent (29:49) Bye.   Kristy,   you said that so well and it is true. I see you and all the consultants like have little meetings on your calendars of connecting and chatting and I do agree. We all help each other out. We want all of our clients to succeed no matter who you're working with. So for all of you, if you're struggling or you're like, gosh, I really would love that help or just having someone, I'll just put our arm around you and like, we're here to help you. We're here to support you. We're here to guide you. We're here to look around that corner. Reach out, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. And as always, Kristy, thanks for being with me. Thank all of you for listening.   and we'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.  

Revamping your financials is as easy as … Kiera shows off her savvy financial skills by sharing what it takes to know what's being spent in your practice. Her spreadsheet tips will answer such questions as: What can be cut? How can you make sure your overhead is in check? What do you need to produce? And much more. Want a sample spreadsheet to get started? Email hello@thedentalateam.com.  Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera and I hope you're just having an amazing day. Like a great, great, great, incredible day. ⁓ just, today's topic is one that makes me excited and it's so dry and boring, ⁓ but I love it. And I'm like, that's probably a buzzkill for the podcast, but you know me, one of my core values is fun. And Dana, shout out to Dana, DanyDane over there.   ⁓ She gave me one of the best compliments. We do a thing on Wednesdays called core value shout out in our company. And I will tell you if you do not have this in your company, I would strongly advise you do this. What we do is every single Wednesday, our company goes and our whole team says that this is our favorite. You guys, we have gone from a very small team to a much larger team and we still do this. So just know small teams, big teams, it is doable and it is very   relevant and very essential. And I think it just goes so well. I am okay to take a little bit longer on this morning huddle because of how good it is. so core value shout out is where we just randomly will pick somebody and then it's popcorn after that. So they'll choose the next person. So for example, we would start and I would say, okay, Shelbi starting today and everybody chooses somebody on the team and they highlight them for a core value and it has to be a core value. It has to be something specific. And so Dana gave me one of the greatest compliments.   She said, Kiera, she said she wanted to give me the core value of fun, because fun is really one of our core values. And she said, I want to give it to you for fun, because she said a lot of times topics that are so hard ⁓ or things that people wouldn't necessarily find fun. She said, you just know how to sprinkle the fun and the confetti and the glitter and make things that are hard or something that teens wouldn't want to do or doctors wouldn't want to do.   you make them really fun. And honestly, that has stuck with me. It is a few days later since she gave me that compliment and I'm still remembering it. So not only is core value shout out day amazing, it also helps you just enjoy and to have like, to be happier. ⁓ It also infuses core values into your company. And I'm excited and grateful that I'm able to bring fun things to the podcast, a dry topic. I hope I've teed this up enough to where you're excited about it.   But this is, think, the discipline side of business of owning a dental practice that you need to do. And this is really, think, for office managers or billers and doctors. And this is something that I think will give you so much confidence. it came actually from our doctor mastermind. We have ⁓ a private doctor only mastermind that we run every single month. It's a virtual one. And then we do an in-person one ⁓ that's more for doctor and leadership teams. But our monthly one, call it Think Tank, and it's on the first Tuesday of every month. And a doctor was saying, she's like,   I just don't know where to cut. I said, send me your PNL and tips like, and she's going to want your credit card statement and she's going to want all your stuff. And while yes, I am obsessive on this. have helped family members. I've helped offices. I've helped myself. something that I will like toot my own horn on it. I actually think I'm very talented with money, with saving, with figuring out solutions and helping people understand where you can cut. This podcast also came about because this morning on my, ⁓ Shelbi Britt and I were meeting and we were literally going through.   our finances to see where could we maybe squeeze the tube of toothpaste a little bit more, where could we maybe change a few things. And I think that that's just so relevant and so helpful. And so this is something I do in my day in day out life. It's something that I think for you to go from chaos and lack of financial clarity to confidence is something that I really want to just bring to the table today on the podcast. If you're new to Dental A team, welcome. We are obsessed about helping you have your best life and ⁓ doing it in a fun, easy way through dentistry. And so   helping you with our yes model. So you as a person getting your life, your vision, all of that in place, then moving into earnings. So ⁓ financially, that's the piece today. And then using those financial pieces. So your analytics, your PNL, your overhead to also help us figure out what systems and team development need to go into place to make sure you have this thriving practice. Because honestly, I believe that being successful, being a successful dental practice does not have to be hard and it can actually be easy. So that's what we're here for today. ⁓ With that.   So today it's going to be like, how do you actually like figure out your costs? So I did this a long time ago and then I like met a lot of really smart financial people. I'm not a financial advisor. I will throw that out there. So just make sure you talk to them and you have your, ⁓ like you chat with them of what's best for your state, but I will teach you how I do it. This is annoying. It's a little cumbersome, but people love to hear like, how do you actually do this? I'm always like, how do people get like jacked? Like how do they work out? Like.   me like what time do you work out like what do you do for your nutrition and just so I understand the full landscape and then I'm going to pick and choose of what's going to work well for me that I'll actually implement so hopefully that will be effective for you today as well.   So this is what we do. I have a spreadsheet that I have for monthly costs. We do this with all of our clients too. So if you're like, this feels too hard, don't worry, join the Dental A Team. We'll help you get it put together. So we have a monthly cost. And what I do is on the monthly costs, and this is probably my most visited spreadsheet of my entire company. And I'm super excited because we're bringing in another team member who does financial.   Forecasting and has a whole background in finance. So my method might get revamped to 2.0 and there's always another layer. But what I have is I have on our monthly costs, I have all the salaries and all of the pay. Now for offices, I do include doctor pay. Again, I'm not a CPA and I do believe that doctors should be paid. So I put in either your W-2 salary and or your doctor compensation of 30%. Now I do lose numbers. So our consultants are paid very similar to how doctors are paid.   ⁓ And so you can get a general idea. So mine are general ideas. It's not my highest month. It's not my lowest month. It's the average is what I've selected to do for these costs. So again, this spreadsheet will not be absolutely perfect, but I think it's a really great tool to figure out what can I cut? How can I make sure my overheads in check? What do I need to produce? How do I basically figure out my BAM, my bare ACE minimum in a company? And so that's what we're gonna be looking at. So with that, I first list all the salaries and...   I want everything in there. And then what I have is a current. So I'm gonna have a current and then I'm also going to have like a future. So for example, if you're planning to hire somebody, but they're not hired yet, that's something that you're going to wanna know, what is my cost now? And what is going to be the future cost? Because those two things are actually different numbers. And so for me, it's really helpful so that I can look at you guys honestly.   When I started this, had like three team members and now we have tons of team members on there and outsource people and virtual assistants. And ⁓ the list just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. I can go back and I can look at things that we've done before. And so mine's on Google Sheets. And again, we've built one of these and I'm even happy to share, reach out, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. But this is something, so I go through all the salaries. And then for me, ⁓ if you do health insurance or you do a health stipend or whatever it is, you add that in.   as well, but then what I do, and again, talk to your CPA, see what your payroll tax are. For me, I just estimate 10%. I always like to air higher. So you will notice in all of my projections and everything I do, I'm going to always air higher than it actually is rather than lower. And so just looking at that, just so you know, that's how I do. So my CPA told me 10%, we have business in four different states. I think we're actually up to five now.   So I estimate high, no matter what state they're in, I just do a 10%. So I'll do my total salaries of the month, an estimated 10 % payroll. And then I've got that in there, my total payroll. Then we have our health stipends or health insurance, our 401k costs in there, how much it costs me per user, what the 4 % is. I actually go grab people's salaries and their bonuses, put it in there. So I have a pretty good idea. Then what I do is I check every single month to see based what I have here, is that close?   to what I'm actually paying or is it not? I know some of you might be like, well, here, I just get it from my CPA, I get a P &L. I agree, but this is a good checks and balance between my CPA and myself. And also when I'm trying to project and forecast, can I add people in? How much is this gonna have? Where can I cut? If I can see it all line itemed out, it's actually for me at least much easier for me to see what are all my costs and where can I squeeze the tube of toothpaste to get a little bit more ⁓ toothpaste out of that tube or a little more juice out of the lemon.   So that's what I have. And then what I have down below is like outsource. So if you've got VAs or you've got ⁓ different people that are contractors or things like that, I have that in there and that one EBS and flows mostly that hangs in my marketing department. That's where I have a lot of those. And then also VAs and EAs that'll be in there that are virtual assistants that are through other companies. So they're not running on my payroll, but they are down there. Like I have some consultants on there. I've got some coaches on there that will be in that section for me. But those again are not up in that payroll section because I'm not paying that.   payroll tax on them and I'm also not 401k on them, but that helps me see how much am I paying in outsourced resources to see should I cut that, should I keep that, how much do I have on the top, is my payroll heavy. You also can break this down by department. So you can see how much am I paying in my hygiene department, are they offsetting, how much am I paying my doctor department, my front office department, all those different departments. If you want to get even more granular, you can. And then below that, I have all of the office expenses and this is something really great.   This year Britt she ⁓ 2.0'd us and she put in their end of year expenses because there's a lot of things that I just pay at the end of the year that are annual subscriptions that will save money on but the reality is I should probably be saving that money throughout the year, right? Because every single month there would be an expense allocated if I didn't pay it annually. So we should be adding that in so we're saving for that. We're preparing for that for the end of the year. We have different things in there. So like all of our subscriptions that we have you might have Netflix, you might have Audible, you might have   Canva for marketing, ⁓ ChatGPT if you're paying for those subscriptions, anything. And I'm constantly updating this like as you hear ChatGPT and how many do we have for that? ⁓ We use our project management software is on there. I also know that every single month I have a budget allotted for employee gifts and anniversaries. And so we have an allotment of how much we spend. I do double check this, but I try to break it down. Also I have in there my merchant fees and how much my merchant fees are on average.   ⁓ And I literally list everything out. So whether it's personal, because like Audible and my phone, I do have those on there. Those are personal things for me that do run through the business, but there's still business expenses that will need to be on there. ⁓ And then we've got our bookkeeping and our accounting or CPA, our lawyers, all of that in there. If you have vehicles that your CPA said is okay for you to run through, all of that, your rent, your mortgage, your supplies, your internet, all of that in there.   to where at the bottom of this list, you can get a complete grand total for the month. And what's really awesome about that, you can actually break it apart so you can have doctors where they're not in there. This then tells you basically your BAM, your bear ace minimum. And then what we can do from there is we can figure out what you need to produce to be able to hit. So hopefully all that was like not too much. just rattle, I'm like literally looking at my spreadsheet as I'm telling you this, all of that. Then below that, we're gonna wanna also add in debt services because debt services are also going to hit your cashflow side of it.   So when you have these two tools together, then you can figure out what's bam, my bare ace minimum, what's my overhead and then what can I cut and then what do I need to produce? Then we can figure out what we need to produce with block schedules. There's like a whole other zone, but back to the client's question. She said, I don't even know what to cut. So today me and our leadership team, we were going through this and we literally looked to see, okay, what's on our office expenses? And I know this sounds so dumb and so like trite.   but I think it's the discipline of knowing how to do this because you better believe when I'm looking at my monthly expenses, which are outlandish and they're very high. When I look at this, saving 40 bucks a month is not like, it's truly a literal spit in the bucket. But when I think about it, it's $40 here, it's $20 there. It's just like your credit card statement at the end of the month. I'm always shocked at how much is on there and it's $20 on Amazon here, $30 over here.   $20 there and all those $20, $30 purchases add up to multiple thousands of dollars every single month. So when we look at this, I look at every single office expense and I'm like, okay, is Adobe something that we need? And this was actually a catch that we had. I was like, we're paying $65 a month for Adobe. Do we still need the entire suite? The answer is no, we don't. We only need it for a small thing. And then we started thinking like, softwares are evolving. So we're like, does G Suite ⁓ actually cover that? Or...   does another one of our subscriptions cover it? Because so many times our subscriptions that we're paying are like duplicates of something else. G Suite has expanded and I'm like, do we still need to use boomerang? I use boomerang all the time. I love boomerang so much, but I'm like, has G Suite evolved to where they have something comparable to it that we could cut the boomerang is 120 bucks a month for us. And Shelbi was like, wait, not all of our team members, like our marketing team does not use boomerang. They're not doing client facing emails. They rarely are in their inbox. They're in Slack all the time.   she's like, what if we reduce the number of people on boomerang that would actually cut our costs down. So again, it's this like fine tuning revolving through it looking, do we need this? Could we reduce this? Do we need to, are all the people that were still on there, do we still need to pay for all those people? Could we change it to this? Are we still gonna be here for that? And you go through and you literally ask, is this a want, a need, or is there a better way that we could spend our money on this? And again, I know it sounds so dumb. Like this, this is not fun.   This is not something that I'm excited to share with you on a podcast, but I'm so excited because the discipline of doing this, the doctor, the reason it came up is because she wants to sign up for AI, ⁓ Pearl or Overjet. Back and forth, we talked about it at length of which one's better. This is why I love our Dr. Mastermind. And it's about $130 a month. And she just like, I'm so sick of these subscriptions. And I'm like, well, go get rid of Netflix or go get rid of one of these things or don't have all the beverages in the   in the refrigerator, maybe just choose one of them. Like there's so many things like, but this is where you look at your list because you have your entire list in front of you. And my office expenses right now, and this is where I look at my credit card. I look at every single thing on there. Right now we have 39 different things that we pay for of monthly subscriptions or annual subscriptions, different things. It's got our insurance policies on there. And then what I can do is I can come in and assess and say, okay, of all these high expenses, like if I need to cut expenses very quickly,   I could look to see, all right, my highest hitters are XYZ. This one's $500, this one's $1,000. Do I still need these? Are we still using them? Is there a cheaper competitor that I could switch to? Where am I at? And all these things. What I love about this is it helps you just look to see where your money's going because at the bottom it has a grand total. And then what's nice is I then can look to see, is this grand total what my CPA is telling me I'm spending every single month? Do they line up?   And if not, where's the discrepancy and where is it? I also can look at future things. if I'm going to be increasing or I'm going to be adding team members or we're going to be looking to add say another subscription or another piece, what is that going to change my monthly amount? And am I okay on my production and collection side to be able to afford it? So many people are like, I talked to my CPA to see if I can afford it. And I want to just say that yes, it's great to have a CPA there. It's also better to know instead of being like a parent child.   if you can spend it. I want my CPA to give me my books, my reconciliation. I want them to talk to me about my tax strategy, but I don't want them to be the ones telling me, can I afford something or can I not? I wanna go to them and say, I know I can afford this. This is what I think. Do you think it's a good idea? Then I'm counseling with them rather than being told. And this goes for all of my executive board. I want to know as much as I possibly can. So that way when I show up, like even financial advisors, even my...   My lawyers, like I do a lot of research before I go into those because I don't want to just blindly follow. I want to actively participate. So we're making the best decisions. I believe they're all in the best interest. I don't believe my CPA telling me to do something or not to do something is the end all be all. I feel like we are great at counseling together. They give me their opinion. I know the numbers. They know the numbers. We know where the business is going. And then my job is to make the best decision for the business and for myself.   So this is where I just really obsessed because right now I'm looking and I'm like, wow, what I'm currently paying based on bringing in some new hires, we're gonna do a $30,000 increase. And I look at that I wonder, is that wise? Is that what I wanna do? Is that what we as a business wanna do? Is that smart for the business? Or is it something like, then I get to sit here and I get to innovate and we get to think of like, what other ideas could we do? That's why I went down the list, because I wanna hire some more people. It's a little premature for these hires.   So I was like, okay, let's go back to the list. Let's look at the list. Like where could I like cut some costs to see, could I free up any cash in other areas or do we need to make different decisions? Or is it like, I need to put a pause on hiring that person for a little while until the business gets to X amount and then we can bring on those different hires. So when you look at this, that's how I do it. I use this spreadsheet. I'm not kidding. I I hold, I can tell you exactly because what's great on Google Sheets is they can literally tell you all the different versions. Okay.   So let's just go back to, I'm going to go, this is embarrassing. I'm going to go to June. Okay, so I'll just go back a few months for you guys. I logged into this spreadsheet of the monthly costs. June 5th, June 10th, June 16th, June 19th, June 24th, June 24th, again, June 25th, July 2nd, multiple times, July 7th, July 8th, July 9th, July 10th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 24.   The only reason it stopped there is because I went out of town August 3rd, August 6th, August 7th. As you can see, I'm in this spreadsheet almost daily. If not every other day. That's insane. I mean, I can go back to April. I can go back to March, February, January, December, December. I'm in here all the time. November, October of last year. I'm just going down. October. I was in there 10 because that's when I started to do projections. So you better believe I was in there a lot more during that time. October. There's about 20 entries September. So when I tell you this is a tool,   that I have found that works so insanely well. Clients love it. Cause then we're like, our overhead's high. We can go over to our costs and say, why is it high? What is causing this? I'm looking at people's loans that they have and I'm like, do you really use the Seric? Do we need to continue to use this? Are we using all these different like plan Mecca and all these other loans that we have on the practice? Are we still using that? And if so, that's fine. But let's at least know where our money's going.   so then we can make better decisions of do we wanna continue that? And so hopefully, like I said, it's not a fun topic. Like it is, this one, if you can't tell, the passion, the fun, like it's really fun for me to look to say like, okay, where is it? This is where I decided it was time for us to close our headquarters down in Reno. We used to have one, but I was looking for how can I cut costs? Where can I, because for me, I'd rather not spend it on a physical location. I'd rather buy, like spend that money on different softwares that are gonna make us more efficient, being able to hire better employees.   Like I'd rather reallocate those dollars to something that's gonna benefit the company more. And so for you, just feel like this is such a great tool to help you truly know where your money's going, know where you can cut. And like I said, I do this for personal. I'm like, all right, give me all your costs. Give me your credit card. We're gonna look at every single thing. And then like, what could we do differently? I mean, my cell phone, let alone, I used to pay almost a hundred bucks a month for my cell phone. It's now, hold please. I'll tell you the exact amount. Cause I can tell you it's literally right here.   Um, it is a telephone right here, $35 a month. And I used to pay 95, but that was once again, like Verizon got a competitor. have a sister company called visible. I could even get it down to 20, but I didn't want to like drop that far. But we went from 90 to 35 and there was no change or disruption. I watched it for several years. I had people do it, then made the change. Is there a better company out there for X, Y, or Z? Is there a better processing company? And I know again, this seems annoying.   But annually around September, October is when I start to do projections and I start to look at everything. Cause I'm looking at costs. What could I cut? But monthly, daily, I'm looking to see who can I hire? Where can I do things? Change it, adjust it. And what's amazing is when doctors and OMS have this tool available, now you're like, can we afford to hire this person? You can answer with confidence rather than hoping and praying you're going to be able to make it. Just like what I used to do. was like, let's just hope and pray we're going to hire them and hope it works out.   now I can have way more confident decisions. And like, think as a business owner, being able to have confident, like one of the strongest things you need to do as a business owner is be able to make decisions. And I think the second piece to that is being able to make more confident decisions, utilizing tools like this one that I'm sharing with you. So if you want help, reach out, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. Like I said, I love to put this together for clients. I love to give them the tools and resources to where they can actually be here and know. And also I say if you're here,   Like go get your credit card, list everything out that you're spending money on. Look at your P &L, see if it matches up, see if you can figure it out. And this was something that's been evolved over the course of honestly, probably eight years. I started it when I was really new into the business. I made this myself because I'm like, I don't even know where my money's going. How am I supposed to be able to make decisions? And I could not figure out why my overhead was so high. Now I can tell you exactly this is what we're spending every month. This is why we're spending it. This is what we want to do. This is where we're going. These are the numbers that we need to do.   It just gives you so much confidence, clarity. And so that's why I just love to share it and to help you. ⁓ I believe, like we said in the yes model, you as a person need to know where your vision is. Then we need to have your earnings and your profit where it needs to be. And then we need to figure out the systems and team development to support all of those pieces. And that's what we love. It's what I'm obsessed with. So reach out, ⁓ even if you're like, I don't know. I don't know if I'm a good fit. Let's just have a call. It's literally no commitment, no stress.   just clarity and confidence to get you the momentum that you deserve. So reach out Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. Go fall in love with numbers and spreadsheets. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.  

Tiff and Kristy spell out what it takes to onboard to the best of your ability. They touch on the questions a hiring manager should be asking themself during interviews, how an applicant will be learning about your practice, the appropriate vibes to give out for your business, and more.   Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:00) Hello Dental A Team listeners. I am here with you again today with my fave podcaster I'm sorry rest of the team. She's got that title right now. She's got the crown Miss Kristy is here with me today And this one we had to talk about it beforehand and I'm excited. I'm now excited for this We had to brainstorm a little bit before recording this podcast to ensure we were on the right track and like minded on this which I think speaks volume to the   you know, podcast topic, but also to how well our team works together and how well our team really is bonded. And Kristy, before we get into today's topic, first of all, welcome. Thank you so much for giving me, it's Monday today, so giving me your Monday afternoon so we could record a couple of podcasts. How are you?   DAT Kristy (00:50) Good, I always look forward to my Mondays when I get to spend them with you.   The Dental A Team (00:54) Thank you. I used to do these on Fridays, which was like, it's a fun way to end of the week. But I was like, I think it's a fun way to start the week too, because we get time together. And then I just like them better on Mondays. So hopefully you guys do too.   DAT Kristy (01:08) I agree.   The Dental A Team (01:10) So today's podcast, you guys, if you're subscribed to our newsletters, you know that our podcasts kind of follow the same topic and genre of our newsletters. If you're not subscribed to our newsletters, hop over to TheDentalATeam.com, hit subscribe because there's actually, I mean, we follow the same cadence and the same topics, but they're gonna be a little bit different. So if you're looking for more information, a lot of times they have downloads in them too. So if you're not subscribed, go do that.   Our marketing team would love me for that little plug, but truly if you're not getting those yet, you should be, so go grab them. ⁓ Today's topic may be, I think today's topic on podcast might be a little bit different than topic by newsletter. And Kristy and I wanted to take a stab at really kind of switching the mindset on this space. And Kristy, think I'm gonna like boost our egos. I think you and I actually do really, really well.   at seeing something and flipping it and being like, well, what if we looked at it from this angle instead of that one? I think you and I actually do really, really well at that. So thank you for working together with me on that. Today, you guys, your newsletter coming through, like I said, it's gonna be a little bit different. Today's podcast, we're really gonna be talking about not off-boarding, like what to do, how to let someone go, because we're really not here for that. Like the consulting team is here for...   doing everything we can to hire the right person and to make sure that there's complete clarity around everything that each individual is doing, that the path is set and you actually have no questions about keeping them on or off boarding them. Like that's in your court, that is not in our court. So we thought it would be more beneficial and more fun for the two of us to really talk about onboarding correctly and like even before you're onboarding, what that looks like.   Kristy, I think this might actually be fun. I'm just spinning us a little bit, but I kind of want to talk about us attracting you into the Dental A Team because you haven't always been here, right? We have met you, Kiera, I have met you a long time ago, but you haven't been with the Dental A Team forever, even though to us and likely to all of our listeners, it does feel like you have been a part of this team since   DAT Kristy (03:20) No.   The Dental A Team (03:33) the very beginning, which I think also speaks volumes to our topic today because that goes right along with what we're thinking. Now, how did that happen, Kristy? Like, how did Dental A Team, how did we attract you? You found us. ⁓ We are so thankful for it. But how did we attract you, who fit so seamlessly into the dynamics of our team, our goals?   you literally like consult just like we do like everything about you embodies who we are. How is that possible? How did we do that?   DAT Kristy (04:11) Yeah, you know, with every place you go, there's little things that may change a little bit, but the heart of things don't change. And so you're right, if we align not only in process, but also culture. so ⁓ when it came time for my journey to shift and change, it was important to find the like minded space and people. ⁓   not only for me to help them grow, but for you guys to help me grow, right? Like they say, look around who you surround yourself with because you're kind of like the top five people you hang around, right? And so ⁓ it was really important for me to find that culture and process both, you know, and I'll make sure we were aligned.   The Dental A Team (05:05) Yeah, thank you. I think if you guys can hear what she's saying, right, Kristy's saying that she was able to see that she was in alignment with who we are as humans, that our goals, our vision, our company standards really aligned with Kristy. While there might be some caveats and some spaces of learning or some spaces where it's like, okay, I thought it would look like this, but let's try this or and let's try and let's create this. ⁓   DAT Kristy (05:07) Yeah.   The Dental A Team (05:34) That's massive because offboarding, offboarding does, it's not easy, you guys. It's not, there's not an easy peasy process that takes emotions out and just makes it to where you're the robot that can easily just fire people whenever you want. What I do instead is I try to make sure that I'm representing our company to the best that I possibly can in everything that I do. So when I'm going through, I'm the hiring manager for our consulting team.   When I'm going through, I'm doing the same thing Kristy said she's doing. I'm looking to see, does this candidate align with who we are? the response is coming back in alignment with how we speak to each other or how we speak to clients. Is it in alignment with what I would love to see a timeline as, right? Like I've gotten, I've had candidates where I'm like, my gosh, their resume is fantastic. This is the experience that I want, spot on.   I'm gonna reach out to them and I don't hear from them for like a week. I'm like, well, that's not in alignment with us. And so ensuring that on both sides, we're taking a step back and we're questioning the alignment of those pieces, I think is a huge, huge reason why it's been successful. Now, in order to do that, this is a caveat, you guys. You can't just show up and just,   expect everyone to know how to show up, right? You've got to really lead by example. And in my opinion, we are leading by core values, mission and vision. We are driven by the why of this company. And that is what attracts people. That's what attracted Kristy. Kristy was attracted to the why of our company, our mission, our vision.   and how we show up, which are our core values. I show up in our core values, Kiera does, Britt does. When Kristy came to the interview, she was like, okay, got it. I can see it in real life. So Kristy, as an outsider, you're applying for a job. In what ways were you able to see that we did have an alignment or at least enough alignment to say, let's explore this in that... ⁓   hiring process, like in the application process, you're sending your resume outside of listening to us on on podcasts, I'm thinking how can offices kind of emanate and represent that in a space where like minded people can find them?   DAT Kristy (08:06) Yeah, if I'm understanding you correctly, think it's truly... ⁓   You have to make sure you're painting clarity for people on, you have to speak your culture. Like for instance, how many times do we talk to our own clients and say, do you have a mission statement? Do you have core values? And they'll be like, yeah, we do, somewhere. You know what I mean? You have to live it and you can't just say, yes, I have it. You have to show that you have it and you use it and it means something.   The Dental A Team (08:37) Mm-hmm.   DAT Kristy (08:47) Right? And so when I found you guys, you could recite it. You lived it. You wove it into your process. Right? And it told me that it means something to you and you live by it. Like it's our code of conduct, if you will. Right? And it can't just be put in a drawer. You have to keep it alive in order for it to serve the ultimate goal and mission, if you will.   The Dental A Team (09:15) Mm hmm. Yeah, I totally agree. And it's just a it's a rep an outward representation. And so I think even in our job ads, right, and I know I work a lot with clients on this. I know I see you guys doing it, too. I know Monica just helped a client last week with some job ads. But making sure those job ads speak to you because I can write a job ad. But if you copy and paste the job that I wrote, even writing it for you, even my clients that I've worked with for seven plus years,   DAT Kristy (09:16) Thank   The Dental A Team (09:44) I can write it for you and I know you, but unless you go in and speak some of yourself into that ad, it's not gonna hit, it just doesn't resonate. And so a lot of practices too are very different than who I am. So if I write your ad and I attract me to your practice and your practice doesn't, you're not me, that person is likely not gonna be a good fit.   DAT Kristy (09:51) Mm-hmm.   Right.   The Dental A Team (10:13) Right?   It's just, she could or he could for sure for the, maybe for the long run, but attracting that like-minded person takes really being able to know who you are and who you want to show up as and then doing that every single day. It makes me think of like, if I went and applied at Chick-fil-A, I know exactly how I'm supposed to show up. If I apply at Target, if I apply at Starbucks, I know exactly how I'm supposed to show up.   Dutch Bros. I wouldn't apply at Dutch Bros because it's too much energy output. I know that, right? But if I can go to Starbucks where it's still energy output, but not quite as much, it's a little tamer of a coffee process, I really want to be a barista one day. That's why I'm saying these. I would love to be a barista. ⁓ But I'm going to judge it. I'm going to judge where I'm applying based on those aspects. My son did the same thing. His first job even, he's looking at, is this a company I want to work for?   Is this a company that I can represent and be happy at? Because no matter what he understood as an employee, he's walking in as a representation of that facility. And if it's not a company that he is in alignment with, either what they're doing, he doesn't understand what they're doing, or he's not excited to be there himself, he knows that he's not gonna be able to represent that and he's gonna be a really just angry human.   And if they're not happy, that's where off-boarding comes in, right? Like now you're into the space of like this kid, dang it Brody, like you suck. He's like, yeah, cause I hate working here. Got it. Right. Or he sees like team members, employees that are like not loving life. Like he's judging these entry level positions based off of that. So to be in a position where we're high level, we're getting paid way better. We've got some schooling behind us.   DAT Kristy (11:48) See you.   The Dental A Team (12:07) Most of us at least see ease at least some sort of knowledge base or trying to get our foot into dental We're looking at those things as well Like how are people showing up and Kristy as I'm saying that I'm like that might be something that even is lost in the old like drop your resume off at the front desk like used to be able to drop it off and see what it was like to be like, ⁓ This is a place. I want to go or ⁓ okay, like   DAT Kristy (12:26) Yeah.   Mmm.   The Dental A Team (12:32) on and jot that down.   Yeah, so we lose some of that like visibility. But I do think this day and age people are looking at social media, people are looking at websites and people are researching. I know when we get when we get finally to the interview process, if I'm talking to a person who hasn't researched us, and they don't know who we are, they don't know how we show up, they haven't looked at the website, I'm like, well, that might not be a great fit. Because for our culture,   You've already done that. You know you fit and you're excited to work with us. You know?   DAT Kristy (13:04) I agree with you,   Tiff, so much. And I love that you use Dutch Bros. Hopefully everybody, even if you don't drink coffee, they have other things. But ⁓ I'm with you. I couldn't work at Dutch Bros. I appreciate what they do. But it's funny how many times that situation happens in practices and we want to make the employee wrong. And truly it was our process because we attracted the wrong person. I mean, if Dutch Bros. was attracting an introvert,   The Dental A Team (13:26) Hmm.   DAT Kristy (13:33) they'd be off boarding a lot of people, right? And so instead of, I mean, I like to say, I mean, when you and I looked at this topic, I literally was like, well, heck, if we're off boarding that many people, we've got to take some ownership on that side. You know, just like our patients, if there's attrition, we have natural attrition, they move away or death, that's gonna happen with employees too. But if we're having to off board a lot of employees, I think it's time that we take a step back.   The Dental A Team (13:36) Agreed.   DAT Kristy (14:01) and go, how are we attracting and who are we attracting? ⁓ One of the things with, we spoke about core values and our mission statement. I also think like, it's just not our why. And you made mention of this. It's also how we behave and how we show up. It's the why, the what and the how. And we get commitments around that. And if we're not getting that,   I'm always about extreme ownership. So how can I take a step back and attract the right person, attract the extrovert to Dutch brothers, not the introvert to, right? Because we're ultimately setting ourselves up for failure and for the person too. We didn't do right by them if we hired the introvert at Dutch brothers.   The Dental A Team (14:39) correct. Yeah.   I agree. And I think something you said there,   that's the like Simon Sinek, like what, what, how and why, right? And I think something that most practices nail is the what. We know what position we need to hire. We don't nail the how that position shows up for our company. So what, what is the how behind how that position contributes to our team? How do they show up for our team? And how do they show up for the patients? Meaning what is the job?   DAT Kristy (15:03) Thank   The Dental A Team (15:19) that they're doing and what are the metrics that tell us they are doing that job or not? Because oftentimes we also get stuck in the ⁓ mundane like feelings and emotions. And I'm not here to say that a stellar person, know, somebody, I've seen it. I've seen a manager who had stellar collections and like top-notch collections but couldn't communicate with the team. That's an issue, but that's a metric too. Like are we,   You know, how can we tie those things to the metrics? So if we can say your extreme ownership is massive, because if we can say as a leadership team or as an owner, I've done everything I can, they have complete clarity, I've had the conversations, offboarding then is much easier. Offboarding is difficult when there's still confusion, when either that person is gonna be confused because you let them go because they had no idea they did anything wrong.   or if you're confused because you can't even pinpoint why this person doesn't work with your team, you just know they don't work. That's the confusion. the what and the why. So what is the position? Why do you need it? And then how do we show up for that position? And what's the clarity around what that person's supposed to be doing?   DAT Kristy (16:41) I love that you say that, Tiff, because how many times do we even identify, let's just take an easy one. I need to hire a greeter, right? And they need to smile and they have to be able to answer the phone too, but it isn't just answering the phone. It's hearing the warm smile and we do it this way. How much of that did you portray? And even how much of that did you include in your interview process?   The Dental A Team (17:07) ⁓ uh-huh.   DAT Kristy (17:08) you know   what I mean? Did you have them answer a phone? This is really ⁓ a different way of looking at things, but I learned a different process when I was in practice where ⁓ at the end of the applying, it says, do not submit your resume. And we wanted somebody with detail. And so the people that submitted their resumes, mean, some of were great, but we threw it out, right? And we never ever   We also took bias, like people bias out of it. And so our first interview was always over the phone without seeing them. And we would instruct them to call at a certain time and how to handle the call. Like you're gonna schedule me an appointment for, and we wanted to hear, like we gave them specifics and hear how they deliver. Can you see how that then starts to align with our how and why? We painted the clarity of what to do.   and then listened for the results and saw how naturally they fit, if you will. It's a different strategy, but.   The Dental A Team (18:11) Absolutely, we used,   it totally is. used to do, ⁓ what's your favorite, respond to this with your favorite ice cream in the subject line or your favorite candy or your favorite baseball team. I've got offices that are in Chicago and you know, there's the Cubs and the White Sox are both Chicago. So it's like, what's your favorite ⁓ baseball team? Not to say, I love that baseball team too or yes, Sprinkles ice cream is the best, but to say, you caught that detail.   in there and I love that you said that, Kristy. used to, Kiera and I once upon a time had a recruiting company. We are not doing that anymore, everyone, and it is hard. I hated it. It was a long time ago. We don't need to go back there, but that's how I used to schedule the interviews. I would say, awesome. I will chat with you on Tuesday at 2 p.m. You call me. So if they didn't call me, if they missed that interview, they were out. It was an automatic out for me, or if they called late, but I do agree.   with getting the preliminary done, not having a face-to-face for the first time, listen for the details of what you need for that position. So if you're hiring a billing rep and you get someone you're like, I didn't love her on the phone, well, she's not talking to you, she's talking to insurance companies. So that might be okay. But if you're hiring a greeter that you're like, she was super shy, she didn't really, like she wasn't super forthcoming, she didn't have any questions for me, it wasn't engaging, is your patient gonna enjoy talking to that person on the other side? But then flip side of that, Kristy, I think you mentioned   something really, really beautiful you said, if we're hiring a greeter and we want that smiley personality, we want that bubbly person, like you're hiring for those things, but I've also seen practices, and this drives me a little nuts, I've seen practices that are like, I want the bubbly person who's building relationships with the patients, they're smiling, they're making eye contact, and they're excited to see the patients as soon as they walk through the door, they also answer the calls and they can pass it off. You find that person.   DAT Kristy (19:52) You   The Dental A Team (20:08) Right? And then they're like, her details suck and she can't multitask. Well, guess what? Those are two very differing personalities and you got to choose your heart. If she's stellar at building the relationships and your patients are fine waiting five minutes in the front lobby because she's sitting there talking to them and they're not angry when they go to the back, might be okay that she didn't call the insurance company for whatever, you know, whatever detail was.   miss, like then at that point it's do we have clarification of roles and are the duties in the right seat? Because personality will make a massive difference to the results that you want and you've got to figure out the type of person that you want in those seats as well.   DAT Kristy (20:46) Okay.   Yeah. The other factor in that too, Tiff, and I think in a way you touched on it was, it a skill thing or a will thing? You know, we've got to understand and also set benchmarks for time, right? I literally was talking to a practice last week and I just kept hearing, don't have time and we don't have time. And I'm just thinking, you know, we can always say, well, when I learned back in 19, whatever,   The Dental A Team (21:04) Yeah.   DAT Kristy (21:24) go there, but you know, we were just thrown in and that doesn't mean it's the right way. It doesn't mean it's the right way. And you know, we owe it to people to give them the time to onboard them and show them what we want. And it goes back to how you said, choose your heart. The time we spend early will reap rewards.   The Dental A Team (21:48) Totally agree. I think that's brilliant. we have worked so hard on our onboarding process to match it with our expectations and to match it with our core values and our mission and our vision because we want our team to be onboarded correctly, not willy-nilly. It was kind of like haphazard. honestly, we've hired a lot of amazing people and a lot of people who   They were, they are amazing humans. We've not hired anyone who's not an amazing human. I have loved everyone that we hired, but they may not have been the right fit for us, either at that time or just in general. It doesn't mean that they're not a good person. It just means that it didn't fit. And I am a firm believer in any aspect of life. If it's not fitting for me, it's not fitting for them either. It's not, there's no way.   we can coexist with one of us not working out and the other one working out. It just doesn't work that way. So this was so much more fun than the original topic we looked at. Thank you for taking that.   DAT Kristy (22:53) Yeah, agree, agree. Yeah, I'm with you   Tiff. mean, if we're off boarding so many people, let's just take a step back and focus on our onboarding and how we can choose differently. So, cause it's not fun off boarding. It isn't.   The Dental A Team (23:08) No, no,   and I don't want that to be like, eventually that is gonna be a conversation. It is a protocol that you do need to have in place. It should be very simple. There should be no questions asked and the person should be like, yep, got it, okay. They might still be angry, that's fine. That's an emotional situation, but there shouldn't be questions around it. And if you need help building that, fine. We've got references, we've got information, we've got documents we can help you with, but realistically,   take a step back and say, how can I prevent the need to off board someone? I want everyone here forever. having that protocol, sure, got it in our back pocket for if it is necessary, but how do I prevent that need? I don't want that at all. So go back through your hiring process and look at the team members that hired well. Like I'll look at Kristy and say, how did I attract Kristy to my team? How did I attract Trish to my team? Like Monica, to my team, Monica was a   referral from Trish because Trish knew that this was a fit for Monica. Trish knew it was a fit for us for the same reasons Kristy did. I actually, we didn't even realize until after Trish started the hiring process, she knew me previously, didn't even realize because it was a different space of life that we were connected. She applied to our company because she wanted to work with our company, not because of me. So it's just really cool to watch those things happen. So moving forward with hiring, I look at   DAT Kristy (24:28) Yeah.   The Dental A Team (24:34) the consultants that I have, Dana, and I say, what attracted this human, this perfect specimen of a consultant to our company? And how do I emanate that in the information I'm putting outward? Like the podcast, the job ads, those pieces, how do I make sure that I recruit those people again?   DAT Kristy (24:54) I agree with you. And you mentioned this early on too. One of my biggest tips would be make sure you're speaking to that employee in the beginning of your ad. So many times people write it about themselves. This is why, you know, but they're buying into what it's an emotional thing that it's going to bring to them. So make sure you're speaking to that, you know, on the onset of your.   The Dental A Team (25:20) I totally agree with you. That is a massive point. We get caught up in wanting people to want us. We want people to want to work with us. And I do want people to want to work with us, but I want people to first see themselves in the job, in the person that I'm describing. I want them to be able to check, check, check, say, yes, that's me, yes, that's me, yes, I want this, yes, I want to work with this company.   DAT Kristy (25:43) 100%. Yeah.   The Dental A Team (25:45) Awesome. All right, guys, I hope this was beneficial. think biggest takeaways, biggest action items, make sure number one, we talk about this all the time, you guys, core values, mission, vision, job descriptions are in alignment. We preach on this because you guys, it is the core of your company. So if those things, your org chart, those pieces are out of alignment, they're not solid yet, reach out, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com We can get on a call, kind of figure out what needs to happen. If you are our client, reach out to your consultant.   Easy peasy. Okay, don't reach out to hello. That gets a little confusing when things like that come through. So if you have a consultant on your team already on your side, reach out to your consultant. ⁓ Secondary to that, check and see like what's working, what's not working, and how can you duplicate what's working? How can you duplicate that higher and keep people for the long haul? I would love if every time we quote unquote off boarded someone, it was truly because they had a life change, not because   it was the wrong place for either of us. And sometimes we do outgrow each other. I do have to put that out there. If you're a team of seven today, and in a year and a half, you're a team of 13, 14, sometimes those team of seven team members need a team of seven. And that's okay too. That's an out, that's a life change. That's a, this space is no longer working for me. That's a life change. It's a growth space. That's okay too. It doesn't mean that there was something wrong. It just means that we're in a new space. So go check those pieces. If you're in the hiring world right now,   Check your ads, make sure your ads are speaking to you, and then check the kind of applicants that you're getting to your ads. Is there a trend in the type of applicants you're getting? Are they all wrong? Are they all right? Are they mediocre? Kind of check that and then revamp your ad to fit to attract someone different if you're not getting the right people. Kristy, thank you so much. This one was, like I said, this was really fun. At first I think we both were like, wow, that's a little wild. ⁓   DAT Kristy (27:39) What?   The Dental A Team (27:42) But I had a lot of fun with this one. So thank you for taking that journey with me, Kristy.   DAT Kristy (27:46) Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Always a pleasure.   The Dental A Team (27:49) Thank you. Awesome. All right, guys, go drop us a five star review because you know this one was amazing. This was super fun for us. And also let us know what you loved. Let us know if there's anything we can do to help you. Again, if you're not yet a client, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com is a really easy space to reach us at. If you are a current client that we love and adore, we love and adore you on a consultant basis. So reach out to your consultant. She is here waiting to help you. All right, everyone, we'll catch you next time.  

Kiera shows listeners multiple places in life where there's likely opportunity for more balance, freedom, play, and ease by: Maximizing the hours you already work. Protecting your time like a CEO. Empowering your team to own their roles. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera and I am so excited because I love this topic and I hate this topic and it's such a great one and all of you are gonna be so excited about it and it's work-life balance without sacrificing production. Yep, you better believe that it is true and I'm here to show you today how you can do this.   but I really hate this terminology of work-life balance. So if you're new to the Dental A Team, welcome, hello. I'm so excited to have you here. If you've been here with us for a long time, high five, hugs. I'm so grateful you've been a part of this journey and I'm so excited to share with you tips, tricks. ⁓ And again, remember, sometimes the greatest form of learning is remembering what you already know. So these might be tips that you've heard before, but hopefully today it hits you differently because no man who's walked through a river is ever the same man because he...   is not the same man and the river is not the same river. So you today, you're not the same person, you're not the same practice, you're not the same scenario. So wherever you are, I'm super excited for you to figure out how to get this like balance and bliss in your life. And I hope you're ready for it. So the reality is like, I used to feel, and I don't know where this came from, like, why do we feel that we always have to like grind like our nose to the brim? Like we have to work so hard and we have to just grind so hard to get to success.   that like you just hate your life. Like why is it, why is it this like busyness and this exhaustiveness and this tired to be successful? Like why, where? And so I do believe that you can have balance and performance that can coexist, that you can be productive and balanced. And so the reality is we're going to walk through some of these pieces for you to help you see where could I maybe strike a little more balance, a little more freedom, a little more play, a little more ease in my life.   And that's maybe the better term of like work-life balance is more ease. It's more flow. It's more, I think just intentional. And how can I do that? So you guys, I love this. think that you should be something that I'm really passionate about is work and life. I'm very passionate about you being the best version of yourself in your life. That way you can show up as the best version of yourself for work. do not believe, Tiff and I talk about this all the time. Like outside of Dental A Team public's eye.   all the time about how work and life are not separate. It's like we think about these two halves and it's like, no, it's one. You're one person. You're going through this and it's like, well, here's half of me that's work. Here's half of me that's life. And it's like, no, no, no, no, no. How can I, Kiera, be the best version of myself that like feels balanced or ease or flow or calm or any of those things? Cause balance to me, don't love. Balance feels like I've got to like have my weight in front of me be equal.   ⁓ But flow to me is like a river flows and sometimes it's faster and sometimes it's slower and all of that's correct. And so this is something where for you to be the best version of yourself, for you to still be productive at the office while being the best version of you, ⁓ I think is what today's podcast will be about. So this is something where it's like, if you feel you are stretched thin or overwhelmed or you don't know how to produce without overworking and if you stop or slow down and get off the hamster, well, you're afraid that it's all gonna crash and burn. Well, hi, I'm Kiera.   I'm your personal therapist today ⁓ and I'm here to help you realize that that's not the reality, that there's a better, easier way to do it. And I'm here to give you a couple of quick steps that hopefully will take you through that ⁓ because I was there, I've seen offices do it and we've helped offices, hundreds, like literally hundreds and thousands of offices get out of that hamster will.   and into the flow that they were looking for. Tiff said it once and she was like, imagine Phoenix traffic. If you've never been to Phoenix, we'll do Chicago traffic, we'll do Texas traffic. Like you name it, big city traffic. She's like, just imagine if you're sitting there and this is like your life and you're sitting there and you're in this bumper to bumper traffic. And then all of a sudden you see that like better than even like an HOV or carpool lane. Like there's just like the way it strikes me like a lucky charm. Like it's like, ah, like the angels are singing. It's this gold path over there or like the yellow brick road. And you're like,   say, well, like I could get out of this nonsense over onto that lane. And like everybody, there's no traffic. There's no slowing down. It is just this easy breezy, like truly like, hope you guys can visualize this like golden path road with gold light over it. And everybody on that road is just so happy. And yet you're sitting here hating your life because you're sitting in all this nonsense traffic. Well, that's kind of hopefully how this feels of like, let's teach you how to get over into that.   that lane that you didn't even know existed today and give you some tangible tips to that. So number one is going to be maximize the hours that you already work. So let's have it like, ⁓ we did this awesome thing ⁓ at a conference and ⁓ we're talking about this and this is so fascinating to me, okay? So in a given week, there's 24 hours in a day. Yes, everybody following? And there's seven hours or seven days in a week, okay?   So if we take that, I love some good numbers, I love some good math. So 24 hours in a day, and we have seven days in a week, that's 168 hours, all right, in a given week, okay? So now, let's say I'm gonna be really generous to you. We know, let's say, let's just, mean, Dennis, let's give you, like, we're gonna work 40 hours in a week. You might say I work more than that, that's okay. I'm just gonna subtract 40 right now, okay? So that leaves us with 128 hours in a week.   Now you're like, well, Kiera, we also have to sleep. I got you. I'm going to be real generous and I'm going to give you eight hours of sleep times seven days. That's 56 hours. None of you are out there probably sleeping eight hours. As you should be prioritizing this, I do not want to be scrimping on sleep because I think sleep is one of the most important things you can do for yourself. So we have 128 hours after the 40 hour work week. We've got 56 hours of sleep minus 128. That leaves us with 72 freaking hours a week. And my question is, what are you doing with those hours?   Now you might say, Carrie works 60 hours. Fantastic, you still have 52 hours if you're working a 60 hour work week, which I hope and pray you're not working 60 hours. So let's get it to where maybe I don't wanna be working even 40 hours and I would prefer to even work 30 hours. Well then if I gave you 30 hours, you're up to 82 hours a week of extra time. And people are like, Carrie, I don't have time, I don't have time. 72 hours, 72 in a week outside of sleeping and work.   Now you're like, well, I've got to make dinner and I've got the kids fine go for it, but there's still so many hours. And I, when I heard this, I was like, yeah, what am I doing with those 72 hours? Like, all right. So maybe I could do like an hour of workout every day. All right. So like, let me just put out like seven hours there. Like, okay, 72. Let's just take this down 72 minus seven hours. All right. I'm down to 65 hours. Well, you know, I've got to like, hang out with my kids. Like we're at soccer, we're at camp. Like that takes, okay. Count it up. How many hours? Like drive time and all of that.   Let's give you like, okay, shoot, you're at 15 hours a week, which honestly, I guarantee you're not putting 15 hours of soccer and camp and all that in a given week. Maybe you are, but honestly, that's a lot. That's like two full days of work plus some extra time. So if we're at that, you're still at 50 hours and we're not scrimping sleep. We're not scrimping work. We're not scrimping kid time. We gave you an hour of workout every single day.   something to think about. So in this step one, to be able to have this balance or flow or best version of you is to maximize the hours you already have. So ⁓ me and Chad GPT, I named her Wanda. I hang out with Wanda all the time and I'm like, all right, you're the most brilliant scheduler of all time. You're the most productive business coach. Like you teach me how to maximize my time. And Wanda gives me some really good things. And it was interesting because I started looking like I realized   that I was spending an extra 30 minutes going to the gym every single day with how far away it was. And I was like, all right, well then that actually adds up. What if I just bought a home gym? Like there are solutions. What if I got weights, free weights? have my personal trainer. She could create some. So I go to the gym X amount of days and I work from home X amount of days. Could that help out? Like that would give me some time back in there. And so it's really like, how can you maximize the hours that you already have in your life to then maybe have a bit more fun?   Like I don't want all scheduled. I want fun. I want to hang out with Jason. I want to be able to like you guys I used to not watch TV at all because I felt like it was an absolute waste of time because I wasn't making money and I wasn't doing something productive. Literally I was like, nope, this is an absolute waste of time. And I'm like, but I like to watch a show and laugh with my husband. I like to be able to go hot tibbing at night with my husband. I love to go for walks with my husband. I love to go hiking. I love to spend time with my parents and I want to do it.   without guilt. It's like being able to like eat all the ice cream that you could ever want to eat without gaining any weight or whatever your favorite thing is that you're like, I just wish I could eat all that, not worry about the calories. Well, this is how you can have un like guilt free time for yourself, guilt free time with family, guilt free time with friends, because we have like, you break it down. I guarantee you, we're still going to find hours for you. So how can we better use it? And then what's awesome is when I work with offices, I'm like, sweet.   You only working four days a week? Fantastic, let's go for it. Let me do 32 hours a week. Beautiful. And you know what's crazy is I usually can help them produce the same as they were producing in five days and four days and then they're able to get a whole day back in their world. Or they're like, I have nowhere I could ever put admin time in. And I'm like, sweet, challenge accepted. How much time do you want? Two hours a week, three hours a week? Great, I'm gonna block it on Wednesdays from eight to 12.   I'm taking four hours out and I'm gonna show you how we can build a schedule that will produce more than you're making right now and give you the four hours of admin time so you don't have to take this home with you. So we block schedule, we prioritize, we put things in place. You literally like, we eliminate gaps, we're proactive, we ⁓ maximize our time and our schedule, we have our morning huddles to align our teams, everybody chart preps, we look through what we need to have. We're all doing the pieces and we're maximizing our time that we already have. Front office team members, seriously like.   Don't insurance verify every single person like in order call Delta Dental and get all of them done and then all your MetLife's and all your Etna's so we're not spending time like wastefully and you can maximize this and I will tell you when doctors shift like this and teams shift like this, we're talking 10, 20, 30, 40, a hundred grand extra a month that we're able to squeeze in the juice with no extra time. Usually even less time. I don't want more hours. I don't want more work for teams. I want less work and more efficiency.   So that way you have guilt free time with family. You have guilt free time on vacations. You have fun being able to take off and not stress about it. So this is where it's like, let's maximize the hour. So the call to action on this is, I want you to audit your current schedule at work and figure out where are we losing production and time and how can we just like, literally I'm talking on one change. Kind of like with FedEx or with, I don't remember what airline it was, but FedEx drivers found out if they took right hand turns at stoplights in the US, they can actually cut down the hours and cut down the routes and actually get more time and.   more efficient packages delivered to all the people. That's the type of like small little shift that we're looking for. Just one little change and then look at it in your personal life. Are we scrolling in doomsday scrolling? Are we spending time? I don't know, audit your day, but it's wild when I'm like, I gave you so much time and there's still 50 hours in a day, like a week. What are you doing there? Like, Kiera, I go to church. Great, put it in there. Kiera, I do community service. Great, put it in there.   I'm not kidding. When you look at it, it's because we're not efficient with our time and we don't schedule our time. And I want you to have breaks in there where there's nothing time in there too. But what's wild is when you do this, you'll realize there's so much more time. And if you're effective and efficient with this, you'll see that you actually can get more done with less time, less energy, and be more happy and have that flow, that work-life balance just by maximizing the hours you already have. Next up, number two is protect your time like a CEO. I want you to be so rock solid on this because we have to have like CEO time.   So this is what I was talking about. You've got to protect your admin working CEO time like a boss. And you've got to actually do high productive work there. So for me, it's called Deep Work Time. It's by Cal Newport. You can read the book. I'm like absolutely non-negotiable. This is when I'm working on the business. And it's wild because I'm always like, there's so many screaming problems that come at you, but you have to say no. Discipline equals freedom here. You've got to stick to your cutoff time. I'm out the door at 5.30. Go, leave, be done.   We don't need to constantly run over because what we do is we teach ourselves that what we say of our boundaries or what we say of our commitments don't matter. Stop lying to yourself and start protecting your time. Start putting you first. Like if you say, I'm gonna be out at 530, be out at 530. If you say, I'm gonna go to dinner, go to dinner. If you say, I'm gonna work out, work out, but don't go lofty, go small. Start small, train yourself that you can trust yourself and then get bigger and better and better. And what's wild is when offices do this, when doctors like,   Truly, my most elite doctors do this. The ones that produce the most have the best family time. And I'm talking like, there's a doctor that I know. He told me, said, Kiera, we've done a lot. They own six practices. He's got like crazy amounts of success. They're going for it. ⁓ Tons of kids, amazing relationship with his spouse. And he said, Kiera, my year working with you was the most transformational, inspirational year of my entire life. And I take that as one of the biggest compliments because this person was so efficient and effective.   And yet we were able to find ways to fix their time, maximize their time, buy back their time, protect their time, make sure all the things that they want to do as a human and as a business owner, they were able to get there. This doctor is celebrating their first day out of the chair and being a true CEO. It didn't happen overnight, but these are things of like, you have better clarity, you're better as a business owner, you're better as a spouse, you're better as a mother, father, you have more time to work out for yourself, but it's like...   being very disciplined, this is the secret. People are like, Kiera, what's the secret? This is it. They protect their time and they act like the CEO that they are. And then number three is your team, empower them, help them to be like truly owning their role. So you've got to set up and have it to where there's clear roles and definitions of what each person does. They have their KPI and their number that they own and you train them to lead and come with solutions. I have a three solution rule. If you've got a problem, you've got to create at least three solutions for it, one of which can't cost money.   So that way they're coming with solutions, they're thinking of solutions. They're empowered so things don't come to me. ⁓ There's the book with the one minute manager, I think. ⁓ It's about the monkeys on your back. I think about this all the time. How many times do my team members come to me and put their monkey and their problem on my back? And I'm like, yeah, give it to me. I've got it. I'll just solve the problems because I'm Wonder Woman over here. But you told me you actually want to stress free. You want more work life balance, but you don't want to cut your production. We'll start empowering your team to actually be the team that they're meant to be. And team members rise up.   Rise up, solve the problems. This is for you. Like we have a culture of ownership. Ownership is one of our core values. And honestly, I shout that core value out so hard every single week on our core value shout outs because I want our team to know that that's one of the top things that I look for. Our team members that own their role, own their KPI, find the solutions. Because guess what? Then I'm able to do my job and my job as a CEO. Your job as a CEO. And I also want to be an amazing wife. I want to be an amazing sister. I want to be an amazing family member.   I wanna do all those things. I wanna show the best for myself. I wanna work out. I wanna be this amazingly fit, ripped, super energetic, 95 year old woman in my life with cotton candy, pink hair. Like that's the vision of Kiera in the future. What's your vision of the future and how do you do this? And what's wild about this is when you empower your team members, you give them clarity of what they need to do, team members now can focus on what they need to do and they can be more efficient in their time. Tiff and I talk all the time about how she's the efficiency queen and how like,   I hope she never dies before me. And if she does, it will say efficiency queen on her headstone because literally we're able to do so much more with less time because we have the team using it. So doctors before you even, and office managers before you even think about putting something in your calendar, ask yourself, am I really the best person who needs to do this task? Or can someone else do it just as good, if not better than I can and delegate it out.   I look at my calendar all the time and I'm like, that could go to Tiff, this could go to Britt, this could go to Shelbi, this could go to this person. Like all these people are better, more equipped and have the time to do it. And then they should do the same thing with their schedules as well. So when you have this, I want you all, every single team member to look at our schedules and see, is this something that a team member could own? Is this really who should be doing it? Are our lines clean? Do we have clear job descriptions, clear KPIs? This way it's not all happening for me. So when you look at this, you see the flow of number one, I'm using the time I already have.   Number two, I'm thinking like a CEO and I'm actually maximizing the hours working on the business. And then number three, I have a team that's fully capable. They're not dependent on me. You have, we broke down the math. guys, the math is there. What are you doing with your time? This is how you have guilt free fun. Like I want you to just think like eating like a big giant scoop of your favorite dessert or whatever your favorite thing is. You're, you're, you're indulgent. And I want you to think of that as your time. Like I'm just taking this big old scoop of like   delicious ice cream, no calories, guilt free of your lifetime, of the time that you get to have your life. Your life is all mixed up of so many pieces. You've got work, you've got family, you've got schedules, you've got appointments. This is how you have guilt free time. This is how you're able to have that flow. This is how you're able to have the balance or whatever it is for you. It's not passive, it's built. It's not passive, it's built. And you would honestly do this while growing your business.   while like all the different things that you're doing, you can have this. And this is something I'm obsessed about. We did this at our last mastermind and it was so fun for me to like show them like, what are we doing with our time and how can we better maximize, squeeze the juice out and have more guilt free fun time of whatever we want to do. This is how you have hobbies. This is how you expand as a human. This is how you read books for fun. This is how you get gardening or biking or surfing or whatever it is that you want. This is how you get more time with your family, more time for yourself is by actually doing these three things. So   You honestly became a practice owner for freedom. It's my hunch. You wanted to run the business how you wanted. You want to have things with the team. And so let's make sure that you're not fatigued out, that you're burnt out, but you actually get that freedom that you wanted when you built the practice. Like let's get you there. That's the ultimate goal. Let's help you see where you could like maximize your time. Let's help your team maximize their time because sometimes we don't even know what we could be doing better because we're just, this is all we know. So let's be smarter. Let's reach up.   Let's ask for the help and let's get the freedom and the fun and the joy that we know we're meant to have. So this is where we're at. This is where I want you to just realize like, where am I at? You're at a crossroad. Do you want to continue down the path you're going or do you want to get into that fast lane over there that you're sitting in bumper to bumper traffic and you're like, there actually is that magical, glorious, gold paid route. Like honestly, I hope our marketing team like, please marketing team make this Vividial.   Put it on social media. There is like literally I see like all the lines like we got like ten lines of traffic We're sitting there and then it's like ⁓ like the angels are singing over there Like are you gonna continue to sit in this bumper to bumper bag? Yep I'm gonna just keep doing it my way or are you going to venture over? Navigate through the traffic across ten lanes of traffic to get over to that magical Lane that can be yours the questions yours the forks in the road literally we're in a road like that was a great analogy unintended   The forks in the road, like you are here, you're at a pivotal spot, the door is open, you can choose to do it differently. Let's do it. You deserve it. Reach out, hello, at the W-H-U dot com or stay in bumper to bumper traffic. Both are fine. There's no judgment on either side. I just want to let you know that that magical lane is incredible. Life over there is happy. Life over there is not stressed. Life over there still does with issues, but life over there deals with issues in stride.   Life over there has a team that's able to run the practice whether you're there or not. Life over there empowers their leaders. Life over there allows you to have a life on your terms. Life over there allows you to show up for your family the way you want. Life over there allows you to work out the way you want. Life over there has you sleeping better. Life over there has you not stress out every single day of every single hour. Life over there truly is flying through traffic because there's another lane over there. And I hope you choose you and I hope you choose the easier path.   and reach out Hello@TheDentalATeam.com if we can help you, because I'd love to. And this is literally what we do is help you get into the fast lane, get into the easier path. It's not overnight. It's not a diet pill, but it is sustainable. It is long-term. And our job is to teach you to fish, to teach your practice to fish so you are forever self-sustaining. And hopefully you're like that client I told you that said your year with Dentalyteen is the most transformational year or years of your life.   and I would love you to be a part of it. So reach out Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. And as always, thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time on The Dental A Team podcast.  

Tiff and Kristy provide guidance on how to assess your practice's financial health as 2025 begins to wrap up (and what to start thinking about for 2026). They touch on… Reviewing those P&Ls monthly Aligning spending habits Keeping emotions in check And more! Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review The Dental A Team (00:01) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. I am so excited to be here with you today. I truly love this portion of what we get to do in our worlds and getting to get you so much valuable information out to the masses is something that Dental A Team has worked and strived just so hard to achieve in our.   consulting world of just getting you all this information and I have with me today one of my faves. I seriously, I have the most amazing consulting team and if you guys haven't heard from all of them yet, you soon will and if you don't know them personally yet, they're not your consultants. I hope that you get to meet every single one of us even if you're just coming to the events, however it is, but I...   have a personal favorite here for recording podcasts with. She calms me, she just keeps the energy light and fresh and I love any time that we get together. Kristy, thank you so much for being here today. How are you doing? The weather is like weird today. I always tell everybody about the Arizona weather and it's so much fun to have everybody here in the same place. We all live in Arizona in the Phoenix area. Jane is down in the Tucson area, but.   We really love it. And Kristy, how's your world over there? You're just in the beautiful little pocket of Phoenix. And how is it?   DAT Kristy (01:23) Yeah, it's awesome. I love that you say that because we do pride ourselves on the weather here, right? But even with that, this weekend we got a lot of rain, what they say the most in like seven years. Yet all of us, even as close as we are, we experience it so different, right? Like some places flooded. I didn't get flooding, thank goodness, but it downpoured. It was fun and it's made it for cool mornings. So we're taking it.   The Dental A Team (01:42) Yeah.   I agree. I agree that humidity is hitting us hard. So we're not super used to that, but it is making for some, some really beautiful mornings. totally agree. And yes, Britt and I were actually in Reno at our quarterly in-person traction event where we have a, implementer who comes in and leads it for us. And he helps us to build out the company structure and,   teaches and trains us on how to run large meetings like that. So it's always super cool. But we were up in Reno with Britt and or with Kiera Shelbi and Britt and I actually got stuck. Jenna got out. She got back to Denver, which is crazy because Denver always shuts down. And so she got back to Denver. But ⁓ we got stuck until Saturday because the airport was shut down. And then there was a storm in Vegas because we thought, OK, well, we'll fly to Vegas because it's only a five and a half hour drive from there and we'll still get home. And then ⁓   that flight got canceled too. So it was wild. was meant to be, got more time in Reno and got to spend a little bit more time with Kiera. So that was great, but it was kind of crazy. It's not usually Phoenix that disrupts the flight patterns. And it was a hundred percent Phoenix. There were so many flights canceled because so many planes were stuck here and other planes couldn't get in. So it was wild, Kristy. It was wild to watch it from afar. We just got like TikTok notifications and you know, news articles are like, my gosh, all the Waymo's stuck in the puddles and things like that. So.   DAT Kristy (03:15) Yeah,   they just stopped in the middle of the road like what the heck.   The Dental A Team (03:18) Yeah,   that's why whenever somebody says, you use the way most? I'm like, heck no, I have seen them stuck in the middle of intersections far too many times. I'm sure one day it's going to be fantastic, but I haven't built that trust muscle just yet.   DAT Kristy (03:30) Yeah, agree. Well, I'm glad you made it home safe. And ⁓ yeah, the humidity is odd for us too.   The Dental A Team (03:34) Thank you.   Yeah,   yeah, it totally is. And my son was like, Oh, you go to the East Coast enough, Mom, you're fine. Stop complaining. And I was like, Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. But but in the spirit of planning, we we truly had an amazing time really just one getting the time together as a leadership team and then to really looking and projecting like where are we at? What's Q4 going to look like? And then also kind of prepping and planning for 2026. So super relevant in this conversation here.   today and really looking at ⁓ practice health from a financial standpoint. And this is something that your CPAs and your financial advisors and all of those professionals should be looking at with you as well. This is the time of the year that we're really looking at what is this last year? Because we get to Q4 and it's like, well, it's kind of like the end of your senior year, right? You get to the end of your senior year of high school or college and you're like, well, everything's kind of basically submitted. So from here,   It's really just like, let's do our best and make sure that we really cross that finish line strong, but there's not a ton of pivots to be made to really change the game. So kind of prepping and planning. And I think looking ahead at 2026, putting in some really solid ways of checking in on that financial health, something that I've seen that, Kristy, I know you do this as well, but something I've seen a lot of clients really ramp up is a monthly pulse and even like,   weekly sometimes pulse on what the financials of a practice actually look like has really been beneficial in helping them to really reach those goals. And Kristy, you are really fantastic at figuring those financial goals out and then like backtracking them to see, okay, well, what do we need to do to get there? And how do you help practices really keep that financial pulse top of mind and that   running that way so that they're constantly looking at those numbers without feeling overwhelmed and also without losing sight of it. Because you know sometimes you do something too often, you start glazing over it. What's that fine balance that some some tactical tips that you have that you and your practices are working on right now?   DAT Kristy (05:52) Yeah, well, first and foremost, I believe that you have to be getting your P &Ls from your accountant monthly, right? We can't be waiting. I have seen some clients where they're begging for them for three months ago, you know, and it makes it really hard to stay on top of it if we're not getting them monthly. So first and foremost, make sure you're getting them from them monthly so that we can take a look at them and evaluate. And I like what you said, Tiff. ⁓   you can be, you can go over the top. It's a fine line, right? So I love looking at them every month and I'm not going to freak out if something's out of whack one month, but certainly let's look at the quarter, right? And make sure that those metrics are in alignment for the quarter. And to your point, I always like to speak in terms of like, we're going to crawl before we walk and we're going to walk before we run. Like,   In the crawling stage, let's just make sure where's your overhead, right? What percentage are we at there and what is our profit or EBITDA, so to speak, right? Where are we ranging there? That would be my first little steps to take and start looking at it.   The Dental A Team (07:10) Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. And I think what time of the month do you usually push for those PNLs to be received? I have my judgments, but what are yours?   DAT Kristy (07:21) like to say by the 15th. I'll give you a little grace and give you by the 20th, but the 15th is my ideal target.   The Dental A Team (07:28) Yeah, yeah. I think I'm a little stricter. If I don't have those CPAs reaching out to us by like the eighth to the 10th, I'm like, my gosh, how are we supposed to work with this? There's a lot of, and I ask that because there's a lot of clients out there that are getting them like the first week of the next, next month. And so maybe December, we're finally looking at October.   DAT Kristy (07:35) Thank   The Dental A Team (07:53) And that is like, gosh, such a lag that we've got these questions floating around of like, where's my cashflow TIF and how do I fix this, Kristy? And it's like, I don't know, because I don't have eyes on what's happening. The P &Ls should be much quicker and much cleaner than that. And realistically, it's just it's the bookkeeper going in and allocating the certain expenses to the category that they should be in. So it's time consuming.   but it shouldn't be too crazy. And if yours is too crazy, then we probably need to look at your spending. Do we need to dial back the number of orders that you're placing every month? Do we need to make sure that things are a little bit more simple on that side, that it can be done quicker? Because we wanna be able to make real-time adjustments as quickly as we can. If we're on a two-month lag.   then we're adjusting for two months ago, it could look totally different. And then next month we get two months ago and it's like, it was totally different. We didn't need to change it. And so we're just constantly spinning our wheels in that way if we're not getting the data fast enough. And that is, in my opinion, one of the easiest ways to ensure that you're financially healthy is really just ensuring, like you said, Kristy, that on an overtime basis, things are consistent and they're clear, that they make sense.   DAT Kristy (09:08) 100%. I like that you said push to the 10th, because obviously if, you know, in the walk or crawling stage, we're just learning, right? We have a little bit of buffer, but as we get to the top of our game, it should be more. And if everything is electronically done, it really is in there already. It's just a matter of organizing it, right?   The Dental A Team (09:30) Yeah, and I like to give myself the grace because I know or give them the grace. I typically know if we ask for it by the 10th, we're getting it by the 15th to the 20th. If I give them that leeway, they'll take it. And we know that's just how it works in that world. That's fine. We work with what we've got and figure it out. And I think it's a massive place to start, Kristy, is those P &Ls. And I think the P &Ls really outline   DAT Kristy (09:39) Thank   The Dental A Team (09:56) the financial health in so many different areas because it gives us insight to what is actually happening. Having those categories split out, we've talked about that a ton, we've done a ton of webinars on it and if you need help with that, reach out. We've got really simple sheets and documents that you can even send over to your bookkeepers and your CPAs that kind of outlines what we like it to look like so that it's simple to review.   But being able to see those over time is huge. I know I have a client that like one month was 48 % overhead and that's before Dr. Pay, that's before loans, right? And it's like, holy cow, we killed it. But then it's like, okay, but hold on, because the next month was 64%. So taking an average there because likely something got shifted, payments got posted, or I don't know, I've had some clients that's like, my gosh, I forgot to pay Henry Schein for two months. So then it's like that third month had this massive Henry Schein payment.   but over the quarter, it wasn't that bad. So making sure that we're looking at it month by month and over the quarter is huge. ⁓ Something that we've done, that we've ramped up ourselves and that we do ramp up with a lot of clients is really looking at our bank accounts constantly. And I know that Kiera and our financial team, they look at our bank accounts weekly on a weekly basis to make sure that everything makes sense, that things are.   where they're supposed to be that, you know, that we're not getting charged for things we shouldn't have been, et cetera, but then also that we're staying in alignment with the budget that we had set. And those budgets come from those P &Ls and those total numbers. Kristy, something I've realized recently in the recent years is while I was in practice, I would build our budgets for our spending. like our...   you know, five to 8 % for supplies or what have you or ortho budget, things like that. I would build it based off of our collections, air quotes on that word, and it would be our collections from Dendrix. I'd pull the collections for the last month. I'd build that budget based on the collections. And then Doc would be like, where's all the money? Like, well, I don't know, it should be there. But there's such caveats to what's been posted in Dendrix or your operating software.   compared to what's actually in QuickBooks, I found that I was running this like ragged race of trying to play catch up all the time with like even just the percentages for credit card fees and third party financing being taken out of our payments, just those simple tweaks make a massive difference. So building those budgets, Kristy, off of our actual P &L numbers, our actual QuickBooks collections has...   made a massive difference, I know, for a lot of my clients. How do you see that working for clients? And also, how do you see that working with a leadership team that maybe doesn't have access to or not looking at those P &Ls together? How do you suggest for financial stability and health in the practice, they really get that information down to the people that need it?   DAT Kristy (13:08) Yeah, absolutely. One of the things, ⁓ well, there's a couple things. We at Dental A Team keep scorecards for our clients and it could be as simple as adding that line in there and having the doctor put that dollar amount and having the budget calculate right there. Everybody can see it. They know what to spend. The other thing to that point Tiff is,   You know, a lot of times we look at the practice management, we see our collections, but how many times do we reconcile it with our QuickBooks? Like, really look at that and see. And obviously, just like you said, it could be a matter of when something was posted or when it came in, right, to the bank account. But I think that's an area that sometimes is overlooked. You know, there can be variance in there, obviously, for when things post, but...   what is that variance and how consistent are we having that variance? again, depending on which method you're using, if you're using the collections from your PMS or the collections that are posted in the P &L, we better be clear what that difference is and ⁓ account for it for sure. Right.   The Dental A Team (14:25) Totally agree.   And you actually reminded me just last week, I was in an office and I was like, what is happening here? I was going through their P and L and I'm like, okay, we've got, we've had some changes in the office. We've got some places that it was decreasing. Some places we spent more, some places we actively spent more on purpose. Like, but things just weren't adding up with what was coming through from the software. And I realized after an hour and a half of digging, I'm like, why is...   I put a line items, I updated the scorecard and I put a line item for like QuickBooks collections and then the PMS collections. And in comparison, I had it subtract and like tell me the difference in numbers. And there were months that were coming up $30,000 different that it looked like we collected $30,000 more in their software than what QuickBooks was showing us. Luckily, I know this office manager very well personally, like familiarly.   And I'm like, I know there's no conclusion to jump to here. Like something is not reporting correctly. And what I realized is they specifically use Dentrix. Dentrix will allocate any positive write-off or adjustment. if there's an adjustment that's adding money, it'll allocate it to production. If there's an adjustment that's removing money, it automatically adds it to collections.   So when you pull up the adjustment space in Dentrix, it'll show all positive production, all negative collections. So it was showing drastic differences. And so I was like, gosh, I totally forgot about this space in Dentrix that it does this. It's just, I call them the Dentrix-isms. It's just a Dentrix thing. It's very frustrating, but it just is what it is. So when I went through, I reallocated where the write-offs should be coming from. Now, caveat, messes up.   production collections for forever because it's now correcting it. So what you thought you had done, you didn't, and it fixes it. So the new numbers are more accurate, but you're going to be frustrated because it's different. But what it did when I did that and re-put in the collections numbers is that it brought that $30,000 difference down to a more manageable $1,200 to $3,000 difference, which is what we tend to see with the   care credit fees and all those different credit card processing fees, we typically see, I say like 5,000 or less, I'm not going to freak out about too much as long as it's inconsistent. I don't want to see consistency. I want to see really low numbers. And then again, sometimes some of that money is going to be pushed over to the next month. So quarterly, it made sense. Quarterly, it was beautiful. Month by month, it was a little wonky, but just making that   change because we were checking the financial health of the practice because things didn't feel like they were making sense. So we, the office manager and I pulled the full year's PNL and we did line item by line item comparison 2024 to 2025 percentage change on each space, went through and figured out where the spending was, went through and line itemed everything and then added it like you said to the scorecard to see those differences, massive.   massive improvements where the docs were feeling like cashflow was like, ⁓ we were freaking out. And it was like, well, these are the areas where you intentionally spent money and were actually only a 16 % difference overall year to year. And they were like, ⁓ so we didn't increase enough, but their spending was purposeful for taxes. We just didn't look that way yet on paper.   Regarding financial health of the practice, that was exactly what we did, but adding it, like you said, to the scorecard and looking at, I think the scorecard's just really cool because it allows you to see over time. Whereas a new sheet is I'm only dealing with today. So I'm only looking at today. I might look at it and say, oh my gosh, my employee percentage was 42%. That's real life, I've seen that in an office. It was 42 % this month, and you're like, cut hours. But over the quarter, it was,   30 % or 31%. We had a spike because we had a collections dip or whatever. So I think adding it where you're seeing that kind of comparison allows you to see what is the trend here or is this an abnormality? Does this level itself out? Am I on track for over time or do I need to jump and hot fire? And Kristy with that said, like, you think, as I'm saying that I'm thinking,   Is that a space where we could even tame our emotions around finances? Because we're seeing so much data in a bigger spectrum where we can see trends, uptrends or downtrends, rather than this like, my gosh, payroll was so high, I've got to tackle that. It's allowing us to see a broader picture. Do you think that helps reduce some of the emotional, like just quick fixes?   DAT Kristy (19:34) Absolutely. And we don't want to react, right? Many times we go to that mindset of cut, cut, cut. you, and you know, one of the things that I learned a long time ago is you can't focus on the opposite. So if we're focused on cutting, then we're not focused on producing, right? And so yeah, you're 100 % right, Tiff. I think it does calm the reactionary, right? It's good to know, notice, but then look at the bigger picture.   The Dental A Team (19:48) Yeah.   Mmm.   Yeah, gorgeous. As I was talking like, my gosh, Kristy, that's why you do so well with coaching in my opinion, because you are very, very good at being data and results driven, acknowledging the emotional aspect and not discrediting that by any means, but being able to focus back to what the drivers are and then being able to acknowledge and address any emotions that are still present. But you do well removing that because   we're looking at data and data is non-emotional. You can come up with something and there's been so many times where I could think of so many offhand where I've data-drivenly discussed something with a client and they're like, ⁓ and the emotion kind of disintegrates, it dissipates because it was attached to what they thought to be true. And when they saw the reality, there was no need for that emotion anymore.   DAT Kristy (20:59) Exactly. Well, and to be honest with you, it goes both ways, right? It's the same thing as if we're only looking at the practice numbers, sometimes they think they're doing very well or not doing well, either one. And then once we look at the overhead numbers, it's like, actually, you're here, you know? So ⁓ it goes hand in hand both ways. I always like to say, you know, if I had a pizza business and I was going to sell pizzas,   The Dental A Team (21:18) Yeah. Yeah.   I love that.   DAT Kristy (21:29) I need to break it down and figure out what it cost me to make the pizza, then I can go sell the pizza. But so many times we don't do that and we just put it out in front of us, right? And then on the back end of it, we do have to measure how many pizzas did we sell and how much did we actually spend. Sometimes we forget to go back and look at the cost too.   The Dental A Team (21:34) Yup.   Yeah, wow, that's a very good point. Very good point, which is where the P &Ls come in handy and the line items. And I think the P &Ls will group it and lump it into categories, but every now and again, maybe like once a quarter or so, really looking at what are they putting in those categories so that one, you're making sure they're still super accurate from the bookkeeper and two, that you're not like Amazon spending. There was a couple clients that I saw.   DAT Kristy (21:56) Mm-hmm.   The Dental A Team (22:19) I'm like, what is going on? Why is this category so jumpy? One month it's massive, another month it's not, and they get lumped into office supplies and front office supplies, and all of a sudden it's $3,000 when realistically budgeting-wise it should be $1,200. I'm like, what is in here? And they're like, Amazon goes in there. Every time we want something or Doc says something, we just press the order. And I was like, ⁓   Got it, we need some systems around Amazon or Walmart. I've seen like, I just run to Walmart and I grab what we need every week. And I'm like, my gosh, there's weekly ordering will hurt you every single time. Any kind of weekly ordering. If you can't budget the ordering in a monthly fashion or maybe twice a month, I'll give leniency on twice a month, then we need to talk. Cause that weekly ordering will hurt you every single time.   I think this is all really good, Kristy. I love this. I love this. And I go ahead.   DAT Kristy (23:16) Yeah. I was   to say, I agree with you. mean, we can liken it to our own space if we go to the grocery store with a list or without a list. What is our end result when we pay? You know, so I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm like for dental supplies, we can go to twice a month, but have it fixed and then make sure you're staying within the confines of the budget.   The Dental A Team (23:27) Yeah.   Yes, yeah, that's actually brilliant. Yeah.   Yeah, I agree. And I think that was that was a super great thought process there. Because if you're not planning even your dinners, right, I'll plan my dinners for the week. So then I know what ingredients I need and what ingredients if I know what ingredients I need for specific dinners, I know what I can reuse as well. Otherwise, I'm going to the grocery store just kind of getting random things that I think I can make into something. And I'm ending up at the grocery store a couple times a week to replenish or, you know, supply those missing pieces.   And so if you know what your schedule is, if you know on average how many crowns you're doing, how many fillings you're doing, how many implants you're doing, you can have an average guesstimate of how much of each supply you need to keep on hand, which is then going into your budget for your ordering. So that was beautiful. Yeah, good job. All right, guys, financial health is massive. And it's something that I think all of us, Kristy,   Trish, Monica, Dana, myself, we all just work really, really hard to ensure that it's top of mind for all of our clients. But if you're here listening and you're not yet a client of ours and you're a Dental A Team podcast listener for life, we love you and we wanna make sure you have this information too. please, by all means, somewhere around the 10th of the month, because we know it's probably gonna go longer, make sure you've got those panels in there. Talk to your bookkeeper. If you are the bookkeeper, I have a couple clients like that.   Put it your calendar, you guys. If you are your own bookkeeper, that's fine. I'm not gonna judge you. I think it is a task that you can easily pay for, but I'm not here for that. If you are your bookkeeper, put it in your calendar and you should have that sucker done by like the fifth or the eighth of the month because everything should be closed out. Review your PNLs monthly and quarterly and yearly. Review your spending habits constantly. I have a lot of practices that'll look weekly.   I have a lot of practices that'll look monthly, whichever works best for you. Just make sure you're reviewing those spending habits and then budget for your team. So your supplies ordering, your front office, those are the easiest places to budget. Make sure that you've got an ortho budget added in there. If you have ortho fees and ortho costs that are outside of like Invisalign, things like that. I have a lot of practices that do bracket style ortho and they need a lot of supplies that has to be separated out.   Those are your pieces, you guys. Those are the easiest ways that you can tackle real life, real life, in time, financial health. And we want you to go do that. Kristy, thank you so much for your insight. You truly do so well with your clients and we get to see their progress constantly and those needles are always moving. And I know that it's because you can take that black and white results driven perspective. So thank you for everything you do for your clients and everything that you bring to Dental A Team every day.   DAT Kristy (26:33) Thank you, it's fun.   The Dental A Team (26:35) I know,   I know, I love watching you do it. You really do love it. And it makes me really happy. All right, guys, that's a wrap for today. Go leave us a five star review. Let us know what was super helpful. Maybe there's some tips and tricks you've got that you can share with the world. I'm telling you, people really do go read those. So if you have things in there, they will see them. You can drop us an email, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. We'll be happy to get you over any documents that might help. We do have some.   budgeting information, we do have some overhead spreadsheets, things like that. If you need help with that, just reach out and we'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team podcast. Thanks guys!

A practice built with character is a practice made up of loyalty, positive culture, and long-term growth. Kiera provides listeners with a list of questions to ask that will set the tone for showing up as the best, truest version. She then gives specific takeaways to meet that ideal culture and stay consistent. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:01) Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera. And today, I hope you're having an amazing day. I hope you're having fun. I hope you remember that dentistry is honestly the greatest profession we could ever get to be a part of. So I hope you're just so excited. I hope you're loving your life. I hope you're happy. I hope that if you're not, that you're committing to make a change in the next week so that way you can be happy. My husband showed me this reel the other day that said, it was from like, I don't know, a Buddhist monk, I think. And he said that yesterday is dead.   Today is all we have and tomorrow is not born yet. And so don't wait for the happy life. You want the happy day. And I've thought about this so much because I think so many of us wait for happiness. We wait and we think, once I get this or once I do that or when I have the team or when my practice doesn't have this, then I'll be happy. Then I won't be stressed. And it's like, no, it's actually on the day. It's today. It's the decisions I'm making today. It's the pieces that I'm doing today and finding that happy.   And they said when you can have a happy day is when you have the happy life. I think when you can have the less like the more stress free day more consistently, it's when you have the more stress free life consistently. And so with that, just reminding you that it's okay. You don't have to do this alone. And I'm here for you and our team's here for you. And dentistry really is one of the greatest professions you could ever be a part of. So welcome. I hope that if you're new to the podcast, welcome. I'm Kiera. I love dentistry. I love helping people. love life.   And I love helping people get the life that they always dreamed of and making that a reality. Today, I wanna talk about ⁓ character. My dad and I were talking and my dad said, in the word character, there's the word act. And I had never picked up that the word character has act. ⁓ And I wanna talk about some leadership pieces today and culture pieces for your practice on building a practice with character and how people act. And...   I think character is something that you hire, yes, of like how people are naturally and who they are naturally, but also I think it's something that you do lead. ⁓ when we look at this, like when you have a practice of character of how people are acting, it does create loyalty, it does create culture, and it does create long-term growth. And so for everybody just going through that, ⁓ looking at that and seeing what is your character possibly? What is the character of your practice possibly?   And what things can we do to evolve your character to make it be a place of things that you want, of the loyalty, the culture, the long-term team. ⁓ And when I look at really awesome practices, the way people act and the character that that practice has is truly something embedded deep into the roots of that practice. going through that, ⁓ Dental A Team's goal is to help offices build to scale, to have the life that they want, ⁓ but to do it in a way that's meaningful.   that it's fulfilling, that it has purpose for you. And so ⁓ this is truly trying to help build a culture for team members to stay, for patients to be raving and for leaders to truly be proud of the practice that they built. So character with this act, like step one, if you want, like we'll just kind of go into this whole process is like how you act when it's hard. ⁓ And I think when I look at teams,   Culture is something that's like not built during easy times, it's revealed during the hard ones. When our production's not hit, when the cash flow's not there, when like all the things are pushing upon you, how do you act? Do you respond with conflict with consistency, clarity and compassion? Do you admit mistakes as a leader? Do you prioritize long-term trust over short-term comfort? Like how is your character in those hard times? And for you as a doctor, and there's the book, Extreme Ownership by Jacque Willings, and I think about this so much of   Like, okay, what is my culture of my company? But what is the culture of me? Because my team ultimately is a reflection of me and how do I act? In high school, I was nominated as most poised and I thought that was such a weird phrase for me to get like most poised. But I actually think about that a lot and like when things are hard, do I lose my temper? Do I yell? Do I shout? How do I act? For me, I almost think like I have the tiger like queen strength. Like what if I was the queen of this   I don't know, like kingdom, my business. Who do I need to show up as? And that character, like really looking to see how do you act. And it's crazy because when you look at a team and you want a team to be a certain way, you got to look at the leaders and how are they showing up? How are they acting? And when my dad talked about this character, it's all about how you act. It's how you act in the hard times, how you act in the good times, how you act when no one's watching. It's how you act when people are watching. And what is your ultimate character in your practice? And so, ⁓   When doctors start to have consistency, clarity, and compassion, when you say like, kind is clear, ⁓ when you're more clear, when you admit mistakes and you have humility, but in addition to that, you also are focusing on making sure that I don't just admit the mistake, but I find the solution to the mistake so it doesn't happen again. ⁓ When we're doing long-term, we have uncomfortable conversations and we're building trust over short-term solutions. Like I'm not just saying things.   And who I was at a leader at the beginning of the NLA team compared to who I am today, she's a much more mature grownup version of herself. ⁓ And it came through a lot of these hard conversations. It came through a lot of these hard awarenesses. It came from asking people, but also asking myself, did I show up as the person that I want to be and the leader that my team needs me to be? And if not, what do I need to do to change that? And so   Thinking about that, that's the culture you're building. And as much as I don't want to be like a rip on leaders, leaders are the mold. Like how you, what you do and don't do is a subconscious theme that runs through your practice. And so I think when people feel like they have no hope and they have no way of changing things and there, there is no solution. The answer is like, there actually is a solution. There actually is a process and a path out. It just sometimes is starting with you.   and not sometimes starting with you, it's always starting with you. And so if you can focus on building that and the culture you're building constantly, that's going to help and that's gonna lead into the next phase and that's gonna be through core values. And core values, I used to think were so laissez-faire. I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, core values. But ⁓ really it's hard to hire the character you want. It's hard to continue to create it if you don't even know.   what it looks like in your practice. so core values kind of give this like framework. call them like, to me, they're like a cookie cutter is how I envision it. Like here's the cookie cutter, not like that we're a cookie cutter practice, but it's the shape. So a cookie cutter shapes the dough into what they want it to be. And core value shape the practice into what we want it to be and helps us have this, I would say filter of who we're hiring for. And so it's, what are the three to five core values that define your team and how you work? Now owners,   Go back to when you first started your practice and what were the three core things that really made your practice what you want it to be? For me, it was always do the right thing, fun and ease. Like from day one, those were the pieces. Those are our core. And if you look at it, it's do the right thing for the company and the practice. We like to have a ton of fun when we're doing it. I I love sprinkles. I love to the sparkles. I love to add the glitter. I love to add the fun. I love to surprise and delight. And then it's to do everything with ease. How can I make this easier for a practice? I don't want things to be hard for an office.   But like that's truly the core of when I started a Dental A team. Now we've evolved into who we want people to be on our team. We have other people, pieces of ownership. We have pieces of passion for excellence and results focused. We have pieces of grit. And so there's other core values that have come and there's core and then there's aspirational. ⁓ But I want to make sure that the people we're hiring and filtering through have that character in them already. I don't want to try to develop that in them. I want to expand it once they're a part of our company.   but I don't want to try and convince somebody to have grit. Like grit's a core portion of you. So what that does is once we figure out what our core of our company is, then we have those in our hiring, we have those in our reviews, we have those in our meetings and decision-making. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to the core values when I've been looking at team members and I look to see rating this person on our core values, how do they fit? And a lot of times the people that are not elevating our team are the ones who usually are getting lower scores on the core values.   And it becomes very crystal clear for me. And so what we do is we hire. So when you're having this, you hire based on core values. You filter your company right now based on your core values. And again, this is the code of conduct of how we act. This is the character, the culture that I want to have in my practice. And when you start to bring people in like this, when I start to have people who naturally do the right thing, naturally look for ease, naturally have passion for excellence and results focus, naturally have grit, and they've got life experiences to teach me about that.   They fit into our company. And when I started to really like, I'm not talking service level, but dig into this and to have the character and the culture and the company, this is when team alignment flourishes. You get reviews, things feel easy. Like there's this mystical flow of businesses that I always thought was so impossible to get. And I found out that actually it's real. And so when you have it, you start to build this culture.   And so what I say for you is write down your values. do assess ours. get our core values get assessed every single quarter. We define them. We have them there. The team works on them every single Wednesday. We have core value shout out every single Wednesday in the company. We have them on their monthly one-on-ones. We have them in their reviews and we review them every quarter to make sure these truly are the guiding core values of our company. I have changed them multiple times throughout ownership ⁓ because it's about the character and the culture of how we act.   And then this is something that goes up on the wall. So for you guys in your offices, have your core values everywhere. We review them every single quarter. The team knows them, but they're part of the core of who you are and what you guys act and believe in. And the number three is like having a culture of accountability and grace. so that's balancing. Like I found leadership as a balance of high expectations and genuine care. And I actually think Britt on our team does such a great job of this, of like, these are the expectations. These are the standards. This is our culture.   but there's also like a care of you as a human and being fair to you and ⁓ having that. it's like, and Britt is so good at clear expectations and follow through consistently where we don't just say this is how we act and this is what we do. And then that's kind of like tossed in the back corner and how we truly act, that's your true character. So it's one of those things like we don't want our core values and our company to be aspirational. We want it to be accurate. And so,   Use feedback as a tool and not punishment. I used to be really, really bad at this. This is a zone that is like a huge growth for me of giving honest feedback. And I remember I had a team member tell me once like, Kiera, you don't always have to tell me I'm doing a great job. If I'm not doing a great job, I want you to tell me and give me that feedback so I can get better. so it's having a culture of how we act, if we give feedback and we have honest feedback, we don't shy away from those uncomfortable conversations, but we do them with grace and true, genuine care.   And then I think about my husband in their hospital and they have a culture where it's a no fault culture. And what they want is they want people to bring their mistakes to the table with the solutions. That way they can continually fix and improve the culture there and improve the protocols. And working in a hospital, think that's so important because at the end of the day, we don't want patients to die. And so if people do make mistakes, which are going to happen, they're celebrating those. They're celebrating the wins and they're...   just as often as we're correcting and fixing mistakes. But we're doing it in a way where that's our culture. So it's these high expectations with this genuine care. And when I found that leaders actually have these feedback loops, when they give them on their one-on-ones, when they tell them true feedback or there's true ownership within an organization, your morale improves, the passive aggressive nature diminishes, ⁓ people feel less egg shelly. There's a culture of trust. There's a...   There's a culture of ⁓ being around people that you enjoy being around because you're not scared of what are people saying about you. But when this doesn't happen, people walk on eggshells and it's artificial harmony. And I think artificial harmony is one of the best ways to describe it. And so looking at your practice to see, do we have feedback? Do we have artificial harmony? ⁓ And don't lie to yourself. Don't make it worse than it is and don't make it better than it is, but make it realistic up to what it is.   because this is something where if we don't have feedback and we're not having one-on-ones and we're not able to have like open to where I'm giving feedback on a consistent basis rather than just when you're in trouble or when you've done something wrong, I'm doing it when you're doing something right, I'm doing it when we're doing something wrong, all of that's gonna be super important for us. And so looking at that to see where is the true character and culture of my company. And so when I look at this, it's like characters in hard times, core values are part of the core.   and then we have accountability with grace. Like that's the formula. Like who are we, what's our culture, what's our character, what are our core values? And then how do we have accountability with grace and love? And I think when practices really take this on, you're able, and like owners especially, that's gonna trickle down to the rest of your team. It's gonna trickle down to every other person in your practice. So for this, this is how you build a legacy practice. This is how you build.   a culture that can withstand the growth and the bumps and the hard times and the great times. It's the one where you know these people are gonna be with you for a long time. And so this is where it starts with character, not just KPIs. Like both are important, but having a practice of character of how we act and really thinking of how do we really act on the hard times, on the good times, on the bad times, on the rocky times? What are our core values? And then what's our accountability and check-in and feedback? When you get those pieces in play,   It's magic. It's incredible. And it's not overnight. These things don't happen overnight, but they are incredible for you. So I would just say like, this is leadership. This is leadership 101 for you. This is how you build it. And hopefully just giving you another perspective and some ideas of how you can improve the culture and the character of your practice with ease. If we can help in any way, we want to help you build a practice that stands out because of who you are, to where you get people coming to your practice because of the raving reviews in the community.   of the culture of the reputation and so building that for you and you might not be there today, but that's okay. We can get you there as long as you're willing to put in the work you're willing to change and you're willing to evolve. And that's something I'm obsessed with. So let us help you reach out and ⁓ you can reach out at Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. can go to our website, click on a book, a call, let's talk about it. It's okay. It's a no judgment zone. It's just there with true love, with true solutions to help you.   This is what we're obsessed with. This is what we do. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.

Office autopsy time! Kiera and Dana review a "practice" that went from broke to success in a handful of months, and how tracking their numbers saved them. Every single office will go through a cash flow crunch at least once, so it's important to understand the right flotation devices to utilize. This could mean pulling overhead apart, identifying production and collections percentages, analyzing fixed costs, and more. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and today is a special day. I have the one and only Dana Morsell on the podcast today. And prior to this, asked her, she's gone through a few nicknames and Dana, believe it or not, I was actually thinking about this last night. No joke. I was thinking like, there's Spiffy Tiffy and there's no BS Britt. And I was like, Dana, you've been with me for a long time. Like, why have I not gotten like a good nickname for you? And like, Britty Gritty. And I was like, okay, I just like throw wise on the end of these names like Tiffy, that is their TT DM does not sound quite right. Like that's like DMing on Instagram. And so I thought like, it's just Dainey. And now you told me I to do it with a Southern draw. So it's going to be like Dainey on the far. So well. Dana (00:44) Yep, it has to have it. I feel like it reminds me so much of my dad and like it just has to have that. Kiera Dent (00:51) Well, it's my dad. grew up on a dairy farm for all the listeners. Don't worry. We have like a really good podcast today. It's an office autopsy that Dana has taken these three incredible practices, like one owner, like they went from just stress and chaos and burnout to complete an absolute just like freedom, which and Dana has done it so quickly. So we're going to get there. I'm just going to tell you about this dairy farm real fast. ⁓ my dad grew up on a dairy farm and he used to say his mom would always like, Ricky, like that's how he would call him. imagine myself on this like beautiful estate and like sweeping my porch and having this like big white porch out there. And I'm like, Dainey! So that's how I envisioned this so, you know, that's that's the vision over here So whether you like it or not, otherwise we can go back to donuts with Dana. What do you prefer? Dana (01:38) ⁓ I actually love you standing on your white porch shouting that, so we'll take it. Kiera Dent (01:41) I think it just fits and if you haven't heard other podcasts, if you haven't been with us as long, Dana has the most random stories like running her bicycle into a deer. She has so many animals. She's got kids like Dana will always come to the table with the most random stories and she whoops everybody on trivia. We play games in our company and it's always like team trivia. Dana will whoop them. So, you know, here we go Dana. Welcome to the podcast. How are you over there Dana? Special Dana? Dana (02:09) doing pretty good. Yeah, doing pretty good. think all of my wild stories and my trivia comes from like, I don't know, I just have this like weird memory thing where I can like memorize things very quickly. Even like applying for a car loan, they're always shocked that I know all of my account numbers, all of my balances down to the penny, like just off the top of my head. And so I think that that's kind of where some of that comes from. Kiera Dent (02:28) No. I didn't even know that about you. So that's also a really interesting thing to note. All right, so Dana will remember, mean, is this okay? Is it something where you can remember numbers like past past? Or is it like your banking out is just current right now, but you couldn't remember like a month ago. Dana (02:47) No, so it is past-past, but it's because I don't know, my brain does this weird, like I make a riddle out of everything and I'm constantly like, okay, well, if I run and remember something, like if it's, you know, two, three, six, I'm like, well, two times three is six. And like, I just, I don't know, create like weird connections, especially with numbers in my brain and like riddle it so that I remember it. Kiera Dent (03:07) Fascinating. Fascinating. Okay. Well, there's another random fact about Dana. So Dana is one of my absolute fave humans in the entire world. Dana, truly, I say that on the podcast and I genuinely mean it. And we have talked about it on show, off show. Dana is just a super incredible human and offices who get to work with her are so lucky. So we thought it'd be fun. Office autopsy time. If you're new to the podcast, this is where we kind of go behind the scenes. ⁓ We mash up a few practices. just so you know, you'll never really fully know exactly who it is just to keep a client patient confidentiality. But we want to highlight of things that we do in real life, because I think consulting can be kind of hard. Like what do you actually do and what are the results you actually get? And so Dana just had some really solid wins with some practices. And I thought, Dana, let's get on the podcast and do our office autopsy, where we lift up the hood and we look behind the scenes. And what were some of the things you as a consultant did for this practice? What are some of the wins and gains that they've had? ⁓ that I think will just be fun. So Dana, let's take it away. ⁓ kind of like, where did this practice start? What have we implemented and where are they now? Maybe even tell them like where they started, where they got to. And then we'll talk about the how, because that's really fun. I don't like to wait for the like end result. I want to know quickly like, okay, they were like dying, drowning, broke, and then they got like hundreds of dollars and they got it in like a month. How did they do it? So take us away. Where were they? Where did they get to? And then let's go into the house. Dana (04:30) Yeah, and I think that this practice is just a really cool example of like the importance of knowing your numbers, especially when you have multiple practices and knowing what each practice is bringing to the table and having really clear separated numbers for those things. And so it was just really fun and I think a cool way to highlight how when you know those things, then you can fix systems that are broken or aren't working to see massive progress. So when this office came, they were at a negative profit. ⁓ each month and Kiera Dent (05:03) We're talking like they're losing money, losing sleep, stressed out of their minds. Dana (05:04) Yeah, yes. So stressed, they're pulling personal, you know, they're pulling boatloads of personal cash every month to cover expenses to keep these practices open. ⁓ You know, doctor is going from office to office. And it's truly, truly really stressful time and they don't really know where the leaks are coming from. And they can't put their finger on what's going on that's causing it. And yeah, stressed out to the max and just really, really wanting help and wanting to kind of pinpoint and give them a clear picture of why they are so stressed and why these practices that feel as if they're booming or are starting to get busy aren't profitable at that point. Kiera Dent (05:35) This And I think this is so common for so many practices, which is why we were talking morning huddle. We share all of our client wins every single day. You guys, we have a morning huddle. It's very fun. We talk about team wins, client wins. And when Dana talked about this, I'm like, Dana, we're podcasting. Like, can you get on the podcast with me? I think this is such a big win because it, yes, it's, it's quote unquote one practice that we've kind of mashed a few of them, but this is like every single office. And so many of them don't realize what's going on with my profit numbers. They feel like it's booming. but they have no money left over and then they're stressed to the max and they're countless hours. And this isn't just a brand new practice. Like this is a business owner who'd been in business for a long time. Like it's almost that I should with air quotes know what I'm doing, but I just don't know where it is. And Dana, I'm so proud of you for saying like they need to know their numbers. We harp on this like crazy because when you actually can dig in, which I'm excited for you to kind of do like the grand reveal and then the how, but I mean, how many practices, Dana, this is, I hope people realize one, practices all go through this. So this is not just a siloed to one or two practices. This is every office at some point is going to go through cashflow crunches, stressed out, working all hours and not being able to pinpoint. And just because you're profitable today does not mean you're forever going to be profitable. It is something you have to constantly work at, constantly be vigilant on. And it's not just like, set it, forget it, we're on our way. And so I think for that, but also I think so many people because they don't know what to do. they spin their wills that creates this cycle of death in my opinion. Like you truly are spinning, you're burning the candle at all ends. I remember when I met, cause I'm, I talked to this office when they were joining our company and I'm like, my gosh, like I can't want this more than they want it. Like they have to make the decision to join us, but my gosh, I see your problem. see your pain and we have got to fix that like an ASAP and get CPR because the owner was just running frantic and it was impacting family life and financials. And to me, you worked so hard that you should not be living that life this far into business ownership, whatever stage you're in. So I'm ready for the grand reveal. I hope people just realize this is not siloed and it's not something that's permanent. And it's also once you become profitable, that's also not permanent too. No season is permanent, but we want profitability to be more permanent because you're vigilant on it. Dana (08:07) Yeah, yeah. And you know, after looking at things, developing systems really honing in on their numbers and kind of what they were telling us, we were able to get them to be on track to hit 16 % profit in August. So going from negative profit to actually having a decent amount of profit sitting there, and they're producing in one less office now too. So. Kiera Dent (08:30) Okay. So breaking this down, how many months are we talking? Is this like five months, 10 months, 12 months? How long of a timeline did we go for? Five months. Okay. Again, why I wanted Dana to come on because consulting is not an overnight diet pill. It's not something that we can just inject and say, here you go. Like you're on your way. It is something. And also I want you to realize that any person listening, getting to negative profit also did not usually happen overnight. Now buying a practice, you might be a little bit negative. So there is a space where that can be negative. but this was someone who was running multiple offices and Dana kudos in five months, you got them from negative cash. We're talking like broke. There's no money to a 16 % profit. So there is, and we're talking, we're in the multimillions. So you can just do some math that even on 1,000,000 10 % profit is a hundred grand. Okay. You add 16 % that's 160,000 of profit. Now you can do the math for your own practice of a 16 % profit. and that was done in five months. So can you just imagine this practice going from like, my gosh, I'm broke to having this much slush on the other hand, and you got one less practice. There was multiple practices. You got rid of a practice, which there's strategy behind. Do we keep it not? What do we do there? And this doctor I guarantee you is having way more time, less stress as well. So the numbers, the money is always what people want to hear. Every time I talk to people on like... sales calls, wondering about working with us. Like what's your ROI, Kiera? How are we going to like make sure we pay for this? And I'm like, well, the numbers will be there. But what I actually care more about is the life you're living. Yes, I'm going to always cover numbers. Like that's the result. People need to have that. But I think the piece that people don't realize and why you're usually reaching out is you're looking for life of no stress. You're looking for your problems to actually get resolved. And Dana, that gift in five months, like, and that's fast. That's a fast turn. Not all practices are this quick. so I'm really curious, what did you guys do? How did you get that turn? I'm really proud of you. That's why I wanted you on the podcast to highlight dynamite Dana. mean, this one feels a little bit more like Dainey on the white porch. get, but dynamite Dana, being able to get those results in five months. That's impressive. Like that is dynamite to be able to do. So walk us through what were some of the pieces of how did we do this? What did we do? Five months is not, it might feel long to people, but when in the grand scheme of things, that's not even half a year to go from net negative. to positive 16%. Dana (10:48) Yeah. And I think sometimes too, it just helps to translate. Like what that looks like is we really cut expenses, right? Some of the expenses and they on average are collecting about 35,000 more per month too. Kiera Dent (11:01) Nice. Dana (11:02) ⁓ So it really came down to first step was getting them to understand which of the offices were profitable if any of them and you know what each individual office looked like. So we basically did an office autopsy. We pulled apart overhead. We pulled apart fixed costs for every office. We pulled apart their percentages of production and collections over the last year and really created a very clear picture of how each practice was doing as well as then moving forward what numbers do we need to hit in each practice to hit various profit points. Kiera Dent (11:40) Awesome. So breaking this down, I think when people have multi-practices, this is a huge problem that offices do is they bundle it all together and they have no idea where the true cashflow week is. And what I found is in multi-practice ownership, usually it's one practice that is the bleeding child and all the rest of them are doing well, but you don't know that. And so I did this, I had multiple businesses, I had all lumped into one and I didn't know, you have no idea where to fix things, where to move levers. what needs to happen. And so what we do is we do this like buckshot approach where we try to do everything for all of them, but don't actually know when we can pinpoint. So we're working hard or not smarter on that. So I love that you broke it apart. So basically you got to have separate tax IDs for each practice. I know that seems annoying. It's also annoying to break it down for your insurance companies, but choose your heart. Would you rather know where you are profitable or where you're not? The answer is hard pass. Yes. Like we absolutely want that. And so from there, then you looked at how much it's costing each practice. And this is so fascinating to me and people are like, but Kiera, Dana, like people travel with me to all the offices and I'm like, fantastic. You have to actually put that salary, that amount for that practice. So we know, and what's wild is that team member technically is working for three different companies. Technically they are, when you break it down this way. So technically they could work 40 hours at each location. That's technically okay. Talk with your, like, we are not CPAs. We're not financial advisors, but you have to look at this. They're separate tax IDs. used to do this at multi practices. So pending upon how it structured. not to say to work your employees 120 hours a week. That's not what I'm saying. What I am saying though is if you've got a regional, you've got dental assistants that are going with you, they need to be clocking in at one location, clocking out, clocking in the next location, clocking out. And if you're paying them like gas or whatever in between, they need to actually be allocated to each practice individually so you can see actual costs per practice per business. This is how you run multi-businesses. You like think about it. If I have a dental practice and I have a coaching business and I have my real estate, they're like, all the money technically comes to you as a person, but you have to have those separated to see which business is doing well. And when you can look at all three of your practices as separate businesses under one roof of your own, this then helps you. Like you said, Dana, you laser focus and you pinpointed. So I'm very curious when you did this and you broke it apart, what did you find on expenses? Like how, like was one like just so expensive? I imagine it probably was just like cashflow negative. Like it was just gobbling all the money and the other ones were probably doing fine. Dana (14:05) Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's it. Pretty much exactly what we found ⁓ and in breaking down all of those things then secondary to that just like you were saying with with team members We had team members doing various roles depending on which practice they were in and so there was just a lot to really clean up clarify and streamline per practice ⁓ outside of even just expenses and knowing financially where the practice stood. So that was our second journey kind of after we figured out the finances and you know once they had a reality of each practice then it was really easy I think to hone in on what systems we had to work on and make some tough decisions too. Kiera Dent (14:48) And when you said that, I was just thinking it also creates clarity for team members too. I know you've also been helping like with the regional manager and like what system should be in place. So mind you, yes, we're working on profit, but then we're also putting all these systems into play looking at all of them. But I will tell you when I had team members traveling to multi offices, that's hard on teams too. They have no clue. They don't have clarity. So they're just kind of like running with you. So everybody's running at full steam, but actually not making progress. I want you just to imagine like you are literally spinning your wheels. So it sounds like you're making progress. but the distance you're going is so minimal versus we want less sound, AKA less chaos and way more forward momentum. And so really love that you were able to do that and dial it in, figure it out. Now, how did the conversation go to sell a practice? Cause I mean, five months and selling a practice, like what did that even look like? How do you even have that conversation? How did this practice execute that quickly? Cause I'm actually really proud of them on that too. Dana (15:42) Yeah. So honestly and truly when we review the numbers, I think the conversation just naturally happened because you could clearly see, you know, that they're ultimately either we need to pump in a fair amount in team expenses, marketing and things like that to get the practice to where it needed to be or ultimately make the other decision. so I think just reviewing the numbers, the conversation naturally came up because it was a glaring, you know, kind of red light. ⁓ and honestly and truly it just was kind of a luck of knew someone in the area that was looking for a multi-practice venture and like just having a network and connections that it worked out so quickly and honestly it finalized within 60 days so it was a very very quick but it just you know happened to be that it was a very strong network ⁓ and made a local connection Kiera Dent (16:13) Mm-hmm. incredible. Yeah, which is also incredible to like have good connections and people often say, think it's, think kudos to this office that you worked with of they were willing to execute and take action quickly and not sit here and give excuses and say, my gosh, there's no one that will ever be there. It was great. see the bleed. And what I love when you talk about numbers, and this is why I think we're so passionate in Dental A Team like numbers, numbers, numbers. Like I harp on this day to know that I am like, ladies, what are the numbers telling us? Look at the numbers that's going to tell you. where you need to go and what you need to get. And like it's literally the treasure map to what needs to happen. But sometimes we're so in the weeds. I do it too. This is why I have coaches for Dental A Team. I'm so in the weeds and I need to get somebody outside of that. But looking at this, there are decisions now to be made. And I think numbers create clarity. So this practice could have like another scenario if we want to choose our own adventure, there are offices that see this practice is bleeding money. So then what do we do? How can we stop the bleed? Let's look at our costs. Let's look to see where we're producing. And sometimes it's a slow grow. So we're only gonna open up one day, but we're gonna open up on Monday, be closed Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. The next week we're gonna be open Tuesday. The next week we're gonna be open Wednesday, next week Thursday, next week Friday. So we can say we're open five days a week, but we're not putting the cost in five days a week. So we're strategic on doing this. We can also have it to where we don't have to staff it as high. So if we know we've got doctors in there that can produce. bring them in for hygiene, if there's dentistry to be done, do the dentistry, move hygiene over to a Friday where a lot of hygienists are off. You can get a part-time hygienist that can come in as that Friday hygienist. You can stack a whole hygiene schedule so we're not paying a hygienist to be on staff every day. ⁓ There are ways that they can do it. They could bring on an associate. They could look at, like you said, the marketing costs, but when you look at the numbers, numbers give so much clarity and then you can make decisions. And then the decision's pretty simple of, Do we need money right now? This practice was needing money. They needed to have the bleed stop. They needed to become profitable. And for them time and profit was more important, it sounds like, than growing and expanding. For other people, like, no, we need to grow and expand. So we're to pump money over here. We're going to grow this, but we now know a more strategic path. So I just want you to know, like, you don't have to sell. But I think being realistic, I remember listening in ⁓ early on in my career and it said, like, sometimes knowing when to close a business. is actually one of the smartest things that a CEO can do. And I remember I listened to that. were doing Dental A Team, tip or no, a Spiffy Tiffy back to dental placement pros days when we used to do recruiting. I should have stayed in that business Dana, like man recruit. I was starting at, I think I charged, I think a thousand, maybe 3000 max to hire and place an associate doctors. should have like hired me. Like I was a hot cake. Like I was so, I mean, now it's like 15 to 50,000 bucks. Like man, but Dana (19:19) Yeah. Kiera Dent (19:26) I remember listening to that podcast and dental place and pros was taking so much time and was so unprofitable. like we had higher and then people would wait the like 90 days and on day 89 they'd like we're terminating them. I was like, my gosh, I gotta go higher again. That business was consuming so much time, energy and effort when it wasn't the one that was going to, it wasn't my passion. It just was out of necessity. Dental A team was my passion by far. And I remember like it, as a business owner is actually really hard to admit that a business is failing. I'm not going to lie. Like I remember driving. I remember exactly where it was. It was like a snowy day. It was very overcast. And I just like had to have that hard, honest conversation with myself of you need to close dental placement pros and you need to put all your focus on Dental A Team. That's actually the, like the practice, if you will, the business that makes me excited. Um, and I think swallowing ego, I think looking and learning what I did wrong in that business. Today, I do that way differently. I'd run it so much differently. It'd be completely separate. I wouldn't be pulling my employees. There were just so many things I did wrong. But I think having the humility and knowing when it's time to close something down versus open something up, I think sometimes it can feel really sexy and exciting to grow. But if we're just growing for the sake of growth, but we're not getting the time and profit that's truly our driver, I think those are great questions to ponder when we're looking at this. So those are kind of my thoughts. Any other thoughts you have? It's such an amazing. Dana (20:45) And then. Kiera Dent (20:48) like transformation story. Dana (20:49) Yeah, and it's been really fun. you know, you're absolutely right. And we spent a lot of time on our calls kind of choosing our own adventure. What would it look like if you know, what's been our average marketing budget? And and and if we spent more and we had this book, what would that timeline look like to get it to what is the active number of patients we need to make it profitable? We did say, okay, if we pull and we add days, what does that pull from the profitable practice if we move the doctor, you know, to the other practice, we talked about expenses for an associate and what we felt like they could produce as we added a certain amount of new patients each month. And so it's been also fun for me as a consultant to kind of do that choose your own adventure with them and honestly and truly just give them the numbers and give them the timelines that then they can really, really make a decision that I feel like they were super confident in because they had all of that information and kind of made the decision I feel like eyes wide open. Kiera Dent (21:48) Yeah, and I think as consultants, this is what drives us. This is our passion to help practices and owners be empowered to make decisions that they want, not ones that they have to make. And so it's a, you're not forced into a decision. You made it with eyes wide open. You had all the numbers. You had all the facts you knew. You knew the pros and cons. And like you said, it is a choose your own adventure. And I think when we can take the, I don't know, it's almost like the stress, the heaviness of business. and turn it into a light, fun game. like, yeah, pretend we're reading a book and your book is your business. And it's like, I could do this way and end up at this chapter. I could go this way and end up at this chapter. Both endings are great. Both endings are your story. Both are filled with highs and lows and all the way around. But I agree with you, Dana. I think it's a beautiful thing to be able to empower our clients, to help them see, to get them out of the death spike, like, sirel downward and help them actually come to like a space of I don't know. It's almost like what you, took this. I feel like the way this office probably felt is they were walking in a heavy, dark cloud, like head down, hunkered down, staring at the ground and just trying to figure out how to get there. And you took them into this like beautiful new neighborhood. It's bright. It's cheery. The birds are singing. They're skipping along there with their family. Like they are living their best life. And that was done in five months. And so just really an incredible thing for us to look at. And so I think for you listening, like, where are you at? Maybe you're on cashflow row. Maybe you're on growth row. Maybe you are on trying to figure out your next adventure. But I don't think this practice even knew that this is their choose your own adventure. think Dana, you are able to be that guiding light shining for them, helping them see, peel apart under all the pieces. And I think really giving them the guidance that they need. So any last thoughts you've got on the choose your own adventure, going from negative to 16 % profit in five months, dang, that's a title and something you should be proud of. Dana (23:41) Yeah, this is definitely an office that I'm super proud of. ⁓ And you're right. These are the things that I think we live for. We love, we hope we see, you know, and we want to see for every client that comes our way. ⁓ And I think it just shows possibilities. And when you really hone in and you are able to make decisions with ease and clarity, it just massively, massively changes your stress level and just your entire life. Kiera Dent (24:11) Yeah, we say is life and business on purpose. so Dana, just love, love, I mean, Dynamite Dana, might stick girl. That is a dynamite story and really freaking proud of you and proud of the client too. Proud of them showing up. It takes grit, it takes humility, it takes courage. And I think just if you're sitting in that boat, if you're wondering, reach out. ⁓ This office five months ago did not know how to see forward. And now they're able to live a much different life very quickly. And I think if that's you. if you can relate to this office autopsy. That's why we do office autopsy sharing it. So hopefully you can see yourself painted in the fabric of someone else's story, knowing what's possible, what's real for you. You don't have to have multi-practices. You don't have to have any of that, but it might be you're on cashflow row. You're negative. You don't know how to see out. You're at a spin or you want to optimize you like this. came to us literally. They came in wanting to have help with systems and training a regional manager and look at what was uncovered. So what you might think is your pain point might actually not be the true pain point. there might be something deeper below. So Dana, real proud of you, real proud of this client. For all of you questioning, wondering, reach out. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. This is what we live for. Truly seeing you succeed is what makes us so lit up. Like it's, it is the highlight of our year, our week, our month. So for all of you, take the call, let's, let's chat and let's get you these same success stories. So Dana, proud of you. Love having you on the podcast. Thanks for being here. And for all of you, of course. And for all of you listening, thanks for listening. And I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast. Dana (25:34) Thanks for having me.

Are you starting to panic over how to reward your team for another year well done? Should you show appreciation in the first place? Kiera gives advice on how to figure out those end-of-year bonuses, parties, trips, and more, plus how not to stress about it. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent (00:01) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera, and I hope you're just having an amazing day. I hope you're loving your life. I hope you remember that, honest to goodness, this is such a blessing. We get to work in dentistry. How fun is that? And I just hope you remember that we are so blessed to give back to people. We're blessed to be in dentistry. Dental A Team's mission is to positively impact the world of dentistry in the greatest way possible. So that's what we're here for. And the job of this podcast is to give you tactical practical tips that elevate your mind, elevate your thinking. help your practice be more profitable, more fun, more successful. That's what we're here for. So with that today, I just thought it'd be fun. Like end of year bonuses, trips, parties, like how do you even decide what to do? This comes up often in our consulting offices, like I don't know what to do. We had an in-person mastermind meeting and I remember the doctors, there were team members there too, so we had it. Doctors and leadership team members and the doctor was like, team members, just tell us what you want. And the teams are like, we just want to be appreciated. And they're like, we know you want more than that. And so I just thought today it'd be fun to just kind of do a rift with you of what are some of ideas? What are some things you can do pros and cons? So doctors, you can work with your team of really what can I do for this end of year and what's the most powerful and hopefully just giving you some food for thought today, making this tactical for you. So when I'm looking at end of year bonuses, number one, ⁓ I hate surprises. So me as a business owner, I actually set a budget for what our end of year will be, whether it's bonuses, trips, parties, I don't care what it is, I try to set that. And right now I'm trying to release this early, so hey, you could be proactive on it, but for me, we actually have a budget for it. And then I don't like to do big expenses, that's just not my jam, I don't enjoy it, unless I'm buying like a big vehicle or something like that, that I can have an immediate write off. But even that, I try to keep my cash and just get the write off for it. So with that, when I'm doing end of year, like I said, budget it out, project it out, and then start saving. whatever month this is releasing, however many more months you've got through end of year, let's say we're going to do $5,000. We'll break that up over the next, let's say we've got five months left, save $1,000. I put mine into a high yield savings account. That way the money's there, I can spend it it's not hitting me in December when everything else is hitting me. So that's what I'm going to do is whether it's a bonus, trip or the party. Like you can set a budget, doctors, you don't have to let your team decide what you're going to do. And oftentimes I like to set that as a percentage. of what we're doing. So if I know that we're going to do XYZ and I know my overhead's at 50%, well, I could do like 1 % or 2 % of that. That way my overhead's at 51 or 52 % with this cost, right? That makes it really nice and easy. And then I'm going to be able to figure out the budget from there. So that's one piece. Or you can just say, I want to do $5,000 or I want to do this. Or like, let me look this up if we want to do a trip or a party, let me figure this out. So for our team, we figured it out. This is how much we spend every single year per number of team members. I can then plug that into my projections for the next year. So I know based on the size of the team, where we're going, how much this is going to cost us, it's really going to help you then just budget it out. And I think knowing the budgets, putting it into our projections, then we're not getting these psycho surprise expenses. This is hopefully going to help you not cry in December, because so many offices are like, I had the worst December. And I'm like, well, yeah, we have all the holiday time. We're not doing as much dentistry. And we get hit with all the expenses. Double, triple, quadruple whammy. not a super fun month. So let's cut the crying in December and make this easy. Now, how do I decide if it's going to be a bonus, a trip or a party? Well, that depends on your team, depends on what you're doing it for. What's our why behind your, why you're doing this? What do you want to achieve out of this is really something I want you to look at of why are we doing this? So for some people it's like, Hey, we set this huge lofty goal. So we're going to do a bonus of X amount. Again, looking at your numbers to determine that amount. I love percentages. ⁓ or dollar amount so that way you just know what you need to do. So that could be a bonus system that you put into place of, hey, we crush it, we hit this. It could be for your leadership team possibly. It could also be for your teammates, whatever it is, but that can also, that could be a bonus. It could also just be, we want to thank you. ⁓ Do we go on a trip? That's again, dependent upon your team. Is your team more bonus? Are they more trip? Are they more party? Is it a combination of it? And also what feels good to you as the owner? What do you want to do? What's going to help you celebrate this? That's going to be a decision for you to make. And so when I'm looking at this, you can have an anonymous survey. Some people get so excited about trips, but then when you start to get into the logistics, it's like, well, how much is this going to cost? we do a plus one? How much time is that going to be away from the business? What is this really going to cost all the way around? And is that worth it? I tell teams, I'm like, rock on. If you want to do this, figure out the cost. Let's figure it out. Put it in our production. Let's add it into our monthly piece. That way we can pay for it. Awesome. Again. I don't want these things coming out of craziness. I like to plan for them, prepare for them and have the whole team help you. Now, if you're gonna do a party, a lot of times I like parties over bonuses. And I know I might have unpopular opinions on this, but what I found is as a team member, like X amount of dollars doesn't weight as heavily as something that maybe I wouldn't buy for myself. So for example, ⁓ those like red light masks, that's one of the things that are out there. The Dyson and then if you don't know what I'm talking about, go check these out. The Dyson blow dart. Like that thing is insanely expensive. I'm probably not gonna spend it on myself, but it would be awesome if I were to get it. ⁓ What other things? The Aura ring. A lot of people want the Aura ring. They don't wanna drop 400 bucks and they don't wanna pay the monthly subscription. ⁓ Other gift ideas like a Roomba, a Roomba lawnmower, a fire pit, a, I don't know. We've done like AirPods. We've done the virtual realities. ⁓ Like the Apple Vision Pro. Those are the things people are not going to buy for themselves oftentimes, but that weights heavier than if I were to give you 500 or a thousand dollars. Now I understand that people like cash, but as a team member, what I will tell you is I had an office, give me an end of year bonus. We got it in our card. It was based on longevity. It was based on these pieces. That cash did not actually weigh as heavy because what I did is I went and spent it on bills. And so instead, like getting an Apple Vision Pro, I remember the day I got that, I was like, oh my gosh, like this is so rad. I never would have bought it for myself. How incredible, or getting a KitchenAid, or getting a Louis Vuitton wallet. And I understand that not everybody's going to want these things. like, no, I don't care about those things. But what's fun sometimes on the parties is you're able to have this really fun time. We do a raffle in our company. That's what I've decided to do. And I picked this up from Midwestern University's dental college, is every year we did a raffle. We all got to do that. all these awesome prizes. And then every year they gave us some type of swag and they gave us like a holiday party. So I didn't get an end of year bonus. And what I noticed was people enjoyed those so much. Everybody looked forward to it. Everybody got excited about it. Everybody walked out with these awesome gifts. Nobody knew what they were walking out with. We could see all the gifts. So was like, oh my gosh, who's going to get the huge TV? Who's going to get the MacBook Air? Who's going to get XYZ? And they like, all the gifts weren't super high end. All of them weren't low end, but it was something really, really awesome. And then I thought they were so smart because they gave out branded swag. So it was umbrellas, jackets, ⁓ just things that we would use like lunch bags that were super appropriate. But think about it, that's amazing marketing power. I was walking around with this swag. I still have it to this day. I have a lot of the stuff that I got from it. But that's what I decided to do because it would just be fun. So for us and our company for end of year, our team knows. I do it on Cyber Monday, happens every year. We do a holiday party, we dress up, we have an ugly sweater contest, and then we raffle off. So we play fun games at the company. We all just get together. We're a virtual team. Otherwise I take everybody to dinner or we do an awesome fun experience. And then we raffle. And I go hardcore on these prizes. I go do fun things for our team. And for me, it's more fun for me to do this than to write them and just give out an end of year bonus. That doesn't mean that I don't also have end of year bonuses for certain team members, certain players that we do put into place. We used to do trips, we used to have retreats, we used have those pieces. ⁓ And then my teams are telling me that the retreats were actually not that fun, the trips, because they had to find childcare, they had to add another day on the road. We already are a traveling company. So could we just combine certain things and actually stop traveling? So when you're looking at your end of year bonus or you're looking at these ideas, how do you decide is one, know yourself and what do you want to do? Two, look at your budget of what we can do. And then three, figure out what's going to motivate your team. And ultimately what we're trying to do with this is we're trying to show appreciation. I truly did survey a group of people, a group of team members, and they said, all we actually want is just to be appreciated. Now, I hear that, but I think that's something you can do consistently. So I have some doctors who have like literally rocks in their pocket and they like move it over for every team member that they compliment throughout that day. I have some team members who will write letters to team members. I have some who just have genuine one-on-one check-ins. But I think overall, the ultimate goal is that we want to show appreciation throughout the whole year and then do something fun for end of year to celebrate, to get into the pieces. But what I will tell you is some people, they hate these end of year bonuses because it feels like it's met not with the appreciation that people were hoping for. So for you, I feel like figure out what's going to make you so happy. Figure out the budget based on your numbers of what you're willing to spend. and then figure out what's going to motivate your team. And it's an easy way for you to figure out how do I decide? Well, here it is. And guess what? You're not going to get it right. But for me, I look forward to our holiday party every single year. I know our team looks forward to it. I know we have a ton of fun and we've paired it with our live to give. So we do a team portion and then we also go out and we give back to our community and we do that as a bonding thing together as a group. And I think it's so special and that's what we've chosen to do. And for me, that lights my fire. I know my budget. I know what I can do and I get so excited. So really mull on this. Of course, we're happy to help you talk about these ideas. This is what we help our clients prep for. This is how they don't have those end of year like, my gosh, this is so hard. So with that, reach out if we can help you. But hopefully this gave you a couple of ideas. And if you have great ideas that you're doing or how you set up, email us Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. I'd love to hear your ideas. I'd love to hear what you're doing. I'd love to hear the successes because at the end of the day, this should be fun. It should be a celebration and team members. I just want to highlight for you, say thank you. because your doctor and your owners don't have to do this for you. Not all offices do that. So if you have a doctor and owner who's doing that, it means the world to them if you'll just say thank you, because they truly love you. They want to take care of you. They want to surprise and delight you. so acknowledging that is always going to reinforce great behavior. So team members say thank you, doctors show your appreciation. Reach out, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. Enjoy the end of the year. Start budgeting now so it's not chaotic. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on The Dental A Team Podcast.

Tiff and Dana discuss how to achieve full team alignment on periodontal policies and protocols, even when it's the last thing you feel like doing. Their tips include which habits to build upon, which templates for conversation with the patient are most educational, maintaining team alignment, and more. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript The Dental A Team (00:00) Hello Dental A Team listeners. We are back with you with us today I have Ms. Dana and I'm so excited to do these podcasts. I have podcasts all day I have podcasts with you Dana. I podcast with Britt today I never get Britt on these suckers anymore and then I think I'm Kristy later, too So it is a whirlwind of podcasting day. Thank you for letting me, you know Just bust it out and get all of you guys here today I'm really excited. I'm really excited for the one we just did. We record these just kind of like back to back to back just so you guys know in case you were wondering how this actually happens. We're not live right now. I wish we were. That'd be super cool. But it'd be really time consuming at the same time. But we just did a really fun one. I'm excited for them to hear about it. Dana though, I haven't asked you lately just how's life. had, it sounds like a full weekend of kiddos sports. Dana (00:54) Mm-hmm. The Dental A Team (00:54) ⁓ But you personally, you guys, talked about consistency in this last one. And you personally, you have some of the best consistency that I've ever seen anyone maintain. So number one, I think my big question that might be on everyone's mind is why? How do you maintain that consistency? You show up for everyone, but you still show up for yourself. You still do your workouts. You still make sure that your path for your own health is one of the most important aspects of your life. So Dana, how do you maintain that? Dana (01:29) Yeah, I think that just I learned early on in life, right? Like, especially with my health, like I had a point in my life where my health cup was pretty much empty and I had nothing to pour from. And so I just promised myself when I made it through that, that like, I would always prioritize keeping that like as a priority. And ⁓ it's just something that like, I've shown up for for myself. ⁓ And to like, because I've shown up, it just, I don't know, like it just keeps me saying it makes me a better mom, it makes me a better friend, it makes me a better partner, it makes me like, just better in so many ways, because I do take that space. And I don't always like, there's guilt, for sure that I do it and that I take the time and that you know, like I put other things aside to do it. But I think what it like, reaps and benefits and rewards for me outweigh those things. And so I'm truly on to the point now where I have kept it so consistent that when I fall off I feel terrible. The Dental A Team (02:43) Yeah, yeah, that's the real deal now. Yeah, I love that. I think that the things you pointed out there just your why is big enough. And I think a massive reminder to everyone that typically for a human being to make a change in life, it has to be hard enough. Like, we don't change things that don't feel like they're not working, right? That haven't like sprung up as a quote unquote, like broken piece of life yet, right? Like however you want to word it. If it's not hurting, we don't typically think, we're not thinking about it. If it's not hurting, we're just not thinking about it. So why are we addressing things we're not thinking about? So when it finally does get bad enough, I think I had a similar story, not the degree of health, but a similar instance where it was just like I hit the spot where it's like I actually don't have a choice. I either take care of myself or my health continues to deteriorate. So was honestly, it was easy at that point. So it's interesting because it's so easy, I think for us from the outside, especially for you and I for fitness and health, like I think you and I have, I can imagine you're the same like my whole life. It's been in my, it's been in my being for as long as I can remember. So it was very easy to see that in myself and to see that in my life and to see where. the consistencies or the inconsistencies are, but it's interesting to take a step back and see how relatable it is to just so many aspects of life. And if we applied those same steps and processes, the same thought to other aspects of life, how different things could look. And we narrow that focus because I think fitness and health just like, I don't know, I feel like it's like a box to check instead of like, away and for you and I like it's a way especially for you and so it's just gives you the template for other areas which I think for us makes a lot of times consulting fun. I think it's more fun and it's a little bit easier for us to sometimes see the structure of what needs to happen because it's literally mimicking the results that we've seen in other areas of our life and first So happy you're here, Dana, because had you not taken that initiative, things could look very different today. And I'm very happy that you did and that you dedicated to yourself and that you continue to. Second, you were teaching your kids the most important valuable lessons of their entire life. And it's so cool to watch you do that and to watch you show up for yourself, but for them too. I've always taken that stand with it. They're like, Brody's going to know that exercise is for health. It's not for the other. ideas in there. So I never wanted him to, you know, have whatever complications with health and fitness in his life. So I made it a priority for me pretty early on in his life because of that. And then really had to about six years ago. So I applaud you for those pieces. And I just think it's really, really cool. And I think it kind of stems and spurs into a more fun version of today's podcast. Because I really do think that that consistency and again that template that you have for like no I'm just going to do it and some days, you know I'm sure you wake up like I do or I'm like today's not the day and then it's like no just go just go it's 30 minutes It's an hour of my life. Like just go and you will always feel better afterwards So sometimes life comes in and this task or this duty comes in and it's like this feels like it's gonna be really hard I don't really want to talk to this person about this thing I'll do it next time. And the I'll do it next time only slides us backwards. And we see that with the health and fitness very easily. If we don't go to the gym today, like we're sliding backwards to tomorrow. But in these conversations that we're talking about today with the perio, everyone's favorite word, perio, and being in alignment on the periodontal care kind of makes me think of those areas where we really do slide backwards because we're like. I don't really want to have that hard conversation or, that kind of borderline or I don't know what we would classify this as. I'm just going to probe you today. Maybe they'll see somebody else next time. Like you're my, you're one of my favorites, Brits, my other favorite, ⁓ perio brain to pick when it comes to stuff like this, because really getting alignment on that can look like so many different things and consistency on the alignment I think is one of the key pieces. And Dana, there's so much to pick apart in there. I'm obviously alluding to have the hard conversations with the patients when they need deep cleaning, even if they've been coming to your practice forever. I don't care, just do it. But how are the doctors important in your opinion and from a hygiene standpoint in gaining the alignment within the periodontal care, within the periodontal policies and protocols? Because we can tell a hygiene team to go do it, but I feel like without the doctor, we're like 90 % there. Dana (07:22) Mm-hmm. ⁓ Yeah, and and I really and truly feel like the doctor is so crucial in to me. It's like, ⁓ we have to do in this situation is build a plan and then create habits stacking for our hygienists like to do it right. And I think that the doctor is so crucial in setting up the standard of care for perio like what are the expectations for the hygiene team for each specific perio service within the practice? What are our parameters? What are our guidelines? That way, when a patient walks in, no matter which hygienist they see, the same thing is recommended. Also too, it gives a very clear roadmap for the doctor to back you up. You've built it together. So you know that if you follow the protocol, the doctor can confidently back you up. You know that you'll get that every time that they walk in the room. And then lastly, importantly, just as important, it allows you to ⁓ confidently have the discussions that maybe you haven't. And I've seen an office as to where we built the protocol and there are moments of maybe we disagree, right? Maybe we see something different on an x-ray or maybe we see, you know, we probe slightly different or our angles are a little bit different or I've got a doctor versus a hygienist that one presses a little bit harder when they probe, right? But it allows us to definitively be able to make a decision and say, we default to the protocol. This is what the protocol The Dental A Team (09:08) Yeah. Dana (09:16) says when we have this many millimeters in probing depth, this many, and this is how often we do those things. This is the cadence in which we bring them back. These are the results that we expect to get it. And so when you have that outline, whether you are so far from it when you start or whether you're like pretty close to it when you start, it's okay. It's just build your roadmap of what you want your The Dental A Team (09:23) Yeah. Dana (09:41) period to look like in your practice first. And doctors play such a key role in developing standards of care with hygienists. The Dental A Team (09:50) Yeah. my gosh, that was beautiful. something you said at the beginning was the habit stacking and then something in pieces, ⁓ kind of pulling those together, the habit stacking, mentioned, basically you mentioned templates, right? Templates of how to get there. So I think the first template that a doctor in that habit stacking, which is 101 of anything, accomplishing anything in life, it just generally gets put on the health and like fitness industry. ⁓ side of it, but anything is habit stacking to create any kind of habit you're going to have it stack. So what you're saying there and what it makes me think of is like realistically the initial template, like what do I do with my patient? So you mentioned probing. So I think that habit stacking is like probing how often that's your, that's your first habit. Like how do we implement the x-rays and the probing at a certain interval to get the result that we want. And if we want to be able to diagnose periodontal disease, we've gotta have the x-rays and the perio charting. So then it's like, okay, our first habit is getting these things into the appointment. Our second habit is diagnosing accurately and having those three to four periodontal classifications, that's the word I want there, that we can choose from and making sure that we're in alignment on those. There's so many, you guys, you can get recommendations. You can get 15 recommendations on anything anymore. So just be careful what you're looking at. That's a true space of alignment. What is a one to three periaprobe? One to three millimeters, what does that mean? What is three to five? What is five plus? And then what is, we're referring this out. So I think when you're talking habit stacking from an outsider's perspective, I am not a hygienist, I would imagine if I were to sit in your seat, these are the things I would need. to get this started and the consistency on time, like how often are we periaprobing? How often are we taking these x-rays? Dana, I think those come from the doctor and I know I might've just made so many hygienists so angry because I know that I have this conversation so many times. You are a provider but at the end of the day, like it is the doctor's practice and the doctor's license and those types of recommendations have to come from Dana (12:11) you The Dental A Team (12:15) him or her where they're saying, I want bite wings once a year. I want bite wings every six months. I want perioprobes once a year. Dana, is that the kind of habit stacking and templates that you're looking for too? Dana (12:27) Yep, You're spot on in there. How do we gather the information that we need to make our period diagnosis or to make our cleaning recommendation with our patients and outlining and defining how often we do that, when we do that. What it means to do that, like what are we doing ⁓ is your first and foremost foundation. And then it is like bridging into what we do end up diagnosing, right? So what treatments do we choose and when do we choose them? So that's your perioprotocol, right? That is when do we do localized SRP? When do we do generalized SRP? What is scaling in the presence of gingivitis in this office, right? Because that's a term that's very broad. So how many bleeding points? do we have to have? it have to be in all four quadrants? Does it have to be 20 bleeding spots? What does that look like in your office? ⁓ What is a perio maintenance? What do we do? mean, even farther as far as, when do we refer out? If we... aren't, that's one time that I see that hygienists maybe sometimes disagree because it's hygiene comfort. Then I always say default to who you recommend to. If you have a periodontist that you love in your area, call them and say, hey, at what point would you really like to see them in your office? And we start to kind of go back and forth with this patient. So that way it's a very, very cut and dry of what we follow. Right? And then, you know, then it becomes then it's templates for the conversation. Right? So how do we get to the conversation to educate the patient? What do we say if this has been a long term patient? What do we do if a patient refuses? Right? If they just want the cleaning that insurance covers, what do we do once they've had each of these? Right? Is it are we a yes please, perio for life, right? Like once perio, always perio. Do we have wiggle room in there, right? Like what is our, like what's our protocol for all of that? The Dental A Team (14:27) Mm-hmm. Dana (14:28) And I do feel like a lot ⁓ of doctors take the place that like, hey, my hygienists are my perio experts. And I think that like, that is a great stance to have, but I think doctors, need to be a part of building the standard in your practice. And then yes, trusting your hygienists to follow that standard for sure, and make the recommendations on the things that they see. Absolutely. But I do think it's crucial that the doctors are part of the standard setting within their own practice. The Dental A Team (14:54) Yeah. Oh, you nailed it. I couldn't agree more. And that's coming from a non hygiene standpoint. And you just heard a hygienist word straight from her mouth. And I think even the most, I'm gonna say it stubborn and hard headed hygienist who are like, no, this is my world. It is your world. But I think even the most stubborn, hard headed or strong willed is probably a better word to use. Hygienist will agree that structure. helps progress. And if there is a structure to be had, there's input to be had, I think anyone would prefer that input upfront and honestly than on the back end saying like something went wrong, right? I didn't do something correctly. Well, we've all said it like, well, you didn't tell me that I didn't know, right? Or I didn't know you wanted it that way. This is the space to get all of that stuff out on the table first. And doctors, for you to be like, my standard of care is X, Y, Z. And a hygienist to be like, well, tell me more about that because I think this. You know, I think ABC. And a doctor's like, cool, this is why I think X, Y, Z. Why do you think ABC? This is a space to have conversation. it's not, Dana, what you're saying is everything you said was a conversation. So it's more about Everyone being able to bring to the table their own knowledge, what you guys have learned, we've all gone, everyone likely has gone to a different school, right? Hygienists go to a different school, typically university, than the doctors do or trade school or wherever it's from. Doctors in most practices, it's rare that you have even associates that have gone to, everybody's gone to the same school. So there's different schools of thought depending on where your training was. And there's different opinions. I walk into some practices that floss is floss. I walk into other practices that there's like, do not use glide, or do not use whatever on the wall, and it's coconut floss. And then there's other practices that are like, don't eat coconut. You just pick and choose. It's all just the best that you guys can come to terms with. And so I think that it's more of a sharing of ideas coming with the standards and protocols. Now, there are things that will be like, There are things that will be a discussion and I think everything is a discussion. ⁓ There are things that will be flexible, there's things that won't be super flexible. Like x-rays are probably not a super flexible spot. How often are you periaproping? Because these are based off of standards, literally standards of care for their licenses, but it's still a discussion. And I know I've had hygienists that are like two years bite wings, but doctors are firm on one. Like, cool, just take the bite wings. That's the standard of care. and come to an agreement. And Dana, think that based off what you're saying, like that alignment is not just a, this is the box you stay in, but it's a conversation. And what you said earlier kind of resonated with me too, because I do see sometimes, oftentimes where doctors are like, yeah, we'll do a perio alignment meeting and meeting Mondays, we'll do meeting Mondays and we'll do perio alignment meeting. And they've got a patient, they're doing a crown while hygienists are meeting. And then hygienists come out. They're like, this is what we decided. And doctors are like, OK, I'll review it. I was like, come on, just be at the meeting. Right, Dana, do you think? Dana (18:16) yeah. Yeah, I see that a lot. And then, you know, then it sits on a doctor's desk or, or a doctor does review it and has notes, but like the notes don't get to the team or then it doesn't get even fully rolled out because we're still kind of waiting to see like, did we agree? Do we agree? Like, where is this? Where is this thing? And and I think the doctors being part of the meeting and part of the The Dental A Team (18:33) Mm-hmm. Dana (18:42) conversation, I just feel like you leave with alignment and you leave with buy-in. When a doctor is just is a part of that because I feel like, As a hygienist, I never wanted to feel as if like I was doing something that was outside of what the doctor wanted as far as care for their patients. And so I think when they're part of the discussion, they're part of the building the standards, they're part of mapping out those habits stacking and the pieces that they want to see. I think then it makes sure that no matter what patient is in the chair, no matter who they see, right, everybody is aligned and everybody is doing like what is desired for that specific office. The Dental A Team (19:29) Totally, I agree. think this was so cool. And I think we spun this in some fun directions today that were a little bit different than ⁓ areas we've spoken before where it was much more structured. This one is a little, slightly less structured. There's still structure to it, but it's more giving you guys the knowledge base to understand that you get to build the structure as a team together too. Our structure, our recommendations, your action items today. Schedule a perio. alignment meeting. A lot of times these get put in the schedule as a hygiene team meeting or a hygiene department meeting and they're going to talk about perioprotocols and doctors don't think they have to attend or it's not on their schedule at all. But doctors who are listening, hygienists who are listening, office managers who are listening, schedule a full team alignment even if you're like, hey, we don't have issues, we diagnosed just fine. I just come together once, at least once a year, probably once every six months or so. Just make sure we're all on the same page, you guys. And I think Dana, Something I've seen happen the most frequently is any kind of addition to the team, even Steril Tech, who's helping turnover rooms, any kind of addition to the team, those are the pieces that get lost first. That consistency becomes inconsistent and we lose the template. So first and foremost, make sure you guys have alignment meetings and then make sure you have some sort of a structure or a checklist on what are the things that these alignment meetings... One, what are we trying to gain? Like what is the goal of the alignment meeting? And what are we going to cover? So templates A to Z, our x-rays, our perioprobing, our exams, how often do you have to have a doctor in the room for an exam? All of these pieces that might to some of you guys listening now be like, that's crazy that practices deal with this. But if you don't have it, there will come a day, there will be someone that it gets lost on. So just make sure it's there. So Dana. Let me know if you have any more action items. My first one, schedule that alignment meeting. Second, make sure there's templates. Make sure you guys know what you're working towards and why. And then implement. And I think, Dana, when we're building out Perio protocols, I think it would be safe to say you should be able to implement those within a quarter. So if you've got the alignment meeting scheduled, you hashed out on the meetings, you should be, if you do it quarter one, you should quarter two, be able to roll out those Perio protocols. Do you agree, Dana? Dana (21:51) Yeah, I do. I agree with that for sure. And then I think the last action is if you already have a perio protocol in place, make sure that every hygienist on your team knows it and make sure it is updated. Right. I think that, you know, there are some things that in the perio world have changed and will continue to change. And so I always say when you build these protocols or you build these templates and you have alignment, it's not just like set it and kind of forget it. Make sure it gets added to onboarding packets for new hygienists. Make sure that we, you know, continue to kind of check in and see what we're doing. Make sure that we've got tracking in place and make sure that we update those things as Perio changes because, you know, grading and staging is now here and pieces that if you've had a long term Perio protocol, we may need to add or consider updating. The Dental A Team (22:40) Totally, beautiful, thank you. I am leaving it at that. Everybody, if you were listening in the car, go listen again, write these things down. If you were listening, I don't know, anywhere else, I hope that you were taking some awesome notes. If not, listen again. The recordings are here for just that. So, share this with a friend, you guys. Everyone needs to know these Prairie Protocols. This is massive. It is a huge space that is underdeveloped in a lot of practices, I would say most practices. the perio space is underdeveloped. So these are some really quick, easy tools to get that ball rolling without having to take extra courses and laser certifications and all of these things. Those would be like step two or three. These are your first steps. So go do the things you guys drop us a review. We always like to see those five stars and know what you loved and any ideas that you have to add to what we talked about. And then Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. That was a hard one to say today. ⁓ is where you'll reach us. If you have any questions or you want any templates or ideas, just shoot us an email, you guys. do, Dana and I do get a lot of those requests straight to us from our Hello team. So just let us know how we can best help you and we'll catch you guys next time. Thank you.

Kiera joins the Raving Patients Podcast to talk about obtaining that CEO mindset to systematize your practice. This mindset does not mean doing it all yourself, but leaning on others to maximize their skillsets. Kiera also discusses with Dr. Len Tau how to separate yourself from having your entire identity associated with dentistry. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Speaker 1 (00:00) Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Raving Patients Podcast. As you know, I'm your host, Dr. Len Tau, and I am super excited today for multiple reasons. Well, first, before I get there, I want to first thank my sponsors, both Dental Intelligence, CallRail, and a new one, Net32. You'll be hearing their commercials as well, so check out those companies. And again, the only reason I'm able to do this every single week is because of their support. I also want to remind everybody about   my event, is only one week away. One week from now we'll be gathered in Fort Lauderdale for Supercharge with Dental Practice 2025. If you wanna be a come out last minute registrant, you can reach out to me. I will be glad to add you as a guest of me. So please reach out to me. You can check out the content at SuperchargeYourDentalPractice.com So I said I was super excited and I'm super excited because of our guest today. And she's been a guest before and I just recorded an episode with her on her podcast. ⁓   We're talking about Kiera Dent, who is from the Dental A Team, and we're gonna be talking the CEO mindset systematizing your practice for freedom and growth today. So before I let ⁓ Kiera take it off, I'm gonna go ahead and introduce her. So she is the founder and CEO of the Dental A Team, an entrepreneur, consultant, speaker, and podcast host dedicated to helping dental professionals reach their highest potential. Through customized in-office and virtual consulting,   She empowers dentists and their teams to cultivate an ownership mindset and achieving lasting growth. With experience spanning every role in the dental practice, front office, dental assistant, regional manager, and even practice owner, here brings unique first-hand perspective to her coaching. Alongside her team of expert consultants, she has partnered with hundreds of practices nationwide, leading them to greater efficiency, profitability, and fulfillment. As she often says, we don't just understand you, we are you.   So please welcome to the Raving Patients podcast, Kiara Dent. Kiara, thank you so much for being a guest on my podcast today.   Speaker 2 (02:03) Oh, Len, thank you so much. so excited to be here. I loved our podcast we did together. I love the podcast we did in the past together. I'm super excited about Supercharge. Everybody should go. We're going to like sneak peek, be there in 2026. Like Len, huge fan of you guys. Just excited to be here with you. So thank you. Thanks for having me. And yeah, it's always a little weird and fun to hear your bio read right before you get on. So just grateful to be here and just like have a good time with you. It's always a great time when we podcast together.   Speaker 1 (02:30) Well, I'm excited to spend the next 30 minutes or so with content from you. So I always like to ⁓ start off for people that don't know who you are. I obviously read your bio. Can you just tell dentists and other people reading or listening and watching this episode how you help dental practices?   Speaker 2 (02:50) Yeah, absolutely. So with the bio you heard, I started out as a dental assistant and then went throughout and I've owned practices. My first practice I took from 500,000 to 2.4 million in nine months and opened our second location. And that was with a Midwestern grad. I worked at the dental college there. And so helping practices, what I learned was   I've been a team member, I've been in so many of the team roles. And then in addition to that, I've owned dental practices and I understand the business and I've run multimillion dollar practices and businesses. so bringing that perspective, I feel like there's the dentist perspective, there's the owner, the CEO of the practice, and then there's the team perspective. And both are necessary for practices. And so Dental A Team, say like, it stands for dentist and team. So what we really do for practices is whether it's virtual or in person, it's...   I call it the yes model line is what I like to say is number one, you as a person, we're going to focus on your vision, where you want to go as a doctor. Like what is your vision? The practice should serve your life. ⁓ because I believe that when you're supported, you're actually a better owner, a better boss, a better dentist. And then we go to E stands for earnings and profitability. We've got to make sure it's a profitable practice. And then we use those things, the vision and the numbers to then tell us what systems and team development we need to put into place. I'm really much a custom.   Let's see kind of like dentists do with patients. Like let's do a comp exam. Let's see where we're at. And then let's go for what's going to make the biggest impact with the least amount of effort. And being team members ourselves, I really think that we're able to like, Hey dentists, we want to hear your vision. We need to know where you're going and then go do your like favorite thing. It's dentistry. And then let's help your team be empowered to learn how to run the practice. So it truly is like a self-managing team, utilizing every single player in the team to their highest potential, but doing it with a ton of fun and ease. Like as a team member, I didn't want more hard work.   As an owner, do not want you to give me more homework. I'm already busy. So I feel like we really come in and bridge that gap of like where we are to where we want to go and do it in the easiest, most efficient and most fun way possible to help like team and patient experience be the top that it can be.   Speaker 1 (04:48) So I guess someone's listening to this podcast and they say, you know, want to, I want to change the culture in my practice, but I'm very much a micromanager.   So which means they're not focused on their dentistry, they're focused on managing the team. Do you help with that? Because there are so many micromanagers out there. I always wanted them for a very long time. And honestly, wasn't until I gave up that micromanaging and I just did the things I was going to do that my practice excelled. So ⁓ that's something, if someone's a micromanager, do you get them off doing that? Or how do you deal with that?   Speaker 2 (05:19) Yes, and I'm so glad you said that because I think most   Founder owners are micromanagers. think leadership we believe I I think so many there's this belief out there that we just come into this world as great leaders and we should just know it like you went to dental school you should just know how to be a leader and leadership is a journey and so for those micromanagers I think it's really fun to have the doctor and the team perspective and to be able to help both of them say like no doctor like these are the things but what I found is doctors micromanage because there's a lack of communication feedback loops so it's a lot so it's either a lack of communication and feedback   loop, a lack of knowledge, or they just like genuinely want to be a manager and they don't want to be an owner. And I'm like, great, let's just figure out what the the reasoning is. And then let's find the solution to that. So if team members have doctors that are micromanaging, first question I'm looking at is like, where's the feedback loop and what are we missing? Next is like, hey, doctor, I understand that this is where we're at. This is where I need you to be for the growth of the practice. What do you need to feel confident to be the dentist, to be the like not micromanaging like   there's a lack. And when I realize there's a lack and when teams can realize that there's a lack, like there's just something missing, we fix that, dentist is now able to be happy, team's able to flourish, everything starts to move in in a good motion. absolutely. I think being team members ourselves, we're not doctors, we're not dentists. Like, Len, I'm gonna lean on you for clinical. Like, that's not my world. I'm not here to even discuss it for one minute. But what I am here to do is to bridge that gap between doctors and teams.   Because ultimately it's same team, like everybody wants the best experience for the patient. We want the practice to flourish. So if we're all same team, let's help get people right seat, right person, help them understand what they should and could be doing. But also like office managers, there's this whole weird world for them too, where they've never been taught to be managers. They've never been taught what they should or shouldn't be doing. They've never been taught like what the difference between an office manager is and a biller and a scheduler and a treatment coordinator and how all those roles are different. And so helping people understand even what their job entails.   I think really can cut that micromanagement passion project. It's just a lack of knowledge and so teaching teams and teaching people, but we're very hands on. I really don't like fluff. That's why think when you and I get along well, I want it to be tactical. I want it to be practical and I want it to be something that's sustainable as well.   Speaker 1 (07:34) And that makes a lot of sense. And that was a great answer, by the way.   We're talking about, obviously you're very systematized. You put systems in place, the team follows, everybody knows what they're doing, runs like a well-oiled machine. Okay. And that's how my practice was when I left, when I was traveling. ⁓ I knew things, I didn't worry. I knew that things were going to be done like this. They knew the roles, team members didn't need to be scolded. They just knew what their role was in the practice. So, ⁓ I know there are things, I like a term here you use the chaos creators. So there are chaos creators in the, in the office. So what are some of these, these common chaos creators?   ⁓ that actually can be helped by putting systems in place.   Speaker 2 (08:13) Yes, and I love that you brought that up because that's the ultimate goal. That's why I wanted this to be called like the CEO mindset. Like doctors, like you should be a dentist and you should own your business. You should not be the one managing. And when you recognize that this actually can be one of the biggest chaos creators in the practice of doctors trying to be the doctor, the dentist, the CEO visionary, plus the manager, plus all the other parts of the practice. Like that is a chaos creator, not knowing right person, right? See is a massive chaos creator. Number one thing I hear every time I go into an office or I work with someone,   is it's communication. And communication is again just a system that needs to be put into place. So how do team members know? Like what is our true morning huddle? It's not a time for us just to hang out. Like why do football players huddle? Why do basketball players huddle? They huddle to win the game. So what does winning on our practice even look like? Making that very clear for our team. Other things like handoffs. That's another communication drop that's a chaos creator. What doctor says to the patient, to the hygienist, to the front office,   It's such fun. I feel like we play a game of telephone. So putting in a little simple system there where we've got a great communication handoff and a process. I know Len, you and I are very big on this case acceptance process of just really having a great clean experience for the patient. These are chaos creators. Also, team members even knowing what their job should be, understanding how they go from where they were hired to how they can get raises. Those are chaos creators. The scheduling. How do we schedule? Let's have block schedules in there. Let's have   a way that we do this in our practice. I remember when I was a scheduling coordinator, my office manager said, Kiera, do not even think about scheduling outside of the blocks until you learn why we schedule the blocks the way we do. And you're right, like when team members know the rules of the game, so much chaos gets eliminated from the practice. like quick things are have great meetings and truly great meetings. If you don't know how to run a great meeting, Traction by Gina Wickman.   It's a little bit of a dull book. However, there are so many paramount pieces in that book and great meetings could be in there. Doctors and OMS have a same page meeting where we're looking at it. Get our KPIs in place where we know where is the practice even going? What is each person's number that they can like impact and improve in the practice? Have like set job descriptions, have protocols of how we treat a patient. What's our hygiene period protocol? Let's just have like really simple systems and I'm big on I don't like to remember things.   Like I love holidays, holidays are on a cadence. So how can we actually get cadences within your practice to where things really can run on more of an autopilot rather than trying to constantly like catch all the balls and remember things? That's the chaos. The chaos comes from the like not knowing and trying to scramble and being in reactive rather than proactive modes.   Speaker 1 (10:53) But that's really good, that's really great. So another question I have for you, there are dentists who are just dentists, and I don't mean that negatively, but they go in with the expectation that they're either gonna be an associate forever, or they're just going to practice and let everybody run the practice and they're just gonna come and do the dentistry, okay? Versus having the mindset of and acting like the CEO, okay? And there's a big difference. One, I believe, has a lot more stress.   I like to talk about it because I was the CEO of the practice. I handled everything. I handled the marketing. I handled the HR. I handled all of the things that makes it different than just being a dentist and putting your hands in the mouth and treating a patient. So if someone wants to act and think like a CEO, what does it really mean to do that versus just practicing dentistry and doing the dental work?   Speaker 2 (11:51) Yes, I'm so glad you brought this up. I've been like crushing on this idea. We actually just ran a three day CEO dentist workshop. like.   obsessing on this right now because there is nothing wrong. And I think that there's a few hats that people wear. I wear a consultant hat. I also wear a CEO hat. And they're actually and I think about big companies like let's look at Google. I know that CEO is not coding. They're not. They're not building it. They're truly in a CEO realm. And so when we look at like what does a CEO do, they are the chief executive officer. Like their job is to execute. Their job is vision. Their job is culture.   and their job is to like really steer and guide the ship and to come up with great ideas. And so when I look at that, I think that there's two hats for CEO dentists to wear. There's the true clinical dentistry, if that's what you want to do and continue to do. And then we really do need somebody who's guiding and leading this business. And I think when dentists, I know this can be a little like not favored, ⁓ dental practices are multimillion dollar businesses and they are. when we realize that they're   They are businesses and like you said, the HR and the marketing. But when you look at large businesses outside of dentistry, they have other players in the realm and in the rink with them to make it actually run as a very successful business. And so I believe that when we understand the business portion of dentistry and we have great clinical care, that's when we're able to serve and help more patients and more team members. And so helping these dentists realize what does a CEO do? And I actually pulled from Dan Martel.   the author of Buy Back Your Time, like obsessed with his book, met him in person, like raving fangirl. It was like slightly embarrassing, like how big of a fan I was of him. ⁓ But he has his delegation ladder in there for businesses and actually created a delegation ladder for dental practices of when CEO dentists go from like your right line, a lot of them do it all. And that's, think, where the burnout is and the chaos is to where when can we start to delegate? Like, do you have a personal assistant who answers all of your emails for you? And if not,   Administrative tasks are one of the best things to delegate. Then we move into like our scheduling and then into our customer service and the patient experience. And then we move into treatment planning. A lot of doctors do that on their own. And I'm not here to say you have to give up anything, but I am here to say that when you truly take on the role of CEO, trying to do it all actually creates chaos. And you actually, you're the bottleneck of the business. And so then we start to delegate out the case acceptance if you want to. You're allowed to keep whatever you want, whatever you're great at.   Then we delegate out the marketing, then we delegate out the, actually, me and my operations manager were talking that I believe that there's two spaces within leadership. There's the executive side, that's these big picture visionary pieces. And then there's the management side, which is the HR, the protocols, the accountability of the team. And when we had that like, and I believe that there's, it's like a black and a white, yin and yang, perfect whole, you need both sides of this leadership within that CEO realm.   But when you're trying to do all the pieces as a CEO, you need to know every aspect going on in the business. But that does not mean you need to do every aspect of the business. And so I think it's like figuring out which colors you like to paint with, which ones really are your zone of genius and then starting to then delegate in strategic manners, delegate and elevate, not abdicate ⁓ really are how you can make this where you become truly the CEO of your business and your practice. And you're able to have great players around you that are able to then.   Make sure every other part of your business is thriving and flourishing too.   Speaker 1 (15:19) Got it.   Speaker 2 (15:20) So   much line, I hope it wasn't lying.   Speaker 1 (15:22) No, that was great. That was great. I mean, they should replay that because I think there was some really good nuggets and pearls that they can take back. So, you know, I want to talk about delegation. ⁓ you know, Invisalign is a great product ⁓ to bring into the practice or aligners in general. doesn't have to be Invisalign, just aligners. And aligners are really good, but they become really profitable ⁓ when a dentist is willing and able to delegate the tasks to other team members.   And personally myself, I used to do it all. And then I took a class by somebody, can't remember who it was, but it was all about giving the empower your team to do things and delegate the services to them where you're literally kind of just doing the initial consultation and whatever is required by your license in the realm of the things. But the team is able to do mostly everything else. And once you do that, ⁓ Invisalign becomes a very, profitable procedure.   So what advice do you have about delegation to somebody, to a dentist who really feels like they need to do it all and does not want to give up control of anything?   Speaker 2 (16:28) Len, I'm so happy you asked me this question and I'm so happy that I'm a team member and I'm gonna put on a team member hat, not a CEO hat on this one. ⁓ Number one, I really, really hope, and dentists, if you need to pause, replay, record this and listen to it every single day, I really hope you do. ⁓ As a team member, my number one job, genuinely speaking, and doctors have told me so many times when they've heard me say this, it...   hopefully will strike you to your heart as well. As a team member, my number one, like genuine number one objective was to make my doctor happy and to make their life easier. And that was honestly what I did every single day. As a dental assistant, I'm looking ahead. I want to be seven steps ahead of you and I want to make sure that you're truly like set up for success. I want to make sure that patient's back on time. I want to make sure that hygiene exams are on time. And I think that while yes, you might have some team members that make you question this statement.   I think 95 % of the population is genuinely good and they want you to thrive and they want the patient experience to be great. So when you hear that and you truly honor that and you respect that and you trust that, you then will realize that one of the best things you can do is, I don't believe in delegating. So like I can empower, but if I empower and don't hold accountable, then I've created entitlement within my practice. So I want to empower through delegating of this like.   As a dental assistant, do know how happy I'd be if you gave me, can fit a line. I understand I'm going to make a few mistakes, but oh my gosh, the growth, growth equals happiness. So for your team to be happy, give them opportunities to progress. Like that's what creates the happiness and the sparkle and the zest in life. And so really when you empower your team and hold accountable, you don't get this entitlement. When you empower and don't hold accountable, that's when we get these entitled teams that genuinely then it just becomes mayhem in your practice.   So like you said, delegate these tasks that one, either you're not good at, or I do think about everybody should be working at the top of their license. What are you able to produce per hour? If there's a task that I can hire somebody for less than you can produce an hour, it's probably something that we shouldn't be using your time for. And I know as a CEO, as an owner, this is actually hard for me because you strip me of things that I'm actually really good at, but reality is there's better uses of my time. And when you can recognize   giving everybody the best use of their time. Me as a dental assistant being able to do Invisalign, you've now just lifted and elevated me to the highest level of my license as well. And so I really do believe like doctors, one, believe that your team is truly here to support you. And if they're not here to support you, they're not your right team players. they like, great, let them graduate to somebody else and you bring somebody else in. Two, empower them and hold accountable to ensure that it's like how you want it done. And team members like,   You can share this with your team. I'm happy to share this one reason I like to do this. Team members, give the feedback to your doctor. They are going to trust you so much more when you come back to them and you show them the things you listen to what they say, you create the protocols, you do it exactly how they want you to do it. That will build trust and confidence so quickly. Team members lose doctor's trust so quickly when they like lacked to follow through and like truly do what the doctors have given them like stewardship and ownership over. So for those doctors and like you said, Len.   You won't understand until you try. And when you do try, you will make mistakes. But I believe, this is my philosophy, anything that I've delegated never gets to come back to me. And I think when you have that notion and that idea, well, I know it could never come back to me. You actually make it really, really great. You train your team. You help them have this. ⁓ And I then believe everybody's able to flourish so much higher. So hopefully that answered of like, one, you need to delegate and you should delegate.   Two, what are the tasks that you can be doing that are like helping you work to the highest level of your license? Everybody working at that is going to make a better team experience, a better patient experience, and all around a better practice for you as well.   Speaker 1 (20:20) I think you, I mean, the content you're providing, the listening and viewing audience is spectacular. you know, one of the, I guess, negatives about being a dentist is a feeling of being overwhelmed. A lot of stress. You know, that's part of the reason why I think you've got, you know, dentists with the highest, one of the highest suicide rates out there is that, you know, it's a very stressful job. I mean, you've got a lot of debt, you've got a lot of, you know, people relying on you for income as well. So what mindset   do you think exist ⁓ that or traps do you mindset traps do dentists fall into that that keep them feeling overwhelmed and and what do do about that?   Speaker 2 (21:00) Yeah, this is something so real to me. My first practice, I mentioned it briefly at the very beginning of we took our practice from 500,000 to 2.4 million in nine months. And when I present and I speak, I often will bring up like the success story and I list off my stats of our practice. I asked the audience, said, who wants this practice? And like hands go up and people are like shouting like, yes, I want this.   And then I say the other side of success is that this person, is me, like, spoiler alert, I was 98 pounds and I'm 5'8". I ⁓ had divorce papers on the line. I remember like I walked out of my practice that like one day and I remember just like standing on the sidewalk and being like one step and all this could be over. Like it was, and I'm not a dentist. I didn't even have the pressure of having to be in the exam rooms, but I do understand the pressure of business. And that's actually what's like fueled my passion in consulting is.   Because I thought like if this is how so many of us feel to get to success, Tony Robbins has a quote that success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure. And that was curidant in a nutshell. We had success on paper, but fulfillment was lacking and my entire life was falling apart. And so when you ask like, what are some of these zones that keep people in this mindset is one, I think that we believe that to get to success, we have to grind it out. We have to hustle. We have to do it all. Like it's this hustle mentality that I believe is so false.   Yes, I do believe that hard work is required, but I don't believe you have to do all of the work. Just like we talked about before, also think delegations paramount. I think so many of the doctors that I see there in this burnout are just, it's like grippy. Like they want to hold on to everything and they're not willing to let go and they're not like, also you're telling your team that you don't trust them and you don't believe in them when you do that as well. So you're actually causing like this double-edged sword on it. And then third, I think ⁓ we just don't take time to stop and pause and realize like what really is necessary.   I think so much like when I sold out of the practices, my whole identity was associated with that. if we have our identities associated with these practices and with the success, well, I can imagine that that feels like chopping off your arm and your leg if you were to fail. therefore, if it's literally my physical body and I feel like it's my whole identity, I literally remember the day that I sold out of the practices. I felt who is cura dent, who is she? Like I have no purpose in this world anymore. Nothing is important. Like I don't even have a family. I have no practice.   I felt nothing and I think when people's identities are associated with this rather than having something else. So I talk about like what makes all of you up and I remember like like looks like this weird little doll. Like it's such a weird outline that I make people do but I'm like draw to me like how your life is and when I do this usually it's like from your neck to like your ankles that's work and if that much of your identity is associated with work in your practice.   What could we shift this to more so your whole identity is not associated with that? So that's like we go work out, we have time with family, we book the vacations and when you start to realize that there's more life outside of the chair, more life outside of it and you being a well-rounded human that truly and I don't like the word balance, I just love the word well-rounded and fulfilled. When we start to add some of those pieces in which again feels contradictory, it feels like if I give this up that I'm not making money. I used to say I don't want to sit on the couch and watch TV with my husband because I'm literally not making money.   That's one of the the grossest statements I've ever said, but Len, it's truth. I really truly felt this way. Like the only purpose is to be producing and to be productive. But I didn't realize that. Like you look at that athletes have to take a break and they have to reset. They have to recharge. They have to like the best time is actually the recovery off season. ⁓ no, no person can continue operating at 110%. And when they are operating, they're actually not their best self. So there's just as much beauty in the recharge off time.   as there is on the productive on time. So when we can delegate, when we have more purpose beyond just our practice, and it's okay, work to me is very fulfilling. It's such a big part of my life. I love it. ⁓ But it's not all of Kiera's identity. So if I were to lose work, Kiera and hopefully you can still exist outside of that. ⁓ And then truly having shut off time. A lot of clients when they come on board, I tell them, I'm like, I'm giving you the greatest gift. You're out of work today at 4.30 and I don't want you to talk about work. Close the laptop, walk out and literally leave it at work.   And what's crazy is people don't realize that you can actually get a lot done within your four or five hour, like four or five day a week work week. And to be home with your kids, to be home with your family, to go to the gym, to replenish your bucket that gives out so much every single day ⁓ really is what you actually need to be doing rather than trying to produce more. And it sounds contradictory, but it's true. You will actually produce more and be a better producer and happier business owner if you will do that.   I know that was a long-winded answer, Len, but I really hope that people can see there are two sides of success. The word itself of success has a portion of suck. Like there is a side of business that is really hard that does require that grind and that hard work, but there's also a beautiful side. And I think when people can dance in that, can see that their whole identity is not the practice. It's not all dependent on that and they fill themselves and fuel themselves. Literally, I feel like the burnout can be dissipated very quickly.   If you've been going on it for a long time, it will probably take a little bit longer, but these small, simple steps will make you so much more fulfilled. And honestly, I hope nobody listening to this podcast hit success without fulfillment. I hope all of us commit that while we're giving the great patient care, we're giving back to all these people, we equally get to deserve and we should deserve to have a beautiful life of our own as well.   Speaker 1 (26:39) So nicely said, very eloquent in way you said that as well. last thing I want to cover is, we talked about being overwhelmed. stress is also part of being overwhelmed. very stressed. What are some ways that you think a dentist can reduce the stress on a day-to-day part of his practice? If someone said, hey, I'm so stressed, I don't know what I'm going to do. And you hear it a lot. I I talk to dentists all the time. And one of the common denominators is that they're   You know, when I sold my practice, I was never truly, truly stressed out. The stuff that stressed me out, honestly, was stupid stuff. But since I sold my practice and retired, I don't really have much stress in my life anymore. It's very interesting. But what are some things that dentists could do to reduce those stress they see on a day-to-day basis?   Speaker 2 (27:29) Yes. Okay. And I said, yes, because I'm to go back to the S model. The S model is literally like my stress booster buster for you. Number one, where do you want to go and why? Like figure out you that truly if you don't have a North star, you don't know what you're going for and reassess to make sure that's really where you want to go. So many people put this like, I want to have four practices and I want to have this. And I'm like, why? You got to be able to tell me why I'm making sure it's your dream, not the dream you think you should be living.   That's like number one to get rid of stress, like truly living your dream. And I will tell you, you're allowed to like, it's in pencil, it's not in permanent ink. You can erase it, you can recraft it, you can recreate it. That's going to cut stress. I was chasing after a mountain, I didn't want to climb anymore. And when I realized that, that was a pivot shift. So number one is like, make sure you're actually truly going where you want to go. And that's the you. Earnings like profit, like Len, so much stress comes from not knowing the numbers.   And I know people sometimes want to avoid it. They don't want to look at it. Like I'm just going to go do production. I want to do ethical dentistry and I will tell you both exist. It's not an or like you will you as a human are going to naturally do ethical dentistry. Like you can't go against that. That's who you are at your core. And by knowing the numbers, you're not going to go and overdiagnose like I promise you it will not happen. But knowing the numbers and actually like looking at your cash, what are you spending money on? What do you need to produce to be able to afford the business?   Doctors learn the numbers and they actually use the numbers to make their decisions. Stress dissipates. I have so many doctors that reach out to me because they're cash flow poor and I'm like, you're producing 200,000 a month, how are we broke? ⁓ So actually understanding how to use numbers and not to be used by numbers and knowing how you actually can get money and like what can you live on and understanding tax brackets and savings like that discipline might seem constrictive, but I will tell you it is the most freeing stress free piece that you can have.   And then third, our systems and team. Like I'm going to like just really keep like painting this picture for you. Delegate to your team, use your team, put the systems into place. And we don't go for the whole elephant. We don't do the entire thing in one night shift. What we do is we look at the numbers. Where are numbers low on the KPIs? Let's go fix a system over there. So we fix that part of the leaking bucket. Just that alone, like even myself, I felt it like the hoosh of reducing that stress for you. ⁓ Start with your vision.   know your numbers and then put systems into place and team delegation and elevation ⁓ that will immediately reduce stress. And then like just quick, what is the one or two hot pain points right now causing the bulk of your stress? Let's figure out how we can eliminate those right now. And I want to, everybody always says, Kiera, there's no way like I can't do this. The answer is yes, you can. Yes, you can. And when we get out of this, I can't get that, I can't do this. We actually find the true core of what we can solve. Usually the answer is pretty simple and it's pretty immediate.   if we're willing to just let go and take action. So those would be kind of my like four little steps to reduce stress quickly and easily. And if you can't see it, sometimes having an outside voice and outside perspective, sometimes you're too far in the weeds, that can be very beneficial for you as well to like take you by the hand and say, here's step one, two, three, four, and they're there to guide you as well, rather than you trying to figure it out yourself.   Speaker 1 (30:35) amazing. This is great. ⁓ I want to shift for the final few minutes that we have together. I want to shift to my lightning round Q and a that I like to do with guests. We're going to get through eight to 10 of these. Okay, ready? The rule of thumb for this one, you like long winded answers, which is great. But for this one, it's very, fast. No long, no long winded. We'll never get through this.   Speaker 2 (30:47) So   You got it, Len.   Speaker 1 (30:58) So I opened my app up. First question, what book do you want to go back and reread as it's made a great impact on you the first time you read it?   Speaker 2 (31:07) I would go back and reread Bye, Your Time by Dan Martell. I feel like there's a lot that I could relearn from that where I'm at today.   Speaker 1 (31:14) repeat that one more time.   Speaker 2 (31:17) Yep, buy back your time by Daniel.   Speaker 1 (31:19) Buy back your time. I'm just writing it down. All right. Who has been your greatest inspiration?   Speaker 2 (31:25) Gosh Tony Robbins hands down. I love Tony so much. I look up to him a lot. I've been in his Lions group ⁓ the reason I look up to him is because He said one time the Tony you see in front of you is the Tony I created it's not from my parents It's not from business. It's not from anybody else It's who I want to be and who I esteem to be and he said life is always happening for you and not to you and those two pieces have Resonated with me so much in my life ⁓ truly one of the like   biggest, greatest mentors and I've been really blessed and lucky to have him directly mentor me, which have truly changed the trajectory of my course, of my life as well.   Speaker 1 (32:04) Awesome, amazing. ⁓ If you could take a class to learn anything, what would it be on?   Speaker 2 (32:10) marketing. Len, hate marketing. Call my Achilles heel. I learned so much and I think I know more. But man, if I could like understand it on a really high level easily all day every day and I take a lot of them. But man, one like magic one that would teach me everything. Yeah, it'd be amazing.   Speaker 1 (32:26) Amazing. Do you believe there is some sort of pattern or formula to becoming successful?   Speaker 2 (32:33) Yes, I do. It sounds like cliche. I didn't like, I think the yes model came from what I believe success is like you having a vision, looking at your numbers and then putting systems into play and using your team ⁓ and surrounding your yourself with people that are living and doing the life you want. I really do believe we become like the people we surround ourselves what we listen to. So that's what I would say is the path to success.   Speaker 1 (33:01) Amazing too. Has anyone in your network other than Tony Robbins, has anyone in your network been important in your journey or to your journey?   Speaker 2 (33:09) Absolutely. There's a lot of people. think my husband, that's a huge support for me. He believes in me, even though maybe he shouldn't believe in me, but having that rock. And then also my team, truly, I look at all the variations of Dental A Team and where I've gone as me as a person, they've evolved me as a human and they've also evolved our company and the good and the bad that have gone through.   They have truly shaped me, every single one of them, and I'm very, very grateful for the trust they put in me to create what we've built.   Speaker 1 (33:42) amazing. How do you develop how have you developed key partnerships?   Speaker 2 (33:47) Ah, that's fun. You go to events, you talk to people, you look to see how can you add value to their world, to their life. And I think partnerships, partnerships to me, I don't try to figure out like how to do something. I look to see like, who do I know that knows how to do this? That's how I use partnerships in life and vice versa. Like bring more to the table than you take from people. But I look at people have just like, what's their secret sauce? How can I like, like connect them to other people? To me, it's a fun connect the dots of just getting great people together. That's how I believe that like.   To me, that's how all boats rise is through partnerships like hands down. One of the best things was networking and meeting people. You will learn more from the minds of men than you will be able to like mine out of this world. Like there is more gold there than anywhere else in this world.   Speaker 1 (34:32) Got it. What has been your most satisfying moment in business?   Speaker 2 (34:39) Most satisfying moment? There have been a lot. I think recently my most satisfying moment was when I wanted to give up and I really was so burnt out and I was exhausted and I was tired and I hit that breaking point again in my life. And for the first time in my entire career, I took an entire month off and I reset and it was the most scaring. There was a lot of really bad backlash that came from it.   But me as a human, re-centered, refocused, re-prioritized. And I think that that was one of the most satisfying moments to realize, at the end of the day, CEOs and business owners have to show up for themselves first to be able to give to their entire team. And I'd never, ever, ever, ever done that. So like me personally, that was one of them. But man, like the hundreds and thousands of clients lives, Glenn, you and I both know, I think as consultants, when you hear people's lives changing,   like clients who are broke and literally had no money and now they're buying their kids their dream lives, that to me will always be the clincher of everything but like beautiful and why I show up every single day to do it. So there's a personal and a professional win that was like just super satisfying.   Speaker 1 (35:47) That's really great. All right, three questions left. Let's get through these quickly. What deserves all your attention but seldom gets it?   Speaker 2 (35:57) I would say probably my body like working out.   Speaker 1 (36:00) Okay, what three adjectives describe your strengths?   Speaker 2 (36:06) Adjectives. ⁓ I would say grit. would say fun. And I would say passion.   Speaker 1 (36:16) Great answers. Last question I ask is to everybody. So it is one subscription, either business or personal, so something you pay for either monthly or annually, that you simply cannot live without.   Speaker 2 (36:33) ⁓ Len.   I would say I can't live without, honestly, boomerang. That sounds so ridiculous. I would not be able to follow up with all the millions of things that I do day in and day out without boomerang as a person, like professional. Like I would pay for that all day every day. ⁓   Speaker 1 (36:53) I haven't heard that one before, that's a good one. you go. ⁓ So Kiera, how can people learn more about how you can help them if they want to learn more about your consulting agency? What's the best way for them to reach out and find out more?   Speaker 2 (37:03) Yeah, thank you so much Len. Best way is listen to the podcast, the Dental A Team podcast. Reach out on our website, TheDentalATeam.com. You can book a call with us or you can always reach out. You can text us directly, 775-243-5100. Like we will get back to you. I'm happy to share any tips, any insights. Find us on Instagram, Dental A Team. Truly, we try to be just like you are Len, available in all aspects and just really, really grateful for this opportunity today.   Speaker 1 (37:30) Well, this was great. Thank you so much for ⁓ spending 30 plus minutes with me, really educating the audience on things you're passionate about. And just like I did on yours, you can see the passion when you talk, you can see the passion in how you answer the questions. So I truly appreciate you kind of giving it all to us. So thank you again for being part of the Raving Patients podcast. ⁓ Guys, if you like the episode, please like us, please review us. If you think you or yourself or one of your colleagues can use what the Dental A Team can do for your practice, please reach out.   let them know you heard about them through the podcast that I just did with Kiera. ⁓ And as I end ⁓ every single one of my episodes, remember your reputation matters until the next episode. Thank you so much for joining me and we'll talk to everyone soon.  

Tiff and Dana discuss what they've seen across hundreds of practices as the best time to hold those weekly meetings. They also touch on the benefits of third-party insight, finding pockets to create consistency, the right cadence for your team, and more. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. We are so excited to be here with you today. I snag Dana once again, and I always say that I snag Dana. I say that because I pre-schedule these, you guys. Pretty far out in the calendar, I always have the podcasting scheduled. And then I do a really great job of being like, ⁓ actually, I know that it's on this specific date, but maybe we could squeeze it in here. I am always looking for ways to try to maximize a schedule, but sometimes it.   requires me moving things around. So I do really truly snack, Dana, where I can and push it into our schedules, typically somewhere else other than where it had originally started. So Dana, thank you for always knowing your schedule, always considering it, and always, think, one, we typically are able to just pop it in there, which just reinforces my bad habit, but... ⁓   I do know without a shadow of a doubt that if it doesn't work, you'll tell me too. So thank you for being the kind of person that can look at something and can confidently say like, oh, great idea, Tiff, but I can't do it that day. What about this day? I appreciate that about you, about your leadership style. And it makes me super confident in you training leaders and practices out there in the world. So Dana, welcome to the show today. Thank you for all that you are. How are you? It's the beginning of our week. How's your Monday so far? And again, thank you for.   just sliding this in here today.   Dana (01:24) Yeah, of course. Thank you. And you know, like, as a fellow efficiency hacker, I love when you look for ways to just pop it in spaces, especially with how busy our schedules are. I definitely always appreciate the snag and the time with you. And yeah, my Monday starting off pretty good, you know, meetings, catch up, client projects, all the things Monday can be a fun and yet sometimes wild day.   The Dental A Team (01:49) It's so true. It's so true. My boyfriend's always like, gosh, it's Monday and like, why are you always so exhausted? Isn't this your meeting day? And I'm like, yeah, well, you know, we got lots of meetings and today I decided to snag everyone possible for podcasting. So I've got meeting on meeting and then podcasting and you're totally right, Dana. And I think it's actually really beautiful. Something we did a few years ago. I don't know, Dana, if you remember when we started, probably, probably pretty close to when you onboarded as a consultant, we started shifting.   into Monday meeting day and Friday kind of meeting slash catch up kind of admin work day because we were getting really wild with our schedule. And it's just something I think that has changed and shifted the culture of the company pretty drastically. And it gives us that space to really dial in and work on the company and not just always working on client stuff or our own personal stuff that gives us space. So kudos to the Dental A Team there and Dana that was really   really kind of ties into today's content, honestly, of really structuring a schedule and being able to see where we can best create, you know, which I know like people, gosh, what am I trying to say here? Practices are like, where am I supposed to do a meeting? Where, and then where is it most beneficial? And I know I get asked a lot and Dana, you might too, like, can I do my meeting on a Friday? I'm like, totally, you sure can. But I think from our experience, what we've seen is Mondays tend to be the best because it sets the week up.   in advance. You can set it up on Friday for sure too, but I think it really just starting the day with our Monday meeting that first, you know, level 10 style meeting first thing in the morning on Mondays really gets the whole team energized and aligned on what our week is going to look like. And for me, working from home, like it really like motivates me to get moving. And Dana, do you, do you kind of feel that same way? And do you see that with practices?   Dana (03:41) Yeah, I do. agree with you. think if Friday is the only time that the entire team can get together for a meeting short have it on Friday, but I do feel like end of the week meetings, whether your last day is Thursday or your last day is Friday. It doesn't allow us to really jump off and get started right away. There's this whole weekend kind of a lag. And sometimes I feel like we come in Monday and it's like, we maybe lost some of the priorities that we talked about, or they get filtered through our weekend a little bit. So if it is the only time that you can, absolutely. And then I think Monday just a little like, guys, don't   forget, right? Bullet points of what we talked about, what we're working on this weekend, again, just to start the week fresh. But I think if you can do them on Mondays, it is a great way to really get everybody focused for the week to be super intentional with the week and with your time and just a jumpstart for everybody.   The Dental A Team (04:27) I totally agree. I think that's super important. I love how you brought that back together on Monday morning as a refocus moment. So maybe it's not the whole hour to hour and a half, however long meeting, but it's a quick like 15, 20 minutes. Let's just jumpstart this week to get us off on the same foot and make sure we remember the things we committed to. So I love that. I think that's brilliant. And again, it ties into what we're going to talk about today. I   Love stats. love pulling the consulting team's stats. love seeing what you ladies are doing for your clients over there and really just seeing the successes of the clients. And I love sharing those successes and those tools. Something that my team loves to do is just really share all the tools we possibly can. And when you're ready to work with us, we do it side by side with you. But until then, you've got these resources that you can kind of self-implement to the best of your possibilities. And we are always here to help as much as we can.   So Dana, I know we've chatted about this client ⁓ ourselves and we're not going to get into the specifics of the client, but the specifics of the results itself. And kudos to your diligence, ⁓ to your accountability and really staying on top of what a client needs. And I think what we've seen a lot is that mostly a client needs someone doing it side by side with them as in,   sharing the emotional load and being willing to have the hard conversations when they need to be had and answer the text when they need to be answered and get on those calls every single month for an hour and a half and really bust through the struggles that the numbers are showing us and really implement the right tools and put the accountability lines into it. So when I say we do it with them, Dana, that's like a very hard line that we've learned to take.   And we do it with them by ⁓ actions of training and support. We're not doing it for you. not calling your patients. Dana's not calling on unpaid balances. But she is someone who has been able to support many clients, but specifically these results. She has been able to support practices in achieving this specific one is tripling their collections within two months of working with Dana.   That sounds magical. It sounds beautiful and it is. And the clients who do experience these kinds of results, which all of our clients experience some tremendous results. But something I do want to put a caveat on is that our clients experience results in varying degrees. And there are just so there's so many results to be had and so many results to be shared. And I think something that has to be taken into consideration is where you come into the game.   Where are you starting and where are you going? Right. So this practice had some room to grow coming into it and as do many practices. so generally speaking, Dana, I think my first question is tripling collections. Number one freaking fantastic way to go. You offered some incredible support, some incredible training and awesome, awesome tools that they will be able to use for the rest of their careers.   What did you, when you see practices come in like this and you're like, holy, holy cow, there's room here to triple your production or your collections. Like, let's do this. What kind of demographics are they coming in with? What are you seeing their stats as when they onboard?   Dana (07:52) Yeah.   Yeah,   yeah, and I will say a client like this is really exciting to onboard because when you can kind of instantly see where you can help, right, you can instantly bring some relief, you can instantly reduce stress because, you know, collections is an area that can cause a ton of just.   emotions, stress, because that's money in the bank, right? And, and that is the money that we use to pay our team and pay for expenses and keep the doors open. And so to be able to have a client come in, I can just like instantly pinpoint where I can be super helpful and massively impact just their life and their practice. It is really, really exciting. Now to get results like triple the collections, this office came in with collections sitting at around 40 % as well   as needing some growth in their production, right? So ideally what they were needing to collect, there was a fairly decent gap ⁓ there that allowed for these results, but it definitely was hugely impacted in their just willingness to jump in and get to work too.   The Dental A Team (09:04) Yeah, I totally agree with you. I think that that space is super fun when clients come in and I'm like, heck yeah, here's a target. And most clients, whether it's the collections or overhead or production, most clients will come in with something that we can just narrow in on right away within the first 30 days and get momentum and get movement. And I think once we get that movement going, whether it's small or drastic, that's when the momentum catches with the team.   and the doctors and the leaders, and they're like, ⁓ this isn't as hard as we thought it was. We can do this one strategic piece at a time. And so when you're looking at a whole practice, it can be super overwhelming. And when you're working in the practice, hence the reason we do Monday meeting days, right? It's really hard to work on and in something at the same time. And when you're doing that, everything that quote unquote needs to be fixed or needs to be worked on or needs to progress,   is a hot fire and is a stress. And you're like, how do I do it all? How do I do everything? So what we end up doing, I think most often in practices, Dana, I know that I did this as a leader, is we try to fix a piece of multiple things. And so we get nowhere really fast. And we get like a 3 % movement on 10 different things instead of really being able to narrow down the focus into that one thing.   that can be done now that will progress you, that can spiral and domino effect into the next thing. And Dana, I think that's something that you were able to do with these, the results that you got here with this client, but specifically with any client, that third party kind of bird's eye view perspective of massive issues, it's easier for us to come in and say, well, why don't we work on this is the biggest thing, or this is the thing we can fix right now.   those other pieces might have things tied to them that we can't resolve. So we're gonna start here and finding that starting point seems to be the magic sauce of like one thing, one focus. And Dana, you do really well keeping them in line with that and being like, ⁓ yeah, those are great questions. What about this? Yep, those were great options. What about this? So bringing them back in alignment to that. And for these results to triple their collections,   What did you see right off the bat that you were like, is our focus. This is where we're gonna keep coming back. And how did you continue to pull them back into focus for that? Because I know they squirreled, everyone does.   Dana (11:38) Mm-hmm. Yeah. They do.   And everybody squirrels, and I think, too, like...   Doctors come in with I need to change this thing because it's the thing I can control, right? So a lot of times when it is a collections issues, doctors will come in and say, just need to produce more, right? I got to get in there and I got to produce more. And while that will help collections, right, it isn't going to fix whatever the root causes that's really thrown it off. And I will say for this practice, like there was quite a bit of opportunity in there, meaning that both sides of collections were just   not kept super consistent, not really great systems in place. You know, a lot of the parts and pieces in the background were a little bit off kilter or broken, if you will. And so instantly what I could see was, because I will say,   front office turnover, there's only one person that works in the front and it turned over quite frequently during the period of time where they saw a huge drop. knowing that, I could see that insurance AR really hadn't been kept super consistent. And honestly and truly the first thing that I did was recommend that he outsource it to somebody that could keep it steady. First and foremost, I can see we don't have hands on deck. Our clinical team doesn't know insurance well enough to pivot and jump in in those areas. And we really need somebody that is strong.   The Dental A Team (12:46) sense.   Dana (12:56) and can get in there and can get you results very quickly because honestly and truly at that point there was not a front office person on the scene. So it was I've got a great resource for you to outsource your insurance billing and get that started right away and honestly and truly that made a huge jump just having somebody consistent work on it.   The Dental A Team (13:18) Yeah, and I think that's a huge point. So whether you have somebody in the office or you have to outsource, ⁓ the thing that you said there was consistently working on it. So if you do have somebody, which a lot of practices do, you've got somebody in the practice, but I think that like squirreling on trying to figure out or decide what's the most important thing to work on right now, I...   think my assumption is, what I've seen is that those insurance follow-ups, those claims follow-ups, even claims processing, like sending the claims and prepping the claims, those get pushed to the wayside because they can be theoretically done at any time, right? It doesn't require me answering the phone and talking to a patient right now. It doesn't require me checking in a patient right now or answering the 15 questions that the doctor's coming with me.   to me with today because he doesn't have a patient, right? It doesn't require my immediate attention. So I can kind of push it to the back of my pile and handle other quote unquote hot fires. So that consistency gets lost. And back to our Monday meetings, would you have, if they had someone in this practice, and I know you've done this with other practices too, or I assume you have, would you have them structure so that they had specific times for that consistency?   Dana (14:31) Okay.   The Dental A Team (14:32) how do we help a billing team? Because I've had it too, where they've got somebody there and they're just like, Tiff, I don't know what you want me to do, I've got all these other things. And it's like, well, we need a structure built in. So what does that look like,   Dana (14:44) Yeah, and we did build a structure with the patient side with them. And so I think that there's a structure for both sides and you have to figure out about how much we can set aside every week. Right. And I like just a very simple cadence. Week one and three is patient AR. Week two and four is insurance AR. Week one is sending statements. Week three is your follow up calls and texts.   for your patient AR, for your insurance AR, usually I say week two, I'm working oldest forward, right? So I'll do my 90 day, my 60 day week two, week four, then I'm hitting my like 30 to 60 and whatever I can work in the current. ⁓   And so I think when you break it up into chunks like that, and whether it is, hey, you spend an hour every day each week, or you pick Tuesdays as your AR day, and you lock yourself in whatever space you can that you're uninterrupted, or you just let the team know, hey, come to me as little as possible for the next four hours, it's my AR time, and you mark it on your schedule. But I think developing, because AR is the one thing that the second you let off the gas, right, it will spiral on you.   It   will continue to grow. It will take off the second that you look away from it. And so, so often that's really just what it is, is you're doing the things. You're doing follow-up calls. You are...   Reaching out to patients you're sending statements, but we're doing it sporadically versus consistently We're doing it when we have pockets of time versus making the time to keep it consistent And when we're looking for pockets of time in a busy dental practice as you know Tiff like things always will come up   There's always a way to fill your time and there's always things that feel really pressing. And so AR is one of those things because it's just follow up that gets pushed to the side or is like, I'll tackle that next week or Hey, I'll tackle that at the end of the month. And by the time we get to the end of the month, it's grown to where we actually can't manage it now because there's so much in there.   The Dental A Team (16:44) Yeah, well you made me think of the reference that people can kind of look at this as, especially for our doctors or our managers who maybe don't do this part of the job. It makes me think of gym workouts. And when you're going even three times a week, so you've got three days a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, every week you're gonna go to the gym and you go to the gym and two, three, four weeks go by and you're starting to increase the weight.   on the exercises that you're doing. So maybe your bicep curls by week four, you're able to do a five pound heavier dumbbell. You start at 10, now week four you're at 15. And then life happens and you're like, shoot, we've got Christmas, we've got New Year's, we've got family in town, and we don't prioritize getting to the gym or getting those workouts in. So we lose the reps, right?   your reps aren't just like the single exercise reps. Your reps are the repetitions of actually going to the gym. So what happens then, you lose the reps of the gym and you were going three days a week and you were just killing it for like four months and you're like, I see these great results and this is working. And then you're like, shoot, it's holidays. And you just don't make the time for it. And you say, I'll get there when I can. And it starts as two days.   Fridays are out, there's too much family stuff going on. I can't do a Friday, that's crazy. So Monday, Wednesday, and then all of a sudden it's like, shoot, by Monday, I'm really tired by the end of the day, so I'll go at least Wednesday, but Wednesday's hump day. So then by the end of January, you're like, now I need a resolution created to get myself back in the gym because I'm starting over. And so I think that's what happens with AR or re-care calls or unscheduled treatment calls. We do them and we do them and we do them and then we're like,   Gosh, Dana, I've got to do this thing or I'm exhausted of this. I can't make any more calls. So we stop and then we're starting at the beginning again, even for re-care calls. If you've called a patient four times to schedule and you're like, Tiff, they're just not coming. You don't know that until they tell you they're not coming. So then in two months, you're starting again at ground zero. That's your first call. It's not your fifth call. You haven't called them five times. Now you call them once and you're starting all over again. So Dana, I think when you talked about the consistency in AR, that's what it made me think of.   Brody does great, my kid does great, and he'll start seeing results and then he falls off and then he's like, my squats are, I can't do as much on my squats again. And I'm like, well, you know, your legs are the first to go, buddy. Like your biggest muscle, those are the first to go. And he's constantly restarting. And I see people do that all the time in the health industry, but I don't think we relate it necessarily to our tasks in our daily job.   And I think Dana, you keyed in on that. And so building that consistency for them, the consistency with the offsite billing company obviously helped this practice alone, but building that consistency on the patient AR and having those two, if it's in office, if you're using an offsite company, matter what, consistent follow-up on offsite company is a thing as well. So no matter what you built, you helped them see where they could build that structure into their schedule, build the systems that needed to be followed.   and stay consistent on it no matter what happened. And Dana, I would have to assume and surmise here that that's where the results really started to trickle in. Because had they done that really well in month one, they may have only had 10 % increase. But because they stuck with it, they were able to triple their results in two months by utilizing those structures. Dana, do you agree? Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, you've   Dana (20:12) Yeah, absolutely. Yep.   The Dental A Team (20:18) killed it and you guys again like this comes from you have to start where you are and if you don't have you guys if you're calling us and you're like hey I have ten thousand dollars in my over 90 AR okay great when order to increase collections we're gonna have increased production like great AR I want that but when you call and you say hey Dana I have two hundred fifty thousand dollars in my AR that's an easy space to be like awesome we need to get this collections ramped up there's a lot to be collected here   So start where you are, know there's always consistency to be found. There's always something we're doing inconsistently and I always say anything you do consistently, even if you're consistently inconsistent, okay, if you are consistently inconsistent, you are going to produce a result. Anything you do consistently will produce a result. It's just looking to see is this producing the results I want or not. And if it's an or not, look at your real consistency.   Are you actually doing what you think you're doing? Or are you a little lopsided and topsy-turvy and maybe only making insurance calls once a month? Because that would suck.   Dana (21:23) Yeah, and it's one of   those spaces to like you said hard conversations, right? And I think that numbers make those conversations a little bit easier because I can say it may feel as if it is consistent, but there's something happening because the result   isn't there. And if we kept it consistent, we can certainly look at what you're doing and is that effective. But so often when we work with teams, it's the consistency piece that we're missing. Offices come in and like they want systems and they want help. And it turns out that a lot of them have systems, right? It's the consistency piece that they haven't quite figured out or, or how to even see that or build it in, like you said, creating that cadence. ⁓ And sometimes it's like you can   makes such massive movement with just one small tweak in consistency.   The Dental A Team (22:13) Yeah,   beautiful. I think that is wonderful. And Dana, if I were to force you to wrap this into some action items, with that said, what would it be?   Dana (22:23) Yeah, I would say just pull your AR, right? Know what your AR looks like. Know what your collections percentage is for every month. Remember, we're targeting less than one month's production for AR, 98 % for collections. But the biggest piece is if those numbers aren't where you want them to be.   Build your cadence. Make sure that those pieces are consistent. Talk to your billing coordinators. If you are the billing coordinator, look, where can I make it consistent in my schedule? Map it out, put it on the schedule, tell the team, ⁓ and get to work because it'll make massive change.   The Dental A Team (22:57) Awesome, I love it. Thank you, Dana. I think that was a beautiful wrap. ⁓ And guys, I just, I love our clients and you guys work so hard for the results that you get and the space to allow us to come in and support you on that is just really, really fun for us. So thank you to all of our clients. Massive thank you to all of our listeners, whether you're a client or not. You are here, you show up with us and hopefully you get some really fantastic.   actionable items and pieces that you can take away to your teams or individually implement within your own position in your company. So you guys, that's a wrap for today. I hope you enjoy. Drop us a five star review. Let us know what you think. And if you have any tips or tricks that you've implemented that have helped increase your collections, we'd love to hear about them. You can leave them in your review. People do read those. tell you that all the time. Or let us know Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. If you have any questions or you want to give Dana some massive kudos or   just pick our brains, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com works as well. So thank you guys and until next time, we'll see you later.

When it comes to the goals you're setting as a practice, it's important to establish a strategy to reach them. In this episode, Kiera walks listeners from wishful thinking to goal-driven execution. Email hello@thedentalateam.com for your goal-projection calculator today! Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team Listeners, this is Kiera. And today I like to get out of the hopes, the wish, the like, my gosh, are we gonna be able to hit our goals or not? ⁓ To actually set you and your team up to hit goals. this is just a true like, is your team set up to hit what you guys have set up? Or are we hoping, wishing, wishing on stars, doing all the like magic dance? ⁓ Let's truly, truly, truly help on this. We even have...   a goal projections calculator. So you guys can use that. And something email is Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. I'm gonna go through a bunch of these pieces today, but truly this is something that I think is gonna be so helpful for you guys. Let's not hope, wish, pray, like do that, but let's have it be a bit more predictable. ⁓ We've got to get it to where it's real. Somebody asked me like, I just wanna hit this amount. And I'm like, cool, why? And do you have a plan to get there? Every single piece. I don't care if you wanna hit.   2 million, 5 million, 20 million, all of it's doable. Let's just figure out the strategy. Let's figure out the plan. Let's create it. And then let's execute. Let's not just talk in hopes. Let's actually execute. ⁓ But it has to actually be founded actually. It has to be foundational. Otherwise, no matter how hard they try, they will not hit it. So we're gonna go from like wishful thinking to goal-driven execution. That way you guys can execute consistently.   Dental A Team's obsessed with this. Our mission is to positively impact the world of dentistry in the greatest way possible and to help you have every possible amazing life opportunity that you possibly have ever dreamed of. ⁓ We want you to lead with numbers, not just motivation. We want you to be confident in your decision-making. I want you to be able to say yes to more things in your life and that's focused on you as a person, earnings and profitability and systems and team development. The yes model, making sure that you are truly set up for success.   We're gonna teach you guys how to actually reach goals that you've set, how to be more consistent. It ties into quarterly. We talk about that on podcasts. Like really it's tracking, it's measuring, but it's like foundational. We've got to make sure that we've got step one is clear, measurable, visible and realistic. So, often offices I'm like, what are we even working towards? Like, I don't know. It does not have to be number centric either. It can be patient centric. It can be whatever it is. And I help offices see that like,   the numbers equate to the number of patients. And so when we look at this back and forth, it's really gonna help us like drive these things forward. And so whatever it is, you just have to make a goal clear, measurable, visible and realistic. So I'm talking like have a thermometer in your back room and we like fill it in every single month to see how close we are.   I do not want you just to be talking about it just as noise. It's got to be visible. It's got to be specific and it's got to be realistic. And then it's broken down into daily, weekly, monthly goals that are going to help us with benchmarks on it. So, so many times you're like, it's so hard care to add an extra 20 grand. And I'm like, but is it? If we're working 20 days a week, a month, that's an extra thousand dollars. Let's talk about how easy is it to add a thousand dollars a day? Like just rattle off, what could we do?   We could do fluoride. We can make sure our X-rays are there. We could add one extra, a couple extra fillings. Like that's all it is to add an extra 20 grand to a practice, but that's broken down into a daily realistic goal. This is going to help people also know what's their number that they actually can influence to drive the goal forward. So I'm very specific. If our goal is X, Y, or Z, we're going to then make sure every single department has something that they're driving this goal forward with that they can influence. And then we have a scoreboard.   Like truly teams do not win games by hoping, wishing that they got enough baskets in the hoop. They have the scoreboard there. They see, are they behind or they on track? Are they above goal? Are they behind goal? The entire game. It's not like, well, we're going to just like look at it once a month and hope like one time during the game, we're going to just throw that score up there real fast. Hope nobody really looks at it. Cause you know, we just want them to play ball.   No, we're here to win. We're here to make sure your practice is thriving. We're here to make sure that your systems are in place to make sure that you give the best patient and team experience. We need that scoreboard visible. Otherwise, how does the team know if we're winning, losing, or if we're on track? So break it down, monitor it. And I will tell you when practices implement this, they instantly grow 10 to 25 % consistently. Like it's a no brainer because we're like what you focus on, you achieve what's in your mind's eye. It's like when you want to go buy a car,   Well, instantly you start seeing that car everywhere and like, my gosh, there's that car again. Well, Toyota don't just like pump out a bunch more cars. You were focused on it. So you started to see it more. And what this is doing is it's focusing all of us on the goal and it's going to make it visible. So step one is you need to have your goal clear, measurable, visible, and realistic. And you need to post it this week. That's step one. Get it in there, physically post it and start measuring on it. Now every goal needs to have   the role tied to the goal. So this is going to what we talking about, like you have to train each role, what metric they can control. So hygiene reappointments, that's a big portion, hygiene fluoride, hygiene production per day, having it visible, having them have their own metrics so they can see what should my daily goal be. You just give a hygienist this information, your hygiene production will go up naturally. If they start looking at it, you have them turn in their end of day production reports, they check it off compared to where they're supposed to be.   Even if you have nothing tied to it, no pain, no gain, no nothing other than telling them what it is, you will increase because now they know for an office, your billing, it's our AR needs to be X amount. This is our goal. This is our standard scheduling. We need to have our schedule filled 80 % or 90%, whatever it is. That's less than one opening per day. We track it. We measure how many days do we not have? It's like how many accident free days did we have? Doctors hitting their dollar production per hour goal.   And checking out like literally I've helped associates increase their associate production goal just by giving them a little calendar where they check on how many days they hit their goal. That's it. That's it. People love like I used to work at the dental college at Midwestern. If you don't know that, well, welcome. Hi, I'm Kiera Dent. I used to work in Arizona's dental college and it was crazy. Our endo buckets were a hot mess. I had made these pictures. I had protocols. had it. The number one thing that worked for me to get those endo buckets back clean.   was giving out gold stars to students. I kid you not, these are dental students. I had 140 of them in two different classes. So 280 and I had to get these buckets in. You can only imagine the amount of work I had to do and that we're talking gut a purchase, like the whole nonsense of these things. And the piece was if I gave them a gold star and then what people started doing was putting those gold stars on their name tags. And believe it or not, people were obsessed with getting those gold stars and tracking and measuring just with a simple gold star.   And if their bucket wasn't perfect, they got a red or green. They did not get the gold or they had to go back and fix it to get the gold star. And it's crazy. Cause when you do this, what it does is it connects the dots for team members. And then we're reinforcing good behavior of what we want more up. So when you start to have like every single role having their goals. So hygienists know what their metrics are. Dental assistants know their metrics. Front office knows their metrics. Doctors know their metrics. And we're tracking it.   They're closing, like we are hitting our goals with so much more ease and continuity. This is how I take practices from producing 150 to 500,000. Like it's not sexy, it's not crazy, it's not hard, it's just consistent and being focused on the right things. So in your next meeting, like we've got the goal posted, it's visible. In the next meeting, ask each department like.   I break this down quarterly usually with departments and I say like, all right, build your quarterly goal. What are we gonna focus on? What are gonna be the metrics that are going to help us get to this mountain over here, this big goal that we're focused on? What does your department need to do? Where are we lacking? Where are the gaps and where can we improve? And then we start tracking it every single week. We review it every single month and we start to help them exponentially grow. This is how we do it and you can have that as a piece. And then third is we need to...   track the progress and adjust it weekly. we're literally like I said, you've got the goals, we're tracking it weekly. It's on there. And when a goal is read, we talk about it that week and we say, all right, this was off. What do we need to do? If hygiene teams are behind, the hygiene team gets together and we calibrate on how we do perio. If the doctors are not hitting their hourly goal, well, let's look, what are they diagnosing? What's our case acceptance close? What are our block schedules? When high gents aren't able to hit enough perio, let's go look to see, do we have enough perio spaces within our schedule? ⁓   but we start to identify these gaps early on, of course, correct quickly so that we were able to hit the goals consistently. And then like we celebrate those wins. So when you look at these things and you have your departments, this is where you have your department meetings every single week. People are like, what am I supposed to talk about? You talk about this. You talk about like, how can we win? We've got our scoreboard there. We're looking, are we behind, are we ahead? And if we're ahead,   Great, how can we calibrate the whole department? How can we look for other things that would drive it forward? And it's not driving the practice forward so much as it is great team experience, great patient experience, great practice experience. It's not one is better than the other. All three of those are interconnected. And so start doing this, start tracking every single week, start having each team member tied to a goal, start having it because when you do this, you're not just hoping and wishing.   You literally know the score every single week. Owners, you will be so obsessed about this because now you know like, are we going to win the game or are we going to lose the game? You're not hoping and wishing. You literally know at any given moment so you can fix it out like at halftime. Can you imagine, like my family, we all played basketball. So can you imagine for one second a basketball team that's like, well, it's halftime. We don't know if we're winning. We don't know if we're losing, but we're just going to go in there and we're going to pep talk.   No, they're like, all right, we're behind. need to go strategize. We need to go figure it out. Like, how are we changing this? Let's look back at our plays. What have we done? Well, what do we need to change? And they fix it to win the game. That doesn't mean we win everything, but it does mean that we're more consistent. It does mean that we're more focused on it. It does mean that we're more aligned because honestly, what you focus on, you achieve. So go post your goals, make sure they're realistic. We do have a whole projection calculator, which is really awesome. And it helps you figure out   who's gonna be off, how many providers you have, what their dollar per hour is, you can figure out what it is now, you can project out what next year's goals should be. At a minimum, every single office, if you're not in massive growth mode, should be growing at a minimum of 10 % every single year. That's just healthy business. So you have that. If you want to look at this to help you set up your realistic goals, by all means, reach out, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. I'm happy to share it with you. This is a great time of year also to be doing it. So you can get our free goal projections calculator. It's something that you guys can do.   You guys can easily, easily set this up to now have every role have their role tied to the goal that they need to do. And we start to measure it. And then we're able to check it every single week in course correct quickly of what do we need to do? Are we tracking the right things? Are we not? Are we set up to win the game? And I think about like, let's again, go back to basketball. If you don't watch basketball, we'll change it to football. In all of them where they're going to win, when they're looking at the score, if they're behind, it's not like   keep doing defense guys. No, what they do is they change it. They change the strategy. They say, we're going to do X, Y, or Z. We're going to switch out these players. We're going to course correct faster and see if we get a different result. So for you and your team, have this as a rhythm, have it to where people own their roles, have it to where it's realistic. And I will say when we're setting up goals, don't go so hard that people feel they can achieve it. Make sure it's realistic and achievable and attainable for people. I'm not going to go from   I give you your hit 75 % overhead. I'm not gonna be like, let's get you to 50%. Ultimately, yes, I want you to get to 50%. But I'm gonna go, okay, we're at 75. Let's get to 70 this quarter. You're like, here, that's 5%. Like, of course I can do that. Great, because what I'm trying to do is build massive momentum for you to where you hit these things with ease and you build the momentum rather than it being so hard that you give up before you even start. So with your team.   commit to this, reach out for that projections calculator so you can set up a realistic goal for your practice of number of providers, when you're gonna hire new ones, all the pieces. It's really awesome. I'd love to help you out with that. Or if you're like, gosh, like I cannot figure this out. I cannot get my team bond in. I feel like I'm so scattered. Reach out. We're here to help you. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. This is what we do. You guys, this is where we wanna help you lead with confidence and not chaos. And honestly, if you know a practice struggling with this, you're not struggling, send this podcast to them, help them out.   because I believe that the success platform, I think all of us are climbing the mountain to success, it's huge. Everybody's welcome and we want everybody there because we want to ultimately help more patients get great dentistry and help more dentists and more practices thrive. So share this, give it to somebody, help them lead with confidence, not chaos. And as always, this is what we do. So reach out and as always, thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team podcast. ⁓  

Tiff and Britt celebrate all the leaders in the dentistry for National Boss's Day! They talk about key qualities the best leaders have, maintaining a humility/confidence balance, how leadership is entrepreneurship, and a ton more. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript; The Dental A Team (00:00) Hello Dental A Team listeners. I am here today. This is a special drop-in This is an extra podcast this month from the consulting team You guys know our avid listeners know that we do quite a few podcasts every month here It takes a bulk of podcasts every month But ours always kind of coincide with the information that we're working on the newsletters that you guys are getting So if you're not subscribed to the newsletters go pop in there on that but we have an extra one today and I have a special guest with me I'm calling you a guest now because   Britt (00:00) Yeah.   The Dental A Team (00:30) I don't pull you in on these as much, Britt, and I have Ms. Brittany Stone. And Britt, I mean, it's gotta be nice over there, like, floating through life on the HR side, you know? But every now and again, I gotta pull you in and wrangle you back to the consulting side. So welcome, and I'm just, I'm excited to have you here today, Britt. How are you?   Britt (00:50) I like that you call it floating through life over there, Tiff, right? I'm happy to ask a person what it is.   The Dental A Team (00:54) I'm just, I'm projecting it for you. Yeah, I'm projecting   it. That way you can like create it. What we say we create, right?   Britt (01:01) Exactly.   We do have an amazing team. It's fun to be here. know consultants get the opportunity to be on here. Even Eve with marketing, so proud of her that she did a podcast as well. So I'm happy I get to stop back in for a little bit.   The Dental A Team (01:17) Yeah, I mean, you reminded   me that Eve was just on Not That Long Ago now, and I'm just mixing it up for these listeners right now. You guys are welcome. This is this is becoming a spicy podcast. So here we go. I love it. Full team. know. Next thing you know, we'll see who I pull in. But probably nothing any more exciting than this. You guys. They're behind the scenes for a reason, right? They are behind.   Britt (01:29) The whole team, the whole team.   Good luck on any of the rest of them. ⁓   I really enjoy   being in that spot.   The Dental A Team (01:46) Yeah, Britt did not, you guys. Just a quick tidbit. Britt has come out of herself quite a bit. And do you remember, Britt, I was just thinking like one of the first, I remember where we were sitting, where I was sitting, at least in my apartment when we had to do the Zoom, because Kiera's like, we got to do videos. People are doing video podcasts now. We got to keep up with it. We got to do videos. And you and I were like, what? Like, I am not dressed for this. Like, and we were so awkward and uncomfortable and it was so weird. Do you remember?   Britt (02:14) I do and you know that's like voice was weird enough for me at least you know karma works in my favor that I didn't have to go full throttle from the very beginning of doing things I got an intro of just doing voice and then eventually adding video   The Dental A Team (02:23) there.   Very fair, very fair. And I think as a leader on our team, that kind of spurs right into what our conversation today is about. And Britt, you are an incredible fearless leader on our team. And I think doing this podcast with you is divine and just meant to be. are someone that I look up to, that I know the whole team looks up to. And just that in itself, like the things that you have worked through, overcome. I remember when you first came on, I'm like, talk to yourself in the mirror. You're like, okay, crazy. Like, yeah, I am.   I am crazy, but it works. And you did it. Like you just jumped in and you were like, I'm going to figure this out. And that is just a piece of leadership that I think you're naturally born with, the figure out-ness. Like it's fine. Anything can be figured out. Whether you do it for the long run or not, you can figure it out and train someone else to do it. So having you on on the leadership piece here is actually just super like natural, right? Like it just is natural. So thank you for being here.   Britt (03:26) You bet, you're generous, Tiff. I problem solving for sure. Kiera will say there's always a solution and that is yes, being a leader, there's always a path through. I don't know exactly what it might be right now, but there's always a pathway through. And ⁓ yeah, it's, ⁓ I think also being a leader, it's a constant ⁓ humble of being able to learn is helps you continue to learn skills to be a better leader over time.   The Dental A Team (03:51) I totally agree with you. And we learn from each other, I think, and we continue to grow. We continue to refine those aspects of ourselves and those aspects of who we are and who we want to become. And it just makes it really, really cool. And today's special podcast, you guys should know. Hopefully, you know, this is dropping on a very special day. It's it's considered Boss's Day. I wish it was like Leaders Day. I don't I don't love the word boss in 2025. Yeah.   Britt (04:17) Can we have a for you to end that a little bit?   The Dental A Team (04:19) We've rebranded so many holidays and so many names of things. I think this one's definitely on the list of need. But I think of Boss' Day as like Leader's Day. I think that it's just a day to celebrate leadership and it's a day to celebrate today of all days the reason that we have, we'll say jobs, right? The reason that we're here today, the reason that we have a company to work for. And I just think it's really cool to take a moment and a special time to really thank those   those people, the entrepreneurs that we work for. And the other day someone said to me like, I'm not an entrepreneur. I'm like, they're an entrepreneur. They own a business. Like they're dentists. know they are entrepreneurs. Just like Kiera is an entrepreneur and she is the leader of this ship and she is to be celebrated today just the same as the rest of you guys are. And Britt and I thought we would take a moment to celebrate Kiera. We will get there. Kiera, don't you worry. Keep listening. We are going to get there.   ⁓ celebrate Kiera, but also to just celebrate you guys too and to really highlight some fantastic leadership skills that we've seen come about in our journeys, but also things that we see practices doing that set them apart from other practices in the leadership spectrum. And Britt, I think that it would be wild to start anywhere else. You tell me I might be totally wrong, but I really believe that leadership is a culture that you create.   and learning how to hone in leadership, think people kind of start all over the place. They're like, well, start with accountability. I'm like, well, first you gotta start where you want, how do you want to show up? Like, how do you want people to view you? How do you wanna be seen as a company and as individuals? And I think that culture piece, can be hard to understand. I might be like making things up, but I think it's something that really great leaders get.   is that they are the culture of the company. And from your perspective, Britt, you've helped create the culture of this company. You're a massive leader within our own company, but you've also worked with many, leaders, even before Dental A Team, to help build businesses, to help build successful entrepreneurial businesses and sectors. What have you seen as just important leadership qualities that really hone in   that culture that doctors and owners can take away from today.   Britt (06:44) Yeah, I love it, Tiffanie. It truly does start at the top. And I think that's probably one of the most important things for anyone who's an entrepreneur, anyone on the team who's got some sort of influence upon other people, which is pretty much everyone, is to number one, like recognize that, yes, you are a leader. And number two, like you said, recognize that it really does start with you and the impact that you have and what it shapes your culture.   I think some of the best leaders that I've had the privilege of being around or working with, I think number one, there's like a confidence humility balance that happens with them because they are confident enough, more confident than I, to like go and take this big chance and go have this business, make that investment, it's gonna be successful. So they've got that strong confidence piece in them.   while also realizing that yes, there are human sides sometimes we've got to shape ourselves a little bit to become that leader and create that culture within our team. And so being able to recognize that and acknowledge it and take that responsibility on as a leader, I even have to catch myself doing it sometimes. Right, sometimes, well, it's just, that's the way I am. No, that's not a good answer, right, for something. That's not a, that's an excuse 100%. It's not just the way I am or I'm learning about that.   thing or I'm working on becoming better at that thing instead of saying, well, that's just what it is and move on and deal with it because that doesn't get us anywhere. So I think kind of that humility, confidence mix. you know, I think anywhere you go and you've heard it before, right, people remember how you make them feel. And I think really good leaders have a genuine just want for their people to do well as humans and in their job.   And it's amazing the power that comes behind that. I'm thinking of, just had the opportunity to see one of my old bosses recently. And just like the excitement he has for what I'm doing now. And I quit, I left his office to come and do this. And he's still so excited about it. I think that goes a long ways for team members and building leaders because it builds confidence in your team around you.   and helps you to one, not only build up your team, but also build up more leaders, which everyone needs.   The Dental A Team (09:10) Yeah,   I love that. love that I actually get to see my boss that I left next Monday. So I'll probably have a similar experience. But I love the way you said that, Britt, that confidence, but with that humble and I kind of as you're as you're talking, my brain's kind of putting it in steps. And it's almost like you've got to develop yourself to the point that you have the confidence to say yes to take that step to run for it. But then the next layer is peeling back enough ego.   can't rid of the whole ego because you need some sort of ego. Ego is good, but it can be too much. It's peeling back the ego and realizing that you're not losing confidence or losing status by being humble or by being vulnerable in your leadership. And so I actually find vulnerability to be a space of higher confidence. I feel like the more confident you are, the more vulnerable.   Britt (09:54) Mm-hmm.   The Dental A Team (10:06) you are able to be with like that true confidence definition. And so it's kind of that like you needed the momentum. It's it's kind of like Brody. He's 17 and he has all of these things that he wants to do and he has all these decisions he's trying to make. But he doesn't have his brain hasn't developed yet enough to see the logistical steps that happen after that decision is made. Like it's like this decision and then the next one. Right. So it's kind of those   steps of entrepreneurship is like, had to have enough confidence to make this first decision, but now I'm no longer 17 years old, my brain needs to develop, right? So it's almost like you get here and now you're developing that skill of humble, vulnerable leader and peeling back those layers to say, is now where we're at. And that's where that culture piece comes in. And I think it's where the culture   shifts come in for so many practices because we had to hire people, we had to have what we have, and then we get to a point, I would say, I would venture to say three to five years in, you get to the point where it's like, okay, this feels chaotic. How do we back up and almost restart because we're backing up, peeling off those layers, and then adding something back in. And I think, you highlighted that really well.   Britt (11:08) Thank   you   The Dental A Team (11:31) and those characteristics ⁓ being developed over time are like, it's just the only way to really do it. And to think that right off the bat of practice ownership straight out of school, you're gonna have all of those skills is kind of crazy. So I love the way that you had said that. And I think we've all had the opportunity on some level or another to watch each other grow in those spaces, ⁓ but to highlight Kiera in this moment for Boss's Day.   she's an incredible boss, is really watching her develop those is something that we all get to take away. So she has that humble vulnerability. Doesn't always come easily and you guys, like you'll stumble. You're gonna have to have some space where you're like, that wasn't my best foot, which it almost was because it created the situation we're in to have the conversation we're having. So I just don't ever look at anything as a total loss. I look at everything as like a step forward.   but she's able to do those pieces for us and with us because we're all growing at the same rate she is. We're like a percentage or two behind her, right? But she's leading the pack and creating that culture. if Kiera's turbulent, we're turbulent. If Kiera's, she doesn't even have to be in the company, you guys. Like she does not even have to be here with us, we know. We're virtual.   Britt (12:41) Mm-hmm.   No.   virtual or virtually.   The Dental A Team (13:00) Good, yeah, good point because I have a lot of doctors that are like, how do I get this culture to work without me here? This is that space where Kiera has led us in this fight of culture to where we've all been able to pick up those pieces and embody them. We embody who the Dental A Team is and it's not necessarily Kiera. We're not mini Kiras by any mean. We are embodying the Dental A Team culture.   so that the company can be successful and we can carry the culture without care of being here. And I think that comes from that next layer, right? We push forward, we have the confidence, peel back the layer, we have the vulnerability, and then we train and teach that by showing and doing, by being. Like, you live it so that people can live.   Britt (13:53) Tiff, and as you were saying that, right, that confidence piece, and we've all experienced it. I don't care who you are, right? You've hit that point where like it's just a tough spot. Whether it's a tough thing you learn about yourself, whether it's a tough spot business-wise, right? We hit those tough points and that the confidence that leaders have is the confidence to say, all right, and...   We keep going and this makes us better, right? Like that's the confidence to where it's not, they're not backing down, right? Have their moment great. As my brother tells me, you got five minutes, go cry about it and then let's move on from it. You know, something like that. It's like, fill your emotions, let it out, but then it's time to move on and start progressing from here instead of letting that derail us completely.   The Dental A Team (14:45) Absolutely, absolutely. And when we're given that availability, it changes and shapes who we are. Because I think then the last thing people want to do is take stuff home to their families. And that's where people come in, they're like, tiff, right, how do I get this work-life balance? I'm like, I hate that word. You guys know that, you've heard me preach about it. We're not going to go down that rabbit hole. This is where it happens though, where you can show up and be respectful, but be yourself and be able to work.   through things together, that you don't take things home and then you come to work worse. Like it's this bad spiral. And when the culture does start to shift in that direction, it's having the confidence plus vulnerability to be able to say, we need to have a conversation. Like something's off, we're off. Kiera and do that a lot, right? We'll say something feels wrong. the words aren't matching the tone or like the way I'm hearing them, it doesn't match what I   think your intention is, so like, let's squash through that real quick because what happens is if we stay on that space, it's just like a battle of egos at that point and you think I'm showing up confidently, like I'm showing up strong. Sometimes, but mostly we need to be like, wait a second, what is that that I heard? Walk me through that first. That's the vulnerability space, because you might say, well, you said something that really hurt my feelings. Got it, tell me, let's work through it.   Britt (16:10) I   The Dental A Team (16:12) And I know we have been trained in our lifetime here that work is not a space for emotions, work is not a space for feelings. And that's just not, it's fine if that's what you want your culture to be. And I'm here to stand on the fact that create your culture to be what you want it to be. Our company's culture is to tackle things as they happen. And it's something that we've been able to develop over time. ⁓   with respect to one another and respectful communication. So thank you, Britt. That was beautiful. I think the doctors that we attract and the teams that we attract kind of, I think we attract, like attracts like, and we attract practices that are looking for culture similar to ours or have culture similar to ours and need to step it up a little bit more or just get to that next level. And   think now, Britt, is there anything else you wanna add to that before?   we start our brag   Britt (17:10) I   only other thing I would add to that, right, as you listeners are out there, whatever stage that you are in, right, we worked with a lot of leaders as well and people we learned from all the time from our clients and also that we get to help them along that journey of leadership. Because I don't know about you, Tiff, but thinking back on clients, right, I've got clients where the leader they were when they opened the door with four employees is different than the leader they are now.   where they're going into multiple locations and have now leaders built up underneath them who do a lot of things for them. I think giving credit to the amount of personal growth and leadership growth that takes to transition within your business to a different stage and a different size even. And so it's a lot of fun for us to be able to be a part of that and help out with that.   And also I know a lot of our doctors who come to us and there's a lot of things that as a leader, you cannot complain down. That's just one of the things you can't complain down. And so you've got to have someone to work through things with. And sometimes it's not the prettiest when you're working through those things. And so being able to be that outside person so that our doctors can work through those things with us and we can work through it so that they can go present to their team.   as the leader that they want to show up as. That's ultimately who they are, but right, we're all growing and changing. And so it's helping them to be able to have that support, to be able to go and then present to their team as the leader that they want to be. So I think that's the only thing is everyone is always learning. Perfection is never something that you are gonna reach. It's a constant growth that we're looking for. And as we work with our leaders, is the leader you are today.   will not be the leader you are in five years. Thank goodness. We will all be better than we are currently.   The Dental A Team (19:05) Yeah.   Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Like, thank goodness I'm not the mom I am today, the same as the mom I was when he was four. Yeah, that was beautiful. Thank you. I totally agree. And acknowledging that, like you said, being okay with it, ⁓ understanding you're not going to be the same as you were and your team shouldn't be either. So I know a lot of leaders will feel held back where they're like, gosh, but my team knows me as this person. And it's like saying, well, my husband knows me as my 20 year old version.   Britt (19:11) huh.   Okay.   The Dental A Team (19:37) self. So me taking these new courses or expanding my thoughts or doing yoga instead of workouts at the gym would be different. How will he view me? It's kind of the same. Like you guys grow together or you grow apart. And if you've got team members that aren't ready to take that next stage with you, that's okay too. Just know if you hold yourself back, you're holding your team back too. So perfect, Brett. I love it.   ⁓ so I have, we have, we have something fun for Kiera. I know she listens to these. I know specifically she's going to listen to this one cause it's freaking boss's day. And she knows that something fun is coming out. And what we did today, Britt and I pulled the, ⁓ consultant team specifically, and we asked for one to three qualities that they see in Kiera that she brings to our team as our leader.   I thought these would be really fun for Kiera to hear, for Britt and I to talk about, and for you guys to take away as leaders, because I do think that they are, there are so many, are 20,000 words we could choose from, but it is really cool to see how a company has grown and what they're showing up and embodying now. And I wrote them all down for us, Britt, and then I've got a couple that I just want quickly you to kind of expand on for us.   There were a few that were repeated, which I thought was really, really cool. One of the ones that was repeated was integrity, doing what they say they're going to do. And that's something that within our company we have had as a piece of our core values for as long as I can remember. And I think for Kiera in general, she works really hard to do what she says she's going to. And if she, for some reason, misses that step, she definitely takes ownership of it. Another one that came up, well, it was kind of worded.   in different ways. So it's kind of, it's actually kind of cool because execution and vision came up, which I feel like Kiera is our visionary and we learned, I called her out on it and I love you Kiera. I hope you're listening. You know, I will call you out every single day. When she loses her vision, our whole company spirals. There was a point in our lives where I was like, we just need to know where you want us to go. We just need it. So having that on this list actually made me really, really, really happy.   Britt (21:51) Yeah.   The Dental A Team (22:02) And I think it'll make Kiera really proud to hear that that was one of the words that came up. But I also think that vision kind of flows in with execution because she executes on the vision, which helps, she executes on most things she puts her foot forward on, but it helps us to execute on the vision as well. But then ⁓ decisive came up and those kind of all clumped together for me in my mind. Decisive, I think Kiera is gonna get a kick out of that one as well.   that is something that she has honed a skill in on. ⁓ Accountability, empathy, confidence, passion to make a difference, inspiring, transformational and resilient. well, first off, Britt, what's your favorite leadership quality that was given to us from the team for Kiera, but just for a leader, not necessarily for Kiera.   Because we don't need to make it all about her. She's already like blushing over there, but I wanted her to hear these words But what out of out of those what do you feel like you pull out as a baby leader as a grown leader? Like what word stands out to you the most?   Britt (23:12) Yeah, I do love that decisive was on there as I know Kiera will love that one on there too. I think that's one of my favorites Tiff to your point. Right, we can't have too many cooks in the kitchen on what direction to go because it really does get wild even within your dental practice too many cooks in the kitchen gets very wild. And so that leader who can be decisive and I think it goes along with vision as well of like   The Dental A Team (23:17) Same. Yeah.   Britt (23:42) keeping the course of what direction are we going, even though that direction is moving or growing or where are we headed to, and that'll adapt over time. A good team, right? Good team members. All we wanna do is like help you and make it happen. It's kinda like, well, we just, what direction? Because I know if I start going my own direction, it's gonna get wild and I'm gonna be off track. So like what direction? And then,   give me a few words and let's go and let's make it happen. And I think that's huge. And I know that that's a tough spot to be in sometimes. Our business owners, our entrepreneurs, you guys have a lot on your shoulders and it doesn't always go recognized. And I know like it's pressure on you sometimes, but keeping, for you to keep a space where you can have that clear direction and be decisive about where we're going is a game changer.   The Dental A Team (24:39) I agree. I agree. I think execution goes along with that. And the vision plays such a huge role too, because as you were speaking, I was thinking for visionaries, for entrepreneurs, for people who start businesses, it's very difficult for them to see outside of being a visionary. Just like when you're not a visionary, when you're an implementer, which most team members are not going to be visionaries. You guys are probably on their own companies, just saying.   Britt (24:43) Thank   Yeah.   The Dental A Team (25:06) They are implementers on some level. You are the visionary, but it's very difficult to see the other side. It's like it's difficult for you to put yourself in those shoes. So the visionaries are like, no, like you want space to create because that's what they want. But they do have a very clear picture of what they want, but they don't know how to narrow it down. Right. So it's kind of this like mix and teams sometimes go a little wild. They're like, just tell me and   they get into the spin. And so I think that decisiveness, that execution narrows down to the vision. When you know the vision, when you have a clear picture of the vision, that is your go-to spot, you guys. Decisions are so much easier when you know where you're going. When the vision of your practice is super clear, those decisions, big or small, come down to, they match our vision? Does this go with our team values? Does this match our culture?   or is this completely opposite of what we're heading towards? Do we wanna add a new product to our product line? Do we wanna add a new procedure? Well, what's our vision? What's our goal? Is this in alignment with what we're working towards? Because then visionaries, you can say yes, no, maybe here's the outline, here's a template, go create. I can be very creative when I know what the direction is. So to your point, Britt, I think those all go hand in hand. I totally agree. And I think it's something that as a company,   We've pushed for and narrowed down really, really well. Our style of meetings help, and I know we work with practices all the time to get those narrowed down. We have practices coming into town soon to do just this thing. so those were so perfect. And it's something that we constantly refine. Doctors, think actionable pieces here, leaders, office managers. When I was an office manager, you guys, I told you, I'm gonna see my doc in a week. I love him. He, Debrit, I think we're like the same, like they are just   family to us.   Britt (27:04) Always a cheerleader.   The Dental A Team (27:05) Always   a two-year-later, constantly. But I had to be the one that created this stuff, right? Like for slash with him. And so office managers who are here today that are like, yeah, this sounds great guys, but like my doc's not gonna listen to this podcast or my doc's not on the same page as me. That's totally fine. Go create it. Create something so that your team can be decisive in their roles too.   when you can narrow down that vision, no matter who you are right now, whatever leadership position you hold in your company, narrow that down and make it easy for everyone, because it's going to make it easier for you too. So, Britt, this went longer than I thought it would. Thank you so much for being here. I love celebrating everyone. And Britt, you're just one of my favorite humans. And I knew you would have so much to pull out of this on leadership side.   Britt (27:54) Same Tiff, I mean, Kiera deserves all the credit in the world as someone who like, even I've been here for four years now and Kiera now is different than the Kiera back then and is only getting better and better. So thanks to her. I know she and you owners don't always get a lot of the thanks and support and you deal with a lot of things. So it's a thank you for me, one to Kiera and two to all of you out there who take on that responsibility and that.   The Dental A Team (28:23) That was beautiful, thank you. And with that, you guys, go do the things we kinda talked about here too. Go narrow in your vision and your focus. If you haven't narrowed in, go talk to your team about it. Even if you talked about it yesterday, say, hey guys, let's talk about this again. Talk about it enough that that becomes your culture and your drive within your practice. And most of all, go have an amazing Bosses Day.   I hope you are celebrated. I hope you feel loved, even if it's just this today and nobody else knows. Shelbi told us, you guys, I'm gonna let you in on a secret. Like that's how I know the date, okay? So you guys, if you're listening and you didn't get the flowers, like this is your flowers, okay? We're all here for it. We're all celebrating each other. And Kiera, like Britt said, we are so, so incredibly grateful for everything you do every single day, every way that you show up for us and the way that you grow us individually and as a team every single day.   So with that, you guys, go have a great Boss's Day. Catch you next time.  

Kiera and Trish apply their dentistry expertise for another practice autopsy! This episode looks at a legacy practice that was experiencing stagnation in production because of numerous challenges. Kiera and Trish walk through what exactly was changed to allow this practice to hit its production goals for the first time in over a year. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera and today is such a fun day. I have one of our incredible consultants, Trish, on the podcast with me. Her nickname in Dental A Team is, go ahead Trish, say it. And explain what to da means Trish, because it's my favorite nickname of any, like it's one of the best we've come up with.   DAT Trish Ackerman (00:11) Ta-da!   Well, it definitely got sticky, that's for sure. so TADA stands for Trish Ackerman Dental A Team Ambassador, because I love referring anybody I can to us. That's either a client or somebody to come and work with us. I love this company and I want everybody that I love to come and work here too. I want clients to join, so yeah, I'll take it.   The Dental A Team (00:27) you   Trish, like it is one of the like biggest compliments that you you have referred people to our company. You have brought tons of people to us. Like you are a walking little dental A team advertisement. And to me as a boss, as an owner of a company, like that is music to my ears. But like, didn't you just take that name on for another name in your life? Like this is this is sticking. So tell.   DAT Trish Ackerman (01:02) I did, I did. It got   that sticky. So I'm going to be a grandma very soon, which just sounds awfully strange to say out loud. But we had my original grandma name all picked out, which was going to be Cha Cha. But when I heard Ta Da, I'm like, that, that is really classic. That's going to stay. And my daughter and family, they're like,   The Dental A Team (01:26) Yeah   DAT Trish Ackerman (01:29) okay, we might have to grow into that a little bit. I'm like, well, get ready to grow anyway, because it's staying.   The Dental A Team (01:34) Well, our marketing team has already been working on some pretty fancy swag for you Trish, because TADA, if you don't know Trish yet, you're gonna get to know her. If you haven't heard her as much, Trish is one of the most funny, like she, I feel like you're just confetti in a human form. Like you literally just like burst confetti everywhere you go. You make people laugh. Like you have made me almost spit water of laughing so hard on calls together. You're just a good time. And so,   If you haven't gotten to work with Trish or you haven't got to meet her yet, welcome. She's one of my absolute faves. So excited that you're on our team and that you are the to da of the company. ⁓ but today I wanted Trish to come on because I love a good office autopsy and Trish has been consulting some clients, rocking them out, having some really incredible massive wins. And so we thought, let's like, let's go behind the scenes. Let's see what that to da consultant over there has been doing in her spare time, consulting some awesome offices.   And with that said, whenever we do an office autopsy, what we do these for is to help you see yourself in other practices fabric. I think a lot of times people think dentistry is lonely and isolated and it does not need to be. So what we're gonna do today, we do mashup practices. So if you think this is you, there might be parts of you, it might be parts of another practice. We try to do that to keep practice confidentiality. But really I also hope when you are a practice that's being highlighted in an office autopsy, just know that you get highlighted because...   We're freaking proud of you as the owner too. These things can't get done without owners executing and implementing. And while yes, we as consultants are really good at what we do, we truly are magicians. We're able to grow into ways that you couldn't even imagine, but we can't do that if you don't execute. So Trish, take it away. Let's kind of talk this office. Where were they when they like joined Dental A Team? Then I always love to say like, where are they now? Like how long did it take us? And then we'll get into the how of how did you do it? What were some of the things you implemented? So take it away Trish.   Where was this practice when they joined us and now where are they at ⁓ a couple of few short months later?   DAT Trish Ackerman (03:30) When this practice came to us, this was a really, really special situation because this is a legacy practice. And it was originally owned by grandpa and then the current owner's father. So this is now the third generation of a dental practice. And when this practice came on with us, they were doing many, many, things right.   but there was no traction taking place and they were very stuck. They were very stagnant and the current owner, this is a really big deal. know, this was again, because of the legacy that it's holding and he was struggling. He was struggling financially. He really was. There wasn't a lot of, there wasn't a lot of knowledge. He didn't have a lot of knowledge around like the current overhead, what it should be.   And things were feeling, he was feeling a pretty big pinch. And I had to give him so much credit. I think it takes a lot of courage to reach out to get the help. you know, it's like, practices don't typically reach out to us because everything is going so great. It's usually when they're starting to feel something's not right, something's uncomfortable. And he did just that. And they had an extremely congested schedule.   The Dental A Team (04:46) Mm-hmm.   DAT Trish Ackerman (04:57) They have a large patient base, as you can imagine, because many are still, you know, that were patients of his father. So what was happening is because of the congestion, they weren't able to see new patients right away. was like a six week wait for that. There were several patients in the hygiene that were still active that weren't able to get in. And then again, there was just kind of like a bunch of stuff on the schedule, just stuff. So they were working really hard.   And what I did is I really walked through the specifics of his patient base to show him you actually have way more patients than you do available hours, which is why you're stuck here. And how do we do this? Well, we were also a little restricted on that because this is a five op practice. So we had an op for each doctor, an overflow, and then the two hygienists.   But what we did is we got creative because we knew we had to add hygiene. That was a must. And we also had to allow more openings much sooner for the new patients because what was happening when I pointed out that he was basically giving his new patients away to his competitors because they were waiting so long that really got his attention. we ended up, the first thing that we did is added a hygienist.   The Dental A Team (05:57) Mm-hmm.   Absolutely.   DAT Trish Ackerman (06:20) which now brought those two doctors down to one op each. And that really scared them because we were handcuffed. It was like we were handcuffed in every direction, but we got very creative and we designed very strategic doctor schedule blocks so that they know when there's gonna be production.   and they know when they can make the time for like the sand and the water appointments, post-ops and things like that. But the staggering of the schedules made a huge difference. The practice was also only open Monday through Thursday. So we changed it to Monday through Friday. So on Mondays and Fridays, those doctors do have their two ops again. So that has worked well. When we implemented that design, we also implemented some patient filtering.   so that they could get in the new patients, not emergencies, but they could get in the new patients with significant needs right away and also not take the risk of giving those away to a competitor. If they have significant dental needs, get them in right now. And we took away the focus of like, they have the protocol, a lot of doctors like for those new patients to go through hygiene first and that's a great structure. It's a great structure for patients without   The Dental A Team (07:21) Mm-hmm.   Thank   DAT Trish Ackerman (07:41) significant dental needs. So that all of a sudden opened up the door to where both of the doctors were getting very comprehensive new patients on their schedule right away that needed significant amount of dental work. Then they could eventually get into the hygiene department. With that, when we designed that, within six weeks, this practice had hit their production goal.   The Dental A Team (07:43) Right.   DAT Trish Ackerman (08:10) for the first time in over a year. The team was starting to get very numb to goals. They weren't even looking at the numbers anymore. The numbers weren't mattering to them. And then all of a sudden there was this light coming at the end of the tunnel where they hit the goal. Then they hit it again and they've hit it again. He has not hit goal in the last four months. And the trend that they're on,   The Dental A Team (08:12) Wow.   Wow.   DAT Trish Ackerman (08:37) Well, running parallel with getting the new patients with the significant needs and such. What I also did is ensure that both him and his associate were really polished on presenting treatment. ⁓ They had intraoral cameras that were collecting dust like a treadmill in a living room that a lot of people have seen happen or hanging clothes on. They got those dusted off. They use them on every single patient. There's a way to use photography.   The Dental A Team (08:49) Mm-hmm.   you   DAT Trish Ackerman (09:05) And there's a way to use photography. And this doctor, anything I encouraged him to try, anything, he did it. There was zero pushback on any of the recommendations. I've seen, I know how this works. I know what doesn't work. And when these doctors, like this practice, when I broke it down, like here's how you use photography and here's how you share it with the patient, it just continued to skyrocket.   The Dental A Team (09:07) Absolutely.   DAT Trish Ackerman (09:35) The whole team was on board with him. Then we got the associate, the associate dentist on board and we are now getting ready to, he's getting ready to start construction. We're doing a build out. We're adding ops.   The Dental A Team (09:49) Nice.   Wow. And how long has this been? So you started with this practice, they're not hitting goal, they're not doing the things that they wanted to do at legacy practice to now hitting goal four months in a row. How long has this client been with you? Since April. So right now we're recording, that's about five months that this client's been with Trish. And to hear that.   DAT Trish Ackerman (10:05) This is April.   The Dental A Team (10:13) ⁓ what I think is magic one Trish shout out to you, think beautiful job as a consultant, because when we go into an office, there's literally thousands of levers that we could go after. And I think something that consultants have to really do in something I'm very sticky on any consultant who works with us and Trish kudos to you. Is finding the one lever that's going to move the practice forward the most, the quickest, the fastest for fastest ROI that's going to get there because Trish, could have gotten in and implemented, you know,   X, Y, or Z, and they would not see the results. you saw, I mean, you got tight, you got tight space. And I think also having a consultant that comes to the table that's willing to think outside the box. I mean, you got five operatories, two doctors, that's squishy. That's a squishy. And for you to realize they're not maximizing all the days that they could be. And to do it in a way to help both doctors. I also know that you have maybe played a little competition game.   because you realize and you find out that when doctors are a little competitive, it works for some, doesn't work for others. But then they start to watch to see, if this doctor can do it, I think I can do it. And it's not doing anything unethical. It's truly making sure that they're looking for opportunities, using intra-orals, like stuff that was already there. And I think this is what I love about being consultants are we see the entire treasure map. We see all the different things we could do. And we're like, all right.   This is going to be a fun game. And Trish, this is why I think you're Tadda. You're the confetti, like in a human form. You look at this and say, how can I make this fun? How can I get these people bought into it? And then we go for the harder pieces, but you, you dug gold. found the intro oral cameras and you taught them a few things. You figured out how to change the scheduling. And what I hope people hear is Trish that in about three, four moves very quickly and they're hitting goal. So when you're sitting here stuck at the ceiling and thinking, Oh my gosh, there's no way to get there. I just want to help you see that.   The answer is probably much closer than you think it is. You just are buried and you can't see it you need somebody outside who's not sitting in it that can guide you. like, shout out to this doctor, these offices, they take your lead. I feel like it's like, if you're gonna hire an expert who's been there, done that, done that successfully, Trish, I'd like to highlight, tell me how many team members before you came to Dental A Team, how many team members were you overseeing?   DAT Trish Ackerman (12:30) In my past, oh gosh. think at the max at the end, was close to 160.   The Dental A Team (12:31) Yes.   160 and how many practices were you overseeing at that time? All right, so you have a consultant who has worked with 16 practices, 160 employees overseeing them. Do you think she knows a thing or two of how to help a five-op practice with two doctors and a smaller team turn a few levers very quickly to get them up to where they need to go? The answer is absolutely yes. And I think Trish, that's the magic, that's the beauty that you were able to do so quickly, so thoroughly, and just something real fun.   DAT Trish Ackerman (12:43) 16.   The Dental A Team (13:09) I know like we, this is a quick podcast. I asked you to come in between client calls. So I know there's so much more magic I just want to share with everybody. But as we wrap up, cause I do know like you guys, they're consultants, they podcast in between coaching calls. They're here to deliver to clients and to also share with you. But any last thoughts you want to add as I know we wrap up so you can get on your way to another client, help them get their magic. Any last thoughts you have of this very quick office autopsy that you think people should recognize, maybe they're in the same boat as well.   DAT Trish Ackerman (13:38) Getting uncomfortable. Getting uncomfortable is going to be very important and it's okay. This doctor got uncomfortable. During the implementations that we were making, there was a team member that was not on the bus ⁓ and that was also holding the practice back a little bit. When we go in to make these types of changes, it's like, it's the unknown.   I do certain things a certain way every day the same and I understand how it feels when you're asked to do it differently. But when I first go in, that's the first thing that I will kind of announce and ask. Are you going to be okay getting uncomfortable with me? Because I promise, I promise I'm here. I'm here. I'm in your corner. And my job is to not watch people fall. My job is to watch them rise.   And I use the six pack analogy. We all want the six pack of abs. And it's going to require a lot of sit ups. And our abs can get a little bit sore, but the outcome is just really, really magical. And so once they make the commitment, like, OK, yeah, I'm ready. Let's get uncomfortable. That's when it really takes off.   The Dental A Team (14:55) That's incredible. And I think Trish, like you said, we can give you all the tactics. We can help you with all the how, but you've got to be showing up as a practice. So if you're not ready to get uncomfortable, it's not the time for you to do consulting. But I would say, like you said, most people call for consulting when they're much further down the path of hardship than they should. So if you're kind of like, all right, I know I could do some help. I know I could make some changes. Now's the time. But you also have to be willing to be uncomfortable. So Trish.   DAT Trish Ackerman (14:57) video.   The Dental A Team (15:22) I know you've got to run. I appreciate you so much being on the podcast. I think you just bring so much magic. You're so welcome. And for all of you listening, if you can see yourself maybe in this story that we shared, I know it was a very small snippet today, but there's so many things that we do, but I hope you can see in just a couple of months, this practice's life was changed, utterly changed. This doctor is having more fun. They're more excited. They're dreaming again. They're living their best life. They're loving it. The team's excited. The team's re-engaged. So if you're maybe in that like, gosh, we're kind of like losing momentum.   DAT Trish Ackerman (15:25) Thank you, Chair.   The Dental A Team (15:52) Reach out, we'd love to help you. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com or head on over to our website, TheDentalATeam.com. Book a call. We're here, we'll do like a totally complimentary practice assessment. Look to see where you are. Look to see some of the gaps. No pressure, just massive momentum for you. If we're a great fit, awesome. Otherwise we're gonna send you on your way with a lot of great tips. You're gonna have a lot of fun. And hey, you might even get to dodge your consultants. So reach out. Trish, love having you. Go have the best day. And for all of you listening, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on The Dental A Team podcast.

Expert consultants Tiff and Kristy give listeners a look inside their head when it comes to scheduling the most efficient and optimized way possible — and in a way that won't feel overwhelming. Their advice, which includes the right verbiage and what to do when schedules change last minute, will start all team members with their best foot forward for various tasks throughout the work week. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. We are back today. I have Miss Kristy with me. I stole her for the afternoon. If you listen to the job description, I don't know what they're gonna call it, but we talked about optimizing your job description basically and metrics. And if you listen to that one, you know Kristy is like my calm in the storm.   and ending my day with her today, I was like, there's no better way to end a Monday. So if you have the opportunity to work with Kristy one-on-one, she is your consultant, you guys. I envy you. You get more time with her every month than I do. Truly, I envy you. And you also know exactly what I'm talking about, Kristy. Your calm is just incredible. I will never not talk about it. So thank you for ending your day with me today and ending. It's a good day.   It's an exciting week for us, so thank you for being here.   DAT Kristy (00:51) Yeah, thank you for having me. It is a good Monday ⁓ ending with podcasting with you and then we're on the heels of our live event. So excitement all around this week.   The Dental A Team (01:02) I know, I agree, I agree. There's so much just, there's so much to be thankful for, so much to be excited about, and I think something that's been coming up a lot, and something that we do a ton in our own schedules, even just talking about, Kristy, your client's getting more time with you than I do, like even individually, you guys, individually, I think you see her more than I do. And there's no bad feelings, I promise, I harbor no anger. I am just slightly jealous. ⁓   But I think on that note, like it requires some really, really specific special skills to be able to plan a week and plan a day. luckily it's something we train on because I think we're really good at it and we have to be even within our own position. like Monday, we're ending our Monday with podcasting because Monday is kind of our meeting slash admin day. Friday is our secondary admin day. And then we have all of our calls Tuesday through Thursday. There are some.   people in there that slide in other days, but they know the caveat is it may have to be moved because these are our admin days. So Kristy, I think it's just like divine that this is the conversation we're having. Today's conversation is all about optimizing your schedule, making sure what you're doing is optimized. But Kristy, before we really start talking about the in practice, like dental schedule, I think it would be smart to maybe even tell me how do you...   when you look at your schedule, what is the thought process that goes through your mind on optimizing your schedule? Because I think business is business, schedule is schedule, how I schedule anything is how I schedule everything, and how I do anything is how I do everything. So how do you look at your schedule and think to optimize it?   DAT Kristy (02:47) Yeah, well, I love that you started it with us and our schedule because with anything, you're either going to be doing it by default or you're going to be intentional about it, right? And so a lot of times when we do it by default, we'll look back at the days and we're like, my gosh, it was such a crazy day. And we look at the end dollar that we produced and it was like, ⁓ why am I doing this? And then there could be another day where we hardly did anything and it felt like,   The Dental A Team (02:58) Mm, I love that.   DAT Kristy (03:17) We won the world, you know, we hit our goal. And so I think just to your point by being intentional, it's not about being crazy, right? But to your point, Tiff, we have to start somewhere. And I think sometimes people get very overwhelmed with where to start. And so obviously I like to start with where were we last year? You know, what is my goal this year?   ⁓ Obviously, doctors have to look at things from an overhead and business perspective, which is smart, and what percent are we expecting to grow this year. So knowing those benchmarks, first and foremost, but when it comes to specifically team and scheduling, ⁓ we need to know if that's our goal, where are we at today, and how can we bridge that gap to get there? So looking at what's our procedure mix.   How many, you know, take your procedure count and how many have you done in the last year? I can want something all the time. And we hear this Tiff, we were kind of joking about it earlier, but you know, doctors want to do more implants and we do their procedure count report and look and go, I want you to too, because last year you did two. just, you know, a lot of times people, you know, go to fill the dreams, build it and it will come.   The Dental A Team (04:34) Yeah.   DAT Kristy (04:41) And there is a little bit of truth to that, but I also think it has to be realistic.   The Dental A Team (04:45) Yeah, I agree. I agree. like when you look at your schedule, I look at my schedule, the first thing we're going to do is we're going to look at how many clients do I have? What's my call time? My call volume? And then we're going to add on top of that, how much time per client do I need for admin style work? I'm creating things for them. I'm looking at trends. I'm working on P &Ls.   So then we go through and it's not just call time. It's like, cool, I'm gonna bust out this many calls, but then I'm gonna give myself creative space for this. Or maybe Wednesday's my PNL day and Tuesday and Thursday's my calls, but we're gonna build it to where we can work with it. And something that I have learned over the course of eight years of this is spreading it out and allowing calls to be scheduled wherever does not breed productivity.   What happens is I'm exhausted constantly because switching from consulting brain to even podcasting brain, so even being on client calls to podcasting, being on client calls to writing a newsletter, to creating some sort of content, to doing a one-on-one with one of the team members on our team, going from one mindset, one space of Tiffanie's life to a different space, even in the same position.   is jarring and it slows down the process. And I like to say you're just not, you're not getting enough of me when I have to do that. And so a lot of times clients are like, can we do it on Monday? I'm like, I would love to give you Monday, but I'm not my best version for what you need me for on a Monday, on a Monday. Because the version of me on a Monday is Dental A Team meeting, leadership calls, like we're GSDing for the business. And so switching from that,   to a client coaching call is a different set of brain cells and it just makes it really hard. So Kristy, what I think that flows into in your conversation is a doctor who's like, yeah, I can do a root canal anytime, who cannot do a root canal anytime. Like you don't wanna do a root canal at 3 p.m. when you close at five. I don't think you do. I don't think I've met a doctor yet who wants that. But a doctor who's like, you know what, I can do root canals on Wednesdays at 10 a.m. every time.   Great, because it builds in predictability and sustainability, I can sustain that. I know what to expect with my schedule and when there is some realm and version of predictability, when the chaos comes from the outside, when things change, when things are thrown at us and people are asking us questions, it doesn't feel quite as bad as when your schedule feels like chaos, right, Kristy?   DAT Kristy (07:33) Yeah, I agree with you. I always like to say too, ⁓ I know most of us that got into dentistry have that S profile from the disc assessment, right? And we want to please, but we're never going to please everybody. And so I hope that you look at your schedule as your team and protecting your team, right? And so   The Dental A Team (07:42) Yeah.   DAT Kristy (07:56) If you're saying yes to the patient, most of the time you're saying no to your team and the schedule and your guys' sanity. So I say the schedule's a baby, protect the baby, right? Don't, yeah. And you guys don't get upset with your doctors either if they want things scheduled at a certain time. ⁓ We've all probably experienced it either ourselves or a loved one when...   The Dental A Team (08:07) I totally agree.   DAT Kristy (08:21) A surgeon says, do surgeries on this day at this time. And it's for a reason. It truly, it's not to give our patients grief, you know? So give them a little grace when they want those specific times.   The Dental A Team (08:35) I totally agree. Even just orthodontists, right? I know we've got orthodontists who work with us, orthodontists who listen to the podcast or GPs who are practicing orthodontia, but I talk to my GPs constantly. They're like, but that's not what my patients want. And I'm like, well, what do you want? You think an orthodontist is going to be like, yeah, sure. I'll ban you anytime. No, they are banding on Fridays. Like they are banding on Wednesdays. Like they're choosing it, right? My oral surgery practices are not doing   all on fours or thirds at any day of the week. They're doing thirds on Fridays. They're doing all on fours on Tuesdays and Wednesdays so that they have two or three days left of the week to troubleshoot things going wrong, having gone wrong. So, or troubleshoot just any needs, not even something gone wrong, but they're leaving that availability for themselves. And I think that's truly optimizing the schedule. Optimizing the schedule is looking at what do I need to accomplish? So what is the end goal of my schedule?   one of the end goals of my schedule. My schedule is to deliver all the things I'm supposed to, but stay sane. I have to be a sane human and a good person at the end of the day. So add that into your goals. But what are you trying to do? And then I think there's that vision, right? What is the goal? What's that vision? But then Kristy, what you're saying is like, how am I gonna get there? And that's like your procedures, right? Like, what are you doing procedure-wise that's adding up to that goal?   and then looking at optimizing your time. And Kristy, you mentioned, and I want you to like expand on this a little bit, you mentioned the implant piece. Tell me more. We kind of briefly joked around about that, but it is very fair and very valid. Tell me about optimizing that space, because I have a few practices that are working on this right now.   DAT Kristy (10:23) Yeah. Well, again, I like to ⁓ do your procedure count and get an actual where you want to go.   if you're only doing two, could we maybe set a goal to do 10? And then we can template that into our schedule next year. And and what we focus on usually tends to happen. Right.   But with that being said, ⁓ I think people need to realize when we do do our template, it's not a one and done. It's always a moving target, right, based on our goals. So don't think that you're gonna get it in there and it's never gonna change. We need to take a look at it because our procedure counts may change. And guess what? Now that we're starting to focus on implants and schedule them, we might need more than 10, right? But with that, look at your procedure counts and see where you've been.   make some goals for growth realistically and then begin to formulate your template.   The Dental A Team (11:25) Yeah, I loved that. I wanted you to dive into that because I thought it was so important. There are so many times that, yeah, I want you to do 10 implants a month too. I really, really do, like more than you know I want you to. But if we just strictly optimize the schedule based off of what we want to do procedure count wise, we don't look at what we have done, like what's our trend, and then how can we grow it. So that's a smart goal, right? A measurable amount that stretches you just slightly. And so...   That was beautiful. So if we wanna get to 10, but we've only done three, cool. Well, maybe we block out four spots and then we start tracking the conversations we're having. Because when you start doing that, that's where you're gonna grow it and seeing the consultations that we're having and then adding more blocks in there truly optimizes that. Now, Kristy, hygiene spectrum and I think we'll use the dreaded word cancellations. ⁓ I hate that word, but.   DAT Kristy (12:20) Mm-hmm.   The Dental A Team (12:21) What do you suggest to practices optimizing their schedules when they do have things that fall off the schedule? What's a good way last minute to optimize a schedule and kind of maybe help rebuild that?   DAT Kristy (12:33) Yeah, well, first of all, are we making it easy for them to fall off? Are we expressing empathy and concern and trying to save that? I always like to say ⁓ the only thing that you can do is offer same day. But if not, then how are you creating value? Are you saying, hey, we're already booking out till fall or winter?   I'd really like to help you keep this appointment. I know doctors can be concerned or your hygienist is gonna be concerned, right? So first and foremost, try to save it and create the value for it. And then you guys as a team also have a system in place where we're all following the same rule of thumb. For pushing them out four to six weeks, then everybody pushes them out four to six weeks, right? And creating that ASAP list to get them back in.   The Dental A Team (13:23) Yeah.   DAT Kristy (13:27) Again, watch your verbiage because just like you Tiff, I'm a huge proponent of verbiage and if you're saying, can add you to my cancellation list, you're sending the message that cancels are okay. So check your verbiage as well and literally all come from the frame of getting our patients healthy and keeping them healthy. So if they're missing their appointments, are they staying healthy?   The Dental A Team (13:53) Yeah, totally agree with you. I think you are right. That's why I hate that word cancellation. Even if you guys, even if you're saying, we've got you scheduled here, but if you need to cancel, just give us 48 hours notice. Like, cool, we accept cancellation. So just don't tell them that it's OK, right? And just be like, my gosh, this is crazy. Nobody ever reschedules their appointments. Like, what's going on? OK, it's wild that anyone wants to come off the schedule. I totally agree with you. Make it a big deal. ⁓ But this is brilliant. So basically, what I'm understanding, one,   DAT Kristy (14:14) Yeah.   The Dental A Team (14:23) Create your templates and create what you want that to look like. You guys, we have templates available. Please reach out. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. are happy to send over some awesome templates. Now templates are called templates for a reason. They are a template and you make it your own. Okay, ideas are ideas. We have a million of them. But Kristy, what you're seeing is really go through and figure out what your ideal schedule is based on the goals that you have, which again, create a self-fulfilling goal to be your best self at the end of every day.   Optimize the number of the procedures that you're able to do, which means I too scheduling you you mentioned ⁓ Kristy and something I want to pull back in is scheduling for not only the patient but the team so happy doctor happy practice most of the time Happy team right happy everyone and I've seen those teams and I've been that team that's like my gosh, like do we always have to work through lunch or do we   Like could we not do this procedure somewhere else? Like I used to have a doctor that would do late evening or late afternoon root canals and they would be late constantly. They were always staying late because they're unpredictable. Or doctors who don't schedule, they don't schedule quite enough time for the procedures that they   truly when we're talking about optimizing, that's the space that we're looking at. We're looking at like, what does this look like to get all of this done in the best ways possible? Those templates help with that, but then you've got to do the due diligence to go through and do it. There's a million podcasts on block scheduling, there's a million webinars we do. Go find them, we're not gonna go through all of those details today. Part of the optimizing and what I just had you bring in is,   really making sure that we've got contingency plans as well. So making sure when things do fall off the schedule, we're looking at, where do we pull patients back into the schedule from and to, right? Like if we have an appointment open up at 10 a.m. tomorrow, where are we pulling this patient from future, from where are we getting them from to fill that hygiene gap? So making sure we've got those contingency plans, but then also something that offices   can occasionally miss is the block schedule rule. I call it the 48-hour rule, right? Or 24-hour rule. And it's when can we break a block? Our teams are oftentimes very skittish of implementing block scheduling because they are concerned that they're not gonna fill the blocks and that they narrowed into this can only be this thing. But Kristy, I like to, and tell me what you do for teams too.   I like to say, listen, if it's not filled by this spot based on the time that's available on the schedule, we fill it with something. And that's to where that's a contingency plan. And that's either like, it was diagnosed now, can they come in or pulling in again from those lists that you mentioned? And Kristy, how do you handle that with Teams and how do you get them to utilize that?   DAT Kristy (17:22) Yeah, well, I'm with you, Tiff. Obviously, if they're really, really busy, ⁓ a 24-hour ⁓ block or 24-hour, I guess, time limit could be very achievable with a very busy office. But I like them to come up with their time, you know?   The Dental A Team (17:37) Mm-hmm.   DAT Kristy (17:44) Typically 48 hours is what most practices do because it gives you a little leeway. Again, I do have an occasional one where it's 24 hours because they're so booked out that they have a short call list that is very easy to pull from. But also to your point, I think so many people miss the opportunities from their morning huddles. Many times the patients are already coming in in your day.   You might have a patient in the doctor's schedule that is doing fillings on the upper right, but still has fillings in other quadrants. Could we keep them and do more? And they'd appreciate that not having to come back in another visit. Or, you know, look at hygiene. Usually in any given hygiene schedule in an eight-hour day, there's probably two to three people that have outstanding treatment that maybe we can convert them. In fact, maybe we could call ahead.   and ask them to come earlier because doctor had a hole in the schedule, right? So many times it's not having to fish from somewhere else. It's literally right there within your schedule.   The Dental A Team (18:41) Mm.   Yeah, and that's the contingency planning every day. So we're constantly looking and building that predictability. Because even that right there, what you said, was an unpredictable moment, but you just built predictability into it by looking for an option that we can foresee and maybe even plan ahead and get it fixed to help that. So beautiful, Kristy, I know you'd have all of the pieces that I wanted. Thank you. I love that.   DAT Kristy (19:16) ⁓   The Dental A Team (19:20) If you guys wanna optimize your schedule, like Kristy's your gal. Kristy, I have watched you in person, hands-on, optimize schedules and block schedule. You are so fantastic at it. I know our whole team is, but I really, really hand pick when you're gonna do these and what the content's gonna be. So this was strategic for you. So Kristy, thank you for those tips. think maybe, let me know if we need to add on to this, but I think action item-wise, it's, I would say look at what you're doing now. Look at your schedule now. Look at your goals.   Look at your procedures and look at how can I streamline this? How can I make this any more efficient? ⁓ Time journaling is a fantastic version. So looking at your procedures that you're doing, your procedure mix and how many, and then time journaling how long they take you. And then looking at where do you want to do these things? Do you want a three o'clock root canal? If you do, more power to you. You just let your team know, whatever you want that to look like.   And then really looking at those contingency plans as well. So how do we build in the contingency plans? Morning huddle is a great space to do that on the daily, but giving the tools and the empowerment to the team to have contingencies prior to that too. Kristy, anything I missed that you want to add in there?   DAT Kristy (20:30) think that's really good, but even in morning huddle, don't forget to not just look at today, look beyond, because if tomorrow's not at goal, starting today would be a little bit easier for the team to call on patients that are already within that day, right? So don't forget to look ahead also. And truly, as you're starting to implement templates, doctors...   work with your team, get in the habit of looking a week or two out and just looking at the schedule, explaining to them if it doesn't work here, why, you know? And, you know, look at the days, you guys add them up, add them up and make sure it's equaling your goal. When you see, I like to call it a wallpaper template where it's like, we just cleared all, you know, made sure all the white space was filled. ⁓ That's truly not the goal of a template, if we're being honest.   The Dental A Team (21:20) I love that.   DAT Kristy (21:25) ⁓ so add up your days, make sure it's equaling your goal and kind of gamify it. See how we can get better at it, you know? Yeah.   The Dental A Team (21:33) Yeah, I think those are great. Good job. Thank you, Kristy.   And you guys, listen to this a few times. Kristy is full of, she's just a wealth of knowledge and she's got so many tips and tricks. So I want you to go back, listen to this, take some notes if you weren't able to yet. Kristy, thank you for letting me pick your brain. Thank you for being here on this Monday afternoon with me. And I'm just, I'm so grateful for you and your brain. So thank you.   DAT Kristy (21:57) Thank you.   The Dental A Team (21:58) Yeah, and everyone go listen to this again. Drop us a five star review below. Let us know what your favorite tips were. And if you have anything to add to it, we'd love to hear about that too. Either within your review or Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. That's where you'll snag that promised template as well. My marketing team is on it and they want to give it away to you. So email us Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. You can also book a strategy call with us and get the template as well as strategy. We can help walk you through this ⁓ at our website.   TheDentalATeam.com. So those are all the pieces you guys. Go make life wonderful. Trish always says go be wonderful and go change lives. Thanks so much. We'll catch you next time.

Kiera shares specific tips for how practice owners can gain consistency, confidence, and calm in their day-to-day unsteady of chaos and surprise at the unknown.  Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:01) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and today's a fun day. ⁓ think how to get more stability and predictability in your dental practice. I think this is a zone where people don't know how to have stability, predictability, growth, and how to do that in a consistent way. so ⁓ some practices feel like it's like a freaking rollercoaster. Like your systems are wild and it's like, what?   flavor of the day should I be choosing? I fix my system? Should I go for a new patient? Should I be working on my P &L? And I think that that's just like what people do. And they're like, how do I get this stability? How do get this predictability? Now I heard this quote and then I tried to find this quote. So I'm just going to tell you, because I love it. I don't know if it's real or not, but I'm just going to say it's real. They said that Walt Disney said, and I love Walt Disney and I'm obsessed with Disney, but they were able to create predictable magic with systems behind the scenes.   And I think about that for practices of like, can I help you create predictable magic, predictable cashflow, predictable, ⁓ profitability, predictable, like new patients. Well, it's through the systems behind the scenes and the team that's in place. so today really working on that of like how we can go from chaos and like whack them all of like, and I feel like I do this too in my company. just so you know, I don't think anybody's ever perfect at this, but I think we can actually cut out a lot of these pieces for you to create less chaos.   more predictability, more predictable magic in your practice ⁓ to give you that consistency, confidence, and calm in an owner's life rather than the chaos and the surprise and the unknown of will I be able to make it next month? Will I be able to make it in six months? I think for me as a business owner, is the hardest part of being a business owner is that unpredictability. so trying to give you more, ⁓ more predictability and stability. So if you're tired of   the revenue swings, you're tired of the no show surprises, you're tired of the last minute team drama, like you're just tired and exhausted of that. This episode's for you. This is where today we're gonna really go into our mission of positively impacting the world of dentistry with tactical advice ⁓ from experts who do dentists and team consulting. We've been there, we've done it, we've done it multiple times, we've run it in our own practices. ⁓ Every single consultant on our team has had to have a proven track record of going through exactly what you go through.   coming out on the other side with ease and grace. So that's what we're here for and so I'm gonna just break it down into a couple quick steps for you today of just some different things that can probably help you create some more predictability in your practice to create more stability and to get you out of that, like I said, the revenue swings and no-show surprises. Now, this isn't something that's going to come easy. This isn't something that happens overnight. ⁓ I have a sign up in my kitchen that says discipline equals freedom. This is a disciplined act.   This is what the high achievers do. These are not the small practices that are doing this. And it's the, like, I feel like it's investing. Someone once told me investing is like vanilla ice cream. It's not sexy and nobody gets really excited over vanilla ice cream, but it's predictable and it's always good. And that's what I feel this is like, let's create your practice into the vanilla ice cream practice where it's not sexy. It's not flashy, but it is predictable and it's stable for you. And then from there, like add the sprinkles, add the toppings, add the chocolate. Like you can make vanilla ice cream awesome. It's a great base and a great foundation.   So today I wanna help you create that in your practice. So step one is a daily and weekly rhythm. ⁓ I found that structure is something that's so paramount. Even my mom, like there were seven kids in my family and my mom had to create structure. Like I remember summertime, a lot of parents hate summertime because their kids have no structure. They enjoy school time, there's structure, there's a rhythm, there's something that they can count on. Kids go to school at this time, kids come home at this time, there's predictability in there. And so for you within your practice, let's kind of take what we do.   in parenting and in growing up. And let's apply that to your practice because the same principles apply. And so having these different pieces ⁓ in place of how teams communicate, of how we review performances. So it's a cadence. Like I hate remembering things and I love cadences. just a couple key strategies on this daily and weekly rhythm would be morning huddle. And in morning huddle, morning huddle is one of my fastest ways that I'm able to create stability and structure within a practice if it's a good one. So we're looking at patient.   patients, goals and priorities. And we're doing it consistently and we're looking for opportunities. So a great morning huddle, Kristy and I were talking the other day and she said, I can add 10 to 15 grand to most practices just with a great daily huddle. And I love that because I agree with you. If you use a huddle strategically, it's like, why do team members like in basketball or football, why do they huddle? They huddle to win the game and that's what your huddle should be. So we have our daily morning huddle to look for opportunities to prioritize, to align, to make sure our goals are actually where we want them to go.   Then after that, we have a weekly leadership and team meetings. We're looking at our numbers, resolving obstacles. We literally teach our teams traction style ⁓ L10 meetings so that way you can run it. So we're talking about our data, any of our numbers that are off-track or an immediate issue. We teach you how to solve issues. We teach you how to rate a meeting. So they're very effective and efficient meetings using data. So we're not just sitting here like vomiting our problems. You vomit the problems, yes, but we're also going to have a strategic way of how we solve them.   And then this way we're able to catch our problems earlier. So between those two things of a daily and a weekly, so we're having a daily huddle that's focused on strategy. It's focused on winning. It's focused on opportunities. And then we have a weekly leadership. So your leadership team gets together and departments. And I know you might be like, that's so many meetings. It's fine. You're welcome to do that. But I'm like, if you want to know how the big players are hitting, like I'm talking the practices I work with that are 20, 30 million annually. This is what they're doing. And at a small level on a big level, this works.   When I had one team member, did leadership meetings every single week because I figured we need to start, like that's a big practices to do. That's a big organization to do. So why am I thinking I'm so small not to implement that? When you do this, you typically will see a 10 to 20 % increase in revenue and decrease in overhead. You'll increase your schedule. Like just doing this, you'll look for opportunities. Your schedule will start to get hit more consistently because we're tracking it. We're tracking it every single day. And people like don't love to talk about this, but I'm like,   I also don't love working out, but I want the six pack abs. So it's choose your heart. Like would we rather sit there and like hope and pray and want to have it? Or are we going to start to put in some of these daily practices and weekly practices that work for other ones? So that way you can have more predictability. I promise you what, where your focus is, like where energy goes, focus flow, like where focus goes, energy flows. Let me get that one right. Where focus goes, energy flows. So if I'm focused on the numbers, I'm focused on the things we should be doing. I'm focused on solving problems sooner.   That's where my energy is gonna go. So we're gonna start to like, if you read the book essentialism, they talk about like, don't spin your wheels on a million things, spin your wheels on the most important things and laser focus on it and get everybody rowing in the same direction, you're ultimately gonna grow so much faster. So when we're doing these little pieces, this is what it is. So I would, if I was you, add these meetings into it, but I would make sure my meetings are powerful and impactful. I wouldn't just do meetings for meeting's sake, meetings need to be done with intentionality. Number two is tracking.   Leading metrics, not just lagging ones. So a leading and a lagging, I really hate these, they're really hard for me, but it's leading ones are things we have control over, lagging is the outcome at the end. So for example, like pre-appointment, how pre-appointed are our books? What's our unscheduled treatment? What's our AR aging? What's our same day conversions? What's our diagnosis rate? Like all those things are leading measures that will help us know if our outcome is going to actually get met. So if we're looking at pre-appointment, like,   how many patients in our database are pre-appointed for appointments versus how much re-care and reactivation do we need to do? So it's these two things like, if I wanna schedule full, I can pre-appoint, I can reappoint, I can look at all those different pieces to make sure my schedule's full. Schedule full is the outcome, the pre-appointment, the reappointment, all of that is a leading measure that's going to help me get to my outcome. And then we wanna actually look at those. So, ⁓ and a lot of times it's like, we want to hire somebody.   Well, let's think about the leading metrics that would help us. It's how many ads did we place and how many interviews did we perform? Those are things we have control over. I don't have control over if I hire somebody or not. I don't have control over the candidates that come to me, but I do have control over how many ads I place and how many interviews I perform. So let's track that versus tracking somebody being hired. Let's track how many reappointments we have and pre-appointments we have. Those are things we can control versus as our schedule full.   I still want to track both. Those are still important, but we have, your team can influence the leading measures. They can't necessarily influence the lagging ones. And if we have great leading measures that we're tracking, our lagging outcomes should actually be hit. Then we look at those in our weekly meetings, not just at the end of the month. And then this way, like it's a KPI scorecard that the whole team's looking at and they're watching. So when we do this, what you find is our reappointment. Like, so in office, when they start tracking their reappointments,   And we started doing it consistently. go from 80 % to 85 to 98. And people are like, but Kiera, I already do this. We're already doing it. And I'm like, great, then let's just make sure that the data proves what you're already doing and you're getting the gold stars for what you're already doing. What's crazy is when you start tracking these little things, your practice, that's gonna get a lot better. And it's crazy to how quickly it does. So if I was in your shoes, I would look at where are my gaps and where are the things that I felt, like I said, the...   the schedule gaps. So what could I do if I've got gaps in my schedule that would be leading? Well, it'd be how many outbound calls did we make and how many patients did we get scheduled off those outbound calls? Those are things I can control. So this is on my re-care. Tiffanie, she used to make her practices call 50 patients a day. I am not exaggerating that. I think it was actually a hundred. Like it was so many, cause she's like the more I have to have so many outbound calls cause she had tracked it. I have have this many outbound calls in order to have my schedule stay consistently full.   I can't just call when I need an opening. I need to be constantly putting those phone calls out there so patients are calling me back and I keep my schedule full. That's something. So when you're looking at like, well, I'm so tired of the cashflow dips. I'm so tired of the schedule gaps. My question is, what are you doing proactively? Like those are the systems behind the scene that create the predictable magic. I guarantee you Walt Disney's not like, you know, we should have fireworks. Well, no, there's all these systems in play before they even get to firework show.   to make sure the firework show is a success. So for you looking at what are the predictable things I should be doing. So the way you break this down is what are the three big stressors I have? And then what are leading measures that I could add into place to prevent that? So instead of me looking at the end of my PNL and be like, well, shoot, I don't have money. Could you look at your bank account every single day? Could you look at your PNL every single day?   could you look at your diagnosis and your production? If you want to produce a hundred grand, you've got to be diagnosing 300,000. That's something within your control. You could start to say, am I diagnosing $300,000 a month? I break that down to how many dollars I need to do a day. I watch my daily production diagnosis. I work with my hygiene team. I integrate Overjet or Pearl as AI solutions to it. That's how you can start to move this one forward for you exponentially rather than hoping and praying that we're hitting our cashflow at end of the month.   That's how you start to be a more strategic, getting out of that chaos into consistency and predictability. And then step three would be like building capacity plans. when I look at this, sometimes we like, so back at the beginning, I mentioned to you, said, are you tired of the revenue swings, the no show surprises, the last minute team drama? Well, cool, this is around like the team culture and all that. So.   People and time are gonna be a big piece for that. So based on our production goals and where we want to go, based on where we are currently and in the future, I need to start planning and projecting out how many team members do I need for the production? How do I have block scheduling to make sure that I'm not having like up and down months? How can I forecast out on my schedule to see when are my down months? When are my up months? When are people taking vacations? How can I proactively plan for this?   And then we're going to plan PTO and hiring proactively. So when I'm projecting out with a practice, we're literally at like September. ⁓ So convenient timing of this podcast to release for you. I'm looking ahead to say, okay, let's plan out our entire year time off. When are we having meetings? What are the highs and lows? What are the peaks and valleys within our production? And how can I stabilize that? So I'm not having these huge swings in a practice. How can I either plan for providers to be there, not have as many providers off? I'm looking at past history.   How can I prevent sucked timber and have slammed dunk timber? Like what are the different things when I know I've got those lows? What could I do two months earlier to make sure that I'm not having these like high and low months and then I'm proactively doing these pieces. So if I need to hire or I need to do these different, I need to have a different schedule. Like a lot of you are out two weeks in December. So why are we setting our September goal the same as our say October goal? They're not, they shouldn't be the same. You should figure out what is my goal. So if I'm trying to produce   let's say 3 million, well, I'm not gonna do 3 million divided by 12 months. It's gonna set me up for massive failure. I'm also not gonna do it by 52 weeks. What I'm gonna do is I'm literally gonna look to see, let's say there's only 45 weeks that we're going to have, and let's say I'm gonna then do that by 12 months. Well, now what I've gotta do for there is if that's the case, I need to be producing every single month, okay? So what I did is I did 3 million, and I'm gonna do that by about 45 weeks, okay? Then I'm gonna divide that by 12.   And I'm gonna say, all right, this is what I need to do. So my 3 million divide that by 45 weeks, that gives me 66,666 per week. Now I'm gonna divide that by four days. I need to be producing about 17,000 a day for 45 weeks. Notice I took out some of our low weeks. We have 52 weeks in a month. So I just gave you seven weeks where that's gonna hit your December holidays, it's gonna hit your November holidays, it's gonna hit your ice days in February, that's gonna hit it.   And instead of just doing it haphazardly like that, you actually can proactively plan this out. We have a tool for this where you can plan this. When are people out? What do I need to do? And then based on the growth that I'm also gonna project for our business, based on my diagnosing, all these leading measures, how many team members do I need to have and when do I need to hire them? How you doing? Because that was so many words and I hope you took it and I hope you took notes on it.   because what this will do is it's actually going to create a roadmap for you for next year. It's going to create a way for you to have predictability. This is going to prevent those revenue dips. We've helped you already with scheduling gaps by being with leading measures and then with your team, like staffing issues, making sure we have enough team members. If we know we are always down an assistant, rock on, let me project that out. Let me figure out what I need to produce for that. That way I can hire an additional assistant without having it be chaos on me. These types of things, if I know I've got maternity leave coming out.   How can I proactively do it? What if I hired another hygienist? But I actually build this whole plan out as best as I can. Usually I do mine in September, August, September, October is when I start working on mine to have it ready to go for the next year. I always want to throw up when I look at how much it's going to be. And then I like go to work and figure out how we're going to make this happen. But that helps you be more proactive. So I would look to see these three things. One, do I have a daily and a weekly rhythm? That was the easiest thing and making sure that those have opportunities.   and looking for that and strategizing with that. Then having leading indicators, not just outcomes. And we're tracking that collectively as a team and in every department. And then we're creating this strategic plan and forecasting and projecting out. So that way that's in place. Those three little things right there are going to help you have so much more stability and capacity within your practice that you will just be able to sleep better at night. Like as a business owner who's done this, as a consultant who's done this for offices, as consultants who do this for offices, these are things.   that are so helpful for you. Like this is not just luck. I say create your own luck, create your own magic and do it through the systems behind the scenes. But the discipline there is required. The accountability to yourself and to your team is required. Sometimes when I listen to podcasts or I have coaches come in, I'm like, that feels hard. Well, it doesn't have to be hard. You don't have to do this on your own. Buying a practice did not mean you had to be a CEO and an operations specialist and a CFO. You don't have to do all these things.   What you do need to do is hire people that are smarter than you that know how to do this. And if you don't know how to do it, it is your opportunity and in my opinion, obligation as a CEO to either figure it out or I love the book, Who Not How, who knows how to do this that can help me and my team. And then I vet them, I interview them, and then I execute and I hire them. That way you're able to grow. So if this is something that I think resonates, like you're like, I want predictable and profitable practices.   I want to get rid of the stress and the chaos. want to get rid of the highs and the lows. Reach out. This is what we do. We build systems to scale and sustain. We create the predictable magic with the systems and the team behind the scenes. We teach you how to have the disciplines. We teach you how to have an effective morning huddle. You don't have to do this alone. People are always like, dentistry feels like an island. And I'm like, only if you want it to be. It doesn't have to be. You can be with all the other doctors. You can be with all the other people. We have a community of doctors that get together.   We have teams that get together. We have trainings across the board. We work with your practice individually and connect you with other people so you can learn from other people. You don't have to do it. So stop guessing, start growing predictably, start having more predictability and less chaos. This is what we do. So if this feels fun for you, reach out. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. If it feels terrifying and intimidating because you're like, feel like I should know this, drop the ego and realize it's okay. None of us know what we're doing. Everyone's in your same boat.   Everyone doesn't know how to figure this out. Some choose to get help and some choose to swim it out and figure it out on their own. Both are correct methods. It's just what's method, Beth, for you. And if I was you, I would at least book the call, see what people could do and see if you could help me get more predictable, predictability in my practice. Because the biggest thing as a business owner that creates the most amount of stress are those upswings, those downswings. And when I have more stability, when I know more consistently, when I know what it's going to be,   I'm able to navigate those highs and lows a lot better because I know the long-term outcome. It's not like a shotgun, like, like scatter. It's like, my gosh. It's like, all right, got it. I can weather this. And I also have somebody who can keep me stable. I have coaches and they help me keep my stability there. So reach out. I'd love to help you. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com as always. Thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time on The Dental A Team podcast.  

Did you know: Each position in your practice should contribute toward the practice's goals? Tiff and Kristy break down why each position should have a vision and specific metrics (starting at the job description), and how together, alongside all the other positions, they work toward the greater good of the practice. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript The Dental A Team (00:00) Hello Dental A Team listeners. I am so excited to be here today. I am always excited to be here today you guys I love podcasting I really really do and I love podcasting with other people more than solo and I get to pull consultants in and Britt from HR Headquarters over there HQ and Eve from marketing like I get to pull in just the most fun people from our team to Just double up and get some time with Kristy   I've got you today and this is like our special time together and I just love it. So, and Kristy, I put you specifically at the end of my podcasting day. I hope you noticed that not just because of timing, but because you bring a sense of calm to my life and podcasting with you, not to say that it's not easy with anyone else on our team, but you really like, it's just so easy. You bring a sense of calm and ease. And I was like, that's what I want to end my day with. So thank you for.   opening up your schedule to me and for being here today, Kristy, how are you?   DAT Kristy (00:59) Good, absolutely. I love it too. I mean, we were just talking the other day because we don't get much time together and so I know we look forward to this time. now that I know you put me at the end of the day on purpose, I love it. I love it. I love it. Yeah, it's a good way to end the day.   The Dental A Team (01:13) Surprise!   Good. Well, I'm glad. know Mondays are busy for you. Our team does, we do meeting Mondays and so it gets a little jam packed, but it's nice because we get it. I feel like we get all of that admin stuff out of the way and we get aligned on actions we need to take for the week kind of all together on the same day. And then we just spearhead our week ready to go. Well, Kristy, ⁓ today is exciting. I   I'm gonna actually pull in what we were just talking about. you guys, you guys know, avid listeners, you guys have been here. We've been doing this podcast for a really long time, you guys, and if you have ideas on things that you want to hear, please send them in because our little brains over here are just thinking of all of these things. Sometimes they feel like, did we just record this? It's like this content sounds so similar to something else we've talked about. And so I don't know how to label this one.   But I want you guys to know we are going to chat today a little bit about job descriptions. And this is something that we find incredibly important. So we talk about it a lot. So I want to drive that home. They are so important. And Kristy, something that I recently recorded a podcast with Brittany. And something we talked about, part of that leadership skill, was being able to give direction to the team to execute decisions.   as a leader, being able to execute decisions, being decisive and having execution as leadership, but also gifting that to the team. And we talked about the vision of the practice, kind of where the company's going and the leader, the owner, being able to utilize that for the culture of the company. But I kind of think right now, these job descriptions are the vision per position.   It gives us our heading so that within my position in the practice or the organization, I can say yes, no, maybe, yes, this is the right decision right now for the company. And it brings about some clarity for everyone. Kristy, you, what do you think?   DAT Kristy (03:28) Yeah, I love that you mentioned that because for so long, think we've all understood that job descriptions should have duties, right? I truly am a fan of duties versus titles, but also I think honing in on the other aspect of, think the duties, let me step back. The duties tell us what we're responsible for, but I think bringing in the other aspect   tells us how the person should behave. And so I think they go hand in hand. And I think oftentimes we miss that other piece of it and then we get frustrated when we don't hire that person.   The Dental A Team (04:11) Yeah, I agree.   in ⁓ a layer on top of that, you mentioned job duties and kind of how to behave. But even within that ⁓ what piece, the job duties, the clarification on the job duties, if I know that my job, my goal of my position is to have the schedule full, maybe I'm a schedule coordinator, and my number one metric is 90 % full on hygiene for the next five days,   80 % full doctor, like whatever that metric is. If I know that's my metric, then I think, my gosh, this one patient, my how-to says confirmations. And step one is text message, email, text message, email, but I know this person is 85 years old and they're not getting these text messages. I don't have to question, do I call this patient? My job, my goal is to get that patient here for that appointment, no matter what that means looks like.   So I think that vision and that ⁓ very clear cut, this is what the metric is of your position. I sitting in that scheduling coordinator position can say, Julie, at 85, I'm just gonna call her. I'm not gonna mess with the text messages and wait until three days before if I know she needs a call and we need to confirm her right. Like I have this information, but we often get asked, Kristy, I think.   by different team members that they're like, well, can I do this? I'm like, well, does it get you to your goal? Is it a part of what gets the practice to our goals? Heck yeah, I think that's a great idea. It gives you the space to be creative, to get to the results that you need to get to, that are set as parameters because you know what you're driving towards.   DAT Kristy (05:58) Yeah, you said that so well. So again, I'm with you. It's not just the duties and how we behave and perform them. But like you said, then we can tie it to what metrics am I responsible for? And one other piece behind that is painting the clarity. If it's 90 % reappointment rate or, you know, whatever metric I am responsible for. Now, what system   comes behind that metric if it's not where I want it to be, right? So then I can pull up the system and say, hey, am I not working the system properly or do I need to find a new system because our system's not working any longer to get the result we want?   The Dental A Team (06:45) for sure and that's where teams come to us, or office managers, and they're like, my team has no accountability, how do I hold them accountable? Or how do I get my team to hold themselves accountable? How do I get them to own their jobs? It's really hard to own something if you don't have complete clarity around that goal that you're working towards. And so having those smart goals with those metrics tied to them, Kristy, like you just said, allows that person then, like you've said, to work backwards from the result to see   What did I do that got the result? Because anything you do, I literally just said it this morning, I say it all the time, even consistently being inconsistent is going to get you a result. Consistently doing anything will get you the result. And if your consistency lies in inconsistently, I'm always inconsistent, you're going to get a result. So knowing what your target result is in comparison to the result that you got allows you to backtrack and say,   DAT Kristy (07:25) Yeah.   The Dental A Team (07:41) Was I inconsistent in my utilization of my systems? Or is the system just flawed and I need to reinvent that wheel? Totally fine too, but it allows the space for that. And Kristy, the way you said it was it allows the person holding that metric to see it themselves and can to it, which takes training and it takes consistency from leadership to constantly point back to the metrics, to constantly be like, okay, ⁓ what   what is your metric, your standard, and then what did you reach? And when there's questions that come up like, Kristy, like, do I call this lady? You're like, well, what is your metric? Does it get you there? And I think that consistency is that accountability piece that people are lacking.   DAT Kristy (08:27) Yeah, I agree with you. ⁓ Just like you said, it's very easy once we've painted that clarity and we have understanding also for the team to report back to you. You shouldn't have to ask. But I also would say don't just report back. Report back and let them know your trend because maybe it is 90 % reappointment rate that we're looking at. ⁓ Literally, I was just on with an office that was   It's almost embarrassing to say they haven't looked at their rates for reappointment. She's like 50 some percent and I'm like, yeah, that could be a problem, right? ⁓ Yeah, let's not focus on 50. Let's talk that the goal is 90 and let's start talking about your trend, right? So even if I'm reporting it talk about your trend where were you and where are we going? And then I also like to say with that TIF is recognize what's working well and   reinforce the good. gets reinforced gets repeated, right? And then get team talking about what they will do to overcome any opportunities if we're not at the mark we want.   The Dental A Team (09:36) Yeah, I love that. I love that so much. you just, you saying that about the practice, I'm like, my gosh, that's fantastic. Like 50%, that's not fantastic, but look at how much space there is to create something different. Like that's really freaking cool because practices come in and they're like, I don't know what to do. And I don't know why it's this way. And I just need this. And it's like, this is so cool because there are spaces.   that are really, really simple to tackle that you just didn't uncover yet. And we get to come in and help uncover those. So it's like 50 % reappointment rate. That's fantastic because now we can implement two to three daily actions that severely change the projection in a company that you may have come to us thinking, and I don't know this client, I don't know what she or he was thinking like, but they may have been thinking like, my hands are tied, what do I do?   how do I get more patients? I need more new patients. I hear that all the time and I'm like, well, what about the patients we have? It's so cool. So you just got me really excited about that. So I'm like, holy cow, I can't wait to hear these results. It's gonna be fantastic. But that's case in point. There's a couple of people that probably need that metric, right? A hygienist, hygiene team and scheduling coordinators, like they need these metrics because now they understand what their purpose is in the company and how they can contribute to the overall goals.   DAT Kristy (10:40) Yeah.   Yeah.   The Dental A Team (11:02) Many doctors, I think Kristy, you and I both come across this, many doctors are really afraid, or business owners in general, to talk goals. And I think the piece that gets missed is that goals drive the courage to push forward in life. Without a goal, without a drive, we're just complacent. And so not talking about them and not talking about how   each position can contribute towards those goals, I think is actually a disservice and holding people back.   DAT Kristy (11:39) Yeah, I agree with you, Tiff. think a lot of times people get stuck because goals are related to a lot of times in dentistry, monetary amounts, right? But truly, it's no different than us at home. We have a checkbook and we have a bank account and we have standard bills that we have to pay. And it's not that we have to get nitty gritty on that stuff, but we all have to understand there's a cost of doing business unless we're a   not-for-profit organization, you know? And so again, I love ⁓ how you and Kiera talk about the metrics aren't to beat ourselves up, right? It's not a stick to beat ourselves up with. It truly is just a measure of how healthy we're getting our patients. And the minute that we really get transparent about the numbers and what they mean and relate it to just like patient health and practice health, I mean, we always talk about getting our patients healthy.   What about talking about a healthy practice too, right? And we need to let team know just because, I mean, we hear it every day as consultants, a practice could do $6 million and I could have another practice that does a million and the 6 million inevitably people might think is more healthy than a million and truly that's not the case. So we need to educate our teams and let them know those numbers mean more.   And ⁓ truly it's a reflection of how healthy our patients are and how healthy the practice is.   The Dental A Team (13:14) Yeah, I totally agree. I totally agree. And your individual metrics then add up to those results. So those of you who are building out the job descriptions, like yes, you need like a how-to, we need to know what those systems and protocols are. But separate from that, they need a heading. They need to know how do I show up? It's like, what are our core values? How do I show up in this position? If we've got, I don't know, a check-in spot, right? We've got a patient coordinator who's at check-in.   DAT Kristy (13:19) Thank you.   The Dental A Team (13:40) and her job description does not say you sit up straight, you smile, and you greet patients with eye contact as soon as they walk in, you can't complain when she's got her head down on the computer or she's got her cell phone and patients are walking in and they're not being greeted. So get nitty gritty on those spaces because that's easy to achieve, right? If she reads that or he reads that, it's like, ⁓ that's the expectation, that's how I'll show up. And then now that feeds into your reschedule rate.   DAT Kristy (13:49) I can't.   The Dental A Team (14:09) Right? Patients are like, heck yeah, I'm coming back. I love seeing Sonia up front. Like it just all feeds into one another. So I think breaking that down into what is this position accomplishing for my practice within the goals that we have set. So if this is my vision, why do I have this position? Why do I have a scheduling coordinator? Why do I have a dental assistant? And then some pieces I think that I promised Kristy we would talk about some positions that you don't always think about. Right? So like sterile tech.   come on guys, there are so many sterile technicians running around that don't know what the heck they're supposed to be doing, there's no job description for a sterile tech and we just kind of run in the mill, let them figure it out, that's the dental way. So like sterile tech or, Kristy, one I know is really big right now is virtual assistants and I have a client who has an entire team of virtual assistants and Kristy, how important is it for the metrics?   the job description ⁓ just in the VA space, so for the VAs, but how important is it for the team to have that VA job description too and know what they can count on those people for?   DAT Kristy (15:21) ⁓ 100%. ⁓ The cool part with it too, Tiff, I mean, yeah, they need to know the expectations of what's being handled so they can hold them accountable just as any other team member, right? But also, I love, especially ⁓ offices where we're looking to develop leadership, when you have in an OM or a practice administrator, if you have a virtual assistant, what if...   great opportunity for them to work with somebody to develop them, right? And you're literally paying them to be there and do a service, but yet your leadership team or developing leadership team can help them be accountable to the metrics, right, that the virtual assistant is there for.   The Dental A Team (16:09) Yeah.   Yeah, absolutely agree. I have a practice that was like, well, like, I know they're doing insurance verification. I'm like, cool. Well, one, how far out are they supposed to be? Like, what's the volume of insurance verifications they're doing? Because we've got some shifts in the front office. Could they take on calling on unpaid insurance claims? And they were like, I don't know. haven't. I have no idea what their time is like. And I haven't talked to them in weeks. I was like, ⁓ hold the phone. I'm going to I got to pick myself up off the floor real quick.   Who's holding these people accountable? You've got to treat them just the same as you would if they were in your practice. And I think that's multifaceted. I have a practice who does really, really well with a couple of each spectrum. But one in particular does really well with virtual assistants because they create them to be part of the team. The virtual assistants do so much as to even show up for Daily Huddle. They're there with them. We have virtual assistants that show up for Daily Huddle. We know our VAs.   practices that it's just like, they're doing this thing and they think of them as a separate entity. I think the VAs get lost. I think the sterile techs get lost. The sterile techs of the world are just lost in our dental field. And they're looking for that direction and they're looking for that drive. I think our VA, right, we've got a newly onboarded one as well, but our VA who just celebrated six months with us, I found out, he has incredible direction in his position.   And I see that he finds fulfillment in the things that he does for our company. And that's really cool to watch and to see. I know we get fulfillment. It's very easy to get fulfillment as a consultant. Like we get to work hands-on with the clients every day. Same as a dental practice, you guys get to see the changes you're making in the patient's mouths, right? And in their daily lives, you know? So then to find metrics where it's like, no, even as a virtual assistant, even as an onboarded,   outsourced billing company, like these are the metrics that are going to show us that you're actually adding incredible value to our team. And how cool is that to have that heading to be like, I get to go to work every day and I get to help this team do better for their community. And that's the piece that I just feel like is missing in a lot of different spaces.   DAT Kristy (18:15) Yeah.   Yeah, I love that you say that, Tiff, because a lot of, I mean, we're familiar, probably the most popular one is in the insurance realm, right? And so I know even a lot of the virtual companies will set up time to meet with the offices weekly, right? And so again, for the OM or the practice administrator, I'm like, how often are you on those? Not very often. I'm like, man, what a missed opportunity, right? Again, to develop your leadership and share with them.   What's your expectations? We want zero claims over 90 days. And again, the metrics aren't to beat ourselves up. If it's not there, how fun to celebrate when, just like the re-care, right? When they hit 60%, we're gonna be celebrating because one little change, right? But painting that clarity, where are we going? What's my expectation? And then getting the team's commitment into how can we...   The Dental A Team (19:17) massive.   DAT Kristy (19:27) improve this, right? But I think you also mentioned something earlier, even outside of the virtual assistant realm, but all of our team members, how often are we meeting with them? And how often are we ⁓ taking the time away from the business to grow and develop them? Right? And review their metrics. Yeah.   The Dental A Team (19:45) Yeah, massive.   Yeah, and how do you do that if you don't know what you're reviewing? Like, how do you do that if you don't know what their accountabilities are? And how do you help grow someone? know one of the big pieces of leadership that we train on is being able to develop people and giving them a growth plan. And I remember being asked, oh my gosh, I don't even know. I was probably like 28, I don't know, 27. I might.   boss, my office manager pulls me into the office for my one-on-one and she's like, well, where do you see yourself in five years? And I was like, I don't know. Like I think my only, that could be your position. Like what, I don't know what, I don't know what that means, right? Because in those positions in the practice, they don't know. They don't know what's possible, right? Unless they've been there before.   There may be somebody who's maybe worked in another practice and she managed or worked in another practice and he saw this great manager he aspires to be, but most of the time we don't know. And so providing that growth plan, even within the job description of these are the metrics that I get to help grow those. So I can find growth and fulfillment within my own position because I'm growing the practice and growing these metrics. I don't need to take your job.   DAT Kristy (20:45) Mm-hmm.   The Dental A Team (21:03) I can be happy and satisfied in my own because it's written out for me and we're talking about it in the one-on-ones. We're seeing how, you know, where's my goal and how far away am I? Just the same as we're seeing the trends and everything else. So Kristy, I totally agree. Really my 28 year old brain would have been like, this is amazing if it had been like, here's some things that I see, you know? And otherwise I'm like, I don't know. Like how do I answer that? You know?   DAT Kristy (21:29) Yeah. Well,   and to your point, Tiff, with that being said, don't forget to rope in your virtual assistants and have those conversations with them too. Because I think, like you mentioned earlier, the practices that we see ⁓ truly utilizing virtual assistants well are incorporating them, right? They're sharing the expectation, but they're also giving them that feedback and they're treating them like a team member, you know? So if you guys are doing   a bonus system, don't forget your virtual assistants or your sterile techs, right? Include them. They're a huge part of the practice. So.   The Dental A Team (22:08) Yeah, yeah, and to your point, the team that I referenced that does really well with the virtual assistants, the virtual assistant that now does a lot of their scheduling started as insurance verifications and they grew her and she learned the schedule, she listened to the team on calls, they groomed her into that position so that she could take it on because she wanted growth. So I agree, I agree. So gosh, Kristy, this one became really, really fun. Thank you.   for that and taking that journey. And you guys, hope that there are some amazing tidbits that you're able to pick up from here. The biggest one is know your vision, know your goals. Like where is your practice heading so that you can then dial in where is each position heading within those goals. That's gonna be massive. So job descriptions, yes, we can talk about job descriptions all the time. Go Google it on our page, like search it. You're gonna find a million of them. The big point today is the metrics. Like what are these jobs providing?   towards your goal, what's inspiring them to do their work every day, and how are you talking about it and communicating it with them. So, Kristy, thank you so much. I love taking these journeys, and you made this really fun. I appreciate you today, and always every day. Yeah.   DAT Kristy (23:20) Thank you. Thank   you. Always back at you.   The Dental A Team (23:24) Thank   you, thank you. you guys, Kristy's always here for the fun, just expanding on what we're even talking about stuff.   for her name on these podcasts. You will never be disappointed. You're always gonna love them. And as always, leave us a five star review. We'd love to hear what you think and we'd love to hear anything that you guys have in addition to what we talked about. We know we don't know it all. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com.   You can reach us there and we cannot wait to hear from you guys until next time  

Part 2 of podcast guest Dr. Lauryn Brunclik (of She Slays the Day podcast fame) and her conversation with Kiera. In this follow-up to Becoming Business Savvy with a Clinician-First Mindset, the pair discusses seeking other revenue streams to obtain financial freedom. The chat includes fixing your pricing structure, living below your means, understanding the spender and saver mindsets, time management, and more. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera and welcome back to part two of my chat. If you liked part one, you are going to absolutely love this. I am so excited and I can't wait to dive right in.   Kiera Dent (00:10) Lauryn, I'm very curious. Like you've talked about it at length. Like what do people do? Like what's the how, how do we get into this?   How do we have multiple streams because agreed all eggs in one basket? gosh. It's, ⁓ to me, that's like just a ticking time bomb. Like one bad day, one bad patient, one bad procedure. Like it's just going to explode because you're sitting like you're sitting on the edge of fear all the time to where you are in like cortisol adrenaline, like you are pumping. And then what you do is you go into complete shutdown because you can't handle it anymore. So your body and your system literally like just shuts down on you. You become apathetic to life.   Dr. Lauryn B (00:23) Mm-hmm.   Kiera Dent (00:44) things aren't exciting for you anymore. You become very numb to walking through the world. And it's like, I feel like the world of color goes into very like gray. It's very subtle. It's like, it's, there's no, there's no life left. It's just, are living life, but you're not actually being and living day in, out. So what are some tacticals? Like I'm so curious. I love to hear that.   Dr. Lauryn B (01:04) Well, so,   I mean, ultimately what you have to, I'm no cashflow expert. My husband would like laugh, not, he wouldn't laugh. He'd just be like, what's she gonna say right now? So like cashflow will multiply the more you start putting your money to work, okay? So it's very, very, step one is simple. It's exactly what you said. You have to have cashflow coming from your clinic.   Kiera Dent (01:14) okay.   Dr. Lauryn B (01:33) You have to. Like, you need to spend less money than you are bringing in. Okay?   Kiera Dent (01:42) Ooh, love that. Ding, ding. All right, great. Got it, team. Got it all.   Dr. Lauryn B (01:45) Like, so it's   it's simple. what did you say? Like you said, there's only three ways to make it happen. Like lower your overhead. Yep. Yep. See more people. Yep.   Kiera Dent (01:50) There are, either cut your costs, increase what you're producing. like for how many patients you're seeing and   or collections, because a lot of times you're producing enough, but we're not collecting the money that we're actually producing. that then costs, people are have no money. And I'm like, you have 500,000 sitting in your AR that's not collected. So you actually have money. You just have a broken system of how to collect it. And to your point, my husband said this very early on when I started that company, he said,   I care, don't lose money. He was like, yeah, I'm not going to give you any rules, any parameters. He's like, just don't lose money because that's going to cause a lot of strain on us. And I thought about that a lot. It's like, ⁓ I guess that's a great, a great plan. Like it's really been a good thought for me. But it's like, if you are going to lose money on having a business, go be an associate for someone else. Like it's a hobby at that point. It's not a business. So I'm like, if you're not going to have your business make money for you, like truly no judgment.   Dr. Lauryn B (02:24) Thanks, husband.   Yes.   Kiera Dent (02:44) go honestly be an associate, go work for someone else so you're taking home a paycheck. When owners are working for themselves and making less than they are as an associate, I'm like, we have a big problem here. And now you're mad because you got way more problems. You can't just clock in, clock out and leave for the day. And I'm like, that's actually not a business. That's a hobby. And it's a bad hobby. You have no freedom. No, it's delusional. No.   Dr. Lauryn B (02:57) Mm-hmm.   And they're like, but I have the freedom when I'm the owner. You don't have freedom? can't afford a vacation. what? You have   no freedom.   Kiera Dent (03:11) Stop lying to yourself just because you own a business. People are like, I wanted this texture, have more time. And I'm like, yeah, tell me how that's going for you. Probably not great. All right, so we gotta have a business that actually cash flows. Simple stuff.   Dr. Lauryn B (03:16) How's that working for you? Yeah.   Yes, so step   one is very simple, but not is you have to fix the pricing structure, the collections, your payroll blow. You need to look at the profit margins of your clinic. Very easy, very difficult, but very easy.   Kiera Dent (03:37) And they're   industry specific too. I don't know how it is in chiropractic, but I know in like dentistry, we say right now, even with all the things like I want 30%, we're talking all things, fringe benefits, 401k. Like 30 % for payroll, 25 to 30 is about average. And we aim for, I don't know how it is in chiropractic, but I aim for a 50%, not including doctor pay, 50 % overhead in dental practices, 30 % of doctor pay, because I'm like, that's what you're gonna get paid as an associate. It's like, let's at least pay you that.   Dr. Lauryn B (03:45) No, that's pretty yeah, that's pretty healthy. ⁓   Kiera Dent (04:04) And then hopefully we've got a 20 % profit, but that profit debt services click in and that's a real fun zone and taxes. Like I love it. No, you're not getting your W two people are not taking taxes out. You own this business. All that money comes to you. So do not get trapped in that like tax trap. but like, like that's a very simple formula and you look, what is my supplies? What are my rent? Like, what are all those things? And if you figure out the benchmarks, then you know, which one am I bleeding money on quickly fix that hole. So we stopped bleeding it again.   It seems so hard. And you and I are on the other side of that equation saying, no, actually it's like real simple. You just look at it real quick, figure out what it is. You can build your practice to support whatever numbers you need, or we cut. Usually it's easier to increase production and collections than it is to cut. But a lot of people are just overspending in ridiculous ways that I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. Like I have a practice, I looked at their numbers. They shouldn't giggle. I did giggle, because I was shocked. They're like, here, we have no money.   And I was like, all right, send me your P &L. Let's take a look at it. So I did. Year to date, they produced 528,000. So they're doing about 85,000 per month is what I calculated when I ran the numbers. But when I looked at their take-home pay, they're taking home, so it's 528. I'm super happy for them. Like don't, there's no judgment on that. They're taking home 250,000 of that 528 is going to the doctor, which again, I'm happy that they're taking home the money. But what's happening is the practice is not producing enough for that.   They're running all their kids through it. They're running their cars through it. They're running everything through it, which again is not a bad thing. But if you don't have cash in your business to hire people, I was like, we're a little off on the percentages.   Dr. Lauryn B (05:37) Yeah. One of my favorite things to teach people   is because people are like, I just want to learn tax strategy. I want to learn tax strategy, tax strategy. And you're like, okay, here's the thing about tax strategy is you can only do tax strategy. Can't see I'm doing air quotes here. If you have money that you don't want to give the government, if you are spending   Kiera Dent (05:47) you   Mm-hmm. Air quotes, I see them.   it.   Dr. Lauryn B (06:06) much as you make and the government's like, yeah, you're good. You don't know anything. Like there's no strategy to be had. Strategy can only apply to profits. you know, like to money you've made. So, so that's where it's like, okay, I get that you really want tax strategy, but like you're, you don't need strategy yet. You just need to create more.   Kiera Dent (06:09) There is no tech strategy. ⁓ That is a tech strategy. No.   Yes.   You   just need money to then pay taxes on. Then we can talk about what it's gonna be. Yes.   Dr. Lauryn B (06:37) Yes, then we can talk strategy.   But yeah, so like that's where it starts. The next hard part, and this is where I kind of touched on like, we went into this career because we believed this career was gonna take care of us while we took care of other people. And so everybody's got a little different version of what that means. ⁓ What car they think they should be driving.   Kiera Dent (06:42) That's a point.   Ready.   Dr. Lauryn B (07:06) once they have made it, what ⁓ their house situation should look like, how many vacations, their spouse, if they're buying their spouse, designer bags and things like that. Like we have in our head once we make it, what life will look like. And so after you fix your cashflow thing, the next thing is like,   you gotta kind of continue to live below your means for a while. Because if all of a sudden you've fixed your profit margins and you have an extra $30,000 flowing into bank accounts a month that does not have a job, like, you're just like, we're gonna move into a bigger clinic, we're gonna hire another doctor, we're gonna do this. And all of a sudden that...   Kiera Dent (07:58) Let's go!   Dr. Lauryn B (08:04) that potential, but like you have to have money in excess to build wealth upon. If you fix the first problem, which is we don't have enough money, okay great, now you have enough money, and then instead of building wealth, you buy a Birkin, which I still keep sending my husband all of the memes and reels that like Birkins are apparently, you know, they are also   appreciating, they're beating the S &P. So I'm just saying maybe a Birkin was a bad example because that would be an investment. ⁓   Kiera Dent (08:36) See?   I why not? think there's a   lot we could probably justify in the investment realm. Like it's fine. I'm here for it.   Dr. Lauryn B (08:46) Right, right. But   no, you know, if it's like one of those things where if you just lifestyle inflate after you fixed your cashflow issue, what's going to happen is, is you're going to still be, you're going to have like golden handcuffs where you're like, well, yeah, the clinic is bringing in 1.2 and like, yeah, I do keep 350 of that, but I still.   like I'm paying off my student, because your student loan payment now is increasing and like this and like your mortgage and all of this stuff. And you're gonna, you have the potential if you're not careful to feel just as squeezed financially, even though you've gone to the next level of salary and income, but you can still feel that exact same financial scare. And so like that's another thing where it's like, okay, you have to figure out,   the balance for you and your spouse because like my husband, ⁓ my husband is definitely, so this is from Garrett Gunderson. He's a really great financial wealth advisor. don't know if he's in your guys's world. Yes. Okay. Yes. So he was on my podcast and he was talking about how basically within all the   Kiera Dent (09:53) I love him.   Definitely. We love him.   Dr. Lauryn B (10:04) that he's coached people through, there's basically, he used a different word, but right now I'll just call it the the saver and the spender. Okay.   Now the spender tends to be the visionary, the CEO. It tends to be the person that's like taking the risks to build the things. They're like, we had a record year, we're   reward ourselves, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do this, life is fun, this is great, this is like a... And then they often marry a ⁓ saver that is just like...   I don't need all of that. I don't need another vacation. I don't need a fancier car. I don't need this. ⁓ And it can actually make them very uncomfortable that, you know, so my husband is, we'll call it   saver. ⁓ And we go, I mean, our travel budget a year is insane.   we should definitely be putting that towards crypto and like buying a duplex and like building more. But   Kiera Dent (10:57) you.   But why? But why?   Dr. Lauryn B (11:04) If someone told me like, no, no,   no, here's the plan. You get one trip a year and then we're gonna just like   all of this money and then you can start around 45, like, know, and then at 50, it'll open up a little bit more. Like, I'd like, well, that's no fun. I don't want that. And so you have to figure out, because there's a ditch on both sides of the road, right? And so you have to figure out like, when do you want to retire?   Kiera Dent (11:28) Mm-hmm.   Dr. Lauryn B (11:33) Like what is that number? What is that freedom number? How much money do you need coming in in like passive investments? Like how much do you need your crypto portfolio to be doing? Like your real estate portfolio. What's that number of monthly income or annual income? And when do you want to get there by? And this is going to be so dependent on whoever you're talking to.   if you're 50 and you're like, I want to get there by 55.   and you're starting,   not great. Like, yeah, okay, you know what? Your travel budget, you just need to not worry about that for five years. Like, you got some work to do. But like, if you're sitting here at 35 and you're like, I'd like to retire by 50, and like, I still wanna take our kids on some vacations, but I do think we should be, you know, then you just gotta pick where are you pinching pennies? Like, because you gotta pinch them somewhere. So like, maybe it's...   not designer handbag season. Maybe it's not getting the newest vehicle. Maybe you'd rather live in a bigger house, but drive a more reasonable car. Whatever it is, maybe you have no problem giving up vacations, but you need that pool in your backyard. Again, there's a ditch on both sides. think that as this couple, you need to come together and figure out.   that equation where even after you're getting some of these doctor luxuries that you've worked hard for, there's still money left over that is being invested wisely.   Kiera Dent (13:13) love Lauryn that you talked about Garrett Gunderson and I love that there's the saver and the spender in every relationship because this happens like it's a real thing. ⁓ And I love that you talk about like, okay, one step one is like, you got to make money and you got to keep the money. So it's like, make the money and keep the money. I have like, okay, if we could just follow that. Jocko Willings, he's got a quote. This is like discipline equals freedom. And it sits in my kitchen, which I think is a very smart place to stick this sign. I see it all the time. And I'm like, that really is step one is like discipline on this.   Dr. Lauryn B (13:28) Make the money, keep the money.   Kiera Dent (13:43) And I think that there's like, one of our consultants, says, choose your hard. And I think about this, like both sides have a hard, like spending all the money has a hard of like being broke. Saving the money has the hard of you've got to actually put like parameters in place. So both have it. But for me, I'd rather sleep at night knowing I've got money in the bank rather than like sitting there wondering how I'm going to make payroll. Like to me, that's the hard I would rather choose. I would not rather not choose the other side. So I'm going to be disciplined there. And then,   I really started working on and I heard at a conference about like just an easy way. Cause my husband, I'm the spender. He's the saver. And it's really thrilling for me because I felt annoyed. I felt like I was dragging him like an anchor. Like we were going on vacation. We're buying the cars and like, don't like cut my wind out of my sails. Like I was so angry about it. So we actually had to make a vision board of both of us. Like what are his dreams and what are my dreams? And we like co put it up on the wall. It literally sits in our bedroom. And it was one of the best things I ever did because he wasn't able to see what inspires me and what I'm excited about what   what's important to me. And I was able to see what's important to him. We also figured out like what's our BAM, our bare ACE minimum as a couple and where we want that. And then when you're talking about like the savings, I really found this awesome principle where it's kind of like, ultimately, what does it actually cost you to get to financial freedom? And when I did this exercise and I do it with a lot of clients, you can actually break it down. like, what does that like, bougie, whatever life you want that to look like, what does that look like? What's your mortgage? What's your HOA? What's the internet? What's the utilities like?   What's our groceries? What's our food bill? What's our children bill? Like how many cars do we have on this? And like literally build that out to what's like my highest end. And then you actually scale it back down to basically like, what's my security bucket? Like for me to just survive, like you said, like the monks, like what is it for me? Like scrap it all down. Let's go back to dental school. Let's go back to chiropractic school. Like when I was at my like most broke, but I could scrap like you guys, can top around and like a boss, like I know I could get through. So like, what is my like minimum amount?   Then what I do, so basically taking that all the way up to my financial freedom, like where I've got money making money, it's a money making machine for me. And then how do I actually break that down? So I've got security, then I've got like growth, then I've got independence, and then I've got freedom. And then beyond that are like your prosperity and your legacy buckets. And so when I look at this, it's like, you basically just chunk it down. And what I mean, I'm such a nerd, I really am. I've like learned to fall in love. I like took that amount of like total dollars.   Then I looked at like, how much money do I actually need to make? What tax bracket am I in? How much do I need like pre and post tax? Like again, total nerd side on my side. But then I was able to look and I'm like, okay, for this practice, I know that for them to be like, just baseline, they need to be making about a hundred grand a year. Like that's pre-tax. So we know like we're to take tax out. We can survive. That's like our security. Then our growth goes up to 202 post-tax. Then our independence is at like 553. Well, now I know my mile markers of what I need to do. And I also have those parameters. you said, where am I going to penny pinch?   This does not mean that I don't have certain luxuries, but it means that I'm like, it's like a gradient and I'm able to see what I'm working towards. And I remember my CPA, he told me once he said, Kiera, it actually becomes a lot easier to make money. And like once you, like in a few years, once you've bought a few of the things that you really are looking for, and I was like, you're full of it. Like, I don't believe you for a second, but it's true. Like as you evolve.   You buy the things you want, you get the house that you want, you get the car that you think you want, you get the designer bags, like it's not all overnight. And then you're like, wow, I have a decent amount because I've learned to make the money, save the money, not spend everything that I've got. I'm able to then plan for these purchases that I want. I love Profit First, Mike McAllags. He's like my fangirl central every time he's on the podcast. I like just love him so much, but I'm like, okay, then I have buckets. have my travel bucket. And you're right, Mike, my travel.   Dr. Lauryn B (17:18) yeah. Sweep account. Sweep! ⁓   Kiera Dent (17:28) amount, that's something that fuels me. So we pump money into a travel fund, but we have those to where I now have budgets and our clients have budgets and you can have budgets. And it's not for me, clients have even told me that's more freeing than it is otherwise, because they actually know I can spend this money guilt free and go on the trip. can go and buy this car guilt free because I have the money.   Dr. Lauryn B (17:46) Mm-hmm.   And that's probably really   helpful for your spouse too. A lot of times the saver spouse, like it's hard for them until there's like an act, like that's the permission they need of like, no, we ran the numbers and we like this amount of money was proportionally taken and it's there. It's only to be spent on this. And they're like, okay.   Kiera Dent (17:52) Thanks.   Yes.   Yes.   Okay. And then the spender feels good because they're not just blowing all the money. So it's on this like, it's a good balance, but I love it. Like it's very simple. And now I'm very curious, Lauryn, because you've talked about like not having your business as your only asset, like that's cash flowing for you. Once we've got a simple, we like make the money and we keep the money like check that off. Then we go into these like, I love the idea. There's a ditch on both sides of the road. So which one are we going to do? We figure out like, what do need today? What are my future like?   Dr. Lauryn B (18:28) Mm-hmm.   Kiera Dent (18:41) kind of nice purchases that I want to, how do I build up to these other ones that I can save for? What's my total number? Like I know my number for financial freedom is psychotic. When I look at that, it really is. I actually have it.   Dr. Lauryn B (18:51) Is it really? Because I'm   interested that you said that because most people when they do that exercise are kind of like, ⁓ it's surprising to them that it's actually not higher. like, so.   Kiera Dent (19:12) Well, let me just clarify.   Let me ask this for you, Lauryn. What I found is for me to hit like my security, my vitality, my independence. Like we're talking like pretty much up to freedom. I'm actually it's good. Like we're there, but my absolute freedom, like where I never have to work another day in my life for me, that number, that number is a little more extreme. That one, but like even looking at it now, cause when I told you, I'm like, it's psychotic. I just pulled the spreadsheet up. What's fun though is I built this.   Dr. Lauryn B (19:30) ⁓ okay.   Yeah. Okay, the like I quit number, the like.   Kiera Dent (19:42) gosh, I like I should honestly look, I think I built this spreadsheet, I'm going to we're gonna hold everybody I know you're like on pins and needles, I'm just gonna scroll back to when I actually made this. It's on Google Sheets, you can go back to like when it was built. So I built this and I think this is really just telling for people I built this in 2022. So May 13 2022 at 1026 am is when I built it. We're now recording this in 2025. So we're only talking just over three years since I originally built it.   I told you Lauryn that my number for absolute freedom, we're talking like I put it all because I have a jet in there. I have a charter jet. I have a private like I put all these things like it was just I have like I want to   Dr. Lauryn B (20:17) You have a jet in there? Okay, well most people when   they do the exercise the way I have them do it aren't putting jets in there. I love you, Kiera. Okay, we're gonna stay friends because I want on that jet. Kiera error.   Kiera Dent (20:25) Like I'm telling you this is my absolute freedom. This is the absolute absolute like here is living this life I mean girl you can come cuz I just like   I wanted to see like what does this look like and I want to have like I don't want to retire in a retirement home I want to live in a villa like I've got some pretty lofty things in this like we're talking I went for like   Dr. Lauryn B (20:41) Right. Did you put the pilot   costs in there too or does that just come with a jet?   Kiera Dent (20:45) So my husband actually wants to be a pilot. So that's already like built in. So I've got like that. I also have friends that are pilots like, you know, yellow, we're gonna have that. Thank you, thank you. So on that, and I actually went through this, like I built it the first time, but we're talking three years. And I look at that to have that absolute freedom. The annual income pre-tax would be 4.6 million, which that can sound like an outlandish number. However, based on where the business is now, it's not that outlandish. And that was just a short.   Dr. Lauryn B (20:49) Okay. Okay. Okay. The jet makes a little more sense now, but yeah, got it.   No, it's doable.   Kiera Dent (21:15) three year period where I'm like, I mean, we got a jet, I got play money. mean, guys in-house chef, live in nanny, we've got all the cars, I've got my Lambo, I've got chartered flights in there, like you name it. And I look at this and I often assess because Kiera three years ago wanted some of these things and Kiera today might look at that and be like, know, I actually don't want these things, but this is what I'd rather. I'd rather like buy a house for my parents or I'd rather do this, but you will shift and change.   Dr. Lauryn B (21:16) And that's got a freaking jet in it.   Kiera Dent (21:45) But it's so crazy because when I look at that, I'm like, all right. So I know if things get tight in the business, I know, all right, rock on. Like pre-tax, we need to make a hundred grand. Like easy. We can handle that. We can create that. We can figure that out. That's it. Again, just a math equation. But then when you look up and you scale up, it becomes so much more doable and realistic. And then for me, I don't know how you feel, Lauryn. It's like, now the number doesn't feel like, got it. I know actually like what I'm working towards. I know how I can now do the math equation. It's not like I have to make   500 million to be free. It's like, no, I need this money because it will now go into investments. It will go into other places. I know how much that's going to generate for me. I know how much it's going to estimate grow. And I don't know. It just is pretty magical. So I'm very curious. Like, what are your other revenue streams that you recommend when we're looking at this and we're building that financial freedom? We're looking at like, okay, I kind of am. I'm hoping that people listening to this podcast are putting like dots together. Like, okay, got it. Like make the money, keep the money.   Dr. Lauryn B (22:17) Mm-hmm.   Hmm.   Kiera Dent (22:38) figure out how I'm gonna spend it, but not overspend it and still keep the money so I don't pinch on that side. Then I'm gonna look to see where I ultimately wanna get in my life. Now, like what are some other things like if we're there, how did you get it to where you weren't just reliant on your business anymore?   Dr. Lauryn B (22:52) So first I will say that none of this is any tax or legal advice and you must talk to your CPA or whatever. Yeah, here's my little disclaimer. I am not an accountant or anything, a lawyer or anything like that. So right now, so I just interviewed someone on crypto. So I am really, really lucky that my husband, he's a very early adopter. And so   Kiera Dent (22:58) This is true our little disclaimer there guys go talk to people that are not   Dr. Lauryn B (23:21) We have been pretty involved in crypto for   Kiera Dent (23:26) Which is why you said   do crypto like all the things like I should be putting this in crypto not going on trips. I now get it. All right, go on.   Dr. Lauryn B (23:33) So I just interviewed someone on my podcast who's like a crypto investor and like some of the predictions that the crypto people, the crypto people are saying about   going to happen with crypto, what could happen with crypto in the next five years,   4.6 million would be easy. So like if our current crypto ⁓   Kiera Dent (23:55) Chump change, like truly, truly.   Dr. Lauryn B (24:01) account like amount that we have invested   did even a fraction of like what like we'd be we'd be pretty   pretty pretty good even if that doesn't happen in five years if it like takes 10 so crypto for us   Kiera Dent (24:08) Mm-hmm.   Dr. Lauryn B (24:14) and like i said i just i knew that like that was the thing that for him but like i just really got i got off this interview and i was like how much did you invest last month we need   double it we need to like and he's like yeah   This is so exciting. Like I have been priceless. I've been really obsessed with a Cartier watch lately. Like a real like, and so I have was, I'm already   Kiera Dent (24:28) That's where he'll spend there, Lauryn.   Dr. Lauryn B (24:37) about my 2026 vision board because I'm in Enneagram three and we do weird   like that. And so I I was like, I want to go to Switzerland and   Kiera Dent (24:41) I love it.   Dr. Lauryn B (24:46) want to   to Switzerland and buy a Cartier watch. Cause that's where they're made. And like, and now I'm like, you know, maybe we should   Kiera Dent (24:52) Yeah.   Dr. Lauryn B (24:56) delay, that would be better put into crypto. And he's just like, this is the saver husband is just like, this is the greatest thing in the world. So anyway, so that's one bucket. ⁓ And you know, he spends a good amount of time each week, each day monitoring. So I won't even call that passive. I think that crypto can be a lot more passive depending on how you do it. I'm not going to get any deeper into the waters here because we are at my like limit of understanding of crypto.   Kiera Dent (25:02) He's loving it. Okay, so crypto. Okay.   Okay, perfect.   Dr. Lauryn B (25:24) I know   that you can   very active in investing and there are ways that can be much more passive. ⁓ So real estate, obviously   think that real estate is the secret of the wealthy for decades and decades and decades and it's not such a secret anymore. It comes with its own things. We both experienced 2007. I luckily had just gone into school, but there are people who lost their asses in 2007 with real estate. So not foolproof. Also,   Kiera Dent (25:50) only.   Dr. Lauryn B (25:54) not incredibly passive. We throw the word passive around way too much in this, but I will say where the majority currently and where we're like next year, how I'm getting to 3 million and this and that, a good percentage of it is very, very active in the personal brand coaching side of things.   Kiera Dent (25:56) I would agree on that. You gotta have a lot of doors, lots of doors, lots of time.   I agree.   Dr. Lauryn B (26:22) I have built and have continued building. ⁓ so, you know, podcast, sure, that makes some money, but like where very actively, where I spend more time on than in my clinic is in the online space of coaching courses, programs, webinars, membership. And that's when you find, and here's the thing.   is like every dentist listening, every chiropractor listening is like, okay, so I need to coach other dentists. I need to coach other chiropractors. And it's like, no, what I'm saying is, is online, there is a lot of money that can be made. It's not easier, but it's also not harder. It's its own hard. I just solved a different problem for someone. So I had the business that we solve this problem. And then I figured out a way. So we talked about the financial.   Kiera Dent (27:05) Right.   Dr. Lauryn B (27:18) freedom, but then I figured out the time freedom that I wasn't needed there all the time. So I could sit and go, what's another problem that I can sell a solution to?   Kiera Dent (27:33) Okay, let's like pause there. I'm very curious. How did you get, how did you solve the time solution? Like guilt free, like walk me through. I know it's like a pile whole nother episodes. Like do it in like a chunk or probably close to time.   Dr. Lauryn B (27:38) God, that's.   Yeah, well, I mean,   you ultimately, you pay for your time. So like, I am not collecting as much money from my clinic as I could if I was there doing the service. Like, that's just kind of obvious. ⁓ So I am paying for doctors that I wouldn't need a doctor. I could get rid of an entire doctor's salary if I just worked full time.   Kiera Dent (27:59) Right.   Dr. Lauryn B (28:10) I could also get rid of my amazing and well-paid director of ops. So this was a big game changer for us is so like, you may have a doctor on staff that's like your clinic director. You know, they're really in charge of like patient care, whatever, things like that. I recommend having a not office manager, a director of operations.   Kiera Dent (28:25) Thank   Dr. Lauryn B (28:39) Okay, like this is not an office manager. A lot of time your office manager is like by default, the person who's been with you the longest. Like we hired in a specific skillset that was going to be my eyes, ears, hands, feet, pretty much everything except my visionary brain.   Kiera Dent (28:40) Nothing.   and   Dr. Lauryn B (29:03) She does HR meetings, she does hiring, she does firing, she monitors stats. I meet with her once a week and I get reports. I pay her pretty well. And like honestly, she needs another raise and so does my other doctor. Like, so this is what's hard.   Kiera Dent (29:17) Yeah.   So let's just break it down. I   don't wanna know exactly what your Director of Operations gets paid, but let's give a range so people understand, because I think people don't realize what we're paying for that. So are we talking? Okay, perfect. And for some of you, might hear like, yes. And I would say that that, I would say it's probably 60 to 150 penny upon, for dentists, the size and practice, like I have seen that come through. So again, looking to see where it is.   Dr. Lauryn B (29:27) Probably 60 to 90 grand.   depending on your city and things like that.   can.   and   especially like if you're running multiple clinics. Yeah.   Kiera Dent (29:44) Yes. So   when you said that though, when we were talking about the audacious number and we're like, Hey, 4.6, like it seems so, but you're like, it's really big. But I think if people were to hear that and think K 60 to 90, if I were to pay somebody 90, but not have to do all the meetings, not all the hiring, not all the firing, what is your time worth? Go to Dan Martell, buy back your time. He's one of my favorites. Like what is your dollar per hour when you're doing dentistry or when you're doing chiropractic?   And could you hire that out? Like how many hours could you do or use your visionary brain to grow the business, grow other things? Well, yes, that's a great salary. It also, think when we put it with your time, I think a lot of people could see that on a balance sheet of a very good investment because I think time is one of your greatest assets. So again, I just want to highlight because a lot of people may think it's like 200.   Dr. Lauryn B (30:26) Mm-hmm.   Well, and I'm in a circle back.   So, cause I said, there's like the two different reasons you're burning out. Although I've listed like 17 at this point. You you've got the person who just wants to care for people and they have to run a business. And then you've got the person who's like, I've solved this. So like, I don't remember who said it, but they basically said there's like two types of people. And this is a really great question to ask when you're hiring. It's one of my favorite questions. ⁓ Are you the type of person?   Kiera Dent (30:39) Yeah   Dr. Lauryn B (30:57) who wants to solve the same problem every day and get more efficient and faster and better at solving that puzzle, or are you a person who would rather have a brand new puzzle every day and figure out   to solve that puzzle? There is no wrong answer here. You are not a less than person because people hear that and they go, oh.   I wanna be the exciting person. And this is why so many people end up in entrepreneurship that shouldn't is because they hear the air quotes, right answer there. the exciting answer is I want a new puzzle. Most people are not psycho like   if you   that you're that person, when you're really, this is totally cool to be like a more efficient problem solving, like same puzzle. But that's what a business is.   Kiera Dent (31:49) Yes.   Dr. Lauryn B (31:50) after a   certain point, you are solving the same problem. And so I literally couldn't. I couldn't, so like, yes, I could say like, well, I had the option of not spending that money on salary and just like stepping into my practice even more and being that director of ops and being that, I couldn't. I was done. At this point, this had been like 12 years.   Like, this is really more more recent. I've been in practice 15 years. So it was really more like three years ago that I was like, I can't, I want to. And I feel like a bad person that I'm like, I can still be the visionary. I can still check in and I still love hands-on patience. Like, ⁓ but like we need to hand this baton to somebody better because I will die if I have to keep hiring and doing some of this stuff.   Kiera Dent (32:47) You   How did your team and doctors take that? Because I think people are so scared of like, well, why does Lauryn get to go have one or two days in the office and we're here five days? Like, did you have any of that backlash? Like, how did that go?   Dr. Lauryn B (32:50) And so.   they're continue, you know, like, yeah, your people are people are people. And we can't, we can't, as if I don't get, my husband has to talk me off a ledge, you know, once a month about like, can you believe, like, we, they're just humans who are also living their experience and wanting more money and like seeing you live abundantly and feeling feelings of jealousy. Like you can't cure anybody who says like they've cured jealousy.   from their team culture, they are lying. So like feelings of jealousy and greed, these are natural human emotions that your staff is going to go through. And so, you know, I would say that more recently as we, because like we're talking about like, hey, the clinic numbers are not good enough for...   Kiera Dent (33:36) Yeah   Dr. Lauryn B (34:00) abundance and bonuses and raises. We've told you what we need the clinic numbers to be at in order for raises to happen.   Kiera Dent (34:06) I hope everybody listening   just heard how she was a CEO and she told them, these are what the numbers are. This is what we have to do. It's not, me give you bonuses and pay you more in hopes to get that number up there. Like rewind that, listen to that over and over and over again, because you have to have this team needs to see that. Otherwise, this is how you don't make the money and keep the money. You make the money and you pay more money and you're broke. Go on.   Dr. Lauryn B (34:27) Yeah, and for the first, that's   how I got to the worst, the best worst year of my life, you biggest revenue, but worst income was because we had been giving raises based on like effort and like they're working really hard. They deserve a raise. So an employee can deserve a raise, but there's not money to give them. So like we're simultaneously this year dealing with like, hey,   I wanna give raises, but like it's gotta be here and we're close, but we're not there. They simultaneously see me just fucking killing it in the online space and spending, because also like in the personal brand, like I coach healthcare providers how to launch a personal brand. And so like I talk about like, hey, I got a $2,000 affiliate check. We invested $13,000 from crypto. If you go find me on Instagram @DrLaurynB, you will see like,   My posts are about abundance and what a personal brand can do for you and how like the behind the scenes of like, yeah, we are, we're talking about diversifying income. Like this is how much our real   portfolio made last month. People want to know that, but my staff sees that. And so they're like, well, she rich. Why is she trying to tell us   she can't give us, why is it? And so, so like even literally this month.   Kiera Dent (35:45) that we don't have money. because the business, the business.   Dr. Lauryn B (35:52) We're in like calm, kind, one-to-one conversations having to be like, you know, but I will say my husband and I, like, this is like real life. These are conversations that literally happened like a week and a half ago where I came to my husband because prior the clinic was all the money. It was all the money. It was the biggest thing. It was really in the last two years that things switched.   where it was like, now my clinic is like, when do we call my clinic my side gig? Because I'm literally making four times as much on this personal brand in digital space. ⁓ And so we realized that,   Kiera Dent (36:20) Yeah.   Mm-hmm.   Dr. Lauryn B (36:32) there isn't money for raises that they want. There isn't money for bonuses. But can I,   Lauryn Brunclik.   who loves my employees, can I give them, can I shower them with birthday presents and anniversary presents and Christmas presents? Can I buy them lunch because they saved my ass because I came in late from a podcast recording or this or that? Yeah, because Lauryn can, like the personal, like we are fine. We are rich, great, this is great.   But like my head was so like the only money from a business mind that we can spend is the money that's allowed. And it's like, no, no, no, no. Now we're entering a whole new ball field where it's like, you know what? I can, but it's not gonna come from bonuses and raises. Those come from clinic performance. And so we are kind of going like, okay, FYI, this isn't coming from chiropractic. This is coming from me.   Kiera Dent (37:30) Right.   Dr. Lauryn B (37:41) loving and appreciating all that you do in this clinic so that I can. So what does this look like? You take a week off and you go golf the greatest like golf whatever courses and like you just like have this bucket list thing. This looks like you showing acts of appreciation, bringing gifts, buying them dinner, like whatever it is like.   showing appreciation for your staff that they are there so you can live your best life. They were there so you could leave early and go watch your kids dance recital. So like, although our natural instinct is to only show them that we appreciate them through raises and bonuses, and that's what they want. So like anytime you can do it. ⁓   Kiera Dent (38:38) I agree.   I agree. I feel like both.   Dr. Lauryn B (38:40) Sometimes   you have to figure out more creative ways to show your appreciation to them that they are doing that so you can't.   Kiera Dent (38:49) I love that. Wow. Lauryn, this is such a fun podcast. think like to put a pretty bow on this. What would you say if a doctor, your listeners, my listeners, if they're listening to this, what would you say would be like, wrap up takeaways from I mean, we have gone the gown. I love this. I felt like we were on the most random road trip of like we were going to this stop going to this one.   Dr. Lauryn B (39:08) I'm not sure if we took this entire transcript   and uploaded it to AI. It would be like, no, you guys are amazing. Here's your silver thread.   Kiera Dent (39:17) That would be amazing. So what would you say would be kind of like key takeaways or things that maybe we didn't get to that you just feel like listeners, business owners, those running the day to day clinic, whether you want to be on whichever side of this burnout coin, if you want to be there and serve the patients but are sick of doing the business, if you're on the side of like, gosh, I like just want to run the business and do other things outside of this, like looking at the burnout, looking at the generations that we're going through. I mean, we went the gamut of   from investments and passive income to appreciating your team as you as a person rather than the business. Like so many fun, different like ideas and aha moments. Any last thoughts you wanna add to put a pretty bow on today's podcast?   Dr. Lauryn B (39:57) All well, that's a really hard question, but you're lucky I actually do have something to say. was like, oh God, okay. All right, so was listening to a podcast this morning. Simon Sinek had Arthur Brooks on, and Arthur Brooks is, I don't know, political science, behavioral science, I think behavioral science. And he just very briefly in the interview said that like,   Kiera Dent (39:59) I know. Hey, good, good.   Dr. Lauryn B (40:21) It's human nature that we go through a reinvention of our career and have to reinvent ourselves every seven to 12 years. And that's just, that's gonna happen. So from the time that you graduate high school until the time that you retire, you're going to need to reinvent yourself multiple times. And the more that you fight that, the more that you, you you're at that seven year itch or whatever,   and instead of embracing reinvention, whatever that looks like for you, maybe you're bringing on new services into your clinic. like, it doesn't need to mean you need to lean out at that point, but you might just need a little, like, re-ignition, a reinvention of your brand. ⁓ The more that you fight that and go, I shouldn't feel this way, what's wrong with me? Like, like if you're sitting there broke and you're just stuck,   in a place of instead of reinventing yourself into this wealthy, healthy doctor that you know you can be, but instead you're like, God, I'm 39. I don't have my shit together. I should be making more money. I should, like, the more you just sit in this, what's wrong with me? It's just gonna torture yourself. I truly believe that people, you know, let's say they get 12 years into their career.   I believe that there are ⁓ too high of a percentage of people that literally just plan on embracing the suck the rest of their career instead of reinventing themselves for something joyful and abundant. And that just makes me so sad. So that's what I would say is my final thing is if you feel wherever you're at in your career, if you're feeling this, like this is your permission. It's not from me, it's from Arthur Brooks. He's some smart.   Kiera Dent (42:17) Yeah.   Dr. Lauryn B (42:18) Like you were smart enough to be on Simon Sinek, all right? He's giving you permission. This is not just a unique thing. This is human nature. And so figure it out. What does reinvention look like for you? ⁓ And just start doing the work.   Kiera Dent (42:35) Lauryn, that was absolutely beautiful and I hope people listen. I hope they take action. They take advice. ⁓ Because I think what you just said is so freeing and so beautiful. So I really hope people don't just listen, but actually take action. So Lauryn, I love this today. It was so fun. How can people get in? It's a great time. I'm like when we in person, I guarantee you'll be someone we will be fast friends in real life. Like just loved having you on here today. How can people get connected with you? How can they see your   Dr. Lauryn B (42:51) We should meet up in real life.   Kiera Dent (43:03) life again, I believe like when we watch other people we become like them. So it's like, I want people like you. I want people that are abundant. I want people like this is what the podcast is for. This is why we bring people together. How can people get connected with you if they want to know more about you see what you're doing? How can they   Dr. Lauryn B (43:07) Mm-hmm.   yeah, and if you   related to this, you'll love my Instagram, because this is everything that I talk about. So it's @DrLaurynB and Lauryn is with a Y. So ⁓ Instagram is definitely the place I hang out the most. Send me a DM if you listen to this. Like I am in my DMs all the time. And I would just, yeah, that's the best place.   Kiera Dent (43:34) I love it. We are millennials. Instagram's our jam. We're not on Snapchat, all right? It's Instagram, okay? It's gonna be that way forever. But Lauryn, I loved it today. Thank you for joining me. Everyone here, I hope you picked up nuggets. I hope you take action. I hope you truly commit to living your best life. And as always, thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team   Dr. Lauryn B (43:37) This jam. Yeah.  

Kiera is joined by Dr. Lauryn Brunclik (of She Slays the Day podcast fame) to take a good hard look at clinician burnout, different sides of the working mindset coin, generational styles of work, and so much more. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera. And today I am so excited about our guest that's going to be on the podcast with me today. She is incredible. We're going to be talking about all things burnout, how to avoid it, how to just like live your best life. And so I have Dr. Lauryn Brunclik. She's an entrepreneur, chiropractor, business coach, podcast host, wife, mother, and sought-after speaker known for her high energy. You guys know that this is why I like her. mean, we're birds of the same feather, straightforward attitude and ability to make people laugh while discovering their truth.   In 2010, she founded Blue Hills Chiropractic building into a thriving seven figure practice. But after years of relentless hustle, she found herself overworked, tied to her clinic and craving more freedom. Dentist, can you relate? Now you see why I brought her on here. Now you can see why I want her here. ⁓ she truly is very similar to all of you out there. She was determined to create a business that worked for her, not the other way around. Lauryn built multiple revenue streams, streamlined her operations and reclaimed her time without sacrificing income.   She took that passion and launched She Slays the Day, a podcast helping professionals and clinic owners break free from burnout by creating multiple revenue streams, recleaning time and building financial and lifestyle freedom. So welcome to the show, Lauryn. How are you today?   Dr. Lauryn B (01:07) Thank you. As you   were reading that is so funny because like in this world of virtual assistants and AI, I'm always like, what bio is she reading? And I'm like kind of holding my breath like, ⁓ and I'm like, okay, yep, that's true. That's true. this is good. I did really get sad and burnt up. It's like, I just went on a journey with you while you're reading my bio.   Kiera Dent (01:25) Usually both.   You and me both. was on a podcast the other day and I had the exact same feeling because they were reading my bio and I was like, huh, I'm super curious. Like which bio did you get? And wow, yeah, like I did just get to go down memory lane. but   Dr. Lauryn B (01:40) You're   like, that's a good bio. Good job, AI. Good job. Which is like always waiting for like the wrong thing where it's like, no, I didn't do a stint as a clown or anything. No, that's not true. That's not true. So.   Kiera Dent (01:49) Exactly.   I, Shelbi got us connected and I was super excited and you know, I was looking up on it and she's like, here, I think you and Lauryn are going to have the best time on the podcast. She's like, you two are birds of the same feather, the high energy, the tactical, the like we talk about it's like life on purpose and business on purpose and not having it to where it's the other way around. I say all the time, like your business should be working for you, not the other way around. It should be supporting your life. So I'm just super jazzed. So Lauryn.   Dr. Lauryn B (02:04) Mm.   Kiera Dent (02:17) I mean, that was a great bio. agree like kudos to AI, virtual assistant, whomever wrote it for you. Kudos to you for living that actual bio and being the human on the other side of that. So anything else you want to add? I mean, we're here today to chat shop. We're here to ⁓ share with your audience, our audience, and just really collaborate together and talk about some things that you're super passionate about and that I am too.   Dr. Lauryn B (02:22) Right.   Yeah, so I think that one of the things is that, you you kind of address of like, I think you probably typically have more dentists on   of thing and your audience is like, wait, what's happening? So I started as a coach for chiropractors, you   Kiera Dent (02:51) you   Dr. Lauryn B (02:56) this is, I see this a lot of what we do ⁓ as especially high achieving people, you know, we spend a lot of money and time getting this degree. And then we kind of, when we start to get   bored, burnt out, ADHD, whatever it is in our career where there's this kind of a couple years in and you're like, wait, is this on repeat? What we tend to do is we repurpose our current knowledge set. And so it's like, I have this degree in this, so I'm gonna start a podcast for those people, right? And so that was kind of my experience too. She Slays the Day started as a podcast for chiropractors.   But then I started to realize like as we were having these conversations and you you're just networking, you're meeting. And I started to talk to dentists and veterinarians and you know, realizing like, ⁓ you guys deal with the same shit we do? I had an ENT on a private practice, ENT ⁓ on the podcast, on my podcast because I was following him on Instagram because he was hilarious, but I was like.   Kiera Dent (03:51) Yeah.   Dr. Lauryn B (04:02) you're dealing with the same stuff we do. And ultimately, that's kind of where I expanded in 2023 to be more for healthcare providers outside the traditional hospital system, because it's like, none of us learned business. Like, we, while we were doing anatomy and infectious disease and all of this stuff, there were people outside in the college getting like MBAs and entire business degrees.   Kiera Dent (04:18) Exactly.   Dr. Lauryn B (04:31) And we didn't take a single class. we just, there's such this atmosphere of shameful entrepreneurship. What I mean by that is like, especially within chiropractic, and I've talked to vets and dentists as well, that's like, well, if you're not gonna own your own clinic, are you even like really that good? And so there's this forced entrepreneurship in a society where only 10 % of   Kiera Dent (04:54) Mm-hmm.   Dr. Lauryn B (05:01) people truly have the grit and resilience for the shit show that is ⁓ entrepreneurship. But you have like 80 to 90 % of a profession going into it. And so it's just so natural that it's like, we didn't learn this stuff. It's so natural that burnout is such a common thing. So that's where really it's like, I've realized that like, yeah, I promise you that the same stuff we're dealing with, you're dealing with too because I've had these conversations.   Kiera Dent (05:13) Right.   Amen. And it's actually funny, and I didn't mention this prior, but we actually consulted a chiropractic office and we've consulted eye clinics and ⁓ optometrists and we've gone into CPA clinic firms. And I realized business is business is business and healthcare business is very similar. I think we do ⁓ outside of mainstream medicine, which is our chiropractic, our vets, our dentists.   We're not in the hospital setting. We have more of that autonomy to have our own practices and our own businesses and I agree with you. It is a I think I think the memes out there with business ownership are so accurate the ones where you're on a roller coaster and they're like it's the highs and the lows the ones we're like holding on for dear life and you're like giggling and then crying all within a matter of seconds and I'm like that is the role that is the realm and so that's why I really wanted us to collaborate together Lauryn to talk about because   What you see in chiropractic, what I see in dentistry, what we see across the board of these incredible clinicians. like you, go to school, you learn, you, you have all this experience in this knowledge. And like you said, It does not train you to be a business owner. yet also, like you said, it's well, why not? Like, and I think that that is kind of the, it's like for team members, like you want to graduate to be the office manager. You want to be the regional manager. You want to get to that level. Like that's where you like it. There's a ladder ascension. And I think in business ownership and with   Like you wanted to be a chiropractor because you wanted to help people. You wanted to be a dentist because you want to help people. You want to be a vet because you want to help people. You want to be an ENT because you want to help people. But it's, think that there's this unsaid natural ladder that people feel there's a push to go for a business ownership when it's like, but I just want to be a clinician. I just wanted to, to do my craft, but I also wanted to do it my way. And that's where I think the business ownership vibe comes in. But you're right. It's, it's stressful, not having profits, not having   understanding cashflow, not understanding how to run teams. Like awful.   Dr. Lauryn B (07:20) The number of people,   doc, clinic owners that have been in practice for 10 plus years that I am teaching what profit margins are and what is healthy and how to calculate it is astounding. It's like, So, you know, I think that ultimately when you, you know, the different personality types, you know, when they find themselves in practice,   Kiera Dent (07:31) Yes. Yes.   Yes.   Dr. Lauryn B (07:46) I feel like they almost burn out for two completely different reasons. So let's say that you have, know, so 80 % of humans are just more meant to be more like caregivers, supporter roles. I would guess that that's even higher in someone who's called into healthcare, right? That like, they went into this, believe me, if you are about to decide what you should do with your life and you are like, I'm an entrepreneur and I wanna be.   Kiera Dent (08:05) Mm-hmm.   Dr. Lauryn B (08:15) rich. Do not go into chiropractic. Do not go into dentistry. There is so much easier ways to make money. like 99 point whatever percent of people are called to this profession in healthcare because they want to serve. So let's say you start your clinic. There's a good chance you're going to burn out from one of two reasons. One, you don't want to run a clinic. You truly   And that's what's burning you out, is that you're just like, I am here for the patients. I want to pour into the patients and I want to serve and I want to do that. But like, I have to hire another front desk person? Didn't we just do that last year? I don't know what the ad should say. I don't know what we should pay them. Or like there's office drama and you're like, I have to create a SOP on that, what? And so that will burn you out because so much of being the CEO and the clinic owner is like,   pulling you away from patient care. So you either have to divide your patient care down or in half so you have time and now you're spending half of your time not doing what you wanna do or you just pile on the admin stuff on top of it so you're working 60 hours a week. So that person, obviously they burn out. Now the other one is I think a much more, like is much more my personal story and I'm so curious as to like why you started the podcast, why you started doing what you're doing but like.   Kiera Dent (09:30) Mm-hmm. Right.   Dr. Lauryn B (09:43) So this is, I was not someone that like was a natural entrepreneur. Like I never would have, you there's certain people you hear these stories where they're like, I'm kindergarten. was like, you know, I'm like, no, that wasn't me. Like I had no idea until really after I, you know, I started my practice, but that was out of convenience. Cause there was no job. Like I had kids and like somewhere along the line, the entrepreneurship bug just got me.   Kiera Dent (09:56) Hahaha!   Dr. Lauryn B (10:13) And then all of a sudden, that's what I wanted to be doing. Like I wanted to be scaling, looking at marketing strategy, looking at like growth projections, creating higher, like I wanted to do that. But then like Barb needs me in a room too. And I'm like, like I love, okay, I like serving. Yes, yes, yes. But like I really.   Kiera Dent (10:36) Yeah.   Dr. Lauryn B (10:41) This is what was exciting to me. And so then, and this is where I'll kind of like be vulnerable and share my story, because I know from stage that this helps people, people see this, but it's embarrassing to admit, but the patient care became boring. The patient care became repetitive. Like in the beginning, you're like, ⁓ how do I fix this? And like, you're not getting results, how do I do that? And it was this problem, like new problems to solve.   But once you've been doing it, five, seven years, I mean, for everybody it's different, you're kind of like, I can do that on autopilot. And it wasn't challenging a part of my brain that wanted to solve new problems. And so there was a lot of shame and guilt that came with, because at this point, I've been in practice seven years. I'm in my early 30s. Okay, well, you're doing this for the next 30 years. And I was like, I can't.   Kiera Dent (11:38) Right.   Dr. Lauryn B (11:39) can't do this for the next 30 years. And so that's just like, whichever side a clinic owner sees themself in, like, you you're not safe on either. You have to figure out burnout on either side, but ⁓ they're completely different reasonings. And I think understanding what, why are you feeling that burnout is really important.   Kiera Dent (12:04) Yeah, I love that you talked about both sides of the coin because I think there's guilt at least from what I see working with dentists working at myself. They actually got like I've heard I don't know like where this is coined but it's like the seven year itch or stitch like there's like you just kind of get into this and some people get it at five years some people get it at 10 years but there is ⁓ I also love Tony Robbins when he says like progress equals happiness.   Dr. Lauryn B (12:20) Mm-hmm.   Kiera Dent (12:29) And so if we're not progressing and some people love it, they love the autopilot of patient care is easy for me. But like when you first get out of school, all of that is hard. It's a puzzle. You're progressing. You've got to figure out how do you navigate and get patients to say yes to treatment? How do I run my books? Like how, like there's so much how, how, how to, how do I like serve my patients better? How do I make this for dentists? It's like, do I make that perfect crown margin? Like, how do get that perfect? I imagine in chiropractor, I'm actually a chiropractor.   all the time. I love her. She's incredible. We do talk business often. She's a fee for service. And I'm like, let's talk shop on like going fee for service versus in network, like, just like dentists, right, the fee for service versus in network. And it's how can I make this body like looking at people that have weird symptoms and trying to figure out how can I fix that? Like, I know there's a way to fix this long term. ⁓ But also the like annoyance of running a business and also be like,   need for growth. I really love and I never thought about those two sides of the coin until you mentioned that of that really is what causes people to stress. And I think that there is guilt on both sides. I think there's guilt of I want to be with patient care and I don't want to run the business, but I know I have to like, this is kind of the, the card I signed up for. And then the other side of I want to leave the chair. I had a dentist the other day and one of our masterminds say to me, I only want to work two or three days, but I feel guilty because my team's working five days. And I was like,   Dr. Lauryn B (13:52) That's   a really common one.   Kiera Dent (13:54) so good. And the great news is you built the business, like you provided them the job, like you've created that. That does not mean you need to stay in the day to day, five days a week, like whatever is best for you as the business owner and creator. And that can shift and morph. But there is a lot of guilt. I think that that creates, like you said, a lot of shaming and thanks for being vulnerable on that because I think so many people can relate to that. I think when people are listening, they're like, yes, yes. Like, I feel either side of that and   I think people don't know how to get out of it. So instead it's just this like, let me keep doing the same. ⁓ let me listen to other podcasts. Let me see if other people are like me. And I'm sure it's the same in chiropractic dentistry. say that it's like this isolated Island and I'm so grateful for podcasts. I'm grateful for communities, but I still think people feel that way because you're day in day out in your own clinic, in your own practice by yourself, even though you maybe know there's a few other islands out there that are maybe similar to you. ⁓ but I think it's such a, I think that's also business too.   Dr. Lauryn B (14:36) Mm-hmm.   Kiera Dent (14:52) I don't think it's just being ⁓ a provider in your own practice. I business entrepreneurs feel this way as well, like, how can everybody else figure this out? And I don't feel like I can. ⁓   Dr. Lauryn B (15:00) And you have no idea that they haven't figured it out. I was at   a seven figure female mastermind a month ago. so it's all seven figure females all over the board, as far as like industry striving to get to eight figures. And like, there were so many moments at this retreat that every single person just felt like their business was duct taped together. And it's just like, everybody's just doing their   Kiera Dent (15:07) you   Dr. Lauryn B (15:29) absolute damn best. And so it is really, ⁓ but you know, I wonder how much of how much of this burnout conversation has to do with like generational differences. You know, like, I'm assuming that you are a millennial. Yeah. And yeah, I know, we really are the best. really are. Don't tell everybody else, but we are the best generation. ⁓   Kiera Dent (15:46) Mm-hmm. Yep. I like the emojis. I'm here for all the millennial vibes. Like, I'm here for all of them. I feel like I really fit it.   Dr. Lauryn B (15:59) And so I will point this out on stage a lot because when you're talking, giving continuing ed, you'll have a lot of, Gen X is still in the workforce. Like they are still here. from the time I was in school up until like the last couple of years, they really were a lot of the stage presence at conferences.   Kiera Dent (16:12) Mm-hmm.   Yes.   Dr. Lauryn B (16:28) And so you being a millennial would sit and really just get advice, business success, career advice through the lens of Gen X. And why that's something that we just have to be aware of is like each generation has a very different script that they have downloaded, like they've just absorbed kind of.   automatically without putting too much thought into, know, it's just like the culture of their generation. And Gen X was like, shut up, don't complain about it. There is work life balance. Like your career is the most important thing. Like raising your kids, like you have a spouse for that and you will enjoy your life once you have accumulated enough money.   And if you've done it right, that'll happen by your like 60, between 60 and 65. But the goal is to hustle, hustle, hustle, accumulate, accumulate, accumulate at all costs. You can enjoy your life if you need a second, if you need to get a divorce and you just get a new spouse in your sixties, that's what like, and so like not trying to give them shit or anything. Their work ethic is phenomenal. My favorite employees are Gen X. Yeah. Yeah.   Kiera Dent (17:41) I always love to hire them. I was like, perfect, come on in, you're gonna work forever. Like, it's great, amazing.   Dr. Lauryn B (17:47) So they're great. But then like we come in and you know, I know that in chiropractic now 50 % of graduates are females. Do you know what that is in dentistry?   Kiera Dent (17:58) Dentistry   actually tipped over. There's more females that are graduating than there are men. It just recently tipped this scale, which I was quite impressed by, which is awesome. So it's exciting.   Dr. Lauryn B (18:09) It's so cool,   but we're kind of screwed because we as millennials, we're not going to not have children. We're not going to delegate that completely to somebody else. I mean, my husband, I'm definitely the primary breadwinner in my husband's profession or career has like molded to what our family needs are, but like.   Kiera Dent (18:13) Mm-hmm.   Dr. Lauryn B (18:35) So we're not gonna do that, we're not gonna do that, like we're not gonna give up our career. And so it's not like we're complaining about work-life balance, it's just a necessity. We're like, no, no, no, it's not like I'm like, like I, it's like, no, this isn't I want to raise my child, it's I have a child, I have to raise them also and the business. And so like we're trying to figure out, like, well, I can't follow that script.   Kiera Dent (18:47) Right.   Dr. Lauryn B (19:05) that script that we saw from stage for so long is just like, that's not gonna work for me. we're trying, that's why everything feels duct taped together is because we actively reject it. We were given a script to follow, like work six days a week, just do it. And we're like, nah, I don't want that. And it's like, okay, well then we're literally creating a new path. And so to any millennial, I would say like, if it just feels   Kiera Dent (19:15) Mm-hmm.   Dr. Lauryn B (19:34) messy, this probably isn't a youth thing. This is like, are truly carving a brand new way to do things, which we're kind of wasting our time because Gen Z is coming in like, no, I'm not doing that either. And we're like, we're fixing this for you. And they're like two months into their, yeah, they're like two months into their profession and like, ooh, 30 hours a week? That's not gonna work for me.   Kiera Dent (19:44) was going to say, they're coming right behind. Exactly.   They're like, no, no, no, no. We see that. We're not doing that either.   Yeah, not happening.   No, they're like, I could be a YouTube, like I could I could do all these different things. I can be an influencer for like five hours a week and make way more than you are not here for that.   Dr. Lauryn B (20:10) And you're like, well,   I don't know how to solve this for you.   Kiera Dent (20:13) they're like AI,   why are guys like still doing stuff yourselves? Like, no, we're gonna have robots to do all this stuff for us. Like, absolutely not. It's incredible. Like, good. But I don't disagree with you. I think it's ⁓ and as you said that I thought about how agreed and I think every generation actually makes it better from the last and I do agree that ⁓ I don't know, I started thinking about it. This struck me about probably, I don't know, eight years ago. And I'm like,   Dr. Lauryn B (20:20) He probably will. Like, damn it.   Kiera Dent (20:42) my gosh, like people used to get married because they needed to be married. Like you used to have to have like a husband and a wife to be able to have kids. And I'm like, you don't need that anymore. There's IVF, there's ⁓ different things that you can do. You do not need anybody anymore to live the life you want to live. It's very much becoming this like self ability. But I'm like, our parents couldn't do that. I mean, women even coming to the forefront to be able to have businesses.   to own land in our name. Like that has not been a long change and shift for women to be here. And then I also think that there's a whole dynamic for women as well coming into this scene. Like you said, they are coming in there. We're, having stronger professions. are being stronger business owners. We're like the kid having children is being delayed much longer in life. And so I do think it's a, a walking through and not understanding like where are we even supposed to go? Because what we've seen as the model isn't the model for us anymore.   like that doesn't work. Our lives look different. I mean, my mom, didn't work a lot of my friends moms didn't work or if they did, they worked at the schools or they didn't work like high level powered careers, a lot of them and I'm so excited that women are coming into the workforce and because there's so much talent and beauty. But I do think that there's a whole dynamic and for men too. think that the whole shifting like you said, a lot of women are becoming breadwinners. They do.   Dr. Lauryn B (21:41) Mm-hmm.   yeah, they want to be dads. Like that's the   thing too is like, they're like, hey, I just cause I'm a dude doesn't mean like I'm okay with missing my kid's childhood. It truly is a generational shift.   Kiera Dent (22:11) Exactly   Exactly. And so I think I just through all of it, I think you're highlighting what makes me excited. And the reason I'm just like jazzed about this today is it's normal. It's okay. And there's solutions around it. And also, I think just aha moments of, my gosh, like maybe this is why. And I do agree. Generations behind the millennials, you're probably giggling at our conversation right here. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you guys don't even know what you're talking about. But I think like we're in it. Exactly.   Dr. Lauryn B (22:41) Hey, we say you don't know what you're talking about.   Kiera Dent (22:44) I'm like, but we're in it and there has to be a solution here.   Dr. Lauryn B (22:44) Hey! I have the microphone.   Kiera Dent (22:48) Who's on this podcast and who's listening? All right. I think when I look at that, I'm like, but for millennials, think that they're, and most generations probably feel this. think we're a taffy stretch between one way of thinking and a new way of thinking. And we're kind of that like middle child syndrome right now where we really are trying to carve that new path that's making it easier for other generations behind us to see easier modalities.   But I do think that that kind of tug of war, I mean, I feel it, you felt it. We've had our personal experiences through it. We see people, we coach people through this, we work with people. But I also think in a way life has become easier to learn. I don't know how you feel. And like easier with air quotes, meaning there's so many things that do things for us. Like washer and dryers were so great for our parents' generations. But I'm like, for us, we now have, like you said at the beginning, we have AI that's writing bios for us. We've got virtual assistants that are doing it.   There's ways, like you said, there's easier ways to make money outside of just doing your day in, day out, eight to five job now. There's different ways that we can build retirement. There's ways like the Airbnb market and having real estate investments. Like there's so many different ways that I feel like wealth is oftentimes easier to achieve. But I think with that, because there's so many things and not to say that it's perfectly easy, but I think as we conquer in life, just like the washer and dryer, the cell phone, like those things were conquering big problems.   Google coming in and the internet taking over, those conquered a lot of challenges. I think so much of today's challenge, and I don't know how you feel, Lauryn. This is like Kiera going off on her own soapbox. I feel like you said so much of it now is our mind and that space of centeredness, of balance, ⁓ not having to work all the time. I think a lot of jobs have shifted from labor jobs to mental labor jobs. So we're not having as much physical.   Dr. Lauryn B (24:32) Hmm.   Kiera Dent (24:35) Like you said, patient care can be a lot of just like mindless. I miss the days sometimes of being a dental assistant, sitting there and having like hours of time to dream of all these ideas to where now I feel like I wish and crave for that quietness that my mind never gets anymore. And so I feel like even with some of those shifts and how we work and how our family needs are in the necessities of family dynamics in, we don't need to work clear up to 65, but people are able to retire now at 35, 40. And then it's like, now what, what am I supposed to do? So also then finding your purpose in life.   I think you combine all that into a cluster storm and voila, welcome to millennial dilemma. Like, you know, we can coin that of what do people do? How do they, how do they exist? And I think the future generations coming will have even more of this at more grand scale. So it's like, let's have conversations of how do we prevent that burnout? How do we have the conversations about not working in like having nothing left to give to our families of having that balance? Like you said, if I want to run the business and I want to progress, but I also want to be a human at the same time.   So Lauryn, think you're more the expert at this than I am. I'm just here for the like great conversations and talking it through because I think it's such a necessary conversation that now is starting to really bubble to the surface out of necessity and also out of curiosity and also out of like desire to fix this and not have it be our day in day out norm anymore.   Dr. Lauryn B (25:54) Yeah, well, so I'm gonna say another kind of controversial thing then. ⁓ So you touched on it and like with any time, we don't love, as care providers, we don't wanna come across as greedy, right? And so what we end up doing is like, we'll just be like, it would be great to be wealthy, but like not too much, like I don't need to be rich, and you didn't do this or anything like this, but like.   Kiera Dent (25:57) Ready, I love this.   Dr. Lauryn B (26:22) other people is just like, yeah, I would like to make a little more money. ⁓ so part of my story, ⁓ I'll give you the very short version, was ⁓ we had our most successful revenue year ever. And it was with like the least amount of money I had taken home in like seven years. Yeah, yeah, we call this payroll bloat. You need to fix your pricing structure so we could talk about pricing increases.   Kiera Dent (26:42) Happens all the time, all the time.   Dr. Lauryn B (26:50) And so like I'm a cash clinic. So like this was my own fault. This was, I set my prices and I just did a bad job at it. And so part of like, if when people are like, well, how did you like, were you burnt out? And I was like, yeah, I was burnt out at like 32. And you're like, are you burnt out? I'm like, no, I freaking love what I do now. I still serve patients 10 hours a week. actually.   as of last week went down to like seven. We got a chef, yay. So I still serve patients like seven hours a week. I still spend probably like three hours a week ⁓ running meetings and like running the clinic. ⁓ But now we have other investments. ⁓ Whereas that clinic portion that used to be all of our eggs were in that basket.   Kiera Dent (27:22) I'm not.   Dr. Lauryn B (27:46) Right? So like, as we had kids, my husband left corporate consulting to help our family and clinic grow. So all of our eggs were in this one basket of whether the clinic does well that quarter or not. we want to remodel the kitchen? Better go get some more new patients. Like, want to go to Disney? It's not in the budget, but like, ugh, like all of these things. And we're not even talking about time freedom. Like we're just talking about like the key to burnout is having time freedom and   financial freedom. When I'm working with docs, the ones that are like the hardest to fix are not the ones that are like, I am working 60 hours a week. I have like oodles of money that I know should be like, I should be doing something with in, but it's just like $50,000 in this bank account. And like, I wish I had time to go to Disney, but I don't, I don't want to belittle that. That is a different kind of burnout.   Kiera Dent (28:32) Mm-hmm.   Right,   it is.   Dr. Lauryn B (28:45) and   everybody right now is playing a little sad song for you, but I relate to you, we can fix this. But the harder ones are the ones that are broke. Like being broke, and this has to do with like just core psychological, like I reference Maslow's hierarchy of needs a lot in my talks because like.   Kiera Dent (28:49) Mm-hmm.   I agree.   Mm-hmm.   Dr. Lauryn B (29:07) You cannot get to the tip, the Maslow's for those of us that took Psych 101 10 years ago is the triangle where at the top is enlightenment and at the bottom is like your base survival, food, water, shelter. And if you are broke, now granted, monks, I'm sure they can figure out how to have enlightenment without having food, water, shelter. Most of us cannot, okay? We are doctors and there is a certain amount of debt.   Kiera Dent (29:12) Mm-hmm.   I agree.   Dr. Lauryn B (29:34) and a certain amount of expectation is maybe the right, I don't know if that's the right word, with like, I'm gonna serve people and this career is gonna take care of me. I'm gonna go into debt and it's a lot of debt, but this career is gonna take care of me. I'm gonna care for people, as long as I focus on serving, the career will take care of me. And we have too many people that it's just not. And they're like, I...   did not realize that I was going to struggle this much financially. These are not people that are like, can't afford a yacht. These are people like truly who are like my margins for financial investing and building wealth are a lot more narrow than I thought they were going to be. And that's a harder thing to fix, but that...   Kiera Dent (30:22) Hmm.   Dr. Lauryn B (30:27) is a deeper kind of burnout that we just need to be more comfortable. Again, following generational stuff, Gen X, like we don't talk about money, right? That was the script that we got from them of like, you just focus on the patients and the patients will take care of you. And you're like, ⁓ okay, so we don't talk about money. And then millennials are like, I think we need to start talking about money. I think we need to start talking about money because if you were being paid,   Kiera Dent (30:38) Bye.   Hahaha!   Dr. Lauryn B (30:56) whatever you feel is appropriate. If you were feeling wealthy. And again, I'm not talking about that. I'm not putting on you that like you feel like you need to be making $3 million a year. Like, although that is my goal for next year is 3 million. just, but like, you know, just so we're clear, that is my literal goal for next year. So you can want that. You have permission to want that if you want, but we're talking about like, I don't know. Maybe if you made $500,000 a year, life would be a little easier and you could breathe.   Kiera Dent (31:10) Yeah, exactly.   Dr. Lauryn B (31:26) And if you can literally financially breathe, you have more bandwidth   make calm decisions for your business. Where you don't feel like if you have a bad quarter, you're gonna have to lay someone off. And like that's one of the first steps to helping most people   burnout or recover from burnout.   is like, we gotta talk about money and we gotta fix your personal financial situation because if you're constantly in a place of fight or flight   you can give yourself an extra 10 hours a week and time to be the CEO if all you're doing is worrying about how you're gonna make payroll. Like, it's not, you're not gonna   from burnout.   Kiera Dent (32:22) think that that was such a good ⁓ way that you highlighted it. And I'm just very curious now, like, how's the how, because agree, like people, what you're saying, Lauryn, I can tell you've lived the like the life. This is something that you've done, you've been there, you can speak to it so authentically. I've been there many times. And I'm always like, I want our doctors to get paid so well. I see how much you go into school for debt.   I see the, and I think that that's a different piece too, if we're to talk generational, people who are not walking out like half a million debt.   Dr. Lauryn B (32:55) And y'all are way worse than us,   right? Like what's the average dentist, like 350?   Kiera Dent (33:01) Average dentists right now are coming out at almost half a mil of debt when they walk in. It's bonkers.   Dr. Lauryn B (33:05) That is bonkers, you guys. Like when I heard that, because I posted a reel that went   so viral and it was just about like healthcare debt and reimbursement rates. And that's when I learned they were like, 250? Talk to a dentist. And I was like, wait, why? How long? And they were like, yeah, 350 minimum. And I was like,   Kiera Dent (33:25) Yeah.   Dr. Lauryn B (33:30) That's insane. That's insane.   Kiera Dent (33:32) That's insane.   And then you go buy a practice. So the practice that I helped start with a dentist straight out of school, we were, I called her 2.5. I got to walk by and I'm like, get that spine up like you're 2.5. We were 2.5 mil in debt. So that was coming with student loans. So schooling was 500,000. Living expenses during that time were about another, you know, two to 500. So like they're walking out with this.   $500, $600, $700,000 worth of debt, not just including your schooling, but all of life expenses, because you're probably not working while you're going to school. And then we went and bought a practice that's about a $2 million practice. So we were like 2.5, not like we were 2.5 in debt. I was like, keep that spine up, like put your hands up when you walk across the street, like you've got to keep those hands in motion because otherwise how are we going to get out of debt? And I think for me, when I look at that much debt,   when I look at that much risk and I look at the benefits that healthcare providers are giving, I'm like, no. And I tell teams all the time, I'm you want your doctor to be ridiculously wealthy. Like I do, and I preach this hard and I say, no, you should and you deserve it. And we want you that way because you're a better boss, you're a better clinician, you are better at doing your services because you're not stressed about making money. So we're not like you said, like, I want to go to Disney, let me go find more patients. I get.   No, I have confident, predictable payroll or cash flow. I'm very successful in what I do and you can make the margins there. Like I was the girl who did business that did not understand numbers. And now I say like, I love numbers and numbers definitely love me. And I'm like, it's now just a fun math equation. If I want to make X amount, you just back it down. You figure out what your costs are and you figure out the three levers you can use. We either drop our overhead, increase our production and or our collections. Like it's very simple when I'm like, okay, got it.   Dr. Lauryn B (35:05) and   Kiera Dent (35:17) Like got it when it's just those three levers, people make it so much more complex. And I think it does feel complex. Like reading a PNL is ridiculous. If you don't know what that is, that's okay. We're here where there's no judgment. It's a profit and loss statement. And I love educating people on this. Like this is where the fire in the belly comes. This is where it does. We get lit up because when I have someone who's cashflow positive, like you said, they can make calm decisions. They're not sitting here stressing all the time, but Lauryn, I'm very curious. Like you've talked about it at length. Like what do people do? Like what's the how, how do we get into this?   How do we have multiple streams because agreed all eggs in one basket? gosh. It's, ⁓ to me, that's like just a ticking time bomb. Like one bad day, one bad patient, one bad procedure. Like it's just going to explode because you're sitting like you're sitting on the edge of fear all the time to where you are in like cortisol adrenaline, like you are pumping. And then what you do is you go into complete shutdown because you can't handle it anymore. So your body and your system literally like just shuts down on you. You become apathetic to life.   Dr. Lauryn B (35:54) Mm-hmm.   Kiera Dent (36:15) things aren't exciting for you anymore. You become very numb to walking through the world. And it's like, I feel like the world of color goes into very like gray. It's very subtle. It's like, it's, there's no, there's no life left. It's just, are living life, but you're not actually being and living day in, out.   The Dental A Team (36:33) that wraps part one of our part two series. Be sure to tune back in for part two of this podcast. And as always, thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.  

Feeling stuck? Kiera helps listeners create a three-step framework to diagnose a growth ceiling and push through with strategy and confidence. The steps that follow can be done in order or reversed. Find your true cap rate (then get a second opinion) Rework your systems for scale Set a bold new vision Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and I hope today is just a great day for you. I hope that you're loving your life. Today's podcast date today is the day I get to share with you for whatever we're doing today. So whether we're driving to work together, whether we're driving home together, whether we're doing laundry or mowing the grass or traveling together or whatever you're doing today, thanks for taking me along with you. ⁓ it's truly something so fun. And today I think is going to be great for you to, what do do when you hit the plateau in your practice? ⁓ so   reality is we like didn't build our practices to be stuck or to feel like we're stuck or like there's no like we don't know our next move. ⁓ The reality is like if you plateaued or you feel stuck, it's just time to evolve. It's an indicator for you to know what the next step is kind of like when our seatbelt buckle beeps in the car, it's an indicator to put our seatbelt on ⁓ or we get the indicator from the gas light. It's an indicator to go and fill up our car with gas. Same thing when we're practices like it's plateaued or it's stuck. It's just like   Cool, let's diagnose, let's create a framework. Today I'm gonna help you have a three-step framework to diagnose your growth ceiling and how to push through it with strategy and confidence. So that's about what we're gonna do today. The Dental A Team is obsessed with you, I adore you. I'm so excited to be a part of your life or your practice. Our goal is to positively impact the world of dentistry in the greatest way possible and we do that through helping you say yes to more. So you having a vision for you and your life and your practice, earnings to make sure that you're profitable and it's predictable profit.   and then new systems and team development to ensure that everything you want to say yes to in life, you, your team and your patients is doable for you. And we do that with fun. We do that with ease. We do that with ⁓ creativity and love for teams. And we've been there, done that and done it successfully many times. I truly can hang my hat on the fact that I believe Dental A Team is the top notch consulting company. If you want to grow, if you want to do it with fun, if you want it to not just be directed at dentists, but you want your team involved in it and to do it from experts who have done it thousands of times successfully. And that's something I'm really proud of.   Most of our offices see a 10 to 30 % increase in production or a decrease in overhead within their first 90 days. We track these stats, we're very obsessive with it, and we do it through really fun, easy dial turns. So if that's something you're obsessed with, rock on. Let's work together. Reach out, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. And as always, thank you guys for sharing this podcast. The goal is to get this into every dentist's hands, every single practice's hands. So please share, like, leave reviews, whatever you can do to get the word out and to help me on my mission to truly give back to our community. If you're ever looking for topics or   episodes head on over to TheDentalATeam.com click on our podcast page we have thousands like literally this is a free wealth of knowledge for you that we put on because we I truly just love dentistry and I want to help you have the best life life is my passion dentistry is my platform so head on over to TheDentalATeam.com click on our podcast page and you can literally type in anything so cash flow overhead ⁓ team growth leadership morning huddles case acceptance routes like you name it   type in any of those and of every single episode we've ever done, will actually filter for you and bring anything forward for you. So just make sure life super, super easy. Ease is one of our core values and trying to make your life easy is what we're obsessed about. So today when we're going to, a lot of times I see this in like a 1 million, a 1.5, a 2 million practice where they're just like, gosh, I feel like I've just like hit my level and I don't know how to grow beyond it. It's kind of like my hair. My hair grows to a certain length and it won't grow beyond that. Like I can cut it shorter.   but it just grows and it has never once grown beyond that. It's like, I don't know how to get my hair to grow past this level. Well, some practices feel like stuck hair, ⁓ but I just want to help give you this framework of three simple steps to help you diagnose it and then figure out what the next step is. So number one is to diagnose your true ceiling. And ⁓ this is where we're going to figure out like what the true cap rate is. Now, why we'll put this with an asterisk though, because a lot of offices think they've tapped out capped out.   but maybe they're just so used to sitting in there or they don't know how to have an eye for it. I went into a practice once upon a time. They had four ops and they're like, Kiera, there's nowhere else we could ever fit an operatory in here. So we're just gonna build out, we're building a building across the street. Well, within about 15 minutes, I was able to find another operatory. They added that operatory. They were able to add 200,000 to their practice just that year.   just by adding that one operatory in place. And they were like, well, we wish we would have met you like even a few months ago before we started building this huge, expensive building. I have another client where they got huge design plans out to like expand the building. It's a huge, huge expansion. They sent me a video of their downstairs and I was like, gosh, we could add like six ops down here with less effort, less reno. ⁓ And so I think also before you like truly say you pick capacity.   maybe getting a second set of eyes on it or a third set of eyes to see is there any hidden potential in here because we're looking at chairs, ops, providers, and hygiene days. That's going to truly be capacity of what can we do. Now again, getting creative because could we add maybe an hour in the morning? Have we maxed out all five days in the office? A lot of times people tell me we're maxed and I'm like, but you're not even working five days. That doesn't mean you have to work five days, but if you're practicing your building sitting empty, that space that we could actually grow that isn't the true ceiling.   So if we are not maxing out all five days, if we're not maxing out ⁓ all the operatories or all the space that we've got, you truly have not hit your ceiling. You might just not want to do the things that are capable for you. So looking at that, could I add more chairs? Could I add more operatories? What about more providers? What about more hygiene days? What about more hygiene hours? Is there space to expand any of that? Before we truly go to expand, these might be some areas that might be able to help you get past this plateau of some other areas. Also, let's look at our leadership.   ⁓ Is our owner acting as a manager and not a CEO? Are they managing the day to day? ⁓ Are they involved in all the meetings or are they truly as a CEO? And our office manager is acting as the manager within the practice. So looking for that because sometimes just freeing that owner doctor up to be a CEO actually can expand your practice very quickly with minimal effort. You actually can have all that in place and there's very little effort that you actually have to do because now the owner is able to look at things   It's like, give me a day of nothing and I will create so many possibilities. And so getting that owner out of the manager seat and into the true CEO seat, if that's the right seat for them, can also help. And then let's look to see like, what are our gaps? are there scheduling apps gaps? Do we have block scheduling in place? Can we maximize our schedule even more? What about our case acceptance, our AR? ⁓ What are some of the other areas of bottlenecks within our practice that maybe if we look to see changing them, like I've added hundreds of thousands.   including millions to a practice just by doing a different scheduling tactic, looking at the flow of the practice, just changing up the flow with pediatric practices, looking to see where do we put our ops versus our, our profis. You can actually readjust that whole schedule and actually squeeze out more juice in your practice, giving a better patient experience with little to no effort, just reworking how we're doing things. So I really, really, really love this. Like there's a practice.   that cure were totally maxed out. Like we don't know what to do and should we like expand our practice? They already have the huge practice and looking at it, I was like, but we're only here four days. So why don't we even consider that fifth day and or evening hours a couple of days? Again, that does not mean your current team. We could hire other team members for this, but like let's just run some numbers and see just adding that extra day, those lower, those evening hours. We were able to add over 550,000 to a practice just by doing that one simple thing.   no extra cost to the building. We were able to bring in two team members for that. Everything ran super easy. So I think I would go and look to see like in your practice when you're thinking I've plateaued, run a quick audit and say, where are we losing time? Where are we losing money? Or where are we losing energy? Like what are the true bottlenecks in our practice? And this is where like a CEO has to have that visionary time. Because if we ran a 60 minute audit on your office,   Could we quickly find those? When I walk into an office or our consultants walk into an office, that's what we're doing. We're auditing your practice. We're looking for these bottlenecks. So even if you can't figure out that, maybe it is time to consider bringing a consultant on site to just look at your practice to see. And we can do this virtually or in person. In person is obviously a little bit easier, but virtually too. Take videos and we can diagnose that space real quickly for you just to see what are maybe some of the options that we could do for you. So then when I look at this, SIP 2 is going to be like,   reworking all of your systems for scale. ⁓ It's like the saying is like, what got you here is not going to get you to where you need to go. So we've got to rework those. And like there have been practices that I walked in and they're actually too systematized. They're too in the weeds to be able to grow and expand it. And so for that, like, what do we need to upgrade? So like I said, for block scheduling or for handoffs or for our morning huddles or for accountability systems or reporting or KPI or tracking, like, ⁓   everybody doing a time audit to see what is on your schedule that should not be on your schedule that we could actually put into different people's spots. So often offices will tell me like, Kiera, we're so maxed. And I'm like, you're actually not maxed. Everybody's just overlapping. So we're like two or three people on the same task versus separating it out, delegating it out, getting everybody crystal clear.   ⁓ That way everybody can see and can have clarity. And I don't necessarily do it by person, but by seat. So especially for an office, we've got chair one, chair two, chair three. What do each of these chairs, what are they responsible for? What are the numbers and the metrics that they're responsible to do? So really like separating it out, dividing it out, making sure our systems are very scalable. So think like, okay, if we're a five-op practice doing 1.5 million today, what would a $4 million business that's maybe an eight-op practice do?   How would we have to change those systems and even starting to implement those systems now into your practice can exponentially help you go beyond this plateau space. So I really think like when you look at it, those simple changes like we're able to add 10,000, 20,000, 15,000 to a practice per month just by adjusting some of these systems, just by adjusting the KPIs, just by adjusting what people are doing because a lot of times smaller practices are more.   Overlappy, I think is the best way to say it rather than the larger practices the larger practices do read a little bit leaner they have more ⁓ More clarity of who should be doing what because they have to and so really looking to see what do I need to do? And how can I optimize the systems? What what's outdated in our practice that maybe we could revamp refine? Do differently now on the flip side sometimes practices that are so large actually have so many old dated systems that they just keep bringing forward that they need to actually   get rid of some of those dated systems and pick one or two systems to update. So like, are we so clunky in everything that we're tracking on our scorecard? Could we eliminate some of the things that we're tracking? So there's either, we need to track more or we need to track less. What is it and how can I actually update and rebuild our systems to be able to scale with ease? So that would be a quick thing to look at of like, what's outdated or what's to like, not like nuances.   what areas, and again, these are hard things to see. So fair warning, you've never done this before. So you might not even realize something's dated. And there was a practice who was still using paper charts. And I walked in and I was like, I've worked with you for a year. You didn't bother to tell me you had paper charts. But for them being in the day to day, they didn't realize that that was dated. So sometimes for you, you do need a bird's eye perspective. You do need someone who has seen hundreds of offices of what should be happening or what could be happening in your organization.   that maybe you're not even doing. So truly I am big on, yes, I am a consultant. So of course I have that. We do it within our company too. Bringing in people who are smarter than where we are. We know we've hit our ceiling and what we know how to update or what we think is outdated, we've already fixed. It might be time for you to also have that. And sometimes that's where the plateau happens is because...   You've grown as far as you know how to grow. You don't know how to go to the next level. And I've been there. I'm in there in my company right now. Like we're getting ready to bring somebody in from large, large, large corporation to still keep our like our boutique feel, but allowing us to scale in ways that I don't even understand how to do. So truly like even myself, I do this for our company because I think it's so wise to see somebody else who can help me figure out like what's dated, what's not working to help us scale even more while maintaining the feel of.   we are. Excuse me, step three.   Step three is going to be setting a bold new vision. So ⁓ when we feel like we've plateaued, we gotta figure out like, where do we want to go? Where do we want to grow to? And for me, it's like defining what the next level looks like. So is that team profit schedule lifestyle? When we work with offices, we set a one, three, 10 year goal that helps have this bold new vision. And sometimes you might be in this, I was in this and at year, gosh, it was year seven. ⁓   I like kind of lost the vision and I was like, I don't really know if this is where I want to go. And so we've got to just like clear up the vision and figure out where are we going? What does that look like? Team members schedule, like how many hours is the CEO working? Things like that. And then getting the whole team bought into it. And this is something I really love about leadership teams is we, build the vision together. So owner, yes, like I need to know where you want to go. You set the lighthouse for us and then we build around it. And so then what we do is we then tie quarterly goals into it. We run off of traction, but really like,   What I see happen so often is the owner doctor feels like they're just like dragging the boat along when they feel like they plateaued, but they don't have the whole team bought into it. And this is actually a question we ask offices when they're coming to work with us is it's your one through 10 year vision. Like how clear is that on a one to 10? And a lot of times you're like, well, I know where I want to go. And I'm like, great. Now does your team know where you want to go? And usually that's where it's fuzzy is the team has no clue. So the doctor really is like, just imagine like, this is how I visualize it. Like these huge chains and I'm holding them and they're like,   pulling this boat and I'm like sluggishly like walking down the beach like trying to pull this boat along versus throw the chains in the boat. So it's not on my back anymore as the owner. I hop in the boat with my team as a team collectively. We know that we're headed to this island at this time. We've got the map. We've got the road map. We've got somebody guiding us if we need to well now like everybody's rowing together right like that's so much easier like even like if you're watching the video you saw my like it's like this like   I don't know, hunched over, exhausted, like trying to pull this whole heavy boat versus like, we're all just rowing and I'm in my seat and I know what I need to row. And well, I guess rowing is not easy. It's much easier than trying to drag and force results. And so with that, a lot of times what I do is teams that do this, I have an office and they sent me a text and I'm like, yeah, remember when you were in our office and you helped us set the goal of hitting, I it was like 350,000 a month. They were like, we were barely producing like,   200 at that time. They're like, there's no way this is going to happen. Four months later, they were breaking 350. And like you went, that's 150,000 added to production. No extra days. Like all we did was we aligned the team to see where we needed to go. And what's crazy is when you get that alignment, well, now your system's become easier. Now the clarity is there. Everybody truly can figure out like where we're going and what our next level is because it's a collective group.   and it's a collective growth and it's a collective mission and effort that we're all headed to. I don't come in and say, you guys should be here. I come in and say, all right, collectively as a team, this is where we are. This is what industry standards are for growth. What do we feel as a team? And now when I'm doing this, also, I don't break it down and say like, all right, you have to add 150,000 a month. Well, no, if you're working 20 days, like I'm literally pulling out my calculator, 150,000 divided by 20 days, that's 7,500 extra a day. Well, 7,500 in dentistry.   is actually pretty easy to produce. And so what things could we do to get there? How could we have each department work on this? So now it becomes not 150,000. It's like, great. How do we add that 7,500? Why are we doing this? What's the purpose behind it? But getting that next level figured out really can help a practice get out of the plateau because now our sites are bigger. We know where we're headed. Then we can figure out our systems. Then we can figure out all the different pieces of like, what is my true ceiling? Am I really maxed out? You get more creative. So   For this, yes, I did these steps this direction, but really I would reverse them if I was listening to this podcast. And step one is I would figure out what my vision is. What's my next level and where do I wanna go? Then I'd look at my systems and what are my systems doing that I need to either add, take away or improve to get me to this next level and then figure out like the ceiling and is my practice truly maxed out or based on my next level vision, what could I do within my practice currently? And I think, yes, it's always fun to go buy a new house or a new car, a new   practice expanded out, but also cashflow wise and business wise and savvy business, if you can make it work where you currently are or just do a few small changes, is that worth it? And does that give it? For some people, they need to go build it. And the next level for them is to build something more dreamy, more fun. And that's like, what's going to ignite them. So everybody has to know what's going to be for you. But really, truly, I believe if you've got this great plan, you've got these pieces in play, it can help you get out of the plateau. It can help you figure out what your next level is.   honest to goodness, a lot of times you do need somebody outside to help you if you're not great at seeing this. And that's okay. I am not good. My husband and walk in a lot of rental properties and real estate properties. And I'm like, I wish I could see the vision on houses like I see in dental practices. When I walk in, I can see what needs to happen. Our consultants can see what needs to happen quickly. Where do I need to the numbers? What do need to do from that? That's something so magical versus like in a house. I'm like,   I don't know, I can't see where to move the walls. And some of you might be able to see in a house very quickly how to renovate it and how to change it. For me, that's not a talent I have. For you, a talent you might not have is being able to see how you can get beyond the plateau of your practice. Here are some tips for you. Hopefully you can take them on and try them out. But really, if you need help, reach out. This is what we do. This is what we do all day long. We've seen multiple practices. We've seen them from five ops. We've seen them up to literally have a practice of 25 ops.   The difference between those two practices and the way they operate in the systems and what we do for the large practices versus what we do for the small practices is pretty similar. Actually, it's very similar of what we do. ⁓ It's just on a different scale and it's growing the smaller practices into the larger practices. So for you growth, truly, I want to remind you isn't luck. It's leadership that has systems and clarity of where to go and what the next step is in the next vision. So if you feel stuck,   You're not failing. You might just need a new vision. You might just need a different perspective. You might need somebody to come in and help you see the gaps that you might not be able to see. And so truly I would love to help you. So reach out, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. This is what we talk about on our practice assessment calls. We talk about where you are, the potential. There is a lot of free consulting on that for you, whether you work with us or not, just to give you what the next step is or what some of the blind spots are in your practice that maybe you didn't see because you're in a day in a day out. I do this for our company.   And it's such a joy and an honor to do it for practices, to be able to help you from someone who's been there, done that and done it successfully over and over and over again. So let's do it for you. Reach out. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. It's time for you to grow into the vision that you were meant to have. It's time for you to have fun with it. It's time for you to get excited, to get reignited, to have the best time. And we're here to help you do that. So reach out. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.

Dentistry isn't always the front of the pack when it comes to innovation, but Tiff and Kristy tackle the topic with digestible takeaways from a marketing point of view. In this episode, they touch on easy questions to identify your practice's brand, why that patient avatar is so critical, and how to ensure your brand spreads through your office, down to the check-in staff member. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. We are back here with you today. This is Tiffanie, because I forget to announce myself, and Miss Kristy. I have Kristy for the long haul today. She's doing a couple of different recordings with me. And I can't wait for them to come out. Actually, Kristy, I have had so much fun. I think this one, I don't know what order they go out in. So whatever. If you guys have listened to the leadership ones we just did or have not, they're coming.   You're going to love them. So Kristy, thank you for taking this ride with me today and just busting out a ton ⁓ with me on this beautiful, it's a Thursday morning right now. How are you doing? You holding up over there? You got your water? Awesome.   DAT Kristy (00:40) Absolutely. It's always the   day goes by fast when we're doing this. love it.   The Dental A Team (00:45) Yeah, me too. I really do. I do love it. And I ⁓ love when we hear from listeners. I love when we get, you know, we get to go through the reviews below and see what people loved or I know a lot of people will leave like info of their own that there is suggestions I should say. And it's just a lot of fun. Always hearing from it. And I love hearing from my clients when they've listened to one. So I agree the podcast is fun and it's like a collaboration time for us.   I enjoy it. this podcast topic, the subject, is something I really, really love. ⁓ I was talking actually, it's on marketing guys. So don't fret. I think you already saw the title, but it's on marketing. ⁓ I joined a marketing call yesterday with a client and it was a marketer I've not worked with before and she was fantastic and she was very collaborative. It was great, but she...   She was like, is this something you guys do? You guys work, like you do marketing for them? And I was like, no, no, no, let's not get wild here. Like I don't do marketing, but I love it. And I know my consultant team loves marketing and internal is our jam. And we are really, really solid at that, but really finding different ways that we can leverage our skills to show patients and potential patients that this is the right place for them.   I think is something that consultants on our team are really fantastic at. And I wanted to dive into some of that with you today, Kristy, is really just like how to just innovate a brand. And the most fun part about this for me in today's market is that I don't think that dentistry has always been in a space of total innovation.   I think dentistry has always kind of innovated, like, my gosh, can we just talk about how long we've been using the same stuff for like root canals, right? Or whatever, like, come on, right? But there is a lot of innovation in like filling materials and scans and x-rays, the, know, CBCT scans, all of these different modalities, in-house crowns, like Botox, lip fillers, but I've got...   Practices that are doing facial aesthetics, know having estheticians in the office We do have a lot of innovation when it comes to that space but something I think is truly innovating within the last few years is the understanding of a Dental practice and a dentist needing to have a brand. I don't think marketing Has been easy in the dental world. I don't think it's been understood and I don't think it's been super effective if I'm honest and the   Idea of innovating is really cool to me. I love innovation. That's one of our, I don't think it's innovate, it used to be innovate or die, a core value of ours. I hated that. But innovate is just something that we live by at the Dental A Team. We're constantly looking for, okay, well that didn't get us the result we wanted. Let's do something different. Let's try this. And changing things and marketing allows for that in so many really cool ways. But really looking at it and saying, what's my brand?   Who am I? Like how is my practice showing up in our community is something that I don't think that, Kristy, we've really ever spent a lot of time diving into within the dental world. And I think it's starting to come up. But what are you seeing, Kristy, even with the practices you're working with today, do you see a lot of practices really thinking, what's my brand?   DAT Kristy (04:25) Yeah, no, I think we are still behind the time in that regard for most other industries. They've kind of dialed this in. ⁓ It's definitely an area I believe that we can do better. mean, obviously, I just moved from Idaho and there's like, I don't know, three or five dentists on every corner almost. Do you think I'm exaggerating? finding out and   The Dental A Team (04:49) Literally.   DAT Kristy (04:54) And brand again can be such a broad word, but to simplify it, I just ask doctors, what's your purpose? What's your niche? What do you wanna be known for? Start asking yourself some of those questions to identify and set yourself apart. Here's the thing, dentistry, it goes back to what you said, Tiff, we only offer so many things.   And so how do we put ourselves apart? Like why do they want a filling from you versus your three neighbors next door? So yeah, again, one of those words brand, it's like, it's so broad. So narrow it down. What do you want to be known for? What's your purpose and what's your niche? And if you've been in dentistry for a while and you still haven't done this, go look at your reviews right now.   The Dental A Team (05:28) Yep, I totally agree.   DAT Kristy (05:48) and start highlighting some common words. If they're saying friendly or, I don't know, nice, kind, whatever it is, start highlighting them and see, does that fit you? Right?   The Dental A Team (06:00) Yeah, yeah, I   mean you could throw that into chat GPT. You could say chat GPT, go look at my reviews and find commonalities. Innovation guys, innovation. 2025 chat GPT, that's our best friend. No, I totally agree with you and ⁓ you said a few things there that I just totally resonate with and it made me think of a client, ⁓ actually a conversation I had with my financial advisor boyfriend who is just like,   DAT Kristy (06:07) There you go.   The Dental A Team (06:28) He works with a few dentists here locally in Arizona and Phoenix and he asks me a lot of questions and he's like, how is this possible? And I'm like, you know, he sees the profit and he sees the things that dentists are able to achieve and what they're able to achieve for their team members and being able to see like how, they're the 401ks and there's the different things that they're able to do and there he's not seen that in another industry.   right, through the work that he's done at least. And the conversation we had was, we were talking about a cosmetic practice and he, I think I upset him if I'm honest with you, we just at the gym, right? And he was just like, I just don't understand how it's possible that one, because I said, don't know, it could be, you know, for this specific cosmetic dentist, it's probably $2,500 of an year, okay?   DAT Kristy (07:11) ⁓   The Dental A Team (07:25) pretty average honestly for a cosmetic dentist like 2500 a veneer and his mind was blown right because he's looking at like cosmetic procedures um at a plastic surgeon right like you can get minor cosmetic procedures for similar amounts of money on your physical body right and not just one single tooth and i said well you know while i understand where you're coming from like let me tell you the hours it takes   to do a cause, like what it actually takes and what a lab cost of one of those crowns could be, et cetera, et cetera. But long story short, he just was mind blown and was just like, that is wild. And I thought to myself, this is it. Like this is the marketing and the branding because you do have to set yourself apart and you have to reach the people that want to be reached by you, right? My boyfriend, I love him to death. He is not.   DAT Kristy (08:14) Mm-hmm.   The Dental A Team (08:18) this he's not a cosmetic dentist avatar, it's not their dream, right? Because you're going to be convincing him. Like nobody wants that. if you want to you want that number nine implant crown replaced by a dentist who's going to make it look 100,000 times better than it does right now, honey. It's you're going to pay money for that, right? But if you're not concerned about it, then you're not going to care, right? Who you go to. So   My conversation with him yesterday made me really really think how important it is for practices to understand their brand and their avatar patient. So what is it that you want to do and within the capabilities of your surroundings I think is a good statement. I have practices that are like I want to do cosmetic dentistry and I'm like well you're in a like this you've got   20 miles around you of Medicaid. People aren't coming here for that, so we've gotta move your practice or change your avatar, right? So within the confinements of where you're at, of course, but what is it that you want to provide and then who are you providing it to? And Kristy, I think one piece that's missed in the branding conversation, one, we all wanna be like, I wanna do this, right? But it's like, okay, is that avatar here? So then looking at what your patient avatar   Who is your patient avatar? Who is the person you're speaking to? And then what do they need, right? In our company, Kiera and I love nothing more than to brainstorm and innovate. Like we want to innovate. We want to change the world, right? And we get on these tangents and then thank goodness we have like Britt and Shelbi on these calls with us because they're like, okay, cool guys, this sounds like an awesome product. It sounds like something that is gonna be really cool and that you will love doing.   Does it speak to our client's needs? And we're like, ⁓ yeah, that's right. We can innovate and we can do all of these cool things, but are we meeting a need of the people who need us, right? Of our client avatar. We know who we wanna work with. Are we just creating to create? Or are we creating something that meets a need of that avatar, of the person that we want to work with? And if it does, then fantastic, then let's move forward.   DAT Kristy (10:14) You   The Dental A Team (10:37) And so I think with the branding conversation, we're speaking to those needs. So who are we looking to work with? ⁓ Who do we want to inspire to have better dental health? And then what are their needs? And how can we show up and speak to that? Where our brand, Kristy, tell me if I'm totally off here, but we'll add to it as well. I think our brand...   really is how we're showing up to speak to those needs, right? And how we're showing up in a way that those people who need those things find us, right?   DAT Kristy (11:14) Yeah, I agree with you 100%. And to your point, I know people almost have a adverse reaction when we say buying dentistry or selling dentistry, but in the big scheme of things, guys, we are selling dentistry. what are they looking to buy? And it's usually they're not coming in saying, I want to buy a root canal, right? They're buying health or they're buying   The Dental A Team (11:39) Yeah. Yeah.   DAT Kristy (11:42) They're buying something it's going to give them. And so I think sometimes we miss the mark by speaking our language instead of the language they're looking for. Right.   The Dental A Team (11:54) Totally agree. I remember one of the first like all on four over dentures, whatever that we did in my practice. I was like, ⁓ my gosh, I get it because the guy bought because he was like, I just want to eat a steak again. And I was like, that is brilliant. So that became our brand of our all on fours. Like eat a steak again because it fit our target audience, our avatar and our demographic. We knew.   DAT Kristy (12:10) Hmm?   The Dental A Team (12:23) the area that we were in had that need and those were the patients that we wanted. And so we took that as a brand of our practice and we were like, do you want to eat steak again? So it's like that, now we're speaking to their need instead of selling a denture, right? Like people might call the denture places, right? And I'm not talking about prosthodontists, I'm talking about these big   you guys have seen the commercials, they might, those are not your avatar. Those patients are not the patients that you want. You want the patients that are emotionally tied to being able to eat a steak again. I had a patient that had regular dentures. I will never forget this lady. She was so sweet and so sweet. She just had dentures and she would not go for.   the lower support adventure and we're like totally fine, totally fine. She came in like once a month for quote unquote adjustments because   She couldn't eat lettuce. And she brought in a piece of lettuce and she put it in between her teeth and then pull it out. Her need was that she wanted to eat a salad again. And I get that, I eat a lot of salads, I eat a lot of steak. So it became the brand of that specific procedure. And it became one of our brands. Lettuce gets you healthy in all the ways. ⁓   speaking to what you said, right? So I think something action-wise that I have a lot of practices do is, and we do this in multifaceted, ⁓ is building that avatar. We help clients build the avatar of their ideal patient, and then, side-step, I love avatars, building the avatar of your ideal team member. Because within the brand conversation,   If you, I like to think of companies who have a really, really easy brand, right? And kind of match up with, I think, what a lot of the dentists that we work with are kind of looking for, their style, right? Everybody says the Ritz-Carlton, but nobody knows what that means anymore, doctors. Please just know your team members don't know what the Ritz-Carlton is or how they show up, so it doesn't work. ⁓ But brands that do resonate with a lot of team members, and it's easy for a lot of doctors to understand the importance of hiring,   DAT Kristy (14:44) Yeah.   The Dental A Team (14:57) And emanating the brand that you want and I think Lululemon is a very easy one, right? Everyone knows there's not a soul who does not know what Lululemon is. They've done a phenomenal job. When you walk into a Lululemon, same, you could copy and paste that person. I've been to Lululemon's all over the country. Sadly, don't tell my boyfriend. I've been to Lululemon's all over the country and you can duplicate the way that they show up.   They are a brand, they are a piece of that company and they are showing up that way. Dental A Team, we run the same way. We are speaking the company culture constantly and we all show up the same. Chick-fil-A is another one. Yeah, great training, but also they're hiring the personalities that fit within their culture that they can train. Same with Starbucks.   All of these different brands who have and companies who have branded themselves really well are ensuring that that messaging and that branding is in all of those spaces. And something I see doctors do is really come to the space of like ready to elevate where they're at, but they're not fully ready to innovate in all the different ways. And narrowing those avatars down helps bring light.   to situations that maybe is kind of sitting in the shadows. And I've seen sometimes where it's like maybe our main check-in gal who's been there forever and she loves the patients that she loves and she's a great human and she doesn't need to go anywhere, but is she right person, right seat? Is she exuding your brand awareness of like, my gosh, we are so excited to see you today. Thank you so much for coming to our practice. We love new patients.   Or, right, is she like, I really love the patients that I know, thank you for being here, fantastic human, again, I'm not saying people need to be let go, I'm saying do you have them in the seat that's appropriate for them? Or is there maybe a seat that, like I walked into a practice yesterday, we were consulting, holy amazing find for their check-in girl. And I am telling you right now, I went through this avatar, ⁓   assignment, whatever you want to call it, with them, this exercise, literally within a week, this girl walked into their office randomly, walked in, said, I don't know if you guys are hiring or not, if you need it. Like I am not really looking, but like, are you looking for somebody? She is amazing. Dental experience, beautiful, beautiful girl, so happy, and just is like,   loving everyone and she just wants to help everyone to a T. I remember the office manager calling like in tears, Tiffanie, you'll never guess what just happened. And it was because they had it, in my opinion, so narrowed down that it walked right in front of their face. Had they not known exactly what their avatar was, they might've been like, that was really weird, right? Like, I'll take your resume, but like, you're cute and all, like, maybe I'll call you. But they were so dialed in on exactly who they wanted at that check-in desk.   DAT Kristy (17:57) Thank you.   The Dental A Team (18:13) She walked in and they were like, yep, she's the one. And that I think happens with our avatar for our patients too, for marketing. And I think that's our brand awareness. Like that's how we stay relevant is knowing how we wanna show up, who we wanna show up for, and how do we help their needs and speaking to that from our brand. Lululemon is not here to serve everyone. That's totally fine.   DAT Kristy (18:17) Pass it.   The Dental A Team (18:42) Talk to, I use Lululemon branding as an example in a lot of different ways with a lot of offices and I've had team members that are like, I'm not spending money on Lululemon. I'm like, you're not their avatar. That's totally fine too because you're someone else's avatar. You are a different brand's avatar and they need you. So what they've done is they've made it easy for people to say yes or no. And if you're a cosmetic dentist who is branding, right, you've got your brand so wide.   that you're getting calls for people who only want to do what your insurance is going to cover, that's not your avatar. That is someone else's let them have that patient. They are working their tail off for new patients too. Let them have that patient. That's not your avatar, right? And I think we try, Kristy, to bend to what is coming. And we're like, well, we can do that. And we don't hold our boundaries of what we actually want.   and what our practice needs and what fits us that we end up confused. And then we get the calls of the doctors that are like, I need systems because it's not working and not something doesn't work for everyone. Right, Kristy, do you see where I'm going with that?   DAT Kristy (19:54) Yeah,   I sure do. I love where you're identifying and it's not just the who, but it's the how behaviors too, like how will they show up, right? Identifying who is the first step for sure, but then take it one step further and identify the characteristics of how they behave as well because then you'll bring that in. Yeah, I love   I love everything you're saying there. think it's kind of bringing me back. I believe I had this conversation with Kiera the other day about... ⁓   a doctor wanting to elevate his practice and should I offer this service? And I'm like, well, have you ever considered taking a poll with your patients to see are they looking for this type of service? Yes, it's fine to, I mean, do what you love for sure, but before you get frustrated, go take CE for this course and learn how to, I don't know, do Botox and none of your patients are wanting it. And then you get frustrated and   fizzle out, you know what I mean? Find out first. And another cool area of that tip is, you know, have your admin team keep track of ⁓ how many patients are calling and asking for something that maybe you aren't offering and see if that's, you know, see if it's in your wheelhouse or is it matching your avatar?   The Dental A Team (21:05) Yeah.   That's a great idea. ⁓   Yeah, yeah, and I think to speak to that too, if they're calling asking for that and it's not something that fits your avatar or that you want to do, is your branding reflective of your avatar because somehow they found you and they called you. So what messaging is out there within your marketing that has attracted the wrong avatar? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.   DAT Kristy (21:48) Yeah, 100%. So it works both ways, right? Yeah.   The Dental A Team (21:54) Love marketing. just it and I don't know I just I don't I truly don't know why I love marketing so much but it just gets me excited and the idea of being able to change something and really target in and achieve the result is really cool to me and the idea of being able to attract someone to something that they need and want by   saying things right by presenting right. Like that just gets me so giddy. So thank you for doing this podcast with me today is my point.   DAT Kristy (22:27) Yeah.   I was going to say to your point, you said something very poignant there that you have to be tracking it. You have to be paying attention to it and you have to be willing to test, track and adjust if it's not getting the results you want. Too many people start and they throw it out and then they stop there because they get frustrated that it's not bringing it. And it goes back to your innovation. You've got to be able to ⁓   try something different and it could be something very minute. A word, right, could make a big difference.   The Dental A Team (23:01) Yeah,   yeah, totally agree. I totally agree. And I think that's the most exciting space is what you just said. Like even the word, the one word in this sentence on this marketing, whatever this ad that's on Google or postcard that somebody's getting one word can totally change the outcome. And I think that's what gets me excited is like, okay, how can I, how can I get the result that I want with the words that I'm using? I love that. And when we can,   hone in on that, I think massive changes. I think there's a ton of takeaways here. think biggest action item, you guys, is really, really figuring out your patient avatar and your team avatar, honestly, your team member avatar, because I think that points you in the direction of your culture, how you want to show up in the world, what your brand is, and then start realizing and understanding that your culture, your core values, that is your brand, that is your brand awareness. And when we live and breathe,   By those, think you guys can, anyone who's listening and has listened before, anyone who's following the Dental A Team on Instagram, Facebook, clients of ours, coming to our webinars, we do free CE webinars every month, you guys, anyone who has experienced Dental A Team in the slightest, I think can agree that we emanate the Dental A Team. Every team member we have, as far as our virtual assistant,   Joe Ash, who we love and adore all the way in the Philippines. He emanates the Dental A Team because we understand that those pieces of our company, the mission, the vision, the core values, brand awareness, all of that is who we are. And we live, breathe it, we show up, we believe in it, we stand behind it and we're consistent. So it makes everything else kind of fall into place really easily. So.   Go do that, you guys, narrow it in. Don't let it feel so big. Just do one chunk. What is your avatar? Who is your avatar? How do they show up in life? What do they look like? What do they love to do? Narrow in your avatar of your patient and of your team members. Make sure your mission, vision, core values are in alignment with what you actually want. And then take a step back and look at it from bird's eye view of how you need to innovate your brand.   and how you can do that. And like I said, I love this stuff. The consultants loves this stuff. Kristy is fantastic with her clients. She's done this so many times and all of them have Dana, gosh, Monica, Trish, everybody, every single one of them have done these types of exercises with their clients and they're really good at it you guys. So reach out. If you're a client and you need this, you're like, need to innovate, reach out to your consultant. If you're not yet a client,   you're soon to be or you're just like, I'm just a podcast listener right now, that's okay too. Reach out you guys, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. We have the resources that you need, we're here to help you. Instagram, Facebook, wherever you can find us and then as always you guys leave us a five star review below. Let us know how helpful this was and if there's anything you've done to innovate your brand awareness that you think people could benefit from as well, people really do read those comments and it could be super beneficial. So, Kristy.   Thank you so much. I love taking the avatar roads with you, because I think you're just really good at it and you love people. So really keying in on parts that you love about people's personalities, I think opens you up. So thank you, Kristy, for being here today. Of course. All right, guys, go do the Things Five Star Review. Reach out, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. Follow us on social if you're not there yet, and we'll catch you next time. Bye-bye.   DAT Kristy (26:37) Thank you.

Kiera is joined by Dr. Hunter Bennett of Bonita Endodontics to dive into the ins and outs of dentistry partnerships, including hiring for passion, splitting tasks, going DSO, and more. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and I am like beyond excited for this podcast. This is all of my worlds combining into one in such a beautiful, magical way. The guests that I have on today actually is a throwback to my Midwestern days. So I met Dr. Hunter Bennett at Midwestern when he was a pre-dentist ⁓ in the sim clinic of good old Midwestern University in Arizona. ⁓ That school is better known as the Harvard of the West and Hunter was a dental student there.   And then he went on for endo residency at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in 2017. Following his residency, he returned to Arizona and practice in the mountain town of Prescott for two years. In 2019, he moved his family across the country all the way over to Florida. He is married to his beautiful wife, Lacey. They have five kids from 12 to seven months old, 12 years old to seven months old. Hunter is busy. And the reason I wanted to Hunter on is because yes, I love a good throwback to Midwestern. Like it is truly the highlight of highlights, but Hunter has gone through   being an associate, being an owner, selling to a DSO. And I wanted him to come on and give perspectives of all of those, because I think so many dentists are questioning, what's my path? What's in front of me? And Hunter is kind of like, I feel like you're the buffet of dentistry. So like, which one was actually best for you? And I'm really excited for that. So Hunter, welcome. I'm so proud of who you are. I'm like, mama bear heart over here. Just so proud of you. Welcome to the show today. How are you?   Hunter Bennett (01:25) this is so good. I'm so excited. I love the buffet of dentistry. That's like maybe the nicest name anybody's ever given me. I love it. It's so good.   The Dental A Team (01:31) Hey, you're welcome.   You're welcome. And how fun is this? As we were like prepping, told you, was like, Hunter, it's just like you and me, Sim back in Sim clinic. Like we're over there. Like you're prepping your like class ones, classes. I still remember you walking up with loops, gloves on. You knew I'd smack you with a ruler. Like not really smack guys. I was nice in that. But if those gloves did not come up at Sim, like take those off. Kiera, come on. Do I really have to? Yeah, gross. I'm training you. Do not have cross contamination. So welcome back to Sim. It's so good to see you again.   Hunter Bennett (01:59) I   haven't forgotten that I changed my gloves just literally all the time all the time so I appreciate it. It's how this has come full circle though truly I mean like and you haven't changed like you're still the same person just awesome and you're just always that bright personality that bright in the lab so and it's cool just to see how far you've come I'm really proud of you it's awesome.   The Dental A Team (02:19) Thank you, thank you. I think it's serendipitous because the whole reason I built the company was for students like yourself. I think the love, I feel like emotions coming on and I don't wanna cry. Like I genuinely just love the Midwestern students so much. I like just so proud of you guys. I watched your journeys. mean, shoot, how long has it been since we graduated? Like I left Midwestern in shoot, like 2015, 2016 realm.   Hunter Bennett (02:44) That's where   I was. I think you got hired like when we got there. I think that that was your first year was my first year in the sim. And then you, I think you left with us too. So yeah, we kind of went to dental. We basically went to dental school together essentially. So yeah, you're basically a classmate. Yeah. 100%.   The Dental A Team (02:47) I did.   I think I did.   We did and helping you guys learn x-rays. Honestly, Dr. Smith   and Dr. Morrow did tell me that I care if you ever want to come to dental school, we don't even care. I didn't like confess this on like to the world. They didn't say all these words, but it basically was like, hey, we don't care what your death scores are. Like we'll accept you no matter what. I'll be that student. But then I decided I just love helping dentists. I love helping you guys. I love being that teammate to you. Like I was able to be in sim. I love seeing you succeed. I love being that support.   Hunter Bennett (03:06) Yeah, they won't care. They won't care.   Just get in. ⁓   The Dental A Team (03:23) that person that's there. Like when you're having those bad practicals or you need to chat shop or whatever it is. it's just real fun. And again, like mama bear proud of where you are and what you've done. and I ran into each other at the Dennis Money Summit together. And that was a throwback. You, Jeremy Mahoney, was like Midwestern crew was back together and just a fun time.   Hunter Bennett (03:28) Yeah.   You don't even, you   don't realize how huge our little side conversations were to me. And I texted you a little bit about this, but like, we don't have to get into all of that, but like just those few conversations literally changed my life. And I'm not exaggerating. I'm not exaggerating. So we can talk about that later, but ⁓ yeah, I so appreciate you and some of your insights and watching your journey and your presentation was just so off the charts.   The Dental A Team (04:03) Yeah. ⁓   Hunter Bennett (04:10) Everything about it was so good. Your stage presence, the delivery, ⁓ the message. I still can remember a lot of the stuff you said. So, ⁓ yeah, good job. It's just, I'm not surprised you are where you are. And like I said, it's been fun to watch and I'm just grateful for the opportunity to connect again. So, but yeah, you literally was life-changing for me. I'm not exaggerating.   The Dental A Team (04:18) Thank you. Thank you.   Well, that makes me really happy. And thank you. And we'll say that that's the dessert of the dentistry buffet here. So we'll save that conversation for our dessert. ⁓ But I think what you just said is what Dental A Team's purpose is like my purpose is life is my passion dentistry is my platform. And so I feel so blessed and lucky that dentistry brought all of us together and but able to help you have your dream life to be able to give conversations about that.   Hunter Bennett (04:34) Okay.   Sure.   The Dental A Team (04:56) At the end of the day, if businesses aren't serving our lives, then what are we doing? And I'm really getting sticky on that. I'm really starting to hunker down on that harder because I think it's so easy to obsess about the profit, the numbers, like what route should I go? But at the end of the day, if it's not serving the bigger purpose of our life, of our family, of who we want to be, I really think it's a good time to question that and to ask to make sure the star we're headed towards is truly the North Star that we actually want to achieve.   Hunter Bennett (05:01) percent.   The Dental A Team (05:23) So I'm really grateful and yeah, I'm just excited for you to share with our audience of Hunter Bennett going through a associateship, residency, ownership, DSO, and then cherry on top of side conversation that we had. ⁓ and just know that all conversations, I think it's a good Testament. They're just, they're genuine. Like, I just want you guys to succeed in whatever path that looks like. And if I can be a guide in any of that rock on, that's what I'm here for. So just like I used to give you teeth.   help you learn to take your gloves off. I'm here to help you make life choices and better practice decisions too.   Hunter Bennett (05:58) Absolutely. You're crushing it. Well, so yeah, yeah. Pros and cons. So I think, you know, before diving into that decision, I think it's really important. Like the big part of my journey was I've just learned so much along the way that my first job was in a place where in Prescott, like that's where I wanted to like, was like, okay, this is, I'm going to be in this town until I die. Like I'm so happy here.   The Dental A Team (06:00) Okay, take it away. Walk me through. Walk me through the pros cons. Let's hear about it.   Hunter Bennett (06:24) And I was in an amazing practice. Like he was such a good practice. the guy that I replaced, ⁓ Nate Duesnup, he, my coming there sort of sparked his leaving because that he had been trying to get in that practice as an owner for quite a while. He'd been there seven years. so my coming sparked a lot of those conversations and they didn't really come to an agreement per se. so ⁓ Nate went and bought a practice in Florida. I, you know, I kind of found that out along the way and I showed up and then me and Nate became friends.   But I knew within probably the first two months I wasn't going to stay at this practice like long, long, long term. Um, it was very clear to me that there wasn't going to be a pathway to partnership. I was a business major. I always planned on owning practice. Um, but this was a really good opportunity. I'm really, really grateful for, um, just that, that chance that I had, but I knew immediately, like I wasn't, um, I wasn't seen as a partner, you know, which is very like, wasn't, I was just an associate and I felt like I just had way more to offer.   The Dental A Team (06:59) you   Hunter Bennett (07:22) I was, I was probably as much of a gung ho person as, as you can be coming out of residency as far as trying to be an owner. ⁓ but I was willing to like sort of sweat my way in if that's what it took just to be where I, where I wanted to live. ⁓ so long story short, like I learned pretty quickly that wasn't going to happen. So started just taking a bunch of CE, ⁓ traveling and then became good friends with Nate. Nate's like, Hey, just come check out Florida, you know? And, ⁓ so yeah, I went out there and, and, ⁓   The Dental A Team (07:35) Mm-hmm.   Hunter Bennett (07:52) If I've ever had a prayer answered as clearly as that, that was it. I mean, was, was clear as day. That's where my family was supposed to be. I actually served a mission for my church in Florida. I never planned to go back. ⁓ And that's ⁓ Tampa. So they actually, yeah, it was inside my mission, but I live in Naples and so didn't spend a ton of time in Naples, but yeah. So anyways. ⁓   The Dental A Team (08:03) No way. Same place?   Yeah?   I know Naples. I consulted a practice in Naples.   It's a beautiful place. Yeah, it's awesome.   Hunter Bennett (08:16) Yeah, yeah.   It's a, it's an awesome place and, ⁓ coming here was, it was definitely not like what I envisioned, but the practice was and the partnership was, and we experienced just like when I got here, he had bought the practice and the old owner was staying on like 50 % of the time and Nate was just grinding, you know, expanded the office. He had already done a lot of the footwork to get us to seven ops and.   We grew so fast, like we tried to find associates, like within my first six months, I didn't even bought in yet. We were already interviewing for associates and we couldn't find anybody that we just really wanted to send offers to. But yet we were just like in the chair all day. And I'm sure you hear this all the time. Like, I'm sure you get this all the time, Cary. It's like just grinding and grinding and then like you get done and then you're dealing with, you know, assistance and days off and they want to raise and, and just drama.   The Dental A Team (09:01) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.   Hunter Bennett (09:12) Taxes, know workers comp I mean you name it like all the things that come after work that are so stressful and Having a young family and and then just like like responsibilities outside of work like, know for us like there's a lot of stuff going on at church ⁓ At home. I was coaching my kids. So again, I think a lot of people that are listening can relate to this lifestyle and I think   The Dental A Team (09:14) Yeah.   Hunter Bennett (09:36) I as as I prepped for this conversation, we had a couple options. One option was to bring in a consultant, which we had thought about, and we already because we both came from the same practice in Arizona that had used a consultant, we felt like we sorta. We already knew how to be efficient. We already had a ton of systems in place. I think we struggled a little bit culturally. And I think frankly, this isn't a. You didn't put me up to this, but like had we hired someone like you like honestly, we may not have gone to DSO route. Frankly, like.   The Dental A Team (09:50) Yeah.   Sure.   Hunter Bennett (10:05) Cause all the things we were struggling with, think could have been dealt with in a different way. But we saw the DSO route as, as an option, you know, um, and there's, mean, we went back and forth and like, that's all we would talk about. We'd get done and then we talked about it for like an hour and then we'd go in cycles and circles. And this is the pro, this is the con. And ultimately we landed on, you know, um, this is just a really good way to sort of bring some balance in our lives. And I'll be honest with you. I, I hated, hated.   The Dental A Team (10:10) Mm-hmm.   Hunter Bennett (10:35) hated like the first six months, the transition period for us was particularly hard. We have a very unique practice. But I'm in almost four years now, and I will say like, I feel like it all happened for a reason. And it's really allowed me a ton of flexibility in my life, and my lifestyle has improved a ton. So kind of what you described as sort of your purpose and letting people   The Dental A Team (10:40) Mm-hmm.   Hunter Bennett (11:03) kind of see like what is your North Star? Like what is your real purpose? ⁓ I don't think that would have been, I don't think I would have been able to discover that had I continued on the path that I was on, honestly. So a DSO I think is good. First of all, when you talk about like a DSO, it's like a swear word, right? Because there's so many types of DSOs and there are some bad players out there for sure. And so like deservedly so, there's a lot of companies that should have a bad name, but there's also some really good ones.   The Dental A Team (11:14) Mm-hmm.   Mm-hmm.   Hunter Bennett (11:33) And that was one   thing, like we interviewed around and we met with a lot of different groups and talked to people from different groups. And I think there's a lot of good groups out there, but I'm actually quite happy with our group overall. And it's been four years and I will say like a lot of the turmoil I felt in that first six months was just the change, know, the change in trajectory, like giving up. I still run my practice. The thing is like, no one knows that I'm in a DSO. Like people know like my referring doctors now, but like they don't care.   The Dental A Team (11:44) Mm-hmm.   Yeah.   Hunter Bennett (11:59) Because nothing changes like nothing I run the way I want to run it and that's very unique to my group. I would say we hire we fire we make days off like we do pretty much anything we want we bought you know, we can get equipment so I Feel like my day-to-day really hasn't changed and I know that's not true for every DSO I think DSOs can be compared to like like restaurants for example. It's like ⁓ don't go out to eat because it's not healthy It's like well, I mean generally speaking probably true, but there are some healthy options out there   The Dental A Team (12:00) Right.   Mm-hmm.   Totally.   Right.   Hunter Bennett (12:29) And   ⁓ that's kind of how I see DSOs is like I do think there are some healthy options out there and it totally depends on personality. So. ⁓ I will say like the pros for me so far and you can ask me like maybe some more specifics, but yeah, yeah, so I'm so. Yeah, like that's that's just the general story, but I will say like you know this far in like that's kind of the general gist of my experience and if I could do it all over again, I I probably would. ⁓   The Dental A Team (12:37) Mm-hmm.   I'm going to ask some questions. I'm like plunging behind. I've got a decent amount. I'm excited for it.   Hunter Bennett (13:00) I say though, like I am very curious to see what it would have been like to have hired, you know, like to bring you in and just say like, all right, come in here. And a couple of my assistants were like, don't bring the consultant, don't hire a consultant. And I don't think that really influenced me as much as I felt like, honestly, I just felt like I didn't need one, but looking back now, I think that definitely would have been a really good option. So I think you either go the DSO route or you bring someone in. But again, I talked to dentists, I work with a bunch of different dentists. I talked to a bunch of guys all the time, every day.   The Dental A Team (13:08) Mm-hmm.   Yeah.   Sure.   Hunter Bennett (13:30) And they haven't had such good experiences with consultants either. So I'm sure you'd get the same thing, you know, but.   The Dental A Team (13:33) I do. That's   one of my first questions when I walk into an office. Tell me what you think about consultants and it's a rip. And I want them to, because why not? Like let's get it on the table. And I think, I think the difference with us consulting versus others, because consultants are going to be there's good and bad, just like there are of DSOs, just like there are of marketing, which is like there is a people. I think the difference is one,   Hunter Bennett (13:39) Yeah, yeah, totally.   The Dental A Team (13:58) I come a team member first. So like my job is to help dentists and I'm a business owner and a multimillion dollar business owner second. And so when you combine those two perspectives together, I very much understand the business side of it. And it's not just theories and ideas. It's true, like hard knocks, ⁓ hundreds and thousands of offices and team members of what are the processes. But second, like I don't hire MBA students. I don't hire people that are just like,   you know, they, want to be a consultant. hire people that have a passion for it. They've been in the front and the back office. So I think teams, that's why I actually named it Dental A Team. want it to be dentists and teams because so many consulting companies either focus on the dentist or they focus on the team, but not both. I'm like, but you have to get both on the same page. And teams are freaked out by consultants. Consultants come in and fire. Consultants are stressful. Consultants are rigid. They make you do it this way. And my thoughts are no one, it's you with your vision.   Hunter Bennett (14:42) Mm-hmm.   The Dental A Team (14:55) it's what do the numbers tell us and the profitability and three based on those two pieces, what are the systems that we need to improve based on like the problems in the practice too. And when you go about it that way and my job is to make life easier, not harder. I think when you go about it that way, teams are not as scared. And that's also why we built the podcast. So teams could hear us. They could learn like, what do we talk about? Because I think a lot of it's just the unknown. And so I, that's going to be like my two cents for a consultant, but I'm going to like back up for you Hunter on, have questions for you.   Hunter Bennett (15:24) Yeah.   The Dental A Team (15:25) I have question marks all the way around. One, think actually excellent point on the associateship and doctors listening, Hunter, you said you were a very equipped, very eager associate. You have a degree in business. I mean, you've got like the little gold star around you, a prime, ⁓ an associate prime for partnership that I think so many doctors are afraid and they don't know how to build partners in that they actually miss a lot of golden opportunities. And so   I like that was one of the nuggets I picked up from your story of like, I don't know who the doctor was and I'm not here to judge. They have their own story, their own reasons. But I think when doctors have great associates like yourself, you're destined to like, I know you're going to own a practice. When you come in with that type of acumen behind you, you're going to own a business. So either I can be smart and snag you and partner in with you and have you help me build and create it. Or I can let you go and you're either going to become my competitor or you're going to go somewhere else. And so there's no right or wrong.   but I think so many owner doctors, do see this. They're afraid bringing on a partner, you do like take home less pay. Like with air quotes, you get paid upfront, but you're like day in, day out is less. ⁓ But I really wanted to highlight that because I think like, well, it all worked out perfectly for you, Hunter. I think doctors listening to this could definitely learn from that. And it's okay if you don't want a partner. Some people are adamant of no partners. They don't want to give any of that up. They don't want to give away the control. That's okay. Don't hire someone like Hunter.   Or be okay that he's gonna probably leave you in about one to two years. And like any thoughts around that? They do.   Hunter Bennett (16:50) Yeah. I think everybody goes through that. Yeah. No, a   hundred. Like I have a ton of thoughts about that because it's, it's, I do, because I mean, I hear it all the time, like every week where Dennis is like, well, I'm just going to plug in an associate and then I'll just take some time off. it's like, that's not really how it works because you have to decide in like Jeremy Mooney, for example, like I talked to Jeremy all the time. He's one of my best friends and you sort of, I know it, I feel like every time I talk to him,   The Dental A Team (16:57) Talents.   Hunter Bennett (17:19) And he wouldn't mind me saying this, like just inevitably what happens is when someone doesn't buy in all the way or they just treat it like a job, like they come and go, you know, and that's, that's the price you pay. And so as a specialist, like we have to maintain relationships and referring offices. if associates are coming and going, that is such a, it's it's a rough look. And then for a dental practice, it's the same thing where patients, know, patients come to me they're like, I went to this practice and I saw the third doctor in my third visit, you know, and it's, they don't like that turnover.   And so what you make in money you pay for in stress and headache, I think on an associate, like when you're making money on your associate, not to mention all the headaches that come with training, reviews, stuff like that. ⁓ And so, yeah, I think ⁓ I totally see both sides of it. And the doctor that Nate and I both work for, he's got like four associates now and he's crushing it. So like, good for him. know, like that's, he's doing really, really well.   The Dental A Team (18:14) Mm-hmm.   Hunter Bennett (18:16) ⁓ Me and eight are like best friends and we have this relationship that like will be friends for life like he's like he doesn't have any brothers like I'm like his brother he's like my third brother, you know, it's just We just have this amazing relationship that I wouldn't trade for anything, you know, and not all partnerships are that way I think we've been super super blessed and super lucky that way but when both partners are both givers and you both want to just work hard and you have their back no matter what like you can find that man like   The Dental A Team (18:21) Mm-hmm.   Agreed.   Hunter Bennett (18:44) whatever money you give up by being a partner, you'll get back in like that, just sitting down at the end of the day and having someone to talk to that you're equal in business plan with, to take risks with, to, you know, even just to have like that comfort of talking to someone, you know, like you you get done with a tough day and just having that person there is, is priceless. I don't think you can put a price tag on that. So I wouldn't give up my partnership with Nate for anything, you know, and, and,   The Dental A Team (19:00) Yeah.   Hunter Bennett (19:09) Yeah, and and I think that's quite unique like in our DSO like no one really knows like we have like 400 partners I think now and Like when they think of Nate they think a Hunter or when they think a Hunter they think about Nate like we're just known like you usually don't see one without the other so to the doctors out there that own if you can find someone like that or someone even remotely close like man and someone that's gonna stay long-term like you eliminate so much stress and so many headaches by being open to having a partner and then if you have associates that might come and go   The Dental A Team (19:20) Awesome.   Hunter Bennett (19:38) And you want, you have the space and the availability and you want to do that, that's an option. But if you feel like you're drowning and you can find someone that's a really good business partner, I definitely see the value. Cause Nate and I, spent the better part of two years looking for associates to work for us. And again, it's that whole thing of like, well, man, I don't think they're going to be, I don't think they're going to have the personality that we need. But you know, then you hire, then you interview the really good ones. You're like, well, they're going to want to be a partner so we can't hire them. So you're just always playing that game of like.   There is no perfect answer. You know, you don't, you don't have like a unicorn associate that's just, and maybe there are a few where they just are just a total 10 out of 10, but then they just don't want to own. just want to show up. So it's pretty rare. They will. Yeah.   The Dental A Team (20:17) Totally. And some will. It is.   But okay, that actually led me to my next point I wanted to dig into because partnerships, some are magical like you guys have and others sink ships. So I want to hear how did you get into the partnership? Like what, what does that look like? How much did you both bring? Like as much as you want to get into the nitty gritty with me, because I think partnerships are so challenging to do well and to hear that you and Nate have a great thing. So I'm almost like, okay,   Hunter Bennett (20:24) Yeah.   Yeah, totally.   Yeah.   The Dental A Team (20:46) There were some tips about associateships and bring us and I agree like, welcome down, like have these people with you. They're going to grow your business. I could not do a Dental A Team does without incredible consultants. And while none of them are partners per se, a lot of them, I've given them opportunities to do different pieces, tip from the get-go. We talked about, offered her to be a partner. She's like, heck no, I want nothing to do with that, but give me my time and give me my life with my child and girl I'm with you forever. So get read, there are different things, but I mean,   Did I give up money when I first brought in all these other consultants to help out? The answer is yes. But I look at it now and it actually like makes me so giddy to see there are so many practices we're impacting that me as a solo person could not serve at that level. So that's, think the beauty of like, yes, there's a dip, but there's also growth in and serving that you can do at a higher level. So with that said on associates, now we're moving into partnerships. Walk me through Hunter. I want to know the like ins, outs, good, bad, like partnerships. I'm sure you guys have had.   some knockout drag outs. I'm sure you guys have had highs and lows in partnerships. I'm sure you like, but I'm curious, like, how did you guys structure it to make it great for both of you? And then I'm to go into DSO. So I want to know partnership though, because like, it's my buffet. I'm choosing an associate now buying and being partners in DSO.   Hunter Bennett (21:57) Yeah.   Yeah,   yeah, for sure. think the key was ⁓ for me and Nate, like we're both givers. And so, you know, we never have fought over money. you know, there's just never, we've just been lucky to not have that. We're very similar because we kind of cut our teeth in the same practice. We had the same philosophy too. Like just we're very, very efficient. both work super, super hard.   The Dental A Team (22:25) Mm-hmm.   Hunter Bennett (22:26) So we're both hard drivers that way. We're both very perfectionistic Like we we both do the same type of root canals like we we kind of have the same treatment philosophy, you know, ⁓ And granted he's seven years older than me So like Nate you I have to give him a ton of credit because he's just been super helpful clinically and like I felt like after years like I was actually I wasn't at my prime prime for sure But like I was I was I was cooking I was doing pretty good and he helped bring me up to where I am   The Dental A Team (22:50) Mm-hmm.   Hunter Bennett (22:53) Now, you know, I've been here like seven years now, but like that first year, like he still just helped me, you know, deal with some of the tougher cases. Naples is just a place that tough cases. But the thing that, thing, yeah, it's old people, retired, calcified, whatever stuff from Europe. That's like totally, totally crazy. But ⁓ he was just so patient. And so just, man, he was just so happy to have me here. Cause he was like, he was burning out. Like he was so tired. And so he was just grateful I was here. He always told me that.   The Dental A Team (23:01) Right? is. It's a good place for business.   Hunter Bennett (23:20) The way we structured it. I worked for him for a year and I was supposed to buy in after the first year, but COVID had hit. so banks weren't like, they were like, hold on, chill out. Like it was literally like March I was supposed to buy in. And so like, you know, we were like, me and him were like alternating days and like, you know, like sharing N95s cause that's all we had. And I mean, that's a whole nother thing. So that delayed the buy-in like six months. And during that time, like, yeah. Yeah.   The Dental A Team (23:27) ⁓ huh.   Yeah.   And hold on, before you go to that, when you moved out there, was it part of   your contract and agreement that you were going to buy in in a year? Was it 50-50? Were those things like in place? Were those like in your contract? Okay.   Hunter Bennett (23:51) Yeah, one year. Yeah, yeah, it was all agreed to.   And you know, I actually don't know if it was in, so the thing was like, when I was in Prescott, I went to the same church that Nate had gone to, like I went to the same congregation. So everybody that knew him just absolutely loved him. Like he was like the cream of the crop. Everybody was just like, you know, like I felt like I was partnering with like, you know, just this.   The Dental A Team (24:10) Mm.   Hunter Bennett (24:18) Completely amazing person which he is so I had no doubts. Yeah, it's like the Michael Jordan like not even I don't even know like analogy would be like Muhammad Gandhi like he was like just such this Just a good dude, you know and so I didn't have a lot of reservations as far as our agreements go and then just again, maybe not the smartest thing but like I don't know it may have been in the writing but I don't really remember and I wasn't that worried about it because I guess naively I trusted him and just felt like it would work out but this was all verbally agreed to   The Dental A Team (24:18) Michael Jordan of dentists.   Wow.   Because I do know for some people   like some people have it's the verbal agreement. I'm sure   Hunter Bennett (24:47) I would, mean, he would have been willing to, he would have been willing   to, and maybe it was, like it might have been in our first contract. I had David Cohen write it up, I had to go back and look, but he did our partnership agreement too. He's awesome for anybody that needs an attorney, but yeah, I've sent him a ton of people. But that was the thing, like we had all that agreed to, then the other conversation that I know a lot of people don't have, and a lot of people hold resentment about is how you're gonna   The Dental A Team (25:00) We do love David Cohen. We refer to him quite a lot.   Hunter Bennett (25:17) split profits. And so we decided early on, it's like, eat what you kill. Like if you do, so the way I did it, I, we, sort of calculated a rough guesstimation of what our overhead was. And then we gave ourselves like, we would do, okay, you get this percentage. We each get this percentage of our production. And then let's say it was like 45, 55, then we split the profits that same way. Whatever's leftover, we're going to split by that same amount. And frankly, like, I don't think we were ever correct.   The Dental A Team (25:18) Totally.   Mm-hmm.   by the amount that you produced? Is that correct? So,   okay.   Hunter Bennett (25:45) collected. we're   fever like our collection is same as product like we're yeah, so it's the same number but Yeah   The Dental A Team (25:50) Right. So sorry, let me back this up. So you guys go produce   and let's just use numbers. Usually in GP, it's 30 % of what you produce. Usually in specialty, you're like 40, 45 % of what you produce. Like let's just use some like loose numbers, hypothetical.   Hunter Bennett (26:03) Sure.   The Dental A Team (26:04) Nate, you produce, you're welcome. We've got this. So let's just say you produce 100 grand in a month. Nate produces 100 grand in a month. Let's say you guys are both taking 30 % your specialist. So giggle at me because I know you're not 30%. You both would be taking 30 grand of that leaving. We've got 70 from each of you, but we have overhead in that as well. So we've got to take our overhead out of there. So we've got 70, 70 hypothetical we're going to take. Let's just do let's leave at the end there's 60,000.   Hunter Bennett (26:21) Yep. Yep.   Yep. Yep.   Say 50.   The Dental A Team (26:33) 60,000 of profit   Hunter Bennett (26:34) Yeah.   The Dental A Team (26:34) at the end of it after you guys have produced 200,000, collected 200,000, you both have been paid your 30,000 each. Of that 60,000, how was that split? Was that a 50-50 split or was it based on like, let's say you produced 100 grand, but Nate produced 200 grand. Did the 60,000 at the end get split based on production amounts or was that like, how was the profit split?   Hunter Bennett (26:54) Correct.   Yeah, so we would just split the profit exactly like you described in the latter example where it's based on what you produced that month or collected that month, then we would split the profits that month. And I just had a spreadsheet, I did all the math. And so we would just work it out between the two of us. And we never had an issue. I would just plug it and just plug and chug and it was never an issue. And truly like...   The Dental A Team (27:09) Nice.   Hunter Bennett (27:19) We were never more than like 52 48, you know, that might've been like, ⁓ you know, I don't remember a month ever being off by more than 2 % or 4%. So it really wasn't a big battle. And one thing too, that I told Nate going into this, and this was for me, I had to just like, was president of like my business school, like my junior year president of the whole business school, like the vice president of all business school, my senior year, like   The Dental A Team (27:23) Thank you.   interesting.   Hunter Bennett (27:45) I was used to being leadership positions. I was used to sort of being in charge. But I knew coming here, he was there first. And I told him, was like, I know you're going to be the alpha. All the referrals know you. I'm just going to have to take that backseat role. And I think me just acknowledging that and accepting that was so important because I had no ego. I didn't have to prove that there was no competition between me and Nate. We were 100 % on the same team.   The Dental A Team (27:56) Mm-hmm.   Mm-hmm.   Hunter Bennett (28:12) ⁓ Again, and maybe that's unique to a specialty practice because you're kind of working together maybe more than you would in a GP office. I don't know. ⁓ Or maybe you're competing for patients a little more. I'm not sure. I've never worked in a GP office. But the dynamics for us is like, we're just, there's like all the referrals. It doesn't matter which doctor you want. Like you're getting your next available doctor unless there's a few exceptions. So we were very good about having no egos. And that was really important to our partnership too. But   financially it was quite easy for us and convenient just because our numbers were pretty similar. Or if he took a couple weeks off, then obviously he'll still get his collections from that month, but then I would get a little bit bigger chunk of the profit. But then when I took my time off the next month, they would just work itself out. so, ⁓ and he was always, like I said, he was always at the end of the year, Nate always produces just a little more than me. And I was just okay with it. You know, I was like, whatever, hang on.   The Dental A Team (28:46) Mm-hmm.   Sure.   Sure.   Hunter Bennett (29:06) And this I think is the desert that we can talk about later because how do we   The Dental A Team (29:07) Fascinating. Yeah.   Hunter Bennett (29:10) measure success? How do we measure fulfillment? And when we tie it to profits and numbers and income, it's just not super healthy. And I've had to learn that. Like that's probably been one of my biggest paradigm shifts over the last year, year and a half and sparked by your presentation and the conversations that we had. So.   The Dental A Team (29:27) Well, that's fascinating to me and thank you. That's a huge compliment. ⁓ I'm fascinated by that partnership split and the fact that you both were eat what you kill. I actually love that because then you got two very motivated partners. Also, you don't accidentally get one partner who's not pulling their weight. I know a lot of times ⁓ and I think the difference that I sometimes see in GP versus specialty is sometimes I have a super producer in GP.   So one who's doing hybrid and implants and all these different cases. And then I've got another doctor who's doing bread and butter. Well, obviously the super producer is going to produce more, but you need the bread and butter dentist to be taking care of all those profie patients and all the day in day out. So you can super produce. So those ones, often will see that it's more going to be a 50 50 split, but I do oftentimes see the super producer gets a little annoyed because they're like, if they're not both givers.   ⁓ I've seen this wax hard on partnerships just in the fact of you look at the numbers and what are you putting up on the board? But I think those partners really have to look at this. It's the ultimate whole. And if the ultimate whole of the business is doing well, both parties are winning. And they have to just see that they bring different strengths to the table, just like in a marriage. And we're not looking at dollars on the board. We're looking at collective as a practice. But that is one where I do watch. And so I do think in specialty, that might be something I had not thought of.   but I love to hear how you guys broke it down, how you picked it apart. And also the fact that there was no ego on taking a patient. Cause I do sometimes see that in partnerships where, if I'm going to get what I kill, I want more of these patients. I want to take them on because that's going to impact my production. But at the end of the day, you guys are still doing well on the profit side. So fascinating to me to hear how it was set up, how you guys got into it, how the buy-in was, ⁓ and then moving forward. And I'm guessing Hunter, I don't know Nate.   Hunter Bennett (31:01) Yeah.   The Dental A Team (31:18) But I'm excited. I mean, I have a quote over here by Gandhi. So when you said that I was like, well, perfect. ⁓ But my hunch is typically in a partnership, I see someone who's like yourself, who's really big into business, like they know the numbers, they have the business acumen. And usually the other partner tends to be more of the people side or this is like, you usually have a separation. So I again, I don't know Nate, but my guess would be not to say that you're not great with team members to   but I'm guessing you're very business savvy, you're very system savvy, and he's gonna be more people savvy and relationship savvy. Again, I don't know, maybe both of you had that, but I'm curious, did you see that dynamic in your partnership that maybe blended you guys really well coming together?   Hunter Bennett (31:54) Yeah, no, that's a really good point and we do compliment it. You're pretty much spot on. would say Nate definitely like is a lot more of a calming, know, I'm kind of like people tell me I'm just fiery, you know, like we've had different.   The Dental A Team (32:07) You   I do remember you walking   up. You wouldn't even shut your light off on me. Like you were busy. You were down to business. Like, here, I need these things in the most respectful way. ⁓   Hunter Bennett (32:14) Yeah, I'm   Pretty pretty focused. Yeah, pretty focused I would say and so I would say there is that little bit of balance But Nate's not a dummy like he was harvard number two in his class at harvard like he's super smart and so He would always lean into me for the business stuff just because I had a degree and I could speak the language and accounting and depreciation and all you know, like that stuff I think sort of intimidated him more than it needed to because once you explain it, know, you know But because he hadn't trained that way like he would sort of lean into me and that stuff   The Dental A Team (32:33) or.   Right.   Hunter Bennett (32:43) But even having someone to talk about because he'd already dealt with the accountant. He already dealt with workers comp. So I'd be like, hey, how does this work? Cause I'd never done it. So he'd explain it to me. And then as a team, we would work it out. You know, as a team, we would make big decisions. So yeah, I mean, you'll both bring different things to the table. And it's actually good that you can be different. I had another opportunity to partner somewhere else before Nate. I was way too much like that guy. I was like.   The Dental A Team (32:49) Thank   Yes.   Hunter Bennett (33:10) This isn't gonna work. I knew right away like I said, you know I went and visited the practice did the whole thing sent like a follow-up email and I think we both knew it's just like yes, isn't gonna work and The negotiations didn't go very far and it was fun. It was like we're still friends and we keep in touch So I think it's important to like you think ⁓ we're so alike man That's not always like the best thing. And so our differences are actually probably what what bring us together and make us strong ⁓   The Dental A Team (33:19) Mm-hmm.   Yeah.   No.   Hunter Bennett (33:37) Yeah. And so that's, that's like a, that's a super fair point about that. And again, a lot of it's just been serendipitous. Like that just happened to fall into place. It just, it's just worked out that way, but it's, it's like a marriage. That's the perfect thing. It's like, it's like a marriage without all the benefits per se. Like you just, you're just like, you're just, you just get the hard part of them. Yeah. You just get the hard, you get the hard part of the marriage where you have tough conversations, but again, you just take them head on. And when you have no ego and, or a limited ego, and when you just want your partner to succeed, like   The Dental A Team (33:38) Yeah.   You get the profits benefit.   Hunter Bennett (34:08) You can't really fail in my opinion. ⁓ even when it came to like negotiate, like I had six months of partnership income that I was missing out on, but then there's the COVID thing. And, at the end of the day, said, Nate, like what number, like what, what, what do want me to do the whole valuation? I didn't really care. I was willing to pay whatever I didn't. To me, the relationship was way more important than any number. And so we just came to a number that we both felt good about based on the valuation, but I was flexible and frankly, I didn't care because it was so important to me. And, ⁓   The Dental A Team (34:09) That's awesome.   Yeah.   Hunter Bennett (34:37) And we came to what we thought both was fair and it's been, it's been a dream. you know, and those, we're like best friends and those conversations can still be a little awkward and a little hard, but they don't have to be. And they, they were always fine. You know, um, if there's a book I could recommend, talk about it all the time. It's Crucial Conversations. Um, one of my favorite books of all time. think everybody should read it before you get married. You should read it like in college. Like I think it should be required reading before you graduate college.   The Dental A Team (34:50) Right.   Hunter Bennett (35:04) But that's one book that's just helped me a ton. As a leader, business owner, as a partner, ⁓ husband, it's just helped me a ton.   The Dental A Team (35:05) Definitely agree.   I love that. I also love that you guys just, I think when you said like it just works and it was serendipitous, I think that's something to look for in a partnership. I think if anybody's looking at partners, if it's hard and it's just not flowing, don't force it to work. ⁓ The best partnerships I really do see where they kind of fall into place this way, they're aligned, you hire people that are complimentary to you, not just like you, because you do need the two halves to a whole.   Hunter Bennett (35:29) Hmm.   The Dental A Team (35:39) to make it really great. And then I think you guys have done a good job of keeping egos in check. think you guys, what you said Hunter, that I hope all partners listening to this or potential partners, you want your partner to succeed and that's your ultimate goal and that's what you're driving for. when Jason and I learned that in our marriage, where like my greatest success is Jason's success, it went from a like, what are you giving for me? And what am I getting out of this relationship to a like,   I want Jason to give me five stars because he's a raving fan because like I am, I'm doing all that I possibly can to make sure he's succeeding and his life is incredible. And when both partners are in that, it goes away from you and it goes to them and to make sure that they're succeeding. And I really do see that that works great in marriages, partnerships. So I'm obsessed with that. Kudos to you guys on that. I love that also Hunter, I hope people buying in.   the partnership and having that, I say the way you start a partnership is how you're going to end the partnership. I love Hunter that you came in as the quote unquote junior partner, but you, leveled yourself up to be an equal partner to him. And I'm really proud of you because I think a lot of associates are stay very timid. They say very junior. They act like they don't know anything rather than being like an equal partner. And I'm like, no, no, no, if you're going to be a partner in this, you need to be a partner and bring your weight. So kudos to you on that.   Hunter Bennett (36:49) Yeah.   Totally.   The Dental A Team (36:57) And then I also just really love that you guys have just had multiple conversations that you just have blended it so beautifully and that you said you were willing to pay whatever he wanted. Like, of course, you're going to be fair. You knew the numbers, but the partnership and the success was more important to you. And I think when you go into it and that's how you start your partnership, I can tell why you guys are actually really great partners. So great job and thanks for highlighting that. And now I want to know about selling to a DSO because I do agree. ⁓ Having a consultant.   oftentimes makes it where you don't have to sell to a DSO. And we do that sometimes. Sometimes I'll grow the practices for you and it's like, well, why would you sell to a DSO when they're just gonna come in and grow your business anyway? Like, let's do this on your own. I had a doctor who we were chatting and he's like, yeah, Kiera, they're gonna give me five mil for it. And I said, cool. Next year, you're probably gonna do five million on your own or within two years. So you can pay them out and they're just gonna do what you were already going to do. And agreed, a lot of that stress comes.   Hunter Bennett (37:36) Yeah.   Yeah.   The Dental A Team (37:55) from that, but Hunter, you said something in the very beginning that struck me when you said you sold to the DSO. You said your life has exponentially gotten better. Your work life balance has gotten better since selling to the DSO, but you also said that you're doing pretty much all the same things you were doing as a business owner. So I'm super curious. How did your life get better while you're still doing, like you were like, I'm still hiring, I'm still firing. And I was like, so what was the perk of selling to a DSO and helped me understand how your life got better?   Hunter Bennett (38:19) Yeah.   The Dental A Team (38:23) And then I also want to know about your cell deal too, if you're open to that.   Hunter Bennett (38:27) Yeah, for sure. don't, um, I probably should have illustrated the point that it's not like we didn't just get overwhelmed and all of sudden decide, okay, we're not, we're just going to throw up our hands and sell. Like we had hired a different office manager who was like, went through like Gary Katas's training. Like, like she was phenomenal. She was amazing. In fact, like she was a lot like you in a lot of ways, just really great personality, new dentistry. And I thought she was going to change our lives, you know, and she is awesome. Like she's an amazing person.   But it didn't end up working out. She left the practice that was being transitioned to a new doctor. So she came with us for a few weeks and it was going okay. And then they had a big crisis back there and she's like, is it okay if I just go back and help for like a week? And we're like, yeah, do what you need to do, you know? And then that doctor offered her equity in his practice. And so she ended up staying there, whatever. Yeah, whatever, it is what it is. And so my point is, like, I feel like we tried a different office manager. We tried restructuring and we tried.   The Dental A Team (39:15) I mean, good deal.   Hunter Bennett (39:25) The only thing we didn't hire a consultant, we definitely talked about it, but we didn't, I think in some ways I was probably just a weak leader in that way where I was maybe a little bit too proud to just get the help that we probably needed and instead just went a different route, you know? And so hindsight's always 20-20, but that just to create a little bit of the background to the story though. So it's not like we just, you know, all of sudden decided, you know, we're gonna,   The Dental A Team (39:47) Of course.   Hunter Bennett (39:55) just sell. So we had done all this other footwork. Sorry, what did you want to know about like the structure of the deal or what? Yeah. Okay. So when we, so when we, you know, after having done all this, we kind of, we had interviewed all these doctors, we had one kind of in the holster, maybe you can associate and we were just like, we were interviewing people, but we was just so, we were just tired. It's just like when you're doing root canal, it's like from like seven to five and you don't even have time to use like the bathroom.   The Dental A Team (40:03) I do, I do want to know structure of the deal. Yeah, tell me it.   Yeah.   Hunter Bennett (40:25) get a drink of water. It's just, we just burned ourselves out because we were chasing something and I don't even think we, we just wanted to change growth. Like we just wanted to, we just wanted to grow. We just always said all the time, were just grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. And so we just kept the pedal to the metal. Excuse me. And I would say we just sort of outgrew ourselves and not that the wheels ever fell off, but like the culture in our practice was okay. Like we had good people, but we did have some of the wrong people on the bus. ⁓   The Dental A Team (40:27) Yep.   Hunter Bennett (40:52) And so when we started talking to DSOs, they saw our numbers, they saw our trajectory and we knew we had a lot of leverage. It was 2021. So the market was just red hot. We got a really good evaluation. We got a really good multiple. they were, you know, and so, you know, I actually talked to Matt Molcock, you know, he's my advisor and, ⁓ and just, I talked to my mentors, Dr. Jones, like, you know, ⁓ just people that I really respect. He's the man he had started nine, nine different endo or worked in or started nine different practices and   The Dental A Team (40:59) I see. That is hot.   Mm-hmm.   Aw, Dr. John.   Hunter Bennett (41:19) And his advice to me was like, you know, like I would do it if I were you. And so a lot of people would just had kind of encouraged me. And so at that point, me and Nate said, you know, we, and we got opinions both ways. And at the end of the day, our conclusion was it doesn't matter. Like, if I'm being honest, like that was kind of our answer to a kind of a joint prayer was like, it's not going to matter. Like it just, doesn't matter which way you go with this. ⁓ for the things that are truly important, it's not going to matter what you do.   The Dental A Team (41:35) Agreed.   Hunter Bennett (41:46) And so we, we, we decided to do the deal and I will say, like I said, the first six months were rough, but to the credit of my, company, like the group that I'm with, like our team and the people that we work with, they're phenomenal. Like I've never like had a, they, they just always bend over backward to accommodate us and help us. And we've done our part. We've grown like crazy, you know, are there times where I'm like, man, we could have done this on our own and, ⁓ our   The Dental A Team (42:06) Mm-hmm.   Hunter Bennett (42:12) whatever, you know, and you look at your paycheck now because now I'm paid on a percentage and I have equity in the company. And so you're just waiting on a recap. And that's a whole, again, talking about, we can get into this too is DSOs have so many different types of structures. Ours is not like a joint venture. So we don't, we don't profit share in ours. It's all in our equity. so equity events are like super important for us. and so Scotty Hudson Smith is our CEO and he's the one that did smile docs. they, he's done it three times.   The Dental A Team (42:21) Yep.   They are.   Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.   Hunter Bennett (42:41) He came to our dinner like the night that they were recruiting us and he wasn't officially the CEO yet But like he was sliding in that role. It just hadn't been announced I think it was like the next week or something, but he came and he just sort of created the vision for us and we just honestly we a little bit of a feeling and sort of that answer like it's not gonna matter and Now looking back Are there days that are where I have resented like seeing what I produce versus what I take home sometimes?   But I've got to remember they give you five or six years of your profitability upfront. And I've been able to put all that to work, you know, for the most part, I've done pretty well with that. Like not like home run, like you, you know, it's not like crazy stuff, but it's fine. I'm diversified now. Um, it's not all in my practice, but I do have a bit still in equity quite a bit. we did a 70 30 split. did 70 % cash, 30 % equity in the group. Um, and I just,   The Dental A Team (43:09) Sure.   Sure.   Right.   Nice.   Hunter Bennett (43:36) Some groups will give you flexibility, some won't. That's just the number that we wanted and they agreed to. And looking back, I'm still glad I did it that way. I actually had an opportunity to buy more equity about a year in, which I did. And so I bought more. And so that allowed me to just be a little bit more leveraged into the company.   on a bigger scale, like me and Nate work real hard for each other, but now you just got all these partners that are counting on you. And I think the mojo and the culture in our group is quite good. So.   The Dental A Team (44:04) Yeah, that's it. That's actually really, really good to know because I think so many people wonder about DSOs. And so what did the DSO take off of you guys? Because I know there's some people that get scared of the equity. Like they get scared of equity because some DSOs have actually gone under. And so I actually love to hear that you were a 70-30 split, then you were able to buy in more if you wanted to, because if it goes under, that is your retirement. And so I love that you were able to put money into work so your retirement's not solely like   Hunter Bennett (44:12) Yeah, that's what you asked.   ⁓ Yeah.   The Dental A Team (44:31) vested into this company. I really am big on that when DSOs do purchase, but what did they take off your guys's plates going in as a DSO?   Hunter Bennett (44:31) Totally.   Yeah, sorry, that's what you asked me and I kind of got off track there, but...   The Dental A Team (44:40) That's okay. I wanted   the deal. I wanted the deal. I actually wanted to know that a lot.   Hunter Bennett (44:44) So we skipped to the deal,   but going back, like the thing that they've helped with the most, would say is like, just as an example, like, like, ⁓ there's like this employment tax, you know, that we'd always get these letters about every year with Florida and we'd call them and then I spent an hour on the phone, finally getting to someone. And then I had already canceled it, but then they automatically renewed it for it. And so it's just like, that's like one example, work, workman's comp. ⁓ even just like we had an office book for like policy.   And again, this might speak more to maybe my lack of strong leadership where when a team member says, well, I understand that's the policy, but this is what I have going on. And then when you bend the rules for one person, then it sort of just creates this culture of favoritism. And again, that was probably partly being a new owner and then a people pleaser. and something I've worked on a lot. And again, I'm not the same leader I was even five years ago, you know, four years ago when we sold, but, ⁓ having seen that now they, because there are just   The Dental A Team (45:34) Totally.   Hunter Bennett (45:40) company policies in place. And again, it might be a little maybe feel corporate, but now you sort of see the reason why things are corporate because otherwise people, if you run it like a small business and you do those little things here or there, all it does is create resentment within your team. And so ⁓ I will say just having a really, we've gone through like, man, we hired like two or three different office managers through the company that they helped us hire. And finally we hired internally and she's   The Dental A Team (45:53) Totally.   Hunter Bennett (46:09) man, she's phenomenal. she has just totally, she was at our front desk, she wasn't in dentistry, she came to the front desk and really for first couple of years she was pretty quiet. And then when we interviewed, we're like, we need to interview, are you interested? And she said, yeah, like I would. And she's absolutely just crushing it. And so she is a big reason because we finally, you know, like it's just a good fit for her, you know? And our old office manager is still with us and she's amazing, she's amazing. And she's just so humbly taking the role. She's she's like,   The Dental A Team (46:10) Amazing.   Yeah.   Hunter Bennett (46:37) just want to be in the front and she's the best front office person in the world. You know what I mean? And that's she didn't want to be an office manager and so it's kind of worked itself out and but I don't know if we would have made those decisions without being sort of forced into it with it with our structure in the corporate, you know in the corporate group. If I'm being honest, you know, there's a couple things like we were salary like we just paid our girls salary for example and so there was always sort of this resentment because here it's very seasonal.   The Dental A Team (46:39) Mm-hmm. Yeah.   Totally.   Yeah.   Mm-hmm.   Hunter Bennett (47:06) So during winter, like our population in Naples doubles. And so the girls are working more hours. So they might work 42. I don't know if I should say this is, I guess it doesn't matter because I don't do it anymore, but they might work 42 or 44 hours one week. But in the summer, they're probably working 32, 34, 36. Or I'd just say, go home or whatever. So over the year, it just worked out. so they came to us, like, you can't do that. And so was like, so then we had to switch to hourly, which I really resented in that first six months. I was so mad. But now looking at it, it's actually the   The Dental A Team (47:06) Right.   Right.   You   Hunter Bennett (47:35) It's actually the fair way to do it. You know, it actually makes sense. ⁓ they like our, always get.   The Dental A Team (47:38) It is. So it sounds like you just got a lot of like,   you got like a lot of company backing is what I feel like it is like the structure of a business. Yeah. Yep.   Hunter Bennett (47:44) Totally, it's just more structure, more structure. I didn't have to be the bad guy, I guess. I sort   of get to say that's just how we do it. And so again, I think now, like the older version of Hunter sees that as, well, man, were kind of, you could have been a stronger leader, but I didn't know what I didn't know. ⁓ But now again, too, like looking at it, like this is exactly the path that I'm supposed to be on and it's fine. And truly like...   The Dental A Team (48:01) Totally.   Hunter Bennett (48:11) There's so many reasons to join a DSO. Some people are looking for an exit. Some people are looking for a lifestyle. And for me, it's just worked out that I, don't know what I was looking for besides relief from all the pressure I felt and, um, and it's worked out, you know? And so I still make enough money that I can do the things that I need to do and want to do. And if the equity works out, that's a cherry on top. And if it doesn't like it's okay for right now. And if I want to do something later,   I can do something else, you know, and that's the other thing too, like with, with the DSO is if, if you want to leave at some point you can. And I don't really have plans to leave per se, but like I, now it's an option. Whereas if I own the practice, that was one reason too, with me and Nate, who part of our thought process was, well, we're from the West in 10 years. If we want to sell in 10 years, who's going to buy us? Are we going to wait 10 years? Why don't we just do it now and grow with the DSO? So that was a big part of it too, is like, what is our exit? And so even though I'm only, I'm not, I'm 40 next year.   The Dental A Team (48:38) can.   Totally.   Hunter Bennett (49:08) I still was sort of planning an exit at some point because the practice was so big and we couldn't find a partner. So maybe that gives some insights retrospectively into our thought process because we did the same conversation every day for six months. But looking at it now, like that's what they've taken off our plate is all those little nuances that are just so mentally exhausting that now when I come home, I can just be present with my kids. I've changed my schedule. Like it's totally benefited my life.   The Dental A Team (49:14) Totally.   Hahaha!   Hunter Bennett (49:38) Lifestyle wise but it's not perfect but I would say an overall net positive, you know If you're not just looking at money, you know If you're not just looking at your month to month income I would say that's like the only downside is I don't make as much money as I used to but my lifestyle is way better so   The Dental A Team (49:43) That's amazing. Sure.   And so we traded a few things, but who knows it can pan out as well to where you actually make more in the future. That's not a given, but like today you're at least in a good space. You've traded ⁓ like money for time. And I think that that's one of the most beautiful things, which ties to, as we like quickly wrap up. I love that you just talked about all the pieces of DSO. I love that you have a great experience. I love hearing the pieces that they were able to take and agreed a lot of businesses actually need to sell to a DSO because they've grown too big that there's not a buyer for them. And like that is   Hunter Bennett (49:57) Yeah. Good.   Yeah.   The

Tiff and Kristy go into the DNA of an effective leader. These are the common traits that Dental A-Team has seen from the top dental practices, with Tiff and Kristy breaking down how exactly these leaders were able to cultivate such characteristics. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:00) Awesome. Hello, everyone. Dental A Team listeners, thank you so much for being here. I had the pleasure of having an email exchange with a really, really well-rounded office manager, regional manager. And anyways, my point was that she mentioned that she is an avid Dental A Team listener, and she has been for many years. And it was just so special to hear that and to have this email thread with her and to hear how much it has impacted her   professional life and I just wanted to give a massive shout out that came up this morning and I wanted to just thank you guys for being here because as much as this may impact your life and and hopefully add value to your systems, your practice, whether you're a dentist, whether you're a team member, office manager, and you know what I mean we've worked with CPAs, we've worked with chiropractors, we've worked with eye doctors.   anyone who's here listening, you found value in this and you continue to come back or if this is your first time, welcome. And I just want to give a massive shout out to you guys and a thank you for supporting our team and our company through the podcast. We love being here and we love what we get to do with you guys every single day. So massive shout outs and welcome to today. I have the beautiful pleasure of honestly having a very relaxed and calming   podcasting day and I have Miss Kristy here with me today and Kristy, know I've told you off camera, off mic, ⁓ how relaxing podcasting with you is and truly, truly from the bottom of my heart, you make podcasting very easy and stress free and knowing that we had a few today, really I was like, goodness it's Kristy, because I am just so excited to podcast with you. So Kristy, thank you so much for being here.   and just for being you. You bring a sense of ease, a sense of joy, and a sense of fun to our company as well as a multitude of other things and I value you. So thank you, Kristy. How are you this morning? It's still morning here as we're recording. How are you doing?   DAT Kristy (01:58) doing well and I'm with you Tiff. I mean we don't get to spend a lot of time with each other so whenever we get to spend time even if it's podcasting ⁓ I always enjoy my time with you so yep it's a good morning.   The Dental A Team (02:10) Thank you.   Thank you. I agree. I agree. The sun is shining. It's supposed to be cooling down. So I'll be missing it. But you should be able to enjoy some great Phoenix weather here in the next week and enjoy that pool of yours. And when I get back, we need to set up a coffee date because it just hasn't happened yet. And we need that time together. I'm really excited. In a few weeks, we've got our in-person mastermind that we've got a ton of our doctors.   DAT Kristy (02:27) Yes.   The Dental A Team (02:39) coming out to Phoenix to spend some time with us. And I know I have a few doctors, you have a few doctors that are coming. Each consultant has quite a few actually offices that are joining us. We're just super, super excited to host everyone here in Phoenix. I am, my clients, my clients know who they are. They are near and dear to my heart. They are some of my closest friends in my life. And I have a couple coming that I am so excited for you guys to meet.   And one of them is just so special and she knows who she is and I'm just giving her massive hugs and massive shout outs. She is such a supporter of everything we do. She's a supporter of me as a human and you know, I just am so excited for you to meet her, Kristy. So I wanted to just shout that out and let everybody know what's coming up in our lives. We've got a lot of Dental A Team fun happening and part of that is this.   course this mastermind that we've got coming up and the things that follow it that go along with that. mean we've got every month we have our doctors only mastermind for our clients and most of what we do is center focused around really truly building leaders and ⁓ within that I think I think something I tell my clients and my teams especially my teams when I'm working with teams is our goal is to create ease efficiency and joy.   in your jobs. No matter what your job is, no matter what your position you hold in the practice is, I want you to love going to do that every single day or at least I say like 95 % of the time there's going to be those days where you're like heck no Tiff I don't want to do this. But a lot of that comes down to I think effective leadership and being able to create a practice that works for you, a business that works for you instead of you working for the business, meaning it's just like gosh I'm exhausted every day and   Will this ever end? And new doctors, it does end. Okay, but not yet. Don't get too hasty. You gotta put your time in. You gotta do your time. But it does end. And Kristy, I think a lot of that, and something you're fantastic at, I've watched you do this with doctors. I've watched you do this with startup doctors. They know who they are. They're here listening too. And I've watched you do this with doctors who have been in practice for 10 years plus. You build incredible leadership.   through really solid systems and efficiency and culture and team. Kristy, my biggest question to you, I told you I was going to ask you this kind of defining question. When you think of a leader, when you think of a practice leader, a dentist leader, an office manager, and anyone who is deemed a leader or wants to be, what kind of characteristics do you think of within that person that either they innately have or can be developed?   DAT Kristy (05:27) You're going deep today, huh? ⁓ Yeah, I think number one, compassion because   The Dental A Team (05:30) I am, yeah. I don't know what's up today, but I am. It's in me.   DAT Kristy (05:44) With leadership, I think we owe it to our people to be brutally honest in a way, but do it in a compassionate way, if you will. the ability to be honest and share from that space of, want to better this person or I want to grow this person versus coming from a place of criticism.   You know what I mean? Because you and I have talked about this before. I don't think anybody walks into a job on any given day saying, I'm going to make it heck today. I'm just going to come in and raise havoc. And I don't think anybody intentionally does that. And so having a leader that can come from a compassionate space and understand that people really are trying to do well and be able to deliver from that space.   The Dental A Team (06:43) Yeah, I totally agree with you. think compassion's a fantastic word there. And ⁓ the way you described it, I think, defines that really clearly. Because I do think there's just so much confusion wrapped up in empathy, sympathy, compassion, being nice. And I think a leader is everything, is all of those pieces. But well-rounded and doesn't get lost in them is, I think, a good thing to say there. ⁓   They're all fantastic characteristics, but being able to navigate that and being able to navigate ⁓ clear and kind, like I really, I really truly love looking at the difference between kind and nice. And I think, you know, nice, even when you say like, ⁓ nice, it doesn't feel in your body as good as kind does. And when someone can be clear and kind, that's that compassionate side of I'm here with you.   And I'm going to tell you, I'm going to tell you the way I'm going to show you the way. Right. And when we get off track, we're going to do it together. And I'm going to tell you when we get off track, when you're off track, when, things aren't being met, when the accountability needs to be put into place, I'm going to do that for you because that's kindness. I think a lot of leaders shy away from that because they want to be nice. They don't want to hurt feelings. They don't want to make someone feel like they're not a good team member or they're not doing a good job because they are doing a good job. They're just doing something that needs adjusting.   And I know Kristy, you've had these conversations too. I've listened to you have them with doctors and office managers of the not saying something to someone holding back information and holding back what could inspire them or just make them a better manager and leader is actually hurting the other person. So where we're trying to be nice and save their feelings, we're actually making it way worse and we're doing damage.   to the human, the person, and that think, Kristy, is where that compassionate side comes into play of compassionate kindness, of that joint. always say, ⁓ use words like I'm partnering with you, and can I partner with you in this? Are you open to me giving some feedback here? You really lay it out very well where it's open and, again, compassionate and kind. And Kristy, I think you do a great job with that.   How do you help to coach leaders and doctors to have those conversations and with verbiage like that? What are your biggest suggestions that even if somebody could take one thing away from today, maybe it's a suggestion of a hard conversation. ⁓ How do you suggest to your doctors and your clients how they can do that?   DAT Kristy (09:25) Yeah, I think there's a few things, Tiff. Honestly, in onboarding new people, I love to have the conversation before it even needs to happen. with new employees just opening the door that, hey, there's going to come a time when we have to address a few things. So finding out what their style is for addressing and always trying to accommodate in that way, I mean, you don't   always have the room to do that. But if I can find out, hey, there's going to come a time when we have to have a conversation, what is the best way to address you? How do you prefer me to approach you in those situations, first and foremost? And that obviously works well for new team members. But as we're learning leadership, we might not have all new team members. So coming into it,   for our existing team members just being vulnerable and honest and saying, hey, I'm looking to grow my leadership skills too, right? And so I may not always hit the mark, but I wanna open the door for honest open communication. And so just like what you said, asking permission and ⁓ I guess with that too is in that approach, always trying to make it from my point of view.   You know, maybe referring back to a situation and being able to address it like, hey, you know, I need to clear the air. And earlier when you were talking about the story I'm telling myself is, I'm sure, you know, that may not have been your intent and that's why I wanna open this space for communication. Yeah.   The Dental A Team (11:17) Yeah, that's beautiful.   That's beautiful. And what that leads into is kind of our next chapter of this whole podcast. And it so succinctly goes together because that communication that you just gave and that openness. I always think of when I when I hear you speak and when I hear you speak of ⁓ verbiage to be able to use like this, I think of you said vulnerable and I think vulnerable for sure. We're open, we're vulnerable, we're honest. But I think you also bring a sense of ⁓   like humility and humbleness to the conversation. And when a leader and a doctor or anyone who an established team member who's been there for a while can be humble and say, you know what, don't know everything and I am growing and learning because I'm a human and we're doing that in every space of our life. Who I am today as a mom, who I am today as a girlfriend, as a best friend, as a friend, a coworker, who I am today is different.   than even two weeks ago, right? We're constantly changing. So being able to be humble allows the space for the other person, for the other, and when you're a dentist and leader or office manager, having these conversations with the team, either individually or open forum, like allows them the space to know. They don't have to know it all either. And they can be in the space of learning and they can ask questions. So.   Kristy, think one of the biggest things we get asked, well, number one thing we get asked when people call in and say, Dental A Team, please help fix my family, is systems, right? And I was actually in a practice yesterday with our consultant Trish, and it was so much fun. And we did the team meeting, and one of the things I said to the whole team was, listen, everybody says we need systems. We need systems implemented. And I'm like, for sure, you need systems.   But systems without communication and without leadership, you already have systems. You know why they're not working, why they're quote unquote broken. You have systems. You're doing a lot of the things I'm going to tell you to do. You're just not doing them consistently and you're not talking about it. So if we can fix the communication and really bring that sense of humbleness, think what you've done there, Kristy, with that conversation that I hope people will take away and go spread is you have inspired.   a culture of positivity. Because whenever we're in a space, we've hired consultants, we have people on our, we have team members on our team right now that have said, I have never worked in a place that I didn't feel like I had to know everything. And when I didn't know a thing, I was scared to say it and I had to like go find it on my own. So we're like behind the scenes trying to track down information and hoping we're right. I remember in my dental practice,   Kiera talks all the time about how she didn't know the definition. She didn't know what KPI stood for, right? She knew it was important. She didn't know what the actual acronym meant. I only knew, and I tell her this all the time, I only knew what KPI stood for because when I became a leader in my dental practice, the office manager wanted me to come into the KPI meetings. And I was like, yeah, of course, I'll be there. Sure thing, no worries. Meanwhile, I'm over here Googling. What the heck is a KPI meeting?   I had no idea, but I also wasn't comfortable enough to be like, yeah, sure, whatever you want. What does that mean? How do I show up? What do I bring? How can I be valuable to that meeting? I Googled it, and then I sat there like, none of this makes sense. I sat in those meetings with the CPA, and I'm just like, I am not, I'm not the same as you guys, and I feel so small right now. But I was not in ⁓ an environment at that time that felt, and it wasn't because,   DAT Kristy (14:34) you   The Dental A Team (15:03) she wasn't supportive or helpful, I just didn't feel seen, heard, and ⁓ like I could be vulnerable, right? I had to just be, you had to put on a face and you had to do the thing. And I think, Kristy, what you've done with that communication is you've opened up space for the culture to really be what our clients are constantly asking for. They're always asking, Tiff, how do I fix the culture, right, Kristy?   Help me fix my culture. How do I get my team engaged? And it's like, you just did it with one sentence, right? Have you seen that, Kristy?   DAT Kristy (15:36) Yeah, absolutely. ⁓ It's communication out of the gate. I don't know the exact statistic, you may know a little better than me, but I know it's up in the high 90 % that all communication is misunderstood just out of the gate. So we already have that going against us. Anything we can do to help open that door and create that safe space. And again,   I guess my biggest thing, if you kind of said, if there was one takeaway, don't ever start a sentence with why. Don't ever start a sentence with why because you'll automatically put them on the defense. Maybe asking a question of, you share with me how you came to this decision or not, why did you do this?   The Dental A Team (16:17) I totally agree.   Yeah, yeah. think a lot of communication starts that way. And I think I try to encourage teams in general, people, when I go into practices and I'm having these meetings and I'm having similar conversations of teaching even just a full team how to communicate together, I actually try to encourage them to stop considering that they're two different people in their lives. Because we think   I'm at work, I have to be this person at work, but at home, like, are you saying if you were to go to your husband or your kid, like, I think of Brody, my 17 year old son, and for those of you who have been listening for a long time, he's 17 now, yes. But I think like, if I came to him and I was like, why did you do it like this? He'd be like, well, why wouldn't I have? And I'm like, well, that's not, like, I actually needed to know why you did it this way. And he's like, well, why are you asking, right? It would just be this like back and forth.   But instead, come almost like I tell people, think about how to get around it. The why this hard statement is the rock in between you guys. And if you try to push through that rock in the middle, you're not going to get anywhere. I massively hurt my wrist one time trying to move this rock that did not look as heavy as it was for years. My wrist hurt. That's what you're doing. But walking around that rock, walking around that boulder and saying,   I actually really want to understand because sometimes, Ray, I tell practices, if you don't agree with what I'm saying that we need to implement, like tell me because I could be wrong. I might not know your practice as well as I think I do and we need to talk through it. And that's the same thing. Like maybe we got a different result than we wanted, but I need to know how you got there because number one, if you use the system that's in place, it's broken. Number two, if we didn't use the system, we needed to know.   what we did use, right? So I think that's brilliant, Kristy, and really just a way to like get around that issue that's in the middle and keep defenses down.   DAT Kristy (18:27) for sure. Another technique that I've used before and especially from leaders is make sure you keep speaking to the results you're looking for. It's painting the clarity for the person on the other end. What's the end result? What are we trying to achieve here that we're missing the mark? You know, another great thing is being able to state the behavior that you are seeing now, maybe even what it's causing.   You know, for instance, when you are in morning huddle and you go, what about, you know, can you see how that maybe drags everybody down and moving forward, stating the behavior you want to see moving forward? It's OK if you feel that way. But can you refrain from saying it in front of everybody? And you and I have a conversation on the side, you know. So again, it's what's the behavior today that's happening that   isn't so favorable, what's the result we want to see and speaking to that versus the person.   The Dental A Team (19:30) I love that. And again, that is like infusing the care into the person and the situation. But like I want I want you to be looked at as a leader in your position. And I know, just from my own experience, when you do come to the table that way, people actually like the people lose trust in you, you lose value, right. And so I do agree being able to show up. And I think the flip side to all of this that I   of thought of while you were saying that piece, because that's massive, is being able to show up how you want others to and then backing this up. So there's a difference in having this conversation and just being like, cool, had the conversation, Kristy. My team didn't do anything about it. They don't care. They're not changing. And then having the conversation and walking the walk, backing it up and continuing. know, Kristy, you probably get asked this a lot too.   DAT Kristy (20:03) Mm-hmm.   The Dental A Team (20:26) They're like, well, how many times do I have to say it? They're not listening. And I'm like, they are, but they've been, if you're working with a team that's established, right, even established with you, they've been down a road already. So we're retraining behaviors and habits. But the only way to do that is by continuing to show up how you want them to show up. You can't tell someone, I can't tell Brody to do this thing. But if I do it, if I.   If I show him and care and love him enough to show him how to behave and how to be in the world, he mimics that, right? We are all just mirroring each other. We are literally duplicating and repeating what we're seeing. So if your team, this one's a hard truth, this just popped in, but if your team, you're like, my team sucks, be like,   Actually, you know what? Maybe I should look in the mirror and reflect to myself because if I look at my actions, I were mirroring myself and watching myself, how would I show up? Because if you're not walking that walk and you're like, yeah, sweet, vulnerable, humble, come tell me, and then somebody has a conversation with you and you're like, well, this is why, let me tell you why. Guess what you're gonna get when you say, why did this happen? You're gonna get the same behavior, right, Kristy?   DAT Kristy (21:30) Mm-hmm.   Yeah, 100%. You know me and my analogies, but we literally are a product of what we live, right? We learn what we live. And so if we're always coming from that critical spirit, we're going to get more of that, you know? So coming from that space of ⁓ understanding, right, versus criticism. ⁓ And to your point, it's coming full circle again.   A lot of times we don't lean into those difficult conversations and those literally are so powerful. Like really that's where our growth comes and I challenge people to see them as a caring conversation versus a negative conversation if you will. ⁓ Really our growth comes from that and not addressing it is also validating the behaviors.   The Dental A Team (22:34) totally agree.   Totally agree with you. That is, drop the mic right there. I totally agree. And that's that nice space, right? Where we're like, well, I don't want to make them feel bad. Well, you just told them it was okay what they're doing then. So either you have to get over that and be okay with whatever it is. You can no longer hold it against them. And it has become a standard of okayness or you have that conversation. Those are the only two options. That is a.   do or die, like only two options. You cannot personally or professionally continue to hold something against someone if you're not willing to help to change that behavior.   DAT Kristy (23:16) Yeah, and you know, with that tip, I would say I was in that space too, when I was learning, learning to be a leader, because yes, we all have innate characteristics that can guide us to being a leader, but it is a muscle that has to be developed and leaning into those conversations had made me a better leader. But also, I would say having a mentor.   or a coach like us to practice the conversations can be very helpful. Before you get into those conversations, I tell my doctors that all the time. mean, think of professional football teams or baseball or whatever. I always say, how much time do they spend practicing versus how much time do they play on the field? And how often do we practice having hard conversations?   The Dental A Team (23:47) Totally.   Yeah.   Totally. I agree.   Mm-hmm. I totally agree with you and I tell leaders all the time practice at home. I have thank the Lord he blessed me with Brody I have practiced so much communication on him and watched how it's molded him and been like, okay or watched his Reactions or just how a situation altered based on my communication and been like, okay Well, that was a misstep because I think our kids will always tell us ⁓ and it's just it's   DAT Kristy (24:13) Yeah.   The Dental A Team (24:35) training and teaching and guiding them to. So practice on your family. Tell your family, I'm going to practice this. Tell your husband, tell your wife. I don't care. But I do. I totally agree with you. Practice is key. And I think effective leadership and dentistry comes down to being able to have those conversations and being able to back it up. And if you're trying to create a great culture, you're trying to get your team engaged, this is the way to do it. And like Kristy said, you don't have to do it alone.   DAT Kristy (24:41) You   The Dental A Team (25:03) You never do. You never have to do it alone ever. We are always here. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. You guys know that. You've listened to this a million times, but also if you're a client, reach out to your consultant. ⁓ And if you're a future client, like reach out to us. We are here. We're here to have the conversations and we know that you can do it. This is how you inspire culture. So my auction item, Kristy, I think for everyone is to take a look at their leadership style, at the things that are maybe driving you crazy.   DAT Kristy (25:03) Mm-mm.   The Dental A Team (25:33) ⁓ that you feel like you're hitting a wall or maybe your team just isn't right where you want them to be. And then just have a moment of self-actualization and really look at what's creating that. And is there something that you can do differently as a leader that could get a different result? Because that's how you're going to inspire a team to be solution oriented as well. So Kristy, this was beautiful. I hope everyone enjoyed this deep dive of communication and effective leadership conversation. Thank you so much, Kristy, for your amazing   words, you really do handle communication in a way that a lot of people don't yet know how to. So thank you for sharing that wisdom with us today. Everyone, go drop us a review. You know I love to say that, but I really do mean it. And five stars are always fantastic, but really, truly just tell us what worked best for you. If there's anything that you've done that's working, people really do read those reviews.   DAT Kristy (26:13) You're welcome.   The Dental A Team (26:28) drop some information in there as well. And then as always reach out, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. are here to serve and help you, whether it's through leadership, whether it's through systems that is leadership or really just finding those spaces that are overlooked. I know when we were in a practice yesterday, we found just like the easiest, most simple, low hanging fruit possible to make a massive difference. And the office manager said, how did you like that is, I can't believe I didn't think of that. And I said, you know what?   You're here every single day. You're in it. You're in the thick of it. You're in the weeds. You're busy. This is why we exist, is to be able to come in and see areas that are unnoticed that could make a massive, massive difference. So reach out. We are here for you. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. And we cannot wait to meet you. Thanks, guys.  

Kiera shares with listeners how to run quarterly meetings to get clarity, alignment, and accountability. She touches on the creation of 90-day plans, creating a definition of done, and why instilling a traction cadence is so helpful and practical. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:02) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and welcome to the podcast today. I hope you're having an amazing day. I hope today's a great day for you. And today we're going to dig into quarterly meetings, ⁓ traction style. So this is based on the framework by Gina Wickman in traction. I've talked about them before. I used to talk about them a lot more and I feel like it's been a hot minute since we brought this up. There's tons of episodes on quarterly meetings. Quarterly meetings are one of my favorite things in the annual planning.   and how to do this because practices who run like this, who operate like this, they truly do so great. Like honest to goodness, so great. And I'm so excited for you to learn how to do these quarterly meetings. ⁓ To me, they're like the guiding principles of a freaking successful practice. So I hope you're excited about it. ⁓ A lot of practices skip these or they run them very loosely. And I want to help you learn how to run these.   very effectively, very efficiently, what they should look like, what you can have. I've been running these for, gosh, I don't know, seven years plus. I've learned a lot through the ways. I have somebody who helps coach our meetings, because I used to self-implement myself, and it's been so beneficial to have somebody help and how much my perspective has changed by having somebody help run them who knows how to do them so well. I love doing this. Yes, we've been trained by traction. We are not traction ourselves.   We do portions of it, but we do Dental A Team's version of it. ⁓ And what I've heard from offices that work with us on them ⁓ is they love that we have the dental background too. So we're able to help solve a lot of their issues, a lot of their problems, but to give the clarity, to give the confidence in these. So I'm excited. We're going to kind of go through how to run a quarterly meeting to get clarity, alignment, and accountability. And that's what it's ultimately for. And two, I feel like give simplicity too. Because once you know like what you're supposed to work on for the quarter, ⁓   Everybody's now aligned, everybody's rowing together. So for that, ⁓ I just want you guys to, I'll kind of walk you through a whole journey of how to do this. So number one, I want you just to go back on last quarter and how did last quarter go for you? What worked, what didn't work, what got done? I think right now you don't even know what happened. Well, it might be time for you to start looking into adding quarterly meetings to your plate. If you do know, rock on, how did you know that? Does your whole team know how you did?   Does the whole leadership team behind it? And then what is like, what are you working on this quarter? Do you know, is there a focus? Is there a plan? ⁓ And so what we're supposed to do is, and I do this with lots of offices and honestly, offices that get this, the leadership team gets more ⁓ honest conversations, more accountability, more peer to peer accountability, more ownership, and the whole organization goes. So the way I break it down is your annual goal is like a mountain. So it's this huge mountain that we're trying to climb and each quarter are the big boulders.   to build up that mountain, so the rocks, and then we have little pebbles and to-dos of the day in, day out. And so every quarter we need to dedicate a full day, yes, a full day, where we actually break away, the leadership team does, and then the leadership team builds what they feel the next quarter needs to be, and then they take it and break it down per departments. So that's kind of like my favorite way to do this. So what we do is we have our mountain, our annual goals, where we're going, we know where we're headed, and then from there we're gonna break it down and build those smaller rocks.   When we're going into a quarterly, we look at where we are based on where we want to be for the year. How did last quarter go? What were the wins? What were the losses? We started having people grade the quarter in the leadership team and that's been real fun. And that's just to see if everybody's aligned. So how do we do on an ABCD? Did we accomplish the things that we set out to do? Are we on track for the year of where we wanted to be? What are we seeing from all that? And what lessons did we learn that we should either do again or not do? I think that's so paramount when I'm going into leadership departments and   working on them with these quarterlies is to see like, what did we do really well and what did we not do and what should we do again and what should we not do again? And when you break it down like that, it's so incredible. And then you go into building your next 90 day plan, if you will, is what these quarterly meetings are. What are the most important three to five things that have to get that in this next quarter that are going to take us three months that are big boulders to help us reach the top mountain point that we've all agreed to is where we want to get to by the end of this year. So if our goal this year is to produce 3 million.   We've to break that down by quarters. We've got to have projections. Obviously, not every quarter is going to be the same based on the ups and downs within a practice. That's something very common. ⁓ Usually, December is not as high. September is not as high. So let's make sure that we're on track for that. Then we're looking at our overhead. We're looking at big initiatives. So maybe it's an operations manual. Maybe it's hiring an associate. Maybe it's getting all of our assistance CPR certified. Maybe it's getting all of our assistance to where they can do   oral surgery, whatever it is, there's big initiatives. Maybe we need to bring billing in house. Maybe we need to outsource billing. Maybe we need to figure out medical billing. Those are big initiatives that are going to move an organization forward exponentially, depending upon your practices needs. So then we break it down. And what I love to do is when we build these 90 day plans, not just have people like what I used to do, and this is something I've learned that I think can really help you out a quarterly is I don't just set up a like, we need to get an operations manual done in 90 days. No, no, no, no.   What is, and this comes from the book Come Up for Air, what is the definition of done? So that means that every department needs to have a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly skeleton. We need to have 20 protocols done per person for all the different departments. That's what the definition of done of getting this operations manual done in 90 days looks like. What does onboarding an associate look like or onboarding a front office team member? It means that they know our company core values, they know our company mission, and that they're able to independently do X, and Z.   Well, what's awesome is when we have a definition of done, now everybody knows what that goal is. Is that realistic to get done in 90 days and what the focus is? Now, when I started working with teams and depending upon the size of it, a lot of times rocks are individual and they're individual department focused. But as organizations get larger and larger, sometimes we do what's called like a rallying cry or like a centralized focus. So maybe it's that this whole quarter,   the focus is getting everybody up on par for operations manual. And that's what we're all gonna focus on. If we just got that thing done amongst all departments, the whole organization would move faster. So there's no right or wrong way to do it. I've just found that depending upon the size of the organization and where they're located and what they're focused on, sometimes that whole collective initiative is the right thing to do. Other times the departments need individual focuses. So once we get those rocks or these big boulders with a 90 day plan with a definition of done, who's doing what,   is this realistic? Do we have the capacity to do it? Then from there you move into like solving issues and resolving. And if you set really, really good rocks and quarterly 90 day plans, what I found is a lot of times the issues actually break apart and there's not as many issues and we solve a lot of the issues because they're fixed in our 90 day plan. And it's so incredible. And so like really having solid, solid ways to solve issues.   to set this up and then we work through the issues. That's one thing I love about being a consultant running these is because we have so many resources. So it's like, oh, we're struggling with scheduling. Great. We have scheduling templates. We're struggling with hiring this person. Great. We already have that. We're struggling with this 30, 90, this 30, 60, 90 onboarding. Great. We already have that for you. We're scheduling with hygiene capacity. Great. We have solutions for that. So helping offices then learn how to solve issues independently is also really beautiful.   what the process is for that and how can we do this in different ways that we can make this even better for the offices is something so good. So when you walk out of your quarterly 90 day plan, you should have one, how did we do last quarter? Two, where are we at for the entire year? What does that look like? Are we on track? Are we off track? And if we're off track, do we have a plan to get back on track with our 90 day plan?   what every person and every department is doing for these next 90 days and their specific, measurable, attainable, realistic with a timeframe with a definition of done on all of them. And they're truly the most important things. We've solved issues, we have massive clarity and all of us agree to have healthy debates. And then what we do is we track it every single week. So it becomes so clearing, so clarifying, and especially for practices that are, I think more obsessive with. ⁓   trying to get so many things done, what this forces you to do is to prioritize, to focus. Now, owners, lot of times, like myself included, I have so many great ideas. And I always think like, this is so great and I want to do X, Y, Z and all these different things. Well, what I found is that actually is really hard for my team to ever feel like they're making progress, they're making traction, there's nothing for them to really do. And so with the quarterly plan, all my great ideas get like pinned for next time because the 90 day plans rolled out.   Now, sometimes things happen. Like we might lose a team member unexpectedly. We might have other things that come up. But if I do this really, really well and my quarterly plan is really set up right, then we shouldn't stray even when things happen. And the goal is that 80 % of your boulders or your 90 day plans are accomplished every single quarter. And your office manager, your regional is responsible and accountable for making sure those like get across the goal line. And so   I love working with offices on this. love setting up. It takes eight hours. So you start out, you start out with some fun like trust building or leadership growth things are how you start. We review the quarter. We look to see how that goes for everybody. We give it a rating of how we did it. Then after that, we go through our vision of where the company is going, our core values. Are those all in alignment? We check to see if our team's all in alignment. Do we have any people we need to?   ⁓ rise up or rise out. We review that. We look to make sure our accountability or org chart is correct and that we've got right players, things are clear for all of it. So to me, it's just a good like housekeeping every single quarter. Then we build our 90 day plan. We overcome obstacles, we solve issues, and then we go to work that next quarter and we check it every single week. And saying that seems so simple. And that's actually why I love traction. That's why I love this model. It's why I love ⁓ the cadence of it.   But what's really amazing is if you pair it with Patrick Lanzioni's five dysfunctions of a team and you really start working on that trust and vulnerability and then healthy debate.   But what's really amazing is when you build the clarity with the quarterly, with the plan, ⁓ and you're working on those healthy debates, the peer-to-peer, the ownership, that's when you really start to win. That's when you start to win as an organization. That's when you start to build trust amongst your leaders. That's when you start to make sure that you're really focused on where you wanna go. And so I'm just so obsessive about it. This is what people do in large organizations and...   When I go to conferences and I talk to really brilliant businesses, they're all running on this. And so I'm like, if this is what the best of the best are doing, and I do think it's the easiest, the most consistent, the easiest to follow. But when I said at the beginning, I used to self-implement and I used to run these meetings and having somebody come in and run them, who's not me, has allowed me to sit in the owner seat, to sit in the CEO seat where I don't have to sit here and think about running it.   But I can actually sit back and I can look and watch my leadership team evolve. I can watch the different pieces. I can ⁓ really truly observe. can think I'm not having to sit here and make sure we're putting things together and I'm pushing my own initiatives. But I have somebody who's there that can see my team from a perspective I can't see them from. And it's such an amazing experience. And so I just strongly recommend if you haven't done it, start, start implementing it. If you need help, reach out Hello@TheDentalATeam.com.   We do this for so many offices and it's something just really magical to be able to help you get the clarity and offices that have implemented have told me like, we just feel alignment. We feel traction. We feel clarity. ⁓ Quarters are not as hard. It's easier to hit goals and expectations. All of that becomes easier. And so I just encourage you to try it, to commit to putting it into place. And this is something where if we can help you guys set it up and to run in for you.   something that we do. So reach out hello at thedeadlyteam.com but truly, this is something that I think you, your organization and every team member deserves. And then you go break it down in departments and we make sure that it's clear, it's tracked, it's measured, and it's focused. And you're actually able to like move the company forward so much. So all those big to do projects that you've always wanted to get done, this is how you get them done. So don't hesitate. Don't wait. Be sure to commit to your practice. Start with the quarterlies. This is how to like   a quick overview of how to run them. There's more in depth. You can reach out, ask questions, but truly you, your practice and your whole leadership team and your whole team deserve to have this. Now, if your team's small, that's okay. You can actually start with your whole team. We can get alignment that way. If your team's larger, you can move it into leadership meetings. So there's a certain spot where I actually move it that's recommended, but other times a lot of it is actually like open to the whole team and there's strategy in both ways to do it. So reach out.   Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. Commit to running amazing quarterlies and just get it done guys. That's what this is about. Thank you guys for listening and as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on The Dental A Team podcast.  

It's book club time! Kiera talks about The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins and how the method can propel leaders into the best versions of themselves. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and today is book club time. It's been a hot minute since we've done a book club and there's a book club that I feel like is just a really good one. It's a popular book right now. If you've read it, great. If you haven't, well, welcome. I'm excited to share with you and it's from Mel Robbins and it's the Let Them Theory. I was very fascinated by this. I'm still fascinated by it and I think it's something of like when Mel Robbins said that you do not need to control everything.   and that peace might come from letting go, not holding tighter. I thought, hmm, I might know a couple of dentists, CEOs, business owners, AKA myself, which means that there's probably several of you that might be struggling with some of these pieces. So whether you wanna read the book or not, just giving some highlights of how you can truly reduce your stress, lead with more confidence and stop micromanaging team and patient behavior, like that might be something worthwhile today. So I wanted to just.   Bring that on today, share with you some quick tips and tricks on how you can even apply this principle in your practice that I've been seeing. As always, Dental A Team is here to grow leaders that are not just successful, but truly like having sanity and happiness in life. ⁓ Today, our podcast is going to be giving you tactical practical tips. Our mission is to positively impact the world of dentistry in the greatest way possible. And we do that through expert consulting for dentists and teams. I am not.   Shy to admit that I think Dental A Team is probably one of the top-notch consulting companies out there where we don't just understand you But we are you that we don't just sit here and tell you doctors what to do But we actually actively work with your team to help them We have grown practices 10 20 30 percent within their first 90 days of working with us. We've added multiple millions We've added hundreds of thousands to offices and we've done it with ease simplicity fun teams actually love to work with us they enjoy working with us and that's something I'm really really proud of as a company of   We don't just come in and like dictate to your team and force them to become robots. We literally help them, ⁓ give them some tools and then elevate them to be their best selves. And doctors, we teach you how to be successful owners for your path, for what makes you happy. And we do it in such an easy way. People are always shocked at the gains and the growth that we're able to do in such an easy, non-confrontational, non-stressful way. So that's what we're about. And I'm super, super excited about the let them theory.   ⁓ Because the let them theory I think works so well for leaders. So anybody listening today this is really is leaders and I remember in the book she talks about how like She just has to let them like let people be who they are and it's actually helped me with my family So today I don't think it's necessary just solely for your practice But also pieces for you within your personal life and that's something Dental A Team were really big on is growing you as a person not just as a practice I just got a   a voice memo from a doctor I worked with a couple of years ago. And this doctor said to me, they said, Kiera, ⁓ the year working with you was actually one of the most impactful years in all of my dentistry career. ⁓ This doctor is doing incredible things. And the doctor told me like just the mindset shifts that we were able to help them have ⁓ of helping them become more efficient of, they said, you pushed me to do certain things like hire an assistant and to   Be accountable to you. And this doctor was really, really, really, really brilliant doctor. And to hear that compliment that ⁓ their time working with us was something that was the most impactful in their growth of their business. I just took as such a huge compliment to what we do because we're not just shaping you as a business owner, we're shaping you as a human. My background is marriage and family therapy. My passion is dentistry and my love of all things is life. Dentistry just happens to be the platform that I get to talk about it on.   And so for this within the let them theory, it's let people be who they are. Truly we can't control other people's actions, but we can control how we are responding. And I know that sounds so simple, but ⁓ in there, like if we let team members show up late, it tells you who they're going to be. We let a patient cancel last minute. It's information for better boundaries in the future. Letting an OCA ignore feedback, it reveals growth readiness. And so like for that, I'm not here for you just to like...   allow people to walk all over you. do believe that there is a standard within a practice that you should maintain and that is perfectly acceptable. However, you can allow people to be who they want to be and that doesn't mean that they need to be on your ship. It's allow them to have the opportunities outside of your location that are perfect for them, but you don't need to try to control every person's actions. ⁓ With my mom, my mom and I view the world so differently and when I read this book, I realized   what my mom wants. Now she's not an employee. Employees for me, there is a code of conduct and there is a way that we show up. That's the standard of Dental A Team. And if you choose an elect not to be there, rock on, we're going to coach you through it. And then we're going to coach you out of it. Like it's one or the other where they're going to coach up or coach out. Both are amazing because I want you ultimately in your dream space. ⁓ and there is a, there is a code of conduct that Dental A Team will operate by. And so with that, with my mom, I realized in my personal life, my mom just wants to be loved for who she is.   She doesn't want to be coached. She doesn't want to be corrected. She just wants to be loved for who she is. And so for me to let my mom do things that make me absolutely crazy, there actually is this whole relief. And when you realize like, can allow team members to be who they want to be in, that just means that there's isn't a place for them. Like that's okay. I can allow patients who don't want to follow our processes, like allow them to find another practice and to have that. Now there's ways that we can coach them through this. There's ways that we can do this.   But I've had practices when they finally decide to stop having patients just show up, cancel last minute, and they're like, no more, this is how it's going to be. Here's the rules of the game. And patients who do like not to, they get to leave the practice. Their production actually exponentially increases. Their patients exponentially become better patients. Like all of it rises up. The ones who decide that they're going to allow team members to be who they are, this is how we're going to operate. And if you choose not to, that's okay. Their practices actually start to thrive. And so   The question is, who are you trying to force right now to change? And what if you let them and focus on our... The word boundaries is so obnoxious to me, because I feel like people put boundaries up of like, this is what I will or won't do, which is great. And for me, it's more like, what are the standards? What are the standard processes? What's the culture of our company or our patient base? That's I'm going to enforce. That's what we're going to focus on instead. And then I'm going to allow people to be who they are. And I'm going to attract the people that I want in here.   Like what would be, who am I trying to force to change right now? And what if I let them and just change my focus to the standards and the processes in our company? Question number one. Okay, number two, stop micromanaging and start leading. So micromanagement's rooted in fear, not in leadership. And so what they did is they said like, let them miss the mark once, they'll learn faster. Let your office manager handle the upset patient, it builds ownership. Let your hygienist structure their day ⁓ that's within, again, the parameters of our company culture.   That way they'll be happier. so like ⁓ micromanaging, do feel there needs to be a foundation first in place. And then once we have that, we don't have to micromanage everything. And for me, something I found, there's the founder's theory too, and something I've been learning is as a founder, as someone who started a business, you tend to hold onto so many things because you've had to. Like you've been in the day to day. And so being able to let people and stop   being obsessed with every single detail because we've got the foundations in place. Now, if you don't have the foundations in place, it becomes a lot harder and a lot scarier. But if you have those things in place, what we can do is we actually see a team rise up and what we're telling our team is they're empowered. Like here's the rules of the game within our practice. Now go create our consultants. Here's how we consult. I want you to go be the most autonomous humans and I want you to figure out how to help these practices. And it's crazy because the consultants rise up, they take ownership, they love to be able to do that.   anything within your team being able to see that as well is really something beautiful for them. looking at the call to action on this would be look at your life, look at your practice and where are you holding on so tight? And let's figure out what protocols or processes need to be put into place so our company standards and expectations can be met. And then can we put into practice the let them this week and observe what shifts. Two questions for you to consider. And don't worry for those type A's who are just like gritting.   They're like knuckles right now. Don't worry, that's me too. So I'm not here to say that I'm perfect at this. I just think it's a good perspective shift to help us have more space, more happiness, more peace, and also to figure out where we can like set up the parameters within our company. Number three is let go to grow. ⁓ And so when we hold on tight, just like I talking about, like the white knuckling.   Like even my body, there's stress, there's resistance, there's burnout. Like this is what causes it, because we're trying to hold all the balls in the air. We're trying to do all the pieces and literary practice will outgrow you. ⁓ I watched it happen time and time and time again, and doctors will either learn to let them and like build the processes, build the structure, allow the team members to grow, or they're going to hold on and they're going to shrink. It's one of the two and it happens every single time. There's no right path. It's your path. ⁓ But like let your leadership team run the meetings.   Let your team opt in and out of culture. Don't force it. If they choose not to rock on, they can go find another dream job. That's okay. Let other opinions be theirs. It doesn't define our worth. Like what can we allow like letting go of that? So when we, ⁓ when we stop obsessing about this, like, for example, we stopped trying to hold onto a toxic team member. watched this constantly in offices where it's like, no, I have to keep them and I need to have them like, let them not be great and let them leave because they're not fitting the culture.   And what's crazy is like even that, like my whole body releases, like let them. And I know we're so afraid of like, yeah, but then I won't have team members. Or could it be like, yes, and I've created space for the ideal team member. I will tell you when I have done this every single time. There's not been a single time when I've been like, and we release it, we let them. Someone just as good, if not better has shown up every single time. And so looking at this of...   Where are you maybe holding on too tight that you could allow team members to rise up that you could allow them to take ownership that you could allow them to start to put into place the things you've done. And what's wild is like, tell doctors all the time, like you have to go on vacation. Like that's it. That's a necessity to see where are things broken in your practice? Where do things need to shift and change? ⁓ where can you let your team rise? And if they choose not to rise, that's okay. You know, you don't have the right leaders in place. Like all of it's just data back for you. There's nothing wrong. There's nothing broken. There's nothing that you need to be mad about.   It's just truly data and information to help you then set better foundations, put better protocols into place and to hire team members that more align. ⁓ You will outgrow your team and your team will outgrow you or you will grow together. It'll be one of those three things. And so looking at that and all of that's okay. So I think for this, as we look at it of let people be who they are and stop micromanaging and release what's weighing us down.   This isn't a passive theory. It's very powerful. Letting go is leadership. Letting go is ⁓ truly putting the parameters in place and allowing team members to grow and to thrive within. And again, me coming on here, I feel a little like imposter syndrome because I don't feel like I am always here. I feel like I'm holding on so many times and I'm having the control. But when I like, I make lists, you guys, I feel like a crazy person. Like it's a beautiful mind. That's my office. I have...   papers everywhere and I'm looking at different things. And when I look at what causes me the most amount of stress, it's because I'm trying to do it all. And I'm trying to hold on to everything rather than saying, okay, what's the protocol I need in place? What are the things that truly I need to care for? And as a founder, again, I think that this is, this is a stripping of identity. It's a stripping of things you've always done, but it's also freeing and it's also creating and it's also allowing you to flourish versus just survive. And so for this, ⁓ think like,   Let it looking to see where can I let go and where should I let go? What parameters do I need to put in place? And how can I allow my team to flourish and thrive? I promise you autonomous people and great team members want you to let go. They want to know the rules of the game. They want to know how can I excel? And then once I know the rules of the game, let me like get out of my way and let me show you, let me do more than you ever imagined I could do. ⁓ let me, let me blow your mind with the ideas that I have.   Those are great team members. That's what we want all of our team to be. And so I think for this of possibly, if you haven't read the book, go read the book. If you've read it, maybe read it again and look at yourself to see where am I holding on that's holding us back? Where could I let team members or patients be different and maybe create space for people that I want that have a different code of conduct, not right or wrong, just different. ⁓   And where can I be a stronger leader where I can truly lead and not manage? Leading versus managing, they're two, they feel so interchangeable and they're so separated. And so where can I show up differently? And again, this isn't letting go of standards. This isn't letting go of your standard of excellence. This isn't saying that we're just going to allow chaos because we're just gonna let people be themselves. It's saying, here's the code of conduct. This is what we do. And then we allow people to show up as that.   rise up or rise out, both are great options. ⁓ And so looking at that. really something powerful on the podcast is not just giving you tactical pieces within your practice, but helping you show up as a better leader because leadership is ultimately going to impact the success of your business. I can always tell if a practices as a consulting client will be successful and it's due to the leader. Truly a hundred percent. Who's on my leadership team? How are their behaviors? What are they willing to do? That is the number one indicator of success in consulting and in your practice.   And so for this, I feel it's very relevant that we have to give leadership tips for you, that we have to help you evolve into the next version of leadership that you can be. This is for me, this is for you, this is for all of us. And remembering leadership's not a destination, it's a journey, it's an evolution of soul. Someone once told me having kids will strip you down to the bare ⁓ bones of who you thought you were and ultimately helps evolve you into who you want to be. And I would say, I think business is very much...   a similar and different process. ⁓ It strips you down to nothing. It rips away all the things that you thought you were. We build these businesses to create these different cultures and we end up creating very similar cultures and we have to work so hard to become these different versions of ourselves, to show up differently for our teams, to show up differently for ourselves, ⁓ to evolve. The person that you were is not the person that you need to be to take you to where you want to go. I hope you heard that. The person that you need to be is not who you were.   to take you to where you want to be. And so you have to evolve, you have to grow. And so I would also say, let you become that person. Let you evolve into a different version. Let you become the person that you were meant to be. Leadership is a growth. This is something that I love helping offices do. This is what our consultants obsess about. So if we can help you in any way, reach out, ⁓ figure out how you can lead with clarity, calm and confidence. See how you can be like that practice I told you about where.   your best year of your life or the best year practices lives or the years that you're with Dental A Team because you became a better person. You became a higher version of yourself and we did that for you and your team. That's what we're about. That's what we're obsessed about. And that's what I'd love to help you with. So reach out if that's, if that's what you want, let's chat. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com or click on our website, TheDentalATeam.com and book a call. I'd love to help you. I'd love to evolve who you are meant to be for the practice that you deserve to have. And as always, thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time on The Dental A Team podcast.

Is running a dental practice the most stressful part of your life? Does hiring and retaining the right people seem impossible? Do you question whether dentistry was the right choice for you? Kiera reflects on DAT's recent CEO Dentist Webinar, including what dental leadership ideally looks like — from an individual and team perspective. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript:   Kiera Dent (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera. And today I am so giddy to be recording this podcast. If you missed it, you missed out. We did our CEO dentist webinar workshop and it was so rad. We did it in August and just kudos to all the doctors that were there. If you missed it, you're in luck. I'm going to give you the highlight reel. But I really hope that you plan to join us. It was a three day, ⁓ full playful out workshop that I just thoroughly loved. had doctors.   joining us every single night and really just having that mindset shift of how do I go from being this day in day out operator to a CEO owner of my business? Like what are the things that I really should be doing as a CEO versus what should I be doing as a founder? Like how do we shift that mindset? And we did it based on our proven model, the yes model. You guys have heard me chat about that. The focusing on you and your vision, earnings and profitability, and then systems and team development. So it was just really, really fun. This really was something to help.   Honestly, like afterwards, had so many calls with so many people that were there. And it was just joyful because they said, Kiera, I really want to learn how to be the CEO. Like as you talked about it, I finally understood like what my role should look like and how I should be evolving. And so just really fun. So just want to say thanks for our entire team. Thanks to everybody who joined. And for all of you, if you didn't ⁓ get to be there, you missed out. It was like full blown. And I did a little surprise. I wasn't expecting it, but I actually ended up ⁓   like doing an after party and it was really fun to just have real conversations. So ⁓ really, truly just a highlight. And today I'm going to kind of like break this down into what we did. I'll give a couple of highlights from each day of just for you to kind of get the highlight reel of it. And then, Hey, if you ever want to chat about how to become the CEO dentist of your practice, this is what we're doing for a lot of offices. I've kind of been shifting our model to help dentists and teams really elevate to have practices that run with team.   leadership to have dentists to truly run in their realm of being that healthcare provider that you love and or exiting and going out of the chair. No, there's no set path. It's your path and really helping dentists ⁓ just elevate to that level of like, do I own this business and not have it own me? So just super jazz. That's what we're working on. Just really, really, really fun and exciting things and getting your team bought into this as well. So with that, I'm just excited. Welcome. If you're new to the podcast, I'm Kiera. It's super nice to meet you.   ⁓ I love all things dentistry, including my last name is Dent. ⁓ I came from self-made, ⁓ being able to help practices grow to the level, the growth, the fulfillment, the joy that they want, helping doctors and teams align. And this is coming from real life, all of my experiences, all of our collective experience of our consulting team, bringing you tactical practical tips to make your life and your business work for you and not against you. So with that,   ⁓ was just a jazz. Like it was so fun. So the first day we really talked about, ⁓ just some topics of like who can relate. So if you can relate to this great, this podcast is for you. number one is running a dental practice is the most stressful part of your life. hiring and retaining the right people seems almost impossible. Some months so great. Others feel like you're drowning. Your patients are canceling last minute, leaving your team and you helpless. know how to be a dentist, but you have no clue how to run a business. You're alone with your problems.   You question if dentistry was the right choice for you. You feel like everyone has it together, but you don't. ⁓ and I hope if you answered yes to any of those questions, you realize that truly, truly, truly, you're not alone. And every single dentist feels this at some point and some survive and others thrive. And so the whole goal of the CEO Dennis workshop was to help you thrive. And so on the first day we really went through like, what exactly is a CEO? I remember there was this aha moment in my career where I'm like,   what does a CEO actually do? I'm not joking, I Googled this and I was like, what is a CEO? Like, what do they do? And it was a good, I would say a good, ⁓ probably identity shift for me. To realize like a CEO is your chief executive officer. So like, this is the person who executes. So you oversee the execution of day to day, but you don't do it all. So your job is to lead the vision, plan for the future.   Create and protect the culture and do big opportunities, but stay out of the weeds. Like that's genuinely what you're supposed to do. And a lot of dentists, we'll add one more Asherick. A lot of times you do the dentistry. Sometimes you do it full time and other times you hire associate dentists to do it with you. So like, that's what it means. It means you oversee. You think about a CEO of Amazon, they are not packing the boxes and shipping it out. They are not calling on all the customer service things. They are not creating the bots and the software.   Their job is to look over the vision. Their job is to keep people accountable. Their job is to plan for the future, look for the big opportunities, ⁓ really truly protect the culture and stay out of the weeds. So I think when I looked at that, I'm like, how many dentists actually live like this? Probably not a lot. So what we did is we like went through an audit and then we worked on like the key foundation and this might feel a little fluffy and I'm sure some participants might have thought this, but if we don't get the you portion of the yes model correct, we can't say yes to things.   The number one, and I purposely built the yes model in the pillars in the exact formula of you first earning second systems third. And if you will follow this model, you really truly can get there. And so what we talked about is how like how you show up as a leader directly impacts the success, the relationships, your financial and personal freedom and the overall happiness and fulfillment you have in your practice. So when I look at this, like, okay, great. You have to take care of you and   We talked about like actually how to shift your identity. And so a lot of times people identify themselves today. But if you knew like Tony Robbins said, the strongest force in the human personality is the need to stay consistent with how we define ourselves, not who we actually are, but how we define ourselves. So what we actually had ⁓ everybody doing the workshop on day one was to create this new identity of being the CEO dentist. Like what would the CEO dentist do or not do? ⁓ you're still checking charts at night. What a CEO handle end of day task like that.   Yes or no. No one's held accountable. What does CEO allow chaos to become culture? Your team's just clocking in. How would a CEO reignite motivation? You're bleeding cancellations. How would a CEO oversee the systems to prevent that? Your schedule's full, but your profits don't show it. How would a CEO fix that? Cashflow is unpredictable. How would a CEO create stability? You're doing busy work and have no time to look at the big picture. How would a CEO solve it?   So just again, it's like when we shift our identity, not from who you are, but to a CEO. So I now am, I'm not Kiera, I'm not dentist Kiera. I am now, you guys, I was never dentist Kiera. I was dental assistant Kiera, I'm consulting Kiera. But for you, like you're dentist John, you go in, you do the fillings, you are this practice owner. But what would CEO John or CEO Kiera or CEO Sarah or CEO Marsha or CEO Tom or CEO Tony or CEO Kevin, what would they do or not do?   And when you can shift this identity, you can actually start to see, and you can look at the delegation ladder. And we talked about the delegation ladder of what tasks, because when you're a small business versus when you expand and become a larger business, you actually have different, like it's literally in a tier of what you're going to delegate and when, because as a founder is a new startup, as a CEO, you're doing a lot of the work. You don't have the cashflow. You can't afford it. You're going to do all the work. So at that point, that CEO is doing that.   But as the practice builds and evolves, a lot of CEOs stay there and they don't actually evolve into delegating the tasks that they should be. And so when we go through the entire delegation ladder from like administrative tasks, a patient experience, treatment coordinator, and selling cases to marketing, to leadership, these are all the zones of where is your name out on that delegation ladder and where should it be based on the current size of your practice. And then what, even if you're small, what's your next hire? Well, first hires administrative tasks. So it's either a front office team member, it's a personal assistant, or it's an office manager.   that's going to immediately delegate all of those front office tasks for you, but they're going to do all of that. And then you move into, you're doing the patient experience, you're doing the closing of the cases, you're doing the marketing, you're doing the leadership, like, but you, you offload that first and then you offload the next and the next and the next. And so really looking at this of like, we, it was really cute. We had this fairy godmother and it's like, you are now the CEO. It's time to be the CEO. And I think for us on day one of people just being highlighted of   you now have this new identity. And so looking at it of when I look at this, what's standing in my way of being the CEO? What does my dream business look like? What does that vision timeline look like for me? And what must change now to become the CEO? So as you go through that, that was a quick recap of day one. And then we rolled right into day two, which day two is a lot more tactical. Day one's a bit more of you, you becoming and taking on this new identity. And I will tell you,   when I got on calls afterwards, because it was actually real fun. We had a lot of calls, really excited to welcome the new offices to our company and to our group. And they're already shifting and changing. had some people text me after that of saying, I'm now committing to being the CEO dentist. And when you take and embody a new identity, like, because I thought through this and we were brainstorming as we were prepping this webinar or this workshop. And I thought, how am going to get people to recognize that the you portion is the most pivotal pillar of this whole success model?   And how do get them to do it quickly? And I realized change identity is the fastest way to change. But like changing identity can feel hard. But if I tell you like, it's like putting on a t-shirt and I say, all right, today you're wearing CEO t-shirt. How are you going to act? Just like I can be Kiera, the executor. I can be Kiera, the consultant. I can be Kiera, the sales. I can be Kiera, the customer service. Those are just t-shirts and hats. But if I'm going to put on my main t-shirt, my main hat, I change my identity and I walk into that office every day. And I'm now the CEO dentist.   you will start to act quicker and faster. It's just like the person who wants to get healthy read Atomic Habits. say what they do is they don't ask them to like become healthy. They say, what would a healthy person do? Well, they would walk to their car instead of driving and get the closest parking spot. They would eat snacks like celery sticks for snacks rather than other things. They would have their tennis shoes by the side of their bed. They would go walking every day. you don't, and that's how you'd be able to like, what would a CEO dentist do? What would a CEO dentist not do?   That's how you can start to shift this identity and become that. So that was just a quick, like I said, quick recap of day one and then day two is just fun. It's about numbers. ⁓ Numbers are one of my favorite things because you've got to really understand numbers because numbers are your superpower. Not knowing your numbers, believe it or not, causes more stress than knowing them. Even if they're bad, even if they're good, not knowing because you're getting this constant fear of like, are they good? Do we have money? I don't know. It's also helping you make confident decisions.   develops the steps of where you need to go. And it also helps you track progress to take action before it's too late. So really numbers to me are the proactive approach in a business rather than the reactive. And it's okay, it does not matter where we start. It always helps us then become more proactive as we're going through. So we went through KPI. So a key performance indicator, which one should you be looking at? What are some common ones? We went through stats and KPI spreadsheets, how we look at these, like what we need to do on the daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly. So like daily we're looking at month.   Today production collections, we only have that 98%. We also want to look at our end of day sheet, making sure we've got all of those procedures built out weekly. We're looking at our KPIs to review during doctor and OM weekly meetings. So looking at trends, creating action items before things get too late, like literally our entire team and our clients, they track stats every single week. Cause we're looking for trends. The offices that do this are always my profitable offices. The offices that don't are the not profitable. Like it is science though, like what you track and measure improves. So track.   Monthly, you do your month and number review, like all the KPIs, what were the trends and what are we going to do better next month? Where are we at? I just talked to an office the other day. We realized we're a hundred thousand behind where we want to be for end of year. We have four months left or two months left or one mother, wherever you are. But if you plan and you look ahead. Four months, trying to make up a hundred grand is way easier to do than two months, trying to make up a hundred grand. So when we look at that and you just change the game, you change how we schedule, we change how we're going to do our block schedules. All of it is really easy, but if you don't look at this and you don't measure it.   Huh, you're in stress. This is stress. ⁓ We look at our overhead, we look at our PNL, and then quarterly we look at our year to date, where are we at? What are the gaps? We're gonna set reach goals or quarterly goals, and then we track weekly and make sure we're on track for that. So we went through a monthly cost spreadsheet too. This is honestly my most favorite spreadsheet of all time. So legit, I love it, and it's here, and it's something that I have of what is our monthly BAM, our bare ACE minimum? What does it cost us to run the practice?   on a high end, low end and where we currently are. So if I've got to scale and add more people, if I need to reduce in times of chaos or hard times, I at least know those numbers and that will give you so much confidence because now you've got a piece of the puzzle to then know what do we need to produce? What do we need to collect? We went through an overhead calculator and what are the benchmarks? What should my payroll be? What should my supplies be? Labs, advertising, all of that. What's my overhead? What's my doctor salary and where can I cut? Because the way to fix your numbers are three things. One, decrease what we're spending.   That's one, two, increase production and three, increase collections. If our collections, cause you can be producing and if you're not collecting, guess what your overhead sky high strip, like that's a stressful zone. Just go collect the money. You've already done it. Collect the money. If we're not producing enough to cover our bills, well, we need to increase our production and build block schedules and different pieces like that to make sure what we need to produce for our practice is actually there. And then like looking at our costs, what can we cut? What things could be more efficient in? do we maybe need to delay a hire or do we need to make the hire?   whatever it is, but knowing those areas, like that's where math becomes very fun. Numbers become fun. It's just a simple math equation. It's not hard. We're not going into algebra and geometry and calculus and all of that trig. No, it's literally simple, basic math where we can say, okay, this is what I'm making. This is what I'm spending. And this is what we're collecting. Which of those levers do I need to turn? And so showing offices how like collections matter and different pieces like   going through an overhead calculator, had actual spreadsheets for KPIs, for a monthly cost spreadsheet, for our overhead calculator. All of that was actually really, really lovely. And then showing offices like we're aiming for you to be 20 % profitable after doctors paid, after all expenses are paid, 20 % profit is what we aim for with our practices. And so when you look at your profit, and if right now you're like, I don't even know profit, hey, let's chat. Let's talk about it because you gotta make the money and keep the money. We're gonna make sure we're not spending more money than we're making. And then we're prepping and preparing and we're working towards that profit margin.   having cash flow, having profit at the end of the month will lower your stress radically. So we went through all that. We also had like a whole KPI checklist to have, and it was really fun because when we look at these numbers, this is where the stress stops. And we actually went through like a real life example with the people that were participating with us and they could quickly see, you don't even know this practice. Look at this KPI scorecard. What do you see and what should this practice take immediate action on? Again, a CEO hat, a CEO shirt.   That person's going to look at the trends. They're not going to go dig into the weeds. Most of the time, they're going to look at this and say, okay, well, if my production's 160 and my collections are a hundred right now, even you listening on the podcast, you can tell that's my gap. We're producing 160, but we're collecting a hundred now that one succeed because we're putting in our numbers in gross, not net production. That's a problem. Fix that. Maybe our collections are good, but if we're producing that in net and we're only collecting a hundred thousand, that's a huge gap. What do we need to do to fix our collections?   Our year to date collection presented 62%. You know right there. And when this office had an overhead of 85%, well, to me looking at that without even knowing this practice, they have a collections problem right there. They increase the collections, their overhead goes down, money instantly becomes available. So many offers like, here, we don't have the money. And I look and I'm like, you got 500,000 in AR, you've got the money. We just need to collect the money. You're producing well, your expenses are in line. Or other times like our expenses are high. Let's reduce that. Let's figure out how we can get it.   So giving some parameters in that and really knowing like, when you look at as a quick review for you, do you actually use your numbers as super power? So one, do you have KPIs? Two, do you review them weekly? Three, does every team member have their own number and do they track them? So meaning like a number that's going to move the business forward that they know that they can impact that they own as ownership. Does your team know how they can impact the numbers? Do you know your overhead? Do you know what's in your AR right now? How much money is sitting out?   And do you have a plan to get to ideal profit? So answering those questions really will help you kind of have an overview of, all right, got it. These are the things. And I will say for anybody, you want, we actually gave away a lot of these worksheets. So to anybody who scheduled the call. So if you're like, Hey, I'm just curious, like, how can you help me with like maybe my you portion, maybe my earning portion or the last person of systems and team development. Hey, schedule a call with us. I'm happy to share a lot of these spreadsheets with you in a lot of the pieces, because why not? I know you weren't there and I know you didn't get all of it.   But I would love to help you out and I'd love to give you a lot of these resources. So book a call. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com or go to our website, TheDentalATeam.com click book a call. I think it's really something lovely to be able to help. And honestly, Hey, why not? You're going to get all the resources and we're to be able to give you a true roadmap for your practice. actually do. ⁓ it's about an hour long complimentary call where we actually go through your practice. give you a highlight, ⁓ of where to go. What are kind of the big pieces in your practice and then also give you resources. So really it's a no risk for you.   ⁓ It's no pressure, just truly clarity and momentum. So, ⁓ and like I said, the KPI scorecard, the monthly spending, the overhead calculator, those types of things I think are just so powerful to be able to access those and to even see what you should or could be doing. So then as a wrap, day three of the workshop was so fun. It was one of my favorite days. Shout out to Eve, our marketer. She said, Kiera.   I want you to really try something for me. And I'm all here for innovation creation. Like let's try something new. And she said on systems, I want us to do like a rapid fire. And so what we did, because what I found is one, you have the vision, you take on this, this, this new hat, new identity of I'm the CEO dentist. You now know that numbers are your superpower and you're going to use your numbers to not be used by your numbers. So you're to look at the numbers and we're going to see where are the gaps.   whatever your numbers are. So the numbers need to lead to the vision and whatever numbers tell us, the numbers tell us a story. Just like that example I gave you, there was a collections problem. Well, great. If there's a collections problem, that's the system that we now go implement into a practice. So it's really, really great to see like, my gosh, I don't have to like eat this whole elephant. It's very simple based on the vision and the numbers to tell you which systems are broken, which systems are lacking and what things we need to implement, improve or optimize. So the last part was systems and Dental A Team, I   I like cadences. like to see like a map. So I put 12 systems for the 12 months of the year. And some of you have heard these things in the past. You can look these up on our website. We've got lots of them, but basically just like, okay, what's my kind of outlook for every single month? So January's office management mastery and leadership, February's doctor optimization. So making sure like endo, CE, Botox, like whatever it is, we're just optimizing our doctor procedures in-house, looking to see what could we do to optimize that more.   March is billing with ease, April's five-star patient experience, May is smooth sailing scheduling, June is maximized case acceptance, July is dynamite dental assistance, August is elevated hygiene, September is confident marketing, October is complete operations manual, so get that thing done, November is practice profitability, what we just discussed, and December, yes, pun intended, A-Team hiring and onboarding. So like a little calendar for you to, as you're going through as a CEO,   Now you don't have to think of like, I've got to do all the systems. You've got a checklist of, all right, let me go look at this system. Let me go look at this system. Let me look at this category and see what could I optimize? What could we improve? What could we enhance? So what we did is we actually did a speed round and it was a yes or no. You weren't allowed to have anything gray and we had three questions under every system. So they went through 36 different areas of their practice and it was either yes or no to then say, how are your systems in those areas?   So for example, and people were giving a zero out of three, a one out of three, a two out of three or a three out of three. So let's go to management mastery. This would be your office manager. I review weekly KPIs to ensure we're on track to hit goals. It's either a yes or no. There's no in between. My leadership team runs effective meetings and follows up on action items. Yes or no. know each team members receiving regular one-on-one coachings for growth monthly. Yes or no. And I'll give you a trickier one. Cause why not? Let's like, people were like, I was doing so good. And then I got into.   Some of these other ones, so let me grab, let's do maximize case acceptance. This one would be our practice maintains at least a 75 % patient case acceptance and tracks it daily. Yes or no? You might be having that. And if you don't know, then it's a no. We have a solid follow-up system for unscheduled treatment and offer easy financing options. Yes or no? Next, visits are scheduled in the back office to help increase case acceptance. Yes or no? So what we did is there's so many things within every single system, but tried to break it down so people could quickly see.   of the 12 systems, where am I maybe lacking to then maybe take execution and action and also as CEO. then no great. have a focus for every single month that I can really look at. I can have a checklist. I can look at this and then we actually take action to improve our practice consistently. So we worked through that. And then we said that the piece is we can talk about you as a leader. We can talk about money and profitability and systemization, but for excellent systems to stick.   You have to have extraordinary leadership. And this is where it was like, but wait, what about the CEO dentist? Do I have to do all of this? And the answer is again, as a CEO, your job is to lead the vision, plan for the future, create and protect the culture, big opportunities and stay out of the weeds. That's your job. That's what you're supposed to do. And maybe we can add in their clinical dentistry if you want to, but like that is what you do. So for that, Britt and I actually then went into their, their two dimensions of leadership because we started thinking about this and in that delegation ladder,   There is this zone of leadership and one side is going to be the executive and that's the future planning, the vision, the culture. Like that is truly the CEO dentist, but there's a split side to it. And the other side is the management side. So Britt and I actually make the yin and yang of the leadership team. I've got the executive side. Britt's got the management side. And management side is operations and systems, people, and then nitty gritty details. Britt is amazing at this. I'm amazing at vision and you need both of those pieces to work in harmony together.   to have it and it's usually not the same person. And so helping people go through that and to see where am I strong? And as the CEO of your practice, you might actually flourish in the management side and that's a okay. You need to hire somebody who's a visionary next to you. Or you might be freaking awesome at the visionary side. You need a strong manager that does all the pieces that you are actually not naturally good at, nor should you be spending your time on to pair gently with you and perfectly with you.   This way your practice can flourish and you can actually be the owner of your business rather than being owned by your business. So looking at this, was really like, where do you actually fall as a CEO dentist, executive leader? Where are you doing? What needs to change in your practice? And as we go through this for you to even kind of do an assessment of how am doing on my vision and owning and being the CEO dentist and that identity and truly sitting in that seat. Then what about my numbers and how's the profitability of my business, the future progress and growth?   And then looking at my systems, how are we on those 12 systems? What needs to happen? And then on my executive leadership, am I on the visionary side or on the management side? And who do I need to have? And do I have a strong person? Is that the right person in the right seat there? Or does that need to be evolved? And so it's one of those pieces of like, we have all the pieces, like we, we know, but how do we actually make this go from like knowledge to action? And I think that was the piece of really helping people.   ⁓ recognize that time is so fluid and so fast. And when I look back, I shared a story of where I truly was sitting in a room of a bunch of really smart business owners and I'm like, I don't even know what they're talking about. And I think so many times when we hear a podcast like this or we listen, we know we should be doing it, but we don't actually know how and we feel inferior. It's what we do is we just keep doing the same thing. And rather than that, I would maybe suggest you take a pause and you say, are you really the best person as a CEO to do this? Or...   Is it maybe worth it to hire somebody who knows how to do it and has been there, done that and done it successfully to help you and your team. I really, really dislike coaching for myself. So that's why I built that only team the way I did. I don't like to be coached as the CEO and then have to try and take that back to my team. That's exhausting. There's things that I need to know. And there's things that my team needs to know. And that's actually why we built Dental A Team the way we did. We coach doctors and teams. We teach doctors how to be the executive.   We teach you how to be the CEO, how to get out of the weeds, how to empower your team. And then we teach teams how to follow up so dentists can actually let go. We can build the leadership. We build the tracking. We build the numbers so you can sit there and confidently run your business rather than being ran by your business. And to think about like when I took the leap of faith to hire a coach, when I didn't know and was so scared to do it, I look, and that was six years ago that I hired her. And in those six years, things that happened like Dental A Team,   has definitely grown. Like we have hundreds of clients that we're able to serve on a very personal intimate level. I was very adamant as we built this company that I would never go to a spot where people just felt like a number and not a person. And so being able to scale it to grow, because my mission is to positively impact the world of dentistry and to do it in the greatest way possible. Like truly, how do I do this, but make people still feel like a person and to be seen. So Dental A Team, you want to be here? If I would have not like taken the leap and.   gotten the help that I needed and truly owned that I'm a CEO. I'm not expected to know everything. And I need to hire people that are smarter than me, better than me, and help me grow and optimize in areas that I don't even know. ⁓ My confidence wouldn't be here. My passion, the certainty of myself, my growth, my purpose, my freedom of life, like the life that I get to live now versus the life I was living, the ability to say yes to everything I need, want, and deserve. And that's why I built the yes model, because to help other doctors, other team members be able to say yes.   to everything you need, want and deserve is life changing. That's why we've got the Yes model. And so for that, it was just a really fun, like it was such a beautiful thing to walk people through a complete workshop to help them see where am I at? And I hope today you took kind of the notes and you look to see like, am I at? And just know that being the CEO and owning your business is not a destination, but it's a journey.   It's a space and you'll get more and more into that, but it's a forever evolution. You're never fully systematized. You're never always profitable. You're never always going to sit perfectly in the CEO seat. You're going to ebb and flow and it's just like a mountain and climbing the mountain. There's peaks and valleys and there's highs and there's lows and that's the game of business that we signed up for, but not doing it alone, not trying to figure it all out on your own, not trying to solve all the problems. I think is one of the most beautiful things. So if that resonates with you, we really talked about like joining consulting.   is only for offices that want to thrive and not just survive. It's you want strong systems in your practice that work with or without you there. You want to improve your leadership skills and actually learn how to be the CEO dentist. You want to be the CEO dentist that you were meant to be. You want to have a team that enjoys their work and owns their work. You want to be with peers like other dentists, other office managers, other leadership teams that make you better. Not that of like comparison and competition, but out of true genuine lifting each other up.   bringing part of a bigger community that's more that gives you hope, gives you help, gives you ⁓ benchmarks to look forward to, gives you ideas of how to do it differently and better. And you know that there must be a better, easier way because you know that there truly is. And so if that's something that you're interested in, like I'd love for you to reach out. Like I know you weren't able to attend the workshop. I hope you tend next year. Cause it was like so much more than I could even give on this podcast. But if that resonates with you.   Schedule the practice growth call. Like truly we're going to go through it. It's complimentary. We're going to dig through all the pieces of your practice. Look at a lot of things we just discussed and the added bonus is you will get all of the resources. So KPI scorecard, KPI checklist, fixed cost spreadsheet, ⁓ our monthly cost spreadsheet, the overhead calculator, the cashflow guide, some really, really incredible things that I think are just so valuable and powerful for you. But more than that, you're going to get clarity and momentum. And I think right now that's one of the greatest gifts you could give yourself. So book the call.   take action. You don't have to do it all yourself. And I think that that's like get out of the weeds because we need your vision. We need you to be the leader of the business. We need you to actually be looking at the numbers, having a team, driving that forward because no one else is doing that. You're the leader at the helm and it's either you or it's got to be someone else. But generally speaking, it's you, the dentist, the owner. And so let's help you out. Let's give you that freedom. Let's give you that confidence. Let's give you that roadmap.   and do it in a way that's for you and your practice. So reach out, head to the website, TheDentalATeam.com, book a call, email us, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. And truly let's help you out. Let's do a complimentary call and just see where are you at? How can we help you? And like I said, as an ad bonus, let them know you listened to the CEO Dennis Workshop ⁓ podcast and we will happily give you those downloads. ⁓ They are tactical, they're practical, they're able to be put into place right away because you all know I love tactical, practical, and you know that my biggest passion is you.   It's you being successful. It's you having the life that you want. It's being able to have life on your terms, to be able to say yes to everything that you want, need and deserve. That's why you did this. That's why you went to dentistry. And so let's give you the life that you had always envisioned. And let's take that from a dream and a wish to a reality. And with that, thanks so much for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast. ⁓  

Tiff and Dana take a close look at a practice that wanted to get a handle on its growth. They discuss knowing numbers inside and out, forming a growth plan, keeping your team involved in any expansion. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript:   The Dental A Team (00:00) Hello Dental A Team listeners. I am just so excited. It is Friday today. I don't know what day you're listening to this or what day it will drop, but you know, these are prerecorded. are not live. So that is not a shock to you. This Friday is almost ending. I think we've got a couple hours left under our belts for both of us, but I get to end it with Ms. Dana and I have missed you, Dana. I was on vacation last week and I feel like I barely saw you the week prior. And then this week has been crazy for both of us and   I love our time together. think I scheduled this extra time just to chat next week because I miss you so much. So, Dana, you're rocking this outfit today. I told you that this morning on our morning huddle. Yes, we do morning huddles. And this cut you've got on your hair, I've told you already, but I freaking love it. You look stellar today. So welcome to Friday, Dana. How are you?   Dana (00:51) Doing good. I'm excited to end, well, almost end my day with you two. I'm excited. I know we probably don't want to get into it on this podcast, but I can't wait to hear about your trip. And, you know, I'll take as much tip time as I can get. So I'm super excited to be here and to be able to chat with you and to maybe help some people too while we're at it.   The Dental A Team (01:13) ⁓ thank you. Thank you. know I did. I scheduled our time next week and I was like, that's our catch up time. But I can say I did figure out I know you recently went on a cruise. ⁓ I am not a cruiser. It's not my jam. So I figured that out. But it was a great sampler platter and I fell in love with Italy. So we'll say that and I've got a lot of stories. I literally yesterday I was like, I need to like, type these out or write them in a journal or something because you know, in 10 years, I'm gonna forget half of them and there are just so many stories out of   the nine days that I was gone. So I'm excited to chat with you. And we can share our cruise stories, I guess, right? They're wild. Cruises are wild. Cruise people are a little wild. If you're out there listening, like you're a little wild. I don't know about these 11 PM, like bingo nights and stuff. I'm like, guys, it's wild. But here we are.   Dana (01:59) Yeah. I left mine   feeling like you. not necessarily, I don't think that like I put it at the top of my list. Would I do another one maybe? But I don't think that it's at the top of my preferred methods for traveling.   The Dental A Team (02:15) Same, same,   same. But you know, Vegas isn't on my top list either. And it kind of felt like Vegas on water. So maybe it's me. I said 10, 15 years ago, you know, in my young years, I would have been all about it, you know, and I would have stayed up all night and gone to Rome the next morning. But at the age that I'm at now, not so much, not so much. I'm tired. My kid puts me to bed every night at like 8.15. He's like, all right, mom, we're part and ways. I'm like, you're right. I'm falling asleep on the couch. Let's go. So.   Dana (02:43) you   The Dental A Team (02:44) Anyways, anyways today, ⁓ Dana, I'm here to pick your brain. You've had, you've had monster success. think all of our consultants have had a lot of success, but you've had some pretty monster success with a few practices that you've got a load of practices under your belt, ⁓ over the years and currently working with quite a few rock stars and some that have come back around because they miss Dana so much. So, you know, if you're out there and you're missing Dana, you guys, she's still here.   We love her and we're keeping her. She's not going anywhere. But you have actually worked with, ⁓ a few of us have worked with clients out of the country too. And you specifically, you've worked with a handful. I think you've probably worked with more than any of us have out of the country. So today's conversation is kind of fun because it is chatting a little bit about somebody who's out of the country, like their successes that they've had. not in the United States, but.   for one, kind of notifying everybody out there, especially our Canadian listeners here. We do work with clients in Canada all the time. And Dana is actually a super stellar. She's trained a lot of us on a lot of things she's learned. And we've all been able to really kind of figure out how to manipulate some of our US standards and our ideas and our protocols and really translate them towards Canadian. And I think the biggest pieces in the Canadian world there are the billing.   and the way the claims go out and the things that you're able to build and collections processes, things like that. But we've kind of got that down. Dana did a ton of work with this practice in regards to that. So today's actually super fun because it's also really cool to see, I think Dana, I think it's awesome to see that like business is business. I say that all the time, like I don't care what your company is. We've worked with CPAs, we've worked with ⁓ podiatrists, we've had...   you know, chiropractors that we've consulted because business is business protocols or protocols. So it's really cool to see that even dentistry outside of the country, so many of the systems and the protocols that we use every single day that I would say some of us take for granted are totally transferable. So today's conversation, I really wanted to dive in and kind of pick your brain, on how this client was able to see so much success. They were really, they're really a fantastic client. And I know that they implement really well.   ⁓ And that's a huge piece of the success, you guys. If you come and we give you the tools and you don't implement them, I can't do it for you, right? So Dana, I know this client does really well in that aspect, but I mean, you took them, I mean, I'll let you tell the story, but their production, their collections kind of skyrocketed once you started really cleaning up some of those systems. Where do you feel like was the best starting point? Like I know you had like Keaton on,   on some things we always do, what was our journey like?   Dana (05:32) ⁓ The first thing is this office came in and they were they were doing well, right? They weren't sure how well they were doing though. So we really really started with numbers. ⁓ Knowing numbers inside and out, knowing expenses inside and out, knowing what goals should be. ⁓   you know, even knowing where payroll expenses were sitting and things like that. So it first first started with number review. So that we basically knew how well they were doing to be able to kind of put projections in place and look at growth trajectory and talk about like what growth should be or could look like. But it started really with honing in on those foundations and getting the doctor to understand.   their numbers and what they were telling them as far as ⁓ growth and opportunity that there were for the practice. So we really, really started in with that. We did create a scorecard so that they could look at numbers every ⁓ month. We looked at trends together and really, really got them comfortable in what the numbers told them. then it was like, okay, I'm ready for the growth, right? I can see, I think some doctors come in and it's like, well, I feel like I'm doing okay. And I feel like I want to grow, but I actually don't know if I can grow.   because I don't know like what my foundation is. So that was really, really eye opening. The other thing was this doctor was working a ton of time and didn't necessarily have any time to work on the business, right? It was always working in the business. So then it was taking the numbers and creating a plan to work them out of the business at least one day a week ⁓ and to also then create some admin time.   within the rest of the week. getting them to have those pieces really allowed for them to have discussions on what a growth plan.   looks like and it kind of helped us take off from there. So looking at the numbers, we realized, you know, the number of patients that they had, he really couldn't serve on, you know, solo. So then we started looking at associates and bringing in associates to the practice. And then when associate schedules started to get full, was like, what's next? And so then it was adding surgery services and sedation and getting hospital days. And so it was really, really fun. And then we got to a certain   point of growth and it was like, this is so much for me to manage. And then we built a leadership team. So there was just a lot, a lot of pieces that happened. ⁓ But honestly, and truly practice came in at about 3.2 million and was projected to end that year at five. Right. So it was a ton of growth, but it honestly and truly started with knowing the numbers and knowing where the potential was and what we needed to do, what levers we needed to do to pull to make growth really happen.   The Dental A Team (08:02) Well.   Mm-hmm. That makes sense. makes so much sense. So the projections and that growth plan that you did with them, how did you project that? So to know that you could take them from that 3.2 that they probably didn't even know they were accomplishing. It sounds like they were successful, but like you said, they didn't know their numbers. They didn't know how successful, which happens, think, a lot for our clients. We attract clients who are doing well and just don't know the space that is left to target.   So how did you help them find that within that growth plan?   Dana (08:47) Yeah, we first started just looking at like patient number because it was feeling like yes, they were doing well, but you know being like schedules were jam-packed. So looking at active patients and actually saying hey you do need to actually grow your hygiene department.   right? So to be able to serve the patients you already have within the practice. So then we really honed in on how many, how much hygiene time do we actually need, right? For this practice. And then looking at, and this is one thing that like where Canada does differ in their billing, especially for hygiene, they, can bill for time, right? We bill for services in the U S they can bill for time. And it does still illustrate a point though, that when we're billing for what we're doing time or not time, right? It's important. So making sure that there are standard billing.   and for the US, right, it's not necessarily billing, it's actually like perio and what we recommend in the time that we have with the patient, but really getting them calibrated on that and really getting them all moving in the same direction.   And then I was expanding the hygiene department. Once we've expanded the hygiene department, then we needed the providers. We needed the providers to do the restorative dentistry since we expanded the hygiene department. So we really started with hygiene and started with adding hours there, really making sure that we fine-tuned the billing process so that, know, hygienists were producing really what they should be producing for their time. And then adding, again, the doctors in there for the restorative that came out of hygiene was just kind where we started.   started.   The Dental A Team (10:16) Awesome. And it sounds like they were at a space then where I think a lot of doctors get to, or a lot of practices get to where it's either I'm good and I'm going to like steady eddy this and I'm just going to, I'm going to stay where I'm at, or I want to continue growing. And I think a lot of doctors get to that space and they think I'm supposed to continue growing. And that's not a hundred percent always the case. It's not necessary. You should continue to grow to keep up with inflation.   obviously, but I think ⁓ something that needs to be said is you don't have to add more hygiene. You don't have to add more doctors. You don't have to do all of those things. But if you want to continue to grow, you want to continue to see those ⁓ numbers increase the way this practice is did, that's a great step to take. And being able to first see all of the patients that you have currently, ⁓ not even including, it sounds like any new patients, we're just   trying to handle the current load, I think is fantastic. And then like you said, it sounds like you did a decent job really honing in, not just the billing, because we want to bill for time, right? I get that. But also honing in their peri-o protocols. while you're increasing, well, we added, you know, added associates. But while you guys were increasing the value on the doctor's side over there, you made sure, it sounds like that.   hygiene was able to keep up with the increased production on the doctor side. And I think that gets missed a lot, Dana, where it's like skyrocketing doctors and we're like, why is hygiene at 12 % of our production now? Well, because we forgot to focus on them. And I think that's something you guys did really well. And I'm sure your hygiene background helped you see that this is an important space. those perio protocols really, really helped, I'm sure. And how did their team do?   Dana (12:05) Mm-hmm.   The Dental A Team (12:07) A big scare I think doctors have is getting hygienists on board. Our hygienists have a scare of maybe changing their thought process on a lot of those pieces. How did this practice do with implementing those changes in their period department?   Dana (12:22) They did a really, really good job, but I will say when we decided to kind of tackle that, we really booked out a set of meetings where they really were able to work through it, to look at each other's patients, to look at what each other built, to look at what each other did for those patients, to pull x-rays and FMPs and all of those things and really work through it together and really calibrate. ⁓ They had a series of, I think,   monthly meeting for four months and really really work through it together as well as at that point we had a leadership team and so having the lead hygienist really double check those things and have conversations with   you know, some hygienists initially took it on really strong and they did really well. Other hygienists didn't do quite as well, quite as fast. And so just having individual conversations, using some of the other hygienists as examples, and really letting those that were really strong give verbiage tips, give billing tips, give all sorts of tips to the hygienists who weren't as strong. And they really, really leveled up and learned from each other, which I was super proud of them for.   The Dental A Team (13:28) That's awesome. That's awesome. So the planning and the prepping, I think, is key and having those initial conversations, but then also having follow up. Because I'm sure some of those conversations were, like you said, seeing the other patients and being able to see those spaces. But I'm sure some of those conversations were like, how did this go for you? And what was your case acceptance? Or how many times have you talked about it? And how did that conversation go? And really kind of batting ideas back and forth. And I would venture to say you probably also   had those meetings set up for the doctors too, where they're calibrating. You've got your owner doctor and your two associates who are calibrating, especially as you brought on more dental surgeries and, you know, it looks like you guys worked on hospital privileges and all kinds of things for them. But I assume based on what I know is that those doctors had to calibrate as well. So he's not only training doctors, training hygiene, but they're all kind of training each other. Is that what you saw?   Dana (14:27) Yeah, it was. And that's why we really put leadership meetings in place. ⁓ And the cool thing about this growth, like you said, you get to a point where you kind of have to choose, right? Do you want to stay where you are? Do you want and he didn't want growth, right? But he didn't want to necessarily take on more dentistry. And I think that was a key thing to really talk about is what does that long term picture for you look like so that as we build it, gets you to those points. And so we knew it meant bringing on other doctors, we knew it meant expanding services in some ways to get them   massive amount of growth that was wanted, but without it being him, right? Because, like, young kiddos family, like wanting to just prioritize that and have days away and, you know, totally understand that but how can we still have growth and have that happen?   The Dental A Team (15:03) him. Yeah.   Mm-hmm, that's awesome. That's awesome. Now within that growth trajectory, and I know we have a lot of team members that listen, not only is this helping the doctor and the practice and the associate dentist and all of these different pieces, but it's also helping the team because I think when you have, that kind of a growth trajectory for a practice and you've got a growth plan set, you've got the goals set, this also trickles down into the growth of the team.   Right. And so I think something you mentioned, right, was the leadership team. so one, you don't always have to have a leadership team in place before you have the growth. First of all, because I think a lot of people are wondering like, what's the chicken? What's the egg? Which comes first. And it doesn't, it doesn't really matter. It doesn't, you can have one, but you don't have to wait for the growth. You don't have to until you have one. Right. But part of that growth trajectory and the growth planning was that leadership team.   Right? And so did you kind of help them timeline that and kind of figure out, well, when you get to this many patients, when you get to this many people, when you get to this, like this is where we need to bring somebody up. Did you help them timeline it and kind of org chart that and like job descriptions? How did you guys work that?   Dana (16:26) Yeah, OrgChart played a big piece in it because we knew like with this kind of growth you're going to need additional team members. I knew Leadership Team was a big piece because it just   didn't want everything to fall on owner doctor, right? So yeah, we did. We looked at org chart, we timelines, like when we were going to add new seats to it, what we might need for the future to get there. And that was really fun. Because I think when we build an org chart, we tend to just have it be like, well, what do I have? Right? Who do I have? And what do they do? And I build it based on that versus like, no, actually, what do you mean? Right? And, and what will you need in the near future? It's okay to build an org chart for now and an org chart for the future. And then   The Dental A Team (16:56) Yeah.   Yeah.   Dana (17:08) map out how you get there. And so that is definitely something that came into play here and was super impactful ⁓ in the journey.   The Dental A Team (17:17) Mm-hmm. Yeah, I agree. I agree. That's amazing. So if we were to peel this back a couple layers for our listeners today who might be in a space where they're like, gosh, I don't know if I can grow. I have the capability and the capacity to grow? What would you say, Dana, is a first step for someone who's really in that space or even trying to figure out if they want it or not?   How did you, like what's that first step look like with your practices that you've worked with or this one specifically that you're like, is where we start, this is how we see that.   Dana (17:52) ⁓ I think that first it becomes like the vision. Where do you want to do? What kind of growth do you want if you even want growth, right? And what I mean by growth is like getting bigger, right? Or getting larger. And what are the pieces that you want? And then secondary to that, and I think in conjunction with that, knowing your numbers and where the health of your numbers stands so that we can kind of align those pieces together. ⁓   The Dental A Team (18:04) Yeah.   Dana (18:21) And I think that those are the two key foundational pieces that I think really helped to drive this doctor too.   The Dental A Team (18:27) Awesome, awesome. So it's kind of looking at where do you want to go? And then looking at what you're capable of right now. What have you done? And I think that gap in between, then you have to kind of figure out, well, if we're doing 3.2 now and I want to do 5 million, how do I get that 1.8 in the middle to get to that 5 million? And then that kind of backtracks into, well, how like financially, right? So dollar per hour, doctor's dollar per hour. How many chairs do we have? What's our dollar per chair?   per day, what's our daily goals, of figuring that out. And then time-lining, I know that's, you know, I did a ton of time-lining for a practice that just grew like crazy. And I was like, okay, by this point, you're gonna need this many people. But knowing that gap in between to be able to set some parameters to really see how far you can go. ⁓ And I guess maybe action items for today would be.   Go look at your mission, your vision, your core values, make sure that you're in alignment still. Those change, you guys, they change constantly. What you wanted 10 years ago is probably very different than what you want today, and that's okay. You don't have to stick with the business plan you set out with when you first started. I think, Dana, you're 100 % spot on. Go look at that mission, that vision, make sure that it is in alignment, and then figure out where do you want to go, and then what does that mean? And if you need help with that, hello at the TheDentalATeam.com., we're always here for you, you know that.   But really figuring out what that means and then looking for that gap so that you can project and look to see. There's a lot of prep work that we didn't talk about today that goes into adding associates. So I would hate to blindly walk into anything and just tell people that an associate is a great idea. I don't think that it's a horrible idea whatsoever, but you have to be prepared and there's a lot that goes into that. just build out your plans. If it's something that you look at and gosh, maybe it's 500,000.   You want to make an additional million next year. Look at the hours in your schedule. Are you capable of that? And maybe there's some scheduling tweaks that we can make. We have found in many, practices just implementing blocked scheduling increases $5,000 a day. We have seen crazy amounts of money come into the production just by fixing the scheduling. And I think I've ventured to say that this practice had to do some of that as well.   and really, really maneuvering what those schedules might look like. this is great, Dana. Thank you so much for all the work that you do with all of the clients that you see, the work you do with our consulting team, and you're constantly finding new avenues and helping us to expand our entire team. So thank you for that. Thank you for sharing this today and just sharing all your love with everybody, Dana. I appreciate you.   Dana (21:11) Anytime, thanks for having me.   The Dental A Team (21:12) Of course, of course. All right, guys, go do the things. Mission, vision, core values, peel back those layers, really look for those gaps. And then I would say look at your open hours. I found a ton of money just sitting there, like, could have been, could have been gotten for so many years for so many doctors that was just open hours and mismanagement of schedules. So double check those things. Drop us a review, you guys. We love those five stars. We love to hear what you loved. We love to hear ideas that you have.   You know I always say people really do read those so go do it. And Hello@TheDentalATeam.com we are always here to help you and if you want to sign up for a free practice assessment it's on our website TheDentalATeam.com. You guys we will help you figure out what your next best growth movement is whether it's with us or without us we don't care we just want to give you the tools. So thank you all and I hope you have a great day.

Re-releasing a DAT listener favorite! Kiera is all about key performance indicators in this episode, and why they're important. When framing KPIs as the vitals of your practice, it makes a lot more sense! Some of Kiera's favorite KPIs are … Production (net, not gross) Collection (at least 98%) How many new patients you're getting Average diagnosis Acceptance rate Overhead There are a lot more indicators she talks about in this episode, so whether you're a beginner with KPIs or elite status, there's something you can learn. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent (00:05) Hey everyone, welcome to the Dental A Team podcast. I'm your host, Kiera Dent, and I had this crazy idea that maybe I could combine a doctor and a team member's perspective, because let's face it, dentistry can be a challenging profession with those two perspectives. I've been a dental assistant, treatment coordinator, scheduler, pillar, office manager, regional manager, practice owner, and I have a team of traveling consultants where we have traveled to over 165 different offices coaching teams. Yep, we don't just understand you, we are you.   Our mission is to positively impact the world of dental. And I believe that this podcast is the greatest way I can help elevate teams, grow VIP experiences, reduce stress, and create A-Teams. Welcome to the Dental A Team Podcast.   Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera. And you guys, how's your day today? You guys loving it? Are you crushing it? I hope you are, wherever you are. I am actually sitting in my bedroom. I ⁓ rarely ever podcast here, because usually my husband's home. But tonight, I have some friends over there in the front room, and I definitely needed to get some podcasts done. Sissy was asking me, I just love having team members that are great at what they do. And I hope you guys take time to acknowledge the team members that make you great. The team members that are   just awesome at what they do. guys, Sissy keeps me so on the ball and I love her for it. Shelby does, Tiffany does, Brittany, Dana, Kylie, they are just an incredible bunch of people. And guys, if you ever get the opportunity to meet any of them, you are one lucky person. So I hope you're having a great day. I hope you're loving it. So podcasting today from the bedroom. I hope the audio is great. I hope you're loving it. Sun's just going down and today I just wanted to dive into a topic that I think is really awesome and it's KPIs.   So what the heck is a KPI? A KPI is Key Performance Indicator. I'll be completely honest. You guys, know I'm like authentic Kiera Dent. People when they call me and they chat with us, like interested in working with us, the number one thing I get told is, Kiera, you sound just like you do on the podcast. And I'm like, this is really great because it is me.   I don't shake it up, I don't change it. The only thing I do differently is I talk in a microphone so my voice sounds a little bit like smoother, if you will, on the podcast than in real life. But beyond that, same cadence, same tones. This is Kiera real life. So you guys know I am always, I try really hard to just be authentic Kiera. So if you ever come meet me in person, you peel back the Wizard of Oz current, I would be the exact same person as I am on the podcast as I am in real life. So when I first started as an office manager,   I did not know what a KPI was. I did not know why they were important. I didn't know that I should be tracking these things. I literally had no idea. So guys, if you're in my boat, hey, welcome, welcome to the CureDent No KPI Boat. If you know what they are, welcome, welcome to the Elite Boat. And if you are using them, welcome to the Rockstar Amazing Boat. Let's make you even better. So KPIs, I call them, the way I describe a KPI is they are the vitals of your practice.   So just like when you go to the doctor and they take your blood pressure, your temperature, they listen to your heart rate, all those things, those are the vitals. They take your weight. ⁓ I just went to the doctor the other day and it's super cool, like, right? You sit on the chair and they say they'll take your weight. And it was funny, the gal asked me, she said, do you wanna know your weight today? I was like, wow, thank you. Like, thank you for not making me have a bad day if I don't want to or thank you for giving me the opportunity. It just made me giggle.   But bottom line is the vitals, we go to the doctor and they take those vitals first because if any of those are out of alignment, that's the first sign that we have trouble. So that's what I think of with KPIs in a practice. These are the core pieces that are going to show you, is your practice healthy or is it not healthy? So yes, it's tracking and there's lots of different KPIs you can track. That's why it's called a key performance indicator. I am a firm believer that you should be able to change these up.   I think there are certain things that you should be tracking consistently. But I also think as human beings, we get stagnant and bored. So give yourself a decent amount of time to track and then shake it up. That way you're growing constantly and we don't get bored with KPIs. So for me, some of my favorite KPIs, this is a question every consultant who comes to Dental A team to work with us, we ask them, what is your favorite KPI to measure? One, I'm checking to see if they know what a KPI is. Guys, I probably would have flunked the consulting test if I would have come on.   We're a more elite company, guys. I have to keep these consultants on their top notch. They can't be lower than us now. So I ask what your favorite KPI is to track and why. Most of the time I get production and collection. Production is a great KPI to track. It's something, and again, be careful on production. Make sure you're tracking it on net, not gross. A lot of people wanna tell me that they have.   These huge successful practices, but guess what guys, if you can't collect it, don't even tell me that number. I don't care. It does not impress me because guess what? That high gross number feeds your ego. Your net number feeds your family. So I don't care about it. So report that number in net. Next up is your collection percentage. I want to know how you're collecting. So if you're a $1 million practice and you're only collecting 700,000, that's stressful. That means you're at a 70 % collection rate. I am aiming for a 98 % collection rate. Now,   There are lots of other KPIs and I will say there are some great softwares out there. Practice by numbers, dental intel, divergent. Those are my top three favorites. I'd probably put them in the order of dental intel, divergent, practice by numbers. I think all three of them are great. I love them all for different reasons. The reason I'm pro-ing for dental intel is because they just merged with Medento and guess what? They are kicking it. So I love that. I love what they do and I love Medento as a company. So any company with Medento, that's going to be my favorite company right now. But bottom line is a lot of these track KPIs.   What I found that gets tricky and what a lot of offices do is we often track too many things that we don't actually move the needle on anything. I'm guilty of this. So in our company, was having Cissy track how many Instagram followers we were getting every single week. At first, I thought it was a great marketing metric. I thought it was great to see how our marketing was doing. Guess what? It was actually just feeding my ego. So guys, if you want to feed my ego, please just go follow us on Instagram. I would love it. Get your friends, get your family, get your siblings, get your kids. I don't care who.   You can boost that number just to feed my ego. At the end of the day, do the Instagram followers actually matter? No, they don't. They don't move our company forward. What matters, just like you guys, how many new patients we're getting. So don't actually care about social media followers. Yes, it's a fun number to track, but what I care is how many new patients are we getting? Then after that, I actually care about if I'm going to the elite boat or to our rock star boat on how many new patients you're getting. Do you know how much each patient's value is?   Do you also know what our average diagnosis is on each patient? And do we know what our acceptance rate is on each patient? If you don't know that and you're already tracking some of these numbers, that might be a fun zone for you to go to, to be 2.0 or 3.0 of KPI tracking. If you're just starting out, don't go there. Let's just get you tracking new patients and where they're coming from. Bottom line is these are the vitals. So first steps first, I want you with your KPIs to make sure that you have the vitals of your practice. Production, collection, new patients.   case acceptance, reappointment percentages. Those are like your main shebangs that are really gonna tell you where you're going. If you wanna add in your overhead, I also love that because that's gonna pull in the business side of it to make sure that we're actually profitable as a business and we're not just running around trying to serve, but not even being profitable as a practice. We need our practice to be profitable. Otherwise we can't serve more in our community. Those are my main things I love to focus on. So if you're just starting out, start tracking those.   I prefer you track them at a minimum every week at best. I actually like these ones to be tracked on your morning huddle. It's great. Everybody has it, have it on a whiteboard. Everybody can see it. That is the vital heartbeat of your practice. I would love you to do it. Just like on my Apple watch, I'm watching the rings on my Apple watch. That's honestly the only thing on my watch face guys, because it'd be really fun. But I decided I don't want to get distracted by other things. I need to master these items before I move on.   So that's why I love it to be front and center. Get these KPIs front and center. Get a whiteboard, guys, they're real cheap. Put it up, track these items. Production, we talked about it. Net, not gross. Collections, we wanna make sure we're collecting at least 98 % if not higher. And then I want you to know how many new patients you're getting out of goal, what your case acceptance is. A healthy practice, if we're talking dollar for dollar, I'd like you to be anywhere from 35 to 65%. Now there's a wide range on that because I actually, if you don't...   diagnose a lot of ortho and you're not diagnosing a lot of implants in larger cases, your dollar for dollar should be way up higher. If you're diagnosing these huge treatment plans constantly, you actually should be hanging out lower because we're presenting so much treatment that I'm okay with a lower case acceptance. If we're one for one, meaning one thing accepted off of our treatment plan, no matter how large it is, I want you actually to be sitting at at least a 90 % case acceptance. If you're not, we got to talk.   That's right, you and me, we're going to have a date, we're going to chat. We need to get that case acceptance up because what we're doing is we're dis-serving our patients. We're not helping them find a way to get this treatment done. You as a treatment coordinator, your job is to be a solution creator with the patient. So do your job, find the solution, get those patients accepted. That way we can help them have healthy mouths and a better life, right? That's what it's all about. Hey, Dental A Team listeners, how was your 2021? Have you reflected back? Where did you really win?   Where did you really not win? If 2021 was a year of years, congratulations. I am celebrating with you and I would love to invite you to take it to the next level. If 2021 wasn't quite your year, hey, it's all right. I'm there for you. And I would love to invite you to make 2022 the year for you. That's right, guys. If you're ready to take massive action, if you're ready to take your practice and your team to the next level, increase your profitability. Yeah, guys, through an easy way.   Get your entire team aligned and you're ready to just have your life be different. That's right. Team development, top to bottom system development, top to bottom, changing and shifting your culture, improving your team morale. If that sounds like what you're interested in guys, I'd love to invite you to join us in our Dental A Team platinum group. It's the exclusive group where we physically fly to your practice. We give you insider tips. We share with you. have a quarterly newsletter that goes to that shares all the updates we're coming up with and we share it with our platinum group.   We'd love to have you and I would like to invite you because guys remember you're always one decision away from a completely different life. So reach out guys. I'd love to chat with you. I'd love to see if you're a great platinum client or what works best for you. Email me Hello@TheDentalATeam.com and I can't wait to welcome you as our newest platinum client. Take massive action. This is your year. Let's make sure 2022 is your year. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. Can't wait to welcome you. So those are my main KPIs that I love to track.   Once you get those dialed in and you're consistent on those and you know, then we're going to start diving into even more data. I want to know how well our hygiene department's doing. They should be producing at least three times their pay. So if I'm a hygienist making $10 an hour, wouldn't that be a dream guys? Welcome to 2022. Hygienist $10 an hour. Yeah, right. You guys are like a hundred and a billion dollars an hour. Like it's crazy how much hygienists are at right now, but let's say for the sake of this podcast, it's $10 an hour. Okay. I should be producing at least   $30 per hour as a healthy hygienist. That's on a PPO. If I'm fee for service, I like you producing at least four times your pay. So if I'm in a fee for service practice, I'm producing $40 an hour, okay? So that would be another great KPI to track. You can also break it down per department. So we might have our doctors. Great KPI to track on our doctors is what are they producing per hour? Most doctors should be producing at least $500 per hour at a minimum, okay?   So if we're working in an eight hour day, that's a $4,000 day per doctor, again on net, not gross. So that's a great metric to put in there. What are our doctors producing per hour? What's our doctor case acceptance? What's our doctor diagnosis? Great KPIs for you to start tracking. If we move on to our hygiene department, you can track fluoride, you can track perio. Perio is a great set to track. We can track ⁓ how many night guards they're doing. We can track how many orthostarts they're doing.   Great KPIs to track, again, if you're in the elite rockstar status. ⁓ Dental assistants, I like to track how many same day conversions you get. Also, how many times you leave the room is a great KPI to track. Also, how many Google reviews do dental assistants get? Those are all really, really great ones that you can do. For front office, scheduling. How often are we scheduling our hygiene and doctors to goal?   So I usually like between 80 and 90 % that they're scheduled to go. Schedulers can be how many openings they have in hygiene. It can also be how many new patients you're scheduling. For our treatment coordinators, case acceptance, right? We want to make sure that we're getting those cases up there. For office managers, what's our collection percentage that can also go to our billers? Billers, I love you to be tracking your AR. Also outstanding claims. ⁓ How long it's taking us to get our claims paid. It's a fan-freaking-tastic KPI to be tracking.   because we want to be paid quicker. Guess what? If I'm tracking that, I can see, are we not sending our claims clean and are we having errors? Could we fix that? Could we enter data better so we don't have these issues happening? Could also track how long our patients are waiting in the waiting room. If we're working on VIP new patient experience. As I just listed, there are a myriad of KPIs you could do. What happens is we often try to track too many things that were actually focused on nothing. So I suggest you usually have at least one primary KPI per   person in the practice. It's their primary. That's the one that no matter what, they're going to hit that. And we make sure it moves our needle forward. So what's going to move our doctors forward? What's going to move our hygienist forward? It's going to move our dental assistants, our scheduler, our biller, our office manager. What is the one thing if we could only focus on one thing, what's going to move each of those people forward the most and move our practice forward the most? Focus on that. Master that. Set a goal of what you should be hitting and report either weekly or daily.   on those. I'll be honest, if you report it daily, just like working out daily, you will probably see greater results than if you do it weekly or just monthly. So I also have with KPIs that you should really, really, really, really be ramping those up and making sure you're reporting consistently and that people know the goals. If we miss it, let's find out why. What's going on? Let's diagnose the problem. Let's find out what can we do to improve that. Again, I want you to think of these as vitals. KPIs are vitals of a practice.   If you don't track these, if you don't check them, you will die. Okay? If you think about it that way, well, instantly I'm like, maybe I don't need to track that. Maybe I don't need to focus on that. If you're already tracking it and you're breathing imperfect, guess what? What happened to the doctor? They start checking other things. They run blood tests on us and they check a thousand different things in that. Okay? So there are lots of KPIs you can do, but I would say keep it simple. Do the kiss method. Keep your KPIs simple. Then add to it. Maybe each quarter we add something.   Maybe each month we add something. It's also fun if you have your team help create these KPIs with you. What do they think is going to the practice board? What did they get excited about? Maybe they want to make social media posts. Maybe they care about how many followers we actually have. Maybe you guys want to do that. Maybe they do it on how many new patients they can get. I just had an office, super fun. The team decided that they were going to try and get more family members scheduled. So on average, this practice was averaging about 35 new patients. Guess what?   Guess what? Just by focusing on asking for referrals from patients and getting more family members scheduled, they use the phrase, what other family members can we get scheduled for you today? They have increased their new patients with no marketing to 50 new patients a month. Is that not rad? That's because they focus on a vital that the practice needed to do. They focus on where they were weak and they're able to move their practice forward. So guys, I would encourage each of you.   Look at these KPIs, get them set. If you don't have a regular KPI tracking, let's start there. If you do, I want to bump it up. Are those KPIs being reported weekly by all team members? And does the doctor and office manager review this? I will tell you at our company, Shelby, she's a rock star. Our whole team reports on a Google drive. We call our leadership scorecard. Those are where our KPIs hang out. Every person has a number that they're tracking. We review these, we make sure that they're the vitals of our company and they're moving us forward.   Every person reports on this every single Friday. We have a reminder that goes out, so everybody fills it in. Shelby then makes sure it comes over to me. I then with Shelby review this leadership scorecard. Then on our leadership team, we look at this every single month and make sure that those are vitals. And then we look to see where are we weak? What do we need to move forward? This is how you start to track. Also, if you want to stamp out and do more practices and you want to have more growth, having a leadership scorecard where you track these KPIs consistently.   allows you to then be able to manage and oversee multiple locations because everybody's tracking. And at a second, you can glance at this and you'll be able to know where your practice is weak and where it's strong and where you need to dive in and give it massive help. So guys, I strongly encourage you, if you're not doing it, do it. If you're doing it already, where can you ramp it up? If you're already ramping it up, get your team members involved and ask them where they want to take it to the next level. KPIs are magic. They're vitals. Also, if you're in that top, top tier,   Maybe I challenge you and say, where could you simplify? Are you overtracking? Sometimes when I look at dental intel, I'm like, holy guac. That's a lot of items you're tracking. How do they know where to focus? I think about the book, Essentialism. If you haven't read it, I would strongly encourage you to do it. If we're focused on too many things, we actually don't make a lot of progress anywhere. We make minimal progress. If we're focused on one thing, we kill it. We knock it out of the park. We dominate it. So I challenge each of you, look at those KPIs. Could you simplify them if you're already doing them?   What are the main drivers of the practice? Keep it to three per department is my recommendation. Make sure that what we're truly focused on is actually going to move you guys forward. If you need help getting those KPIs set up, if that's something you want to start doing, we make sure our practices are all tracking. Our offices have vitals. We look at them. We actually call it their vital scorecard. Truth. That's really what we call it. So if you guys want to help with this, if you'd love somebody to help hold you accountable, email me. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. I'd love to help you out.   nothing else guys, go get these KPIs in place and know that you guys are in control of this. You can see your practice at a glance. You can know if you're healthy or not just at a glance, just like the doctor does when we go in for our medical doctors. So guys, try it out. I'd love to hear it. I'd love to hear your successes. Post your KPI scorecards and tag us. We'd love to see it. Share. If you guys want to, you can start to get on our Facebook group, Donuts with Dana. She's literally going around and she's pulling these ideas and she's sharing and she's answering questions.   So join her, she's on Facebook Live every Friday, Donuts with Dana. So hop on over there if you have questions getting this set up, she's there, she'll help answer questions. And as always guys, just take action, do it. Don't be afraid of KPIs, they're very easy. And if we can help you, email us, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. I'd love to share it with you guys. If you need a sample, email us, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on The Dental A Team Podcast. And that wraps it up for another episode of The Dental A Team Podcast.   Thank you so much for listening and we'll talk to you next time.  

Tiff and Kristy break down the concept of work-life balance, and why so many people can't seem to acquire it. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:00) Hello Dental A Team listeners. I am back today and you know, this is me Spiffy Tiffy I never say my name and I just assume everyone knows me. I actually this is a funny story. I actually had ⁓ Someone the other day it was a child was like, ⁓ you record podcasts you you're on a podcast Are you famous and I said well maybe in the dental world like for ⁓   small, tiny percentage, people might know who I am. So, it's Spiffy Tiffy, Tiffanie, I'm here, I've been here for a while, and I'm just super excited to bring so much fun and joy, and one of our core values is fun, and it has been Kiera and I's core value since the day we met, and that is one that I have refused to get rid of, even though every year we update our core values and they shift and change a little bit, fun has stayed there. The definition of fun has evolved and been   tailored down to what we want it to be, but it has remained and I think we have some fun. So I hope you guys have fun on this podcast. I hope you enjoy it. I have Kristy here with me today and she is ready to rock out some fun, you guys. And I, you know, we've already recorded one this morning and Kristy, you said it perfectly. I was going deep and I don't know. It's a feeling today. We got a lot of leadership stuff we're chatting about and I feel like goodness gracious, Kristy, you're my gal. You keep me centered. You keep me calm.   DAT Kristy (01:07) Thank   The Dental A Team (01:21) and you allow me the space to go deep. So thank you for being here. Thank you for recording so many podcasts with me and just for being you, Kristy. How are you?   DAT Kristy (01:30) Good, thank you. I'm excited to be here. It's always a good time when we can get together and help with anything ⁓ with our doctors, hopefully up and coming doctors, new to dental aging doctors. Yeah.   The Dental A Team (01:42) Yeah. Yes. Right? Yes.   I agree. I totally agree. And I love that you said that because there are so many listeners here. I think sometimes I forget, we get a lot of clients that have listened to our podcast in the past and that's how they found us. And it's just such an incredible resource to be able to get information to people and a tool to be able to reach so many new dentists. And then Kristy, I think I forget when they come,   from the podcast, right? Or they've listened to the podcast in the past and came from, I don't know, Zenist advisors. They maybe said, hey, talk to these ladies, they're great. Whomever, wherever, however they found us, I forget that they still listen. And then I'll have a client that's like, I get texts sometimes that's like, Tiff, I'm listening to this one, and you just said this, or Kristy said this, Trish, and I get these texts from clients that I've had for years. And I'm like, my gosh, that's funny. I didn't even consider the fact that you   You were still here. So repeat offenders. Thank you so much for being here. We love you guys. So like Kristy said, clients who are here. Hello. Um, those of you who are listeners and maybe you're just like, no, Tiff, I am a listener. I'm a diehard listener and I will be here for that. Hello. And if you're a listener who's like, gosh, I just keep thinking about it. I keep considering and this information is great. And these ladies sound amazing, but today's not about it's and, and, and.   DAT Kristy (02:43) you   The Dental A Team (03:10) I'm gonna call them because whether you say yes to success and you're our newest client or you say this is incredible information, I'm gonna implement some of these tools that you just gave me and we'll talk again soon. We're here for it. I want you guys to understand that we are not the company that you call and it's like, if you don't say yes, we never talk to you again. No, you say yes and, right? Yes, this was great information.   and I'm ready to start. Yes, this is great information and I'm gonna go implement it I'll talk to you soon. Okay, pressure's off. So just call us. That was great, Kristy. I think that was a wonderful reminder to everyone. There's literally no pressure. Gosh, Kristy, I love you for so many things and today I am just loving on you for leadership communication, conversations and just like effective balance, right?   We have a fun topic here, and I told you I have some tangents on it, and I think you do too, and I think we align pretty well on this topic. We really wanted to chat, and there's a newsletter. If you're subscribed to our newsletters, you should be getting a newsletter as well that will have similar, probably very different conversations in it, but make sure you're signed up for our newsletters that you're getting that as well. So today's topic, this moment's topic, is work-life balance. And I...   get asked this by a multitude of professionals, whether they are team members, leaders, managers, owners, doctors, dentists, I don't know, and financial advisors, like anyone under the sun who does a job, I have heard, I want work-life balance, TIF, how do I have work-life balance? And I think it's a really tricky statement, and I think it's overused and misunderstood. And I think you just need   balance. My opinion is by separating, Kristy, tell me if I'm crazy. By separating and saying I want work-life balance. It's like saying I have a life and I have work. For me, I have a life and I work within that life. I don't have my work-life that is like, in your brain, it just creates these two separate entities that then you're trying to smash together. It's like saying I'm a dentist.   and I'm a chiropractor and I want to do both out of my office. So I want to, while I'm drilling and doing this crown, I also want to be cracking their neck. You can't do that. It's literally impossible. So I think saying I want balance in my life is more clear and more understood than I want work life balance, which confuses it and makes it feel impossible. It feels literally difficult when I say I want work life balance.   it in my body feels difficult. It feels hard. But when I say I want balance, that feels achievable. That is like graspable. can see it. I know what it feels like to have balance. So I can emanate it. I can mimic the feeling in my body and I can find it. And I just think people just misunderstand that. But Kristy.   What are your thoughts on it? How do you feel about the term work-life balance? And then we'll get into, I promise you we'll get into how to achieve some of this balance. But Kristy, first, think definitions are always most important. So tell me your thoughts.   DAT Kristy (06:39) I know we never want to go like political or anything like that in that realm, but listening to you takes me back to growing up and hearing how moms entering the workforce and how can they work and be a mom. And so it just, kind of makes me laugh. And honestly, what you said is spot on. I don't, I don't know how you can do both at the same time, but   The Dental A Team (06:52) Yeah.   DAT Kristy (07:06) but I do think you can be wear many hats. It's just how do we devote our time to it? So identifying, honestly going back to the results, what are we looking for in the first place? So when you say work-life balance, tell me more about that. What does that mean? What does that mean to you? Because it may mean something different to somebody else. I for one get,   a lot of gratification from my work and purpose from it. So it brings a lot to my life. So to separate, yeah, I can't. But to devote certain amount of time to certain things, I can grasp that 100%.   The Dental A Team (07:51) Yeah, I love that clarity that you brought even to maybe like potentially realizing where the term comes from, because I agree with you. think that that is a huge space and a huge learning curve for everyone. And we're still kind of in it. think we're, I think we're still so much in that world. It's 2025, but we are still so much in that world of moms and not even just moms, but   primary caretakers coming into the workforce or primary caretakers also working. And it's like that, I think you're right. I think that is a confusing factor. And I love what you said that work gives you, it provides something positive to your life. So to keep those separate feels wrong. And I think so many of our leaders and our dentists feel that same way, which also confuses it. And you said,   tell me more, tell me what that looks like. And I know I've asked the question before and I've had a doctor be like, that means I'm home before 5.30 so that I can cook dinner for my family. I'm like, that's easy. Like, what's keeping you at the office? Like, why are you there? Right? Like, let's remove some obstacles. And I've had doctors that are like, well, I have a doctor that was like, Tiff, I wanna work three and a half days a week and I wanna make a million dollars in collections a year. Cool.   He's like, then I can be home. I be with my kids. I can do all the things. And he does, he does that. That's his work life balance. And, and that's his balance, right? His balance is being able to target and hit all of this areas of his life that are important. And Kristy, it makes me think of, ⁓ in March, we did our in-person event with so many of our amazing platinum doctors came out to visit us and their office managers. And we did a blocked scheduling, ⁓ exercise for.   personal life and like for our ourselves and for crowns, root canals, etc. So by personal life, mean like ourselves and what we did it was super cool of really looking at the like six areas of our lives six to eight areas of our lives that are truly valuable and important that we want to contribute to so, you know your relationships your marriage your work ⁓   DAT Kristy (09:52) Hahaha!   The Dental A Team (10:13) Right? Remember in Summit, I forgot to add work in there. ⁓ If you were there for Summit, you guys are laughing. But all those different areas that make us who we are and where we want to show up in life, and then time blocking and saying, this is how much time, like you said, time, this is how much time I want to dedicate to this area for it to feel valuable and balanced, because it's not all going to be equal.   I'm not gonna spend as much time maybe going on dates with my boyfriend and having one-on-one time as I am recording podcasts and showing up for my clients. That doesn't mean it's imbalanced. That would be wild. He would go crazy if I were spending that much time like, we're going on a date or we're going on a river cruise. I don't even know what we would do with that amount of time. Couple times a year for our long vacations, we do that and it balances.   When we say work-life balance, it almost sounds and feels like we're looking for equality between the time spent. And that's just, it's just not realistic. There are a lot of people who have more time outside of work that they're doing other things with their life. And then there are other people who are like, no, I'm passionate about my job and I want to pour into it. That's their balance. And I think you nailed it, Kristy, by really   keying in on that time and saying how valuable it is to consider that there's even more than just work and quote unquote life. Like there are attributes to your life that need that value and that time consideration.   DAT Kristy (11:53) I almost wonder Tiff, like listening to you talk, we almost have to identify, like the first question should be what's missing, right? Because really why is that even a term, work-life balance? Wouldn't you agree it's likely there's something missing in that equation, so how can we do more of it? And the other part that...   The Dental A Team (12:03) Yeah. Yeah.   Totally agree.   DAT Kristy (12:22) Again, you know me, queen of analogies, but it's like people come in to the office and they go into hygiene and they're like, are you flossing your teeth? No, I hate flossing my teeth. Well, you need to be flossing every day. Why do we go from zero to a hundred? Like, can we maybe start with, how about flossing Monday, Wednesday, Friday instead of all or nothing, right? So I almost feel like that question, work-life balance needs to start with what's missing that I need more of.   The Dental A Team (12:35) Yeah.   Yes.   I love that because there's a gap we're not seeing and we feel out of alignment and we're not taking the time to step back and see it. And I think you're spot on because there's an area of life, the six to eight components, how many ever there are, there's an area that's out of alignment with the definition of balance for you. Kristy, I think what you're really good at and what you said even earlier was, well, what does that mean? Right? You're really good at   speaking to your clients in a clear and kind way and asking questions that evoke thought and results. So when you ask those kinds of questions to your clients, I've seen them, I've watched them, I join all of our consultants' calls at some point or another. So I've seen this happen live. They are able to give themselves the space to find it because you interrupted their thought pattern with something different so that they could   think of it from a different point of view. And I think it's just really, really something that is missed in a lot of consulting that's just systems focused, right? Like we are systems focused, we do provide systems, but we're people focused first because without this, without these kinds of definitions, your systems aren't, they're not gonna stick. I promise you, they're just not gonna stick, okay? We've seen it. So Kristy, something you do really well with your clients is,   DAT Kristy (14:09) Thank   The Dental A Team (14:16) keying into those definitions and then asking the thought provoking questions, you might even already have the answer, right? You are like, I know exactly, but if you tell the person, right, they're like, maybe, but if you evoke the thought process, interrupt those thought patterns and get them shifted onto a different, it's kind of, makes me think of when you're driving along, driving along and you're like, shoot, there's a detour.   And then you like scooch over to the next road. It's detouring you on and you're like, wow, these are beautiful houses. Like I've never been down this road and I've lived on this street for 20 years, right? But your pattern was disrupted and you were able to see something new and beautiful and fresh. And, or sometimes you're like, wow, this is ugly. I can't believe I live this close to this street or this, like sometimes you go down and you're like, what is this building? Like this looks horrible.   DAT Kristy (14:58) Mm-hmm.   The Dental A Team (15:11) Right, so sometimes you open a door and you're like, wow, that is really ugly and I have got to spend some attention there. Doesn't mean every time we open a door, it's gonna be like rainbows and butterflies, right? But sometimes we open a door that's like, I need to sprinkle some magic fairy dust in here because this is a space that needs some attention. And Kristy, I think you truly do open those doors for clients. And my question in that, ⁓   What do you think that opens up for them? So you open those doors, you get their thinking differently, but then how does that process change their business ownership and their, literally their profitability? Like these pieces that we work on with our clients, how do you see it totally improve the reasons that they come to us, right? They say systems, profitability, we want to pay our team more, we want a more engaged team.   that system change, that thought process change, how do you see that positively affecting those things that they've come to us for?   DAT Kristy (16:15) Yeah, well, to back up one notch, Tiff, even finding out like their why, once we get there, I think it's also asking one more question of, okay, wonderful, that's what you want, right? We've identified that. ⁓ What will it give you? And it's usually something emotional, right? So then when we're doing the hard work, we can remind them back to that this is what you were looking for.   And again, it's if we're off track, did your vision of what we want change or are we still going for this? Okay, great, we're still going for this and that helps them get the momentum back for getting there. will ⁓ you repeat your question for me, sorry.   The Dental A Team (17:00) Yeah.   No, I talked a lot. Thank you. ⁓ My question was, when we do get these definitions in place and figure out what does balance mean? Why are we doing this? And I think you're right. When we know that why, then the balance is easier to find because we know what's going to support the why. So once that's discovered, which you do very quickly for your clients, I again have watched it happen.   What do you see the positive impacts on the business, the leadership? Because they come to us, right? And they say, I want systems, I want profitability, want a happy team. Like, how do you see those things improve by defining these and really improving their personal selves and finding that balance?   DAT Kristy (17:41) Yeah, so I believe that when we identify it and we start working toward it, they do start to feel a sense of balance. And so when they are back in the rut of things or in the weeds of things, they approach it more refreshed. They have a different outlook. It's not a drain on them. And so literally, it's the same thing as like when we start coaching, all ask clients, know, how much time are you spending working on your business? How many team meetings are you having?   Well, we used to, but we don't. And I'm just a firm believer that the time we spend working on the business, you will achieve outcome because you're in a sense creating that balance to then when you are in the business, you're a lot more effective. I've seen it time and time again, you know, even to the point where... ⁓   I have one client that literally she takes off two more weeks a year, but she's producing the same this year on trajectory to make more. literally the first year she took those extra two weeks off, she's making just as much as she did the year prior, but she gained time, right? So when she achieved that balance of the goal to be able to take time to do X, Y, Z, she identified it. Then when she's there,   The Dental A Team (18:47) Yeah.   them. Yeah.   DAT Kristy (19:05) She's way more productive and focused on what she's doing. Yeah.   The Dental A Team (19:10) I agree. And   I've seen that with your clients, I've seen that with mine, I've seen it with Monica's, Trish's, Dana's, everybody's clients. I've seen that exact thing happen where you're just, when you have that balance, you have a better sense of ease in life. I think when you're misbalanced, when you're out of alignment, I know I have a doctor that we've worked with that, this doctor is an amazing human being and showed up.   and was just like, I have to work, I have to do this, I have to grind, I'm the only one that can. And I think we hear that a lot. And so then they almost get to the point where they don't know how to not do that and feel successful, first of all. And then they don't know how to, then they don't know how, they start resenting their work. And when you resent your work, you're slower, you're less detailed, you really care less, so your diagnosis goes down.   acceptance goes down, your schedule starts falling apart, because the universe is like, oh, you don't really like this, let me take it away from you. Hygiene falls apart, team members start quitting, and it's typically because, again, like my example earlier, I had a doctor that was like, I just want to be home by 530. Then do it. Typically, it's because we're there till six, seven, eight o'clock at night, because we think we're the only ones who can. It's so out of alignment that everything else just sucks, and we start to hate it.   DAT Kristy (20:26) Yep.   The Dental A Team (20:32) But when we can find that balance and even just defining it brings the balance to center stage and it's much easier, that I totally agree with you. That's when we're intentional with our time. And when we're intentional with our time at work, we bust through things quicker, we enjoy it, we diagnose better, we are more invested in our patients than the outcome. And so case acceptance naturally increases. And we've seen like, we've seen huge.   huge profitability increases, 30 % within three months I've seen because they were intentional, they did the things they had to do and they listened, they implemented really freaking well and they were like, all right, Kristy, I believe you, I trust you, that's why I hired you, I'm gonna do this and we're gonna celebrate at the end. And we've seen it, we've seen so much happen in such a short amount of time with that kind of mindset.   I totally, I totally agree with you. think this is, I hope this is really, really valuable to even people who are showing up as amazing leaders. It's still very easy to get caught in the trap of ego filled. I have to. And I've seen incredible leaders be the ones that, that ego, it sneaks in there. It has to be there on some level. Always our ego has to be there. You can't totally get rid of it. It's, it's a good.   but it needs a balance. And sometimes that ego, when we're busy, starts to creep up and starts to get louder. And we start to get to the point where we think, this is all on me. I have to do it. No, Tiff, you don't understand. I have to be here till seven. And Kristy, I think that's the space where you're able to come in as a consultant and really say, but do you really have to? Is there not a way out? Let's explore that together.   you do that by asking those questions. And Kristy, I've watched you do it and I think it's incredible.   DAT Kristy (22:33) Thanks. Yeah, I'm hearing you say delegation and honestly, know, again, flipping it, we have to take ourselves out of the equation. I think, again, we see it every day. We're in our own way. And so when we approach something and take ourselves out of the equation, just even with the delegation part of it, when you are able to flip that, then you can see by not delegating,   you're hindering your team's growth. And that's a different perspective than my team won't rise up to the occasion, right? I'm part of that equation. So yeah, I love it.   The Dental A Team (23:14) Yeah, amazing. Amazing. And you pulled out a great word and action item there. think delegation is key. So I think a couple of takeaways are action items that you guys have. giving you, I'm gifting you those today is number one is to really, think Kristy, you said like, look at your why. Why are you doing this? And then where are you out of balance that is making you feel like you have no work life balance? So what is, what does the terminology actually mean to you? What is your why? How can you get there?   when you get to these points and you need help, please reach out, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com You can reach us on our website. You can reach us with a review below, like however you need to find us and get to us, Instagram, Facebook, I don't care, reach out. We're here to help you through it. So go figure out what's your why. If you know your why, figure out how are you out of balance on getting there. And then Kristy, I think your word delegation, like find something, even if it's one thing today that is on your plate that you can successfully delegate to someone else.   And as an example, I was on a marketing call with an office manager with an outside marketing company. This is first time I've ever met them. she was great. The gal was great. And she said, no one's responding to your social media interactions, right? There's no engagement responses. So we've got TikTok and a massive amount of great social media following, but there's no responses happening. And she's like, we don't have to figure it out today, but I'm just.   I'm letting you know and the manager was just like, okay, I'll figure it out. I'll get on it. And I looked at the manager and I said, well, your new patient advocate who's only seeing new patients, who's not getting enough new patients in her, we're not seeing enough new patients. That's one of our issues. Why doesn't she do it? Like her job is to ensure that start to finish, new patients get the experience. This is the very baby start is engagement. And she sat back, you could see she relaxed and she was just like,   my God, you're right. And so my point of that story is sometimes it's something so simple. And I said, you're investing in her and you're telling her that she is worthy and value valuable enough to take a task like this on. That's really cool. And I think it's going to inspire her, encourage her and give her just so much strength in her position. You're actually helping her be better.   by giving her a task that was going to, you were gonna resent, you were gonna hate that task. So my point of that story, doctors, leaders, team members, look at your balance and say, what's keeping me out of balance? And is there something as simple as social media engagement, whatever it is, that I can pass on to someone that it makes more sense for them to do it? And it may make them feel better about their job. Go do those things. What's your why? What's keeping you from getting there? What's got you out of balance?   And what's one thing you can delegate to someone else to help inspire them in their career? Kristy, this was super fun. Thank you so much for taking the rides with me. And just you have incredible input. And I really appreciate you, Kristy. Thank you.   DAT Kristy (26:22) Thank you and just a little tip for somebody if they want to go do some research go look at the Eisenhower Matrix and Start to put your things in there. You'll see very clearly What can be delegated and ⁓ even things that maybe you thought were important that no longer will be important So little tip there for the end ⁓   The Dental A Team (26:43) That was great. Thank you, Kristy. All right,   guys, you heard it straight from us. Go do the things. If you've been here for a long time, you know doing the things is worth it. If you're just here, trust and you will reap rewards. I promise you. So as always, you guys, we are here to help on your journey wherever you're at. Please reach out. I've told you a million times how to get there. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. You can go to our website, TheDentalATeam.com. There are ways that you can schedule calls with us. There are ways that you can reach out to us by   Text you guys Instagram Facebook email review below five stars are fantastic and I appreciate them However, you can get to us. I don't know a smoke signal like just reach out to us We are here to help you and we want to be that support for you Hello at the only team calm you guys we will catch you next time. Thanks for sticking it out with us  

Dr. Len Tau, aka the Reviews Doctor, is on the podcast. With Kiera, he goes into the most critical nuts and bolts of making sure your practice stands out (or at least keeps pace with) online reviews amid AI. He explains jargon terms like ranking power and factors and velocity of reviews, whether or not you should actually be responding to reviews of your practice, and a ton more. Visit SuperchargeYourDentalPractice.com and enter the code RAVING to save $100 on registration for Dr. Tau's annual conference. About Dr. Tau Dr. Len Tau thrives on helping practices maximize their online reputation, marketing, and social media strategies. As a speaker, Len is known for his lively and engaging presentations packed with ready-to-use strategies. He regularly travels the country sharing his marketing brilliance and passion for practice growth with audiences. As a consultant, he offers practice leaders with real-world solutions tailored to fit their specific challenges and opportunities. Len loves to help doctors and their teams understand and implement successful online systems to build their practice. He currently serves as general manager of the Dental for Birdeye Reputation Marketing Software. Selected as one of Philadelphia's Top Dentists by Philadelphia Magazine, he continues to experience growth year after year in his fee-for-service practice focusing on general, cosmetic, reconstructive and implant dentistry. Following his father into the dental profession, Len graduated from Tufts University School of Dental Medicine and continues to pursue ongoing continuing education opportunities. He has had the privilege of serving patients for two decades. He is an active member of numerous professional organizations including the American Dental Association, the Pennsylvania Dental Association, the Academy of General Dentistry, the Eastern Dental Society, the Northeast Philadelphia Dental Implant Study Club, and the American Academy of Clear Aligners. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Kiera Dent (00:00) Hello, Dental Team listeners. This is Kiera and today I am so excited. This is one of my dear friends. We've known each other for several years in the industry. I'm super freaking pumped. I'm going actually be at his event next year in September. Little teaser. Stay tuned. He's got an amazing event he does every year in September. I have Dr. Len Tau. He is one of my faves. He is better known ⁓ as an authority in the dental consulting world, reputation marketing, and a practice growth. He's recognized by dentistry today as a top dental consultant for eight straight years.   He is the author of Raving Patients and 100 plus tips to 105 star reviews in a hundred days. Like this man knows how to do it. He's one of my faves. We really do collaborate on so many fun things. After 20 plus years in clinical practice, he now helps dentists nationwide, increase revenue, case acceptance and visibility. He leads the dental vision at BirdEye, hosts the Raving Patients podcast and runs the Supercharger Dental Practice Conference, which is the one I was alluding to that we're gonna be at next year in September, empowering practices to thrive in today's competitive landscape.   He's truly one of my faves. And today we're gonna dig into like, how do you get online reviews? But Len, welcome. I'm so happy to have you on the podcast. How are you today?   Dr. Len Tau (01:06) I'm good, thanks for having me, I'm excited to be here.   Kiera Dent (01:08) Of course. And this just came about because Len like, let's just do a little teaser. You're prepping full like steam ahead right now for your event that's coming up in September in Florida. ⁓ I love like the last time you and I were on the podcast, we talked about you in clinical dentistry. And then we reconnected after some time and you've left the chair, you're living your best life and you full blown gone into the event space. So just like, I know we're gonna get into like online reviews and how AI is changing that it's going to be just a really, really fun episode today. But tell us a little bit like   How is it going from like full blown dentist in the chair to now full blown events, like running these awesome events that we're super excited to be a part. Just kind of give me a little insight to that.   Dr. Len Tau (01:46) Well, it's been, it's been a lot of, a lot of fun. It's been very different, obviously, you know, for 23 years, I practiced dentistry, um, for about 12 of those, 13 of those who was full time. And then I went part time in 2017 until I sold and retired in 2022. Um, but one of the things I've grew up on in dentistry was going to dental events and, the big, the ones, the small ones, you know, all over the country and as a dentist first, and then as a vendor.   Kiera Dent (02:08) Mm-hmm.   Dr. Len Tau (02:15) Um, since 2013 or 14, so a long time in the space. know, one of the things that really hit me was that the events are not really put on very well. They're not, um, you know, whether you, if you're a dentist, there's issues when you're a vendor, there's issues. And I said, you know what? I want to change the game. And, um, one of my goals when I retired from dentistry was to start putting on events. So in 2023, um, in, in September, we did an event in Delray had 208.   Kiera Dent (02:25) Right.   Dr. Len Tau (02:44) Dennis there, 33 sponsors. was, first day was business, second day was marketing. Excuse me. First day was marketing. Second day was business. Had a 13, 14 speakers. It went off better than I could ever imagined. I then moved to the last year in 2024 to Scottsdale. And we were at the Scott Resort and Spa, which is a beautiful hotel and the event was good. It wasn't great. Definitely moving to different coasts.   I felt there was not as much, know, engagement, excitement about the event. So I, my family and my wife and I decided, Hey, we're going to do this. Let's have people come down to me. I live in beautiful, you know, part of Florida. we're having this year's event and the next three of them at super at, ⁓ at pure 66, a brand new hotel, ⁓ in Fort Lauderdale. It's literally half hour from my house, five miles from the airport, easy to get to. So this year event is September 26th and 27th.   Kiera Dent (03:32) Bye.   you   No.   Mm-hmm.   Dr. Len Tau (03:45) We've got 14 speakers, ⁓ mixture of business and marketing. So we've got people talking about social media, about content. We have people talking about saving money on taxes. We're talking about how to become a fee-for-service practice. ⁓ So a lot of different great content and top speakers, Steve Rasner, Paul Goodman, ⁓ Jeff Buski, ⁓ Richard, Rich Maddow. So some real, real heavy hitters. And then some people who people haven't really heard of, Melanie Diesel, who's new in the dental industry.   So, but I like to do it differently and my events are very high end. You come, you're going to see things you probably have never seen before. I give a ton of time to the vendors so the vendors love me because they make sure that they get integration or interaction with the attendees. So you're going to be speaking in 2026, same weekend at September 25th and 26th in 2026, same hotel, pure 66.   Kiera Dent (04:28) Sure.   Yeah.   Dr. Len Tau (04:40) We're ramping things up right now. We're literally a month out from the events. still have people signing up. I still have people wanting to reach out as sponsors. And it's, it's, it's, is the fun time for me. Cause when I'm done, I'm, you know, I get a couple of months of break and then I start promoting 2027 again. So ⁓ it's been a good time. I really enjoy it. And I find that I've kind of ⁓ created something that's very different and the attendees really enjoy it and the vendors really enjoy it. So if I can make everybody happy,   Kiera Dent (04:45) No.   Dr. Len Tau (05:09) That's all I'm looking to do here.   Kiera Dent (05:11) ⁓ and Len, I hope the audience, if they can't see it, they can hear it. I think it's so fun because I mean, I've seen you in different spaces in your career, in your life. And there is just this like giddy, like younger version of Len that I feel is emerging of like, it's like giddy boyhood, like excitement of I'm excited to put these on. I'm excited to do these events. And it just makes me so happy for you. And what I think I'm hearing is yes, attendees are happy. Vendors are happy. But I also hear that Len is very happy and to do something   in dentistry is just very, very fun. It's very exciting. And so we're jazzed. I'm really excited. I love good events. I love great time. I love to help. love business marketing. Everybody can take that. That's not Kiera's jam. Like I, that's why I wanted to bring you on. You guys are very good at marketing. You're very good at that space. but to talk about how to help people have their best lives to grow the practices that they want to grow. I think you and I are so synergistic in that. So we're super excited and I love, I mean, I'm not going to highlight the fact that there were   a couple of sixes in that is September 26 at Pier 66. You guys hopefully like, I like the alliteration. Don't put anything weird on it guys, but I do appreciate that you made it easier. September six and nines flipped upside down are a six. Like hopefully everybody can remember September 26, Pier 66. It'll be a good time in 2026. I mean, we got four lines, so we're okay. We've at least got four sixes, not we didn't end on three, but I really hope an exciting step. We'll make sure we put some info for people.   For this year and for next year, I think it'll be a fun time. Dental A Team will be there, so come hang out with us. ⁓ Len, I'm super excited. I will not spoil secrets, but a lot of the things he told me for the events, I will say he does put his heart and soul into it. So Len, excited about that. Thank you for sharing. Good luck for this year. We're gonna be rooting you on this year and next year. And now let's pivot. Let's go into like your jam. You're in BirdEye, you're in marketing, you're on online reviews. AI has come into the scene. Practices are changing.   I also will say, I hope everybody listens to you of their like succession story. You hung up the hand piece, but you are still full steam ahead in dentistry. And so I hope people see that like there is no path to dentistry. Like you just, it's a, it's a beautiful world that you're in. So let's talk though, online reviews, AI, how is this working? How do we make sure that practices are still being visible? Chat GPT is on, on the prowl.   There are clients signing up with us now that have found us on chat. GPT, which is so random. It's changing how people have been doing things. Walk me through. What are you seeing with these online reviews? The importance, how to bring AI in? Like, let's just kind of go in a rift on how practices can still be visible with AIs. Like just showing up to the scene.   Dr. Len Tau (07:43) So I wanna talk about chat CPT for a second. ⁓ I refer to it as my best friend. ⁓ It helps me edit. No, I haven't named it yet. No, I haven't named it. ⁓ you have?   Kiera Dent (07:50) Have you named it? I've got to just ask Len. Have you named? I have! Me and Chet,   I had a name and now her name is Wanda. I don't know why, I don't even know where Wanda came, but people are like, here, are you hanging out with Wanda again? Cause I agree. Like they're our best friends. So go on Len. I can't wait to hear what you name your Chet GPT cause mine is currently Wanda.   Dr. Len Tau (08:06) I'll have to, I   have to name it now that I have to think of something. ⁓ but no, I started using it. I'm like, this is really helpful and it's only gotten better. And, just to give you an idea is, ⁓ my wife and I, and my son, my son just graduated high school. He's literally just started his freshman year at, university of Florida on a free ride. ⁓ smart, smart ass kid. I'm very proud of him. But, you know, and I travel a ton, but I travel a ton for business and I made a commitment. I think I told you that,   Kiera Dent (08:25) Boo? Yeah.   Dr. Len Tau (08:35) during the summer when he was going away for school, I was not going to travel. So from March to literally next week, beginning of September, I haven't traveled at all for business. we did plan some really great travel for our personal lives. And one of the things we did was we had a cruise, a 17 day cruise to Europe. ⁓ And when I decided I did not want to do the excursions to the cruise, cause they're really expensive and you're with all these people. I prefer to kind of just go and tour myself.   Kiera Dent (08:44) It's awesome.   Dr. Len Tau (09:05) So I use ChatGPT in every city. And I said, I'm going to the city. This is what I'm going to get in. This is the cruise I'm going on. It got the cruise itinerary. And I said, I want to set up private tours in every city with different people. And it helped me pick the best tour guides. They referred me to a website called Tours by Local, which is an amazing website that you can meet people who are local that will take you around.   show you the city and it was amazing. It was amazing. So I thank Chachi PT for doing that because I wouldn't have known about half these things if I didn't do it. And in fact, one of the women, and actually the very first place you went to, which was in Split, Croatia, which was beautiful. I told her that literally that's kind of how I went down this road was I asked Chachi PT, what should I do in Split? And they said, you need to use this tour guide. She's the highest rated tour guide and has the best reviews on tours by local. like,   What's towards by local? And that started this whole thing. So she was, she was amazed to hear that. So, ⁓ I have been using Chad GPT for a long time, like I said, and even now it is people I know type in, know, get me to the best dentists in the area. And it's very much based on reviews. So you have to be a highly rated practice. you may not believe in reviews and if you do, think you're not smart, but you know, if, if you want to be at the forefront of where people are looking,   Kiera Dent (09:58) Yeah.   Yes.   Dr. Len Tau (10:25) You have to generate reviews in a significant amount. Velocity now, which is how often you're getting them, is one of the biggest ranking factors on Google, whether you want to believe chat GPT or not. ⁓ But you have to get reviews. You can't, you know, rest on your laurels and say, well, I have enough because you never have enough. Okay. And, ⁓ and you've got to let Google rank you high. And there's been a big discrepancy in the industry, a big, I don't want to say a misunderstanding.   Kiera Dent (10:43) read.   Dr. Len Tau (10:52) But I've been in the review space now since 2013, so 12 years. And in the past, dentists thought that if they get reviews, they're going to rank. And that's not the way it is anymore. If you have reviews, but don't pay attention to the other ranking factors, you actually don't rank well. And that's a problem. So, chat GPT AI is so important, but you still got to dominate Google. You still got to get to the top of the pages.   And that's really where the direction is going. and if you aren't there now and you are ignoring it, you're never going to get there. So I would love to talk to you about our list in instruct or educate the listeners and viewers of these ranking factors that they need, need to pay attention to, or they're going to be left behind when it comes to ranking on Google.   Kiera Dent (11:27) Yeah.   absolutely. And I'm excited for this too, because, I did notice that you've got to like, AI is just crawling the web. That's where it's getting, it's being taught. It's crawls it. It looks through all of it. And so agreed with you. have a lot of clients and like, we want the secret pill of marketing. And I might get your reviews up. Like it is constant and consistent that if you get those reviews up and you bring pieces to the table, that people literally like that's what's going to rank you higher. So I'm excited, Len to, to dig in deeper because it is like how   getting more reviews, but to hear that there's more beyond just the reviews really can help these offices like get the best bang for their buck, help more practices. And I'm like, it used to be when I first started consulting when I used to tell offices get to like 100 Google reviews. It is now I'm pushing people like five, six, 700 reviews that you need to be getting ranked into. And I don't know if you're seeing like a cutoff line or if it matters on that. So I'm really excited to dive into like, what are the rankings? What are the pieces? Is there a difference? But I'm like now   100 reviews, when I look at somebody I'm like, hmm, like if there's another dental practice that has maybe 400, 500 new clients come on, the first thing I do is I go look them up to see how many reviews do you have? And I'm shocked at how many dental practices actually are not showing up when I Google their names and they're like, no, no, care, we're here. And I'm like, but if I'm a prospective new client that doesn't work in your practice and I don't see you all the time and I just tried to find you and I'm looking for you.   How many patients who are not looking for you are not finding you as well. So yeah, take us away, and I'm super curious, very intrigued by this. It's fascinating. And I'll also say, because AI is new, feel like people got like a reset slate. Like, hey, you can actually get back into the game if you haven't been into the game, if you just start playing now. If you don't, I agree with you. I do think that you will unfortunately get obliterated without trying if you don't get into the game now.   Dr. Len Tau (13:28) 100 % so and I couldn't agree with you more. So the best thing to do here is if you're listening to this, I want you to go to a Google search and I want you to type your practice name in. Okay, so that's the first thing to do. Right.   Kiera Dent (13:39) and not in your office. Don't do it in   your office. Go somewhere else. Like try it somewhere else.   Dr. Len Tau (13:44) Right, well, and 100%, that's another thing is that if you're gonna look up your ranking specifically, you do not wanna do that from your office location, okay? Because you're not gonna get real results. You also wanna go into incognito mode or private browsing mode on your phone or your computer if you're doing that to check ranking. But this is not specifically about ranking. This is more about how you appear online. So go to Google and type in your practice name. Not your name unless it's the name of the practice, but your business name, okay?   Kiera Dent (13:52) Yes.   Mm-hmm.   Dr. Len Tau (14:13) and it doesn't have to be what's registered with the state board. It's how you, when you answer the phone, what you say, okay? Pennsylvania Center for Dental Excellence was my practice name, okay? So you wanna look yourself up. So these are some of the ranking factors that Google looks at. Obviously one of them is your total number of reviews you have. Definitely a ranking factor, but the total number has not been as important as some other factors as well. So.   Kiera Dent (14:20) Mm-hmm.   Dr. Len Tau (14:40) Average number of reviews in the industry right now is about 350. It used to be like 100 was the golden number. Now 350 is the average in the industry. So are you average? Are you below average or are above average? Okay, that's something to look at. The second ranking factor, which is even more important is the velocity of reviews. So how many reviews, how often you're getting them. Okay, so if you're getting once every two weeks, not enough. If you're getting them once every week,   Kiera Dent (14:46) Yes.   Dr. Len Tau (15:10) Not enough. You don't need them every single day, but two or three every single week is ideal. Okay, because you think two or three every week gives you eight to 15 a month times 12 months is 100 reviews a year, which is a nice number. Okay, so you have to have that velocity. All right. Third ranking factor is the total score, your average number of stars. So   I would like you to be anywhere from 4.6 to five stars. Okay. I don't think you have to be only five stars. think there's a negativity related to that. If you're only five star reviews, but I also don't want you to below 4.5. Okay. ⁓ And if you're at 4.3, 4.2, or even 4.1, another better review or two, and you're to be in the threes. And that's really where you don't want to go. Cause you lose a huge percentage of patients who may come in if you're less than four stars. Okay. Another ranking factor.   is the primary category. So how do you know your primary category? If you look under your Google, your name, will say right where the stars is, will say, hopefully dentist in your town or dentist in your county or dentist in your city. Okay. So your primary category should be dentist because we're a dental practice. Okay. If you're an oral surgeon, you may want it to be oral and actual facial surgeon. If you're an endodontist, want it to say endodontist. You don't want it to say dentist if you're a specialist. Okay.   ⁓ That's a big ranking factor and I'll give you an example. I, ⁓ my wife had some plastic surgery over the last couple of years and we were referred to that doctor. So we didn't need to search for him. We were referred to him. went in, we liked him, we used his services. ⁓ And of course, being a plastic surgeon, I talked to him about reviews. He now uses BirdEye, but he had me speak in an event that he holds down here in Boca Raton.   And I talked about this exactly. And I asked everybody, cause it was a small group. What is your primary category? And he goes, he said to me, literally, he says, I'm listed as a nurse practitioner. He wasn't listed as a plastic surgeon. He was listed as a nurse practitioner. So his categories were all messed up. So when you actually typed in plastic surgeon near me, he never showed up because his category was wrong. So primary category is a very important ranking factor as well. Now you also have to make sure your secondary categories are also. ⁓   Kiera Dent (17:15) No.   Dr. Len Tau (17:35) ⁓ under ⁓ are there as well as under the proper categories. So secondary categories, if you're a dentist, dental clinic, teeth whitening services, denture care center, orthodontist, if you're doing aligners, if you're endo, you're doing root canals, you can have endodontist. If you do periodontist, can do periodontist. You want to make sure you have nine secondary categories. Okay, if you don't have them, you want to add them.   Now, how do you add them? It's very easy. You go to Google using ChatGPT or anything and say, how do I add secondary categories to my Google business listing? Okay. It will tell you exactly like a recipe how to do it. You need to add those secondary categories. All right. And if you want help doing it, you can always reach out to me. The last ranking factor, which is really important is making sure that the practices name, address, and phone number is consistent. Okay. So just to be clear, most   website companies do not do local SEO. They do website SEO, which is making sure the website is SEOed so the website ranks higher on the organic rankings. We're talking about getting the Google business page ranking higher, which the website companies are not focused on. So when it comes to the name, address and phone number, is it consistent? You have to be consistent. And this is a Google requirement.   It is not a patient thing. It's not a me thing or you thing. It's a Google requirement that this data is consistent. So the name is obviously important. So if you have the and or the ampersand, you may find things inconsistent. When it comes to the address, if you have, you know, South State Streets, Unit 510, you can have South or S, you can have Street or ST, and then you can have Suite, Unit, Number, or STE.   All these variations need to be consistent. So one of them has to be done and one and stuck with. And then if you are using a tracking number for whatever reason on your Google business listing, you may find your inconsistent there as well. So when you make everything consistent and you get a higher velocity of reviews, guess what happens over time? You rank higher on the maps. And when you rank higher on the maps, you get more visible for patients to find you. So that's where the secret sauce is. And   Not that this is a sales pitch about BirdEye, but that's exactly what BirdEye does. BirdEye does those. We check all those boxes for you. And then what ends up happening is a practices get more reviews. But more importantly, when they ask patients how they find them, they're going to see that they found them because of their ranking online and the reviews drove them to the practice. So that's how this whole thing plays a role in getting a practice more visible and credible.   Kiera Dent (20:06) Thank   Wow. So I was over here like taking a lot of notes, which I really loved. I love the number, the 350 at the average, the velocity, like three to five per week you were saying. It doesn't need to be an everyday, but I do agree like them consistently coming through the total score, the 4.6 to five primary category, secondary category, making sure we have nine. And then you were talking about like the practice name, phone number, all of that has to be consistent. So the addresses have to be the same. And that's going to help you rank higher.   Did I miss anything? Those are my notes, Len. And I'm just curious, like, did I catch them all? Because there was a lot of pieces to consider. And then I have some follow ups as well. So like, did I miss anything in that list?   Dr. Len Tau (21:02) No, I   think you got it all there.   Kiera Dent (21:06) Okay, so hopefully that was a good recap for everybody. If you were listening, I tried to like summarize everything he said, because I really feel that those are super valuable pieces to know. Now, Len, there's a couple of things that happen and I'm very curious of what you've seen. Maybe you know, maybe you don't know. It's just a riff for me genuinely curious over here. Does it impact for the business to respond to the reviews? Because I know there was like a big misnomer out there like for a while, like you have to respond to every single review that helps you rank higher. What's the   What's kind of the lay of the land right now responding to the reviews that come in?   Dr. Len Tau (21:39) So there's been a big push over the years to respond to reviews. And there's also been those naysayers who don't want you to respond to reviews. So I want to make this very clear. When you respond to a review and you acknowledge them as a patient, you are technically violating HIPAA. Okay. Now by the letter of the law, if you do that, you violated HIPAA and can be in trouble. Now in all the years I've been doing this, I've only seen one   Kiera Dent (21:49) Mm-hmm.   Dr. Len Tau (22:08) example of a positive review being responded to and the dentist got in trouble. Okay. So if someone writes a review for you and it's five stars and you say, thank you so much for your feedback. We were glad you had a great experience in our practice. Okay. You technically violated HIPAA there because you acknowledged that they came into the practice. I don't think you'll ever run into any problems with that. I don't, I've never seen any instance when a, when a practice has got into trouble. But again, by the letter of the law, it's a violation.   Here's where the person ran into a problem. Okay. So the review in question, the patient wrote, I'm so happy with my appearance after I went to so-and-so's dental office. I think they were in Texas. The dentist responded, we're so happy that you, thank you so much for your review. We're so happy that you loved our magic needles. Okay. So it, from what I understand is the patient had Botox or   dermal fillers placed and that's what they call their magic needles. So the patient wrote, wrote a letter to the practice saying, I didn't appreciate you letting the world know that I had Botox done and asked for the review response to be taken down, which the dentist immediately did. Took it down and apologized, but it really pissed the patient off and the patient sued the dentist and won. Okay. Because the dentist went out of their way to   Kiera Dent (23:08) Mm-hmm.   Right.   Dr. Len Tau (23:33) you know, release private information that wasn't supposed to be done. So in that case, you shouldn't be doing that. Okay. Now on the same note, I would be very careful responding.   Kiera Dent (23:37) Mm-hmm.   Dr. Len Tau (23:45) to a review that's left by a negative, a negative review that's written by a patient. I would be very careful responding publicly to that because it's very hard to respond without violating HIPAA. So a simple response like, we're sorry to hear about your experience. Please contact the office to discuss the concerns as we're unfortunately unable to comment due to HIPAA release privacy stuff. That's fine. But.   Again, I just not sure it's the best thing to do. So you have to be careful with negative reviews. What it doesn't do is we really haven't found any relationship between responding and ranking. Okay, so you have to, I always leave it up to the people to respond. I like using AI to respond as well, because I think it comes up with HIPAA compliant and really good responses. ⁓ But you have to decide what you want to do for your own practice.   Kiera Dent (24:16) Mm-hmm.   Interesting.   That's actually really helpful to know. ⁓ Okay, good feedback for people to ponder and decide what they want to do on. The second piece is   some people lose their Google My Business and they're not able to be found. ⁓ And I don't know if you have reasons why. I don't know if it's from like a name change or it's inconsistent. So like a lot of offices have a lot of reviews, but when you go to search them, they're hidden on Google My Business. Like it will show up on the person's side, but nobody externally can find it. Do you have any ideas of like what causes that or what offices can do if they're struggling with that?   Dr. Len Tau (25:11) So I want to clarify that what question you asked there. I'm sorry to ask a question when you asked the question was when you say that you're saying that when they search for their Google business listing, they can't find it or when someone is searching for the office, they're not visible on the maps.   Kiera Dent (25:15) Hey, that's okay.   So when they're searching, so if I just go into Google and I type in like my perfect smile, the website might link, but the Google My Business with all, and they might have like 150 Google reviews, like it might be, like they've got them all and the office can see it when they like log in as like, this is, you own this, but they've lost it and it's no longer visible publicly. Do you know what causes that or how they can get that back? It's okay if you don't, I'm just genuinely curious. Cause I know some offices struggle with this, especially with like name changes of practices.   going through different ownerships. ⁓ Some of them have told me it's like when I changed the name of my practice, it no longer showed up. Like we have all these reviews, but we're not showing up. Do you know what causes that or how practices can get back being visible?   Dr. Len Tau (26:02) Yep. Now that you   asked it that way, so that usually means that your Google business listing has been suspended. And if you can't find it on search, but you see it, means it's suspended in most cases. Name changes, address changes, other things you do can cause it to be suspended. There are, if you look up on use chat GPT, ⁓   and say, why is, why can your Google business page be suspended? There is a list of different reasons why it can get suspended. ⁓ if you're getting reviews the wrong way is a big one. So, like you should not be incentivizing for reviews. And I'm talking about incentivizing the patients. You shouldn't be getting reviews in your physical office space because there's IP address conflicts and location services on the patient's phone. So if you're doing that, not only will you can potentially lose reviews, but you can't get it suspended, but you can look on.   Kiera Dent (26:37) Mm-hmm.   Dr. Len Tau (26:55) on chat GPT or Google and just say, what are the reasons that your business page can be suspended? And they're there. So usually you have to ⁓ re-approve it or re-verify that page. And there's certain things you do. You'll have to take a video of yourself in front of the practice, showing the address, showing the name of the business on the door. So there's things you will have to do to get it over to Google. So they'll re-verify you. And then once it happens, there's a good chance they'll unsuspend the listing. But that happens for that reason.   Kiera Dent (27:24) Gotcha. Okay. That's super helpful because I know a few offices have struggled with that. So was just curious for that. All right. This has been so helpful to figure out rankings. It's been helpful to understand. ⁓ My last question as we wrap up today on reviews has been so helpful, Len, is how do offices go about like, what are your recommendations? Yes, bird eye, swell, podium. Like there's a lot of review in Weave. I do, I usually recommend using an external one outside of things. think that they like, if they're just, if that's what they do, they're going to be experts at it.   But how can offices ethically and appropriately, like obviously great patient experience, but how do they increase these Google reviews? What are some of the best tactics you've seen to help these offices out?   Dr. Len Tau (28:04) So being biased, I mean, I'm a true believer in BirdEye because we help with the reviews and the ranking part. ⁓ Swell, which is a great product. know the guys who swell really well. A lot of their doctors don't rank well because they don't focus on the listings part of it or the ranking part of it. ⁓ I'm not a fan of Wee from a review perspective because they swell BirdEye and Podium, make it very easy. Weave doesn't. It's just the way we do it with our three other products. ⁓   I always say this, you can get reviews any way you want. The most effective is gonna be use some software, simple as that. But it all starts with the practice and it all starts with, I like to create a reputation culture in the practice, which means you know that every time a patient comes in the practice, that they're going to be evaluating you and reviewing you potentially. And you've gotta be on your best behavior, you've gotta put a happy smile on your face, you gotta treat them like they're the...   Kiera Dent (28:40) Mm-hmm.   Dr. Len Tau (29:00) king of the world, okay? You gotta roll out the red carpet. And if you don't do that, they may write a bad review, okay? But if you don't create that reputation culture, I think it's gonna be hard to get the practice to really accelerate the reviews. So creating that reputation culture using great verbiage skills. I love calling it feedback, not a review. If you call it a review, it sounds like you're begging for it. ⁓ The feedback conversation is much more comfortable to have. So, you know, it's an interesting situation, but if you don't ask, you don't get.   So you've got to ask. I think if you ask and you combine it with a really good software, you'll get a really good number of reviews. If you don't ask, you don't get. It's that simple.   Kiera Dent (29:30) Mm-hmm.   Yeah.   ⁓ well, that was so great. I appreciate this so much. And it's fun to hear about how AI is helping. It's fun to hear about how you still have to be great on Google. So ⁓ I just appreciate you. I appreciate you being here. I appreciate the knowledge you shared. appreciate for offices. I hope they take action and Len any last thoughts, how people can connect with you if they want more help on this. know ⁓ like truly in my opinion, this is the simplest marketing. Everybody wants to like sexy magic pill of marketing. And I'm like, no, it's like really great experience. Ask for the reviews, ask for the feedback.   like rank so that way people can find you I've had offices that had like three four or five new patients and they're like I need this marketing I need all these things which I'm not here to say not to do it but I will say great reviews will boost you very quickly so Len any last thoughts you've got how people can connect with you because it's been truly just an incredible episode today   Dr. Len Tau (30:26) So ⁓ I'm around the country a lot. So you can always connect with me in person if I'm at some of these events. If you wanna come to Supercharge, you can connect me there. SuperchargeYourDentalPractice.com You can use the code RAVING to save $100 on registration. ⁓ We also have some scholarships available. So if you do wanna come, you can reach out to me personally. So ⁓ my cell phone's all over the internet. The easiest way, if you have any questions, you want advice, you want help, I'm the guy to reach out to. My phone number is 215.   Kiera Dent (30:40) Awesome.   Dr. Len Tau (30:55) 292-2100. And my best email is Len, L-E-N, at drlentau.com, which is D-R-L-E-N-T-A-U.com. And you can email me, you can text me, you can call me, tell me you heard about me here and you need some advice. I'm more than happy to offer it to you. I do it all the time. ⁓ I love when people reach out to me because they know I'm an expert. So I do it kind of as a favor to people. ⁓ But no, you reach out to me, I'm happy to give advice.   Kiera Dent (31:23) amazing. Len, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I'm super excited for Supercharge 2025 and especially 2026. So everybody snag that. And truly, I hope you take action from today's podcast. This is easy ways for you to boost your marketing, be found and seen online. And Len, thank you for joining me today. I truly, truly appreciate you.   Dr. Len Tau (31:41) Thank you for having me, Kiera, I appreciate it.   Kiera Dent (31:43) Of course. And for all of you listening, thank you for listening and I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.  

Kiera shares some motivation everyone could use a bit of right now, especially if you're facing significant challenges. Her episode reading recommendation: Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript:   Kiera Dent (00:01) Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera. And today I just want to give you a quick tactical, amazing, miracle morning recap. I have a friend in my life right now who is just struggling and I struggled last year and like I realized, my gosh, like maybe it's time for me to give you guys a quick boost on how we can create a little bit more momentum, a little bit more magnetism in our lives with a lot of ease. So if that's what you're here for, I'm here. Today's more about a life rather than a tactical tip.   but I believe that this tactical tip is going to set your DNA up to be the successful practice, the successful office manager, the successful hygienist, successful team member, giving you the DNA and the blueprint for it. So my name is Kiera. We love helping dental offices, their teams and their doctors and their patients truly live life at a higher level to be happier, to be more fulfilled, to be more profitable, to say yes to more things in your life. We call the yes model. You as a person being fulfilled, happy, vibrant.   E stands for earnings and profitability and S stands for systems and team development. Like let's put the systems in place. Let's teach you the tacticals, but let's make sure we get the DNA right. ⁓ Miracle Morning was a book that came into my life by Hal Elrod at such a vibrant time. I was at my lowest of my lows and I just needed almost like ⁓ a roadmap out. And I feel like this book was so magical and so powerful for me. And I just really, really, really appreciate it. So ⁓ I'm going to give you guys like kind of a rift on it.   But like helping you just get this into your life. Because like I said, my friend is just struggling, high anxiety, burnout, feeling like, can't I be, like, why can't I do this? A new mom, feeling just truly burdened and down. And I remember I was talking to them and they said, Kiera, I just don't understand. Like, I feel like I should be able to do this and I feel like I can't and I don't understand why. And I thought, gosh, how many people feel this day in and day out? Like all of us.   And that's the lie is we all think that everyone else can figure this out and I'm just the schmuck and I just don't know how to do it when it's all just a stupid lie. And I'm so irritated about it because the life experiences that we're having right now are truly gifts to us to help us evolve into the person we ultimately want to become. if you could realize that the challenges we're facing right now are truly the gift of your soul to propel you into the version of yourself that you need to be.   is something so hard to comprehend when you're going through it, but so easy when you're on the other side, like, wow, that was the greatest gift life ever gave me. And remember life is always happening for you and not to you. So how Elrod, like it just helped me have like a routine, like a routine of pieces. So like I said, I'm just going to break it down for you. He goes through what he calls are the lifesavers. And the lifesavers on there are S stands for silence, A stands for affirmations, V stands for visualization, E stands for exercise, R stands for reading.   and S stands for scribing. So on the silence, the way he describes it, it's like, be quiet in your mind and block out the chatter through meditation, prayer, or focused breathing. Okay, so I do it, I do meditation in the morning. I love Joe Dispenza, that's the one who's come in for me for a long time, I didn't. I've done calm, I've done lots of different things, prayer, whatever it is, but the goal is to quiet our mind. And I believe that our mind is like a muscle and we need to strengthen it. And so this is a great way to almost do like bodybuilding for the mind is to every day.   just have a moment and like a time of silence. And I usually do this before I start my day. So it's kind of like setting myself up, building that foundation, creating this affirmations, tell yourself encouraging words to achieve goals, overcome fears and feel happy. And what they've proven is like one thing that I love about Joe dispense is he talks about like the future causes anxiety and the past causes depression. And how can we be in this future moment in this present moment? And then how can we create our future and actually break the pattern and the habit of things that are known and create an unknown?   of what we actually want to become. So when we do these affirmations of like X, Y, Z, and then we go followed up with the visualization, a visualization, imagine yourself doing things you need to for the day in your future life and imagine what it feels like to succeed. So for me, it's like, what is that? Like, don't have to say that he's always like, what is that future life? Like I hear him in my head because I listen to him every single day, but it's like visualizing, like, what do you want to be? How do you want your life to be? Who do you want to be? And I was like, what things? you're   You're basically creating this future that's pulling you, that's compelling, that's something you don't know. And you're able to like literally bring this into your world. Now, I'm not gonna lie to you, this is not an overnight sensation. It's something that you build up over time. But it's really beautiful when we're giving ourselves affirmations, which I have like a ton of I am statements. And then we go into E stands for exercise. So doing something of movement. It can be a one minute movement, but like just go for a walk or a jog. Getting moving allows the blood and oxygen to flow to your brain.   like my morning walk, like the shower for my brain, clear out all those cobwebs before I take off, doing something to honor my body which is this beautiful billion dollar asset that I have that I promise and committed to treating her with so much respect and love. R stands for reading. Fill your brain with positive thoughts and ideas to improve yourself. So any type of reading, anything, even if it's like two minutes like you could grab, but it's not scrolling, it's something of positive. Like you'd be shocked at how many books you get through if you'll just read like a page of morning. ⁓   to just fill your mind with something positive. And then S stands for scribing, write a journal to process thoughts and reflect on what you've achieved. So they have the short and condensed version of the savers, because I was like, wow, that feels like a lot. But again, it gave me a roadmap. So like, cool, I do meditation. Then I visualize within my meditation. Then I have affirmations. My husband says his affirmations in the shower. Like, truly, that's not a joke. Or he says that on his drive to work. And then we have our exercise. We have our reading. And we have our scribing.   I have cut a few of these things down. That's like the quick down dirty formula for it. And so for me, what I try to do in my journal is every morning I do what I'm grateful for, accomplishments I had from the day before, because I want to build that momentum. I do my improvements. And sometimes I just do one. I don't give myself any more than three. So my improvement was live in gratitude more. That was my improvement. I just want to see where life is more abundant and beautiful for me. That was my improvement. So it's nothing hard. It's nothing berating. It's truly just that.   I always do a portion of joy, like what was my greatest joy from yesterday? What's my self love? That one was really hard for me. I put that in and I had to write three things that I loved about myself, whether it was physically, mentally. So the one I wrote in here is that I love my brilliant mind. What's wild is like, why are we not our best friend? Like, why do I not look in the mirror every day and be like, gosh, girl, I just love you I'm so grateful for you. Like, why not be the biggest cheerleader for ourselves? So that was a big thing for me. I write down my goals of what I want to achieve.   And then what are my results for that day that I want to accomplish? So that's my scribing. Journaling for some reason makes me feel weird. It's been a few years block for me that I haven't been able to journal. So that's kind of my quick formula. And then just so you guys know, I have my like just a couple IM statements of like four year affirmations. I say, I am creative. I have growth and expansion. I am love. I have divine connection and collaboration. I have self love and compassion. I am honest. I have an abundant mindset. I'm fun and playful.   I have trust and flow, I have queen strength. So those are just a few. And then some of my affirmations are like, my success is inevitable. This is one that I always have like, hold on, I'll read you my favorite one. I'm 100 % committed to being so dang good people can't ignore me. Kierda is a name that is known across the world for good and for changing those she touches through word, deed and presence. And that's who I wanna be. That's how I wanna show up in this world. I also love this one. I am committed. Let me read this one to you.   ⁓ I think this one's just funny. ⁓ I am committed and choose to be happy each day by laughing so hard, doing super fun things weekly. So just some like really fun things for you. I have another one. This was at a time in my life where I did not have great relationships in my life. So it's been on here for almost nine years. It says I am 100 % committed to only having healthy, positive relationships in my life. I immediately cut out toxicity from my life. ⁓   I am 100 % committed to being grateful for the amazing life that is already mine and continue to watch success, joy, money, grace, friendships, employees. Yes, I added employees. Don't worry, that was for surely added. And happiness flowed to me with ease, acceleration, and continuity. So for you, I hope whatever it is, whatever your version of Savers is, whatever your version of Miracle Morning is, that you remember that you are the greatest asset, that you're choosing you, that you are showing up for other people.   This is the dumb analogy that I hate, but it's true. Put the oxygen mask on you first to give to other people. This is your breath of oxygen. This is your, whoosh, is the way to have a simple foundation for you every morning to prime your mind. For me, I feel like, why don't I prime my mind for what I want to see rather than priming my mind for whatever comes in my way? I truly believe that I am a creator of my life, not a manager of my circumstances. And I want to be creating this beautiful, abundant, radiant version of me.   And I hope that you want that for you too. I will tell you when I first started this, 90 % of what I just read to you, I didn't believe and I didn't feel and I didn't think was mine. And over time, after doing it day in and day out, and it's not lying to myself, it's just again, like Jodis Benz says, it's not looking forward and causing anxiety and it's not looking in the past and causing depression, but being present and then co-creating my future life of what I want, what I believe, what I can create, and then allowing that to come to me.   with ease, grace, continuity. So if you need help with this, not only do we coach on dentistry, but we also help people become the best versions of themselves. And I hope that you just take this because life's too short. We are going to have bumps, we're going to have bruises, we're going to have pieces come through. But what I hope is that you're able to find hopefully something in this miracle morning to give yourself the foundation, the ritual, the routine, the system for your life to give you the extraordinary life that you deserve. If we can help you reach out, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com.   I hope you choose you. I hope you choose to love you the most. I hope you realize that giving yourself 10 minutes, 15 minutes a day is the greatest gift you can give yourself for everything that your body and soul does for you day in and day out. Commit, love yourself, and if we can help, like I said, reach out. I'm betting on you and I hope you are too. And as always, thanks for listening, and I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.  

Kiera and Kristy talk listeners through the patience of the hiring process, with specific attention to understanding training capacity, establishing onboarding expectations, utilizing available resources — and what to do when you do all this already, and it still doesn't seem to work. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript:   Kiera Dent (00:01) Hello, Dental A Team Listeners. This is Kiera and today's an awesome day. I'm so excited. We have the one and only Trouble Hunting Kristy on the podcast today. I call her the truffle hunter because she finds all the money in the practices. Like Kristy, I don't know if you've looked at the stats, but you are rivaling me on the amount of production you're bringing into practices, which I think is a huge shout out to you. Kristy's one of our incredible consultants. So Kristy, with that intro, how are you today?   Kristy (00:27) doing wonderful. Thank you.   Kiera Dent (00:29) Good.   Yeah, of course. I feel like I need to get like a good nickname for you. So I've been like, clicking Kristy, but it's like, that's not what I'm going for. I'm going for like hunting Kristy, but I need like something. So if anybody out there can think of it, like in my mind, Kristy sits there. I don't know. It's a really funny image I have of you, Kristy. I see you like with your little shovel. You're like digging for the gold and the practices. You're like, I'm going to find it. It's like sleuth status Kristy.   So if anybody has a great nickname, send it on over. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. I'm always here for good nicknames. So, Kristy will find one for you. You know, here we go. But Kristy, we've been working on some practices together and ⁓ just like in general consulting, I think there's some fun things. And right now I think it's like, what do you do when you can't hire team members? I think hiring like hygienists for an office, the hiring climate is really tricky. And I think we've been coming up with some good ideas.   Kristy (01:01) Yeah.   Kiera Dent (01:23) that might be really fun to dig into if you're down with that today.   Kristy (01:26) Love it, absolutely.   Kiera Dent (01:29) Awesome. All right, Kristy. So with practices, I were pretend I'm your office and I'm like, hey, Kristy, I need to hire, but I can't hire. Like what's step one, two, three? Where do we even start to find these people? Because I think this happens in almost every single practice. I've said it before in our company. Like how do we break beyond that to help offices really find some people? Because you had an office that like could not find anybody. And now they're onboarding three people in one moment. Like it's pretty incredible how we went like   the swing and the shift. So how do we get to that other than just having patience through the process?   Kristy (02:03) Yeah, well, I think there's multi steps to it. But first, I think we have to take a look at ourselves and figure out, are we the type of person that likes to train people or not? Right? Because if I truly am not a person that likes even training people, our avenue may look a little bit different than ⁓ if I really enjoy developing and coaching them up, if you will.   So first there's that step, if you will. And then I think the next step Kiera is, I get my doctors and teams brainstorming. What attributes are you trying to find within this person? What do they need to possess as a person, personality wise? And what skills are you looking for them to possess?   Kiera Dent (02:31) Okay.   Mm-hmm. Yeah, because I love that you actually brought up do I want to train and develop somebody and then who are we looking for because I think Sometimes people like know thyself and be free I think is the best way to phrase that I am someone who we used to try and hire consultants and train them up and honestly we did a dang good job, but I got to a level as the company grew where I'm like   We just need people who are already expert consultants that can come in at the level that we need. And so even though I might love to develop people, I think also looking at the size of your practice to see, is this a position that we have the space to grow them? Like if I'm a brand new practice owner, trying to grow and develop an office manager, probably not a great idea. Like that's hard. And that person also, you have to look at too, the ROI of this position that, well, I might not feel like I can afford it.   they're actually going to bring money like a very experienced office manager who knows how to bill and knows how to close cases. Even though they're very expensive with air quotes around it because you're brand new will pay undue dividends. Just like when I hire, I remember hiring my first treatment coordinator. I looked at her in the interview and I was like, listen, her name was Kristen. I still remember this. And I'm like, Kristen, I begged our doctor to like stamp off and let me hire you, but you have three months to prove yourself. Otherwise I have to fire you. Like   literally can't afford you for three months beyond this. So, but you should. I mean a treatment coordinator should be putting money on our books. Kristen was amazing. She paid for herself ten times over but it's that like risk too. So, when you look at this of do we have the time to train them? Do I have the skill set to train them? And is our business like for us? Training consultants right now does not make sense. I can't teach a consultant.   how to run a $6 million business that sells to a DSO and get them trained up to that level of expertise. That's something we've outgrown the training space. So now we need to bring in expert consultants that have been there, done that, done that successfully rather than trying to convince them. So I think it was a really solid point you had on that. But Kristy, what happens when you as a consultant know that this doctor could train someone? So for example, like a dental assistant, like we could train them.   but the doctor maybe just doesn't want to, but they don't really have the funds to pay for the higher level. especially like a dental assistant. I'm like, dental assistant is not necessarily gonna put money on my books. They might make me move faster if I have a highly trained one. Like that is, it's nice to have, but what do you do on that type of a practice that like you as a consultant are looking at the numbers and like, maybe we should try to train this person up. What are your thoughts on that?   Kristy (05:34) Yeah, well, to back up, think speaking to what you were talking about is what's the end result we're looking for and within what timeframe, right? Because again, realistically, if we need, if we're a startup and we need butts in the chair, we've got to be producing. We don't have time to train someone up, right? And if a doctor isn't really that great at it,   we've got to find different solutions for acquiring that person. And I think reaching out to your team members to find ⁓ their resources, who do they know? Who can we tap in that maybe they know and worked with and has been successful, right? And bring them on. But also I do believe we have to have a good onboarding process with expectations. You know, what by when and set them out.   not just for the person coming on, but for team members to enroll them in helping them too.   Kiera Dent (06:38) Mm-hmm.   Yeah. Kristy, brilliant point on that of like onboarding expectations. What results do we want by when? And I think that also is probably like the pivotal piece when we're looking at this of what is our result? When do we need it by? That way we can see like who should I really hire of all my candidates? And then I loved how you said like, let's figure it out. You and I were in a practice together and we were like, okay, what sets us apart? Why should people want to work with us? And then who do we want to hire?   and this office, they like run on roller skates. So I'm like, put that in the ad, say like, we run fast and hard. We don't want people that like, if you don't love spinning around like 50 plates going in the air, this is not the place for you. And it's been crazy, because like, that really does speak to, now the person who wants that is going to come rather than just hoping and praying. ⁓ But Kristy, what do you do like this office?   The one I'm thinking of this doctor, it would, it just like the cards were falling left and right. Like every time we'd get on a call, was another team member was gone. And just so you know, this is not just isolated to this doctor. Kristy and I have seen this over our careers. Like this happens. It just comes in waves. And then we're like, we sit here and giggle empathetically. It's like, gosh, like this is just so frustrating. And it's like a giggle of like, I don't know what else to do. I'm either going to cry or I'm going to laugh with you. So like, let's choose the laugh and figure it out. What do you say to those offices? Like when it feels like,   Okay, I'm putting the ads out. I know who I want. I've got my onboarding expectations. Like I literally can't find anybody. What do you do in that spot? Or like where should they even go? So first of all, I guess question A is where should we be posting these ads? What can we be doing to hire? So all of our fishing rods are out there. And then part B will be like, what do we do when all fishing rods are out there, but we're just not getting bites? So where do you recommend fishing rods should go to find people?   Kristy (08:08) Yeah.   Yeah, well first off with your team, who do they know? Who can they reach out to? What are the resources they have? Also schools in your area, know, they may have contacts, not necessarily new grads, because this doctor didn't need a new grad for sure, but they might have relationships still with part of their ⁓ alumni, if you will.   and or lists of their names that they could reach out, you could solicit, you just never know. And I don't mean solicit in a bad way, because there could be people that are out there working, but aren't happy where they're at and are looking for something a little bit different. Or they're happy but want growth opportunities, you know? So again, pull your resources, look at your teammates, and don't think just my assistants. It could be an admin team member, it could be a hygienist that worked   great people before. ⁓ The other areas, obviously, if I wasn't looking for somebody that was hugely experienced and I had the ability to train, I like looking at restaurant servers or you find people that have great customer service and are willing to go the extra mile. I love dangling a carrot out there and   not only dangling the carrot, like promoting them as well. Like, hey, you are a fantastic server. If you know any friends that are just like you, have those qualities and are looking for a career, I would love, you know, to have you give them my card. And sometimes you'll do that and they'll look at you and go, well, why not me? You know, and you just found someone. So.   Kiera Dent (10:17) Exactly.   Kristy (10:20) Those are a couple avenues. know you have some as well. ⁓   Kiera Dent (10:24) Yeah, Kristy, I love that you talk about that. And I love that you're   scrappy like this. And if you're hearing Kristy's voice, Kristy loves where she's at. She loves, like, I just feel the love and compassion and just like helping team members feel that. And I think when you can convey that, it really is an easier path to get people to want to work with you. ⁓ dentistry is so small and I feel like we're a nice patchwork quilt where we're all somehow connected. Like we have the oddest family tree where every single person, I mean, Kristy and I,   Kristy's like, hey, I met you a few years ago. And I was like, this is really funny. I literally have an email from you in my inbox, but yet our worlds came back around a few years later. So just remembering like we all, and once you start brainstorming with your team, people are usually like, my gosh, I know this person or hey, I live next door to a hygienist. Let me ask them or hey, what about this person? And so I agree, Kristy, like the power of networking. And like, I remember we went to, I was in a drive-through and there was this girl who was like,   amazing at customer service. It was at a fast food restaurant drive through and I just handed my business card to her and was like, girl, you're incredible. Like if you're ever looking for something or know someone who's just like you, have them call us. And this girl did call me like it's wild Shelby, who if you've met her in our company, literally my next door neighbor, she wanted my plants and knocked on our door. So look and hunt for good people all the time and always, always, always be on the hunt. I think let's not get ourselves into these pickles where we meet people.   but let's always be recruiting, always be looking for great people. And then of course I'm here for like writing really awesome ads. So we love using a company called Ava HR. We have a promotional code through Dental A Team. I've negotiated down to get you the best pricing, but you can post one ad and it will like, you can post how many ads you want and it's just one monthly fee. So I'm really big also though of like, this is where I put my fishing bait. I'm out there putting like a bunch of different titles to see who's applying to my different ads.   based on the title because just like podcast episodes, it's interesting. Shelby and I went and pulled like the most downloaded ones and it does not matter the content, it matters the title. And so same thing with your ads, like yes, that's going to attract somebody. So put really awesome titles and see like we have tried different ones to pull in consultants and the one that works best is usually like a regional manager or a consultant, like looking for something different. That one tends to pull me my best candidates, but I've tried office manager. I've tried treatment coordinator. I've tried like.   but until you know a bait works in your area, you've got to try them out. So that's why I really love that. Talk to your reps. Reps are connected. Doctors talk to people on the golf course. Like it's shocking how many dentists have come from golf course conversations that I've seen looking in your area. And just like you said, service industry, some of my absolute best office managers are bankers. So they're coming from banking and some of our best schedulers actually came from like tanning salons or hair salons that were super busy. Lots of high-end customer service moving really quickly. ⁓   but those are some of the best places. So I think like, get your fishing poles out there, start looking and then like, don't stop. Don't just like throw the fishing pole out there and hope and pray that the bait stays. Watch it, constantly update it, stay top of mind with people because just because you had a conversation with your team today doesn't mean they remember in a week from now. So making sure it's like top of mind, this is who we're looking for. If you know anybody, you see anybody and it's crazy because all of a sudden.   like little bubbles just show up in your world and people show up. So I think brilliant ideas on that, Kristy. So then part two of that question was what happens? Like, I honestly think it's just patience. So it's okay to just say patience. Like people want immediate results. And so what do we do in that interim when it feels like we're getting no bites, we're doing everything, we're talking to people. Well, A, it's cause your pipeline wasn't built. So.   Just once you hire people, they'll stop doing all these things you were doing to find people. So like, we'll just put that plug in there. But what do you do? What do you tell clients when they just feel like they cannot find anybody? So they're getting desperate. They're getting snootier. Like, sorry, doctors, you do get grumpy when you don't have team members. I do too. So it's not just you. I do too. What do you do to keep their mindset or what can they do to bridge that gap that you've seen work really well for your practices?   Kristy (14:36) Yeah, two things and I had a tie in to the last thing we were talking about one other Avenue that has worked really well for us. Doctors also kind of dig their heels in and resist but make a video. Doctor make a video, right? And if you guys have local Facebook groups that are for dental, post the videos on there. Have the doctor speaking with you know, hey, if you like this, come work with me.   Kiera Dent (14:44) yeah.   my god, yes.   Kristy (15:05) My team, we want you, you know? We've seen it work.   Kiera Dent (15:08) Hmm.   We have seen her and Kristy, great job on that. And doctors like, but I'm not like out there. Like, I don't like to myself out there. I'm like, good, post just that. Like who you are is going to attract the person that you want. And notice this, even Kristy and I on this roof, like we podcasting right now. We work together with the offices. Even right here, we're spurring different ideas, talking to each other. And this is what happens in your team. It's like popcorn. So it's like, what idea could we have here? my gosh, that's going to lead to this idea. wait, what about this?   my gosh, what if we did this like hygienist? I have an office and they literally do CE for hygienist in their area. You could do CE for doctors in your area. And then at the end, you just say like, Hey, we're always looking for hygienist. If you know anyone that like would love to be a part of what we're doing, we'd love to meet them. That office literally gets like three or four hygienist resumes at the end of every one of their CE conferences because people want to be with them. So it's again, like where are these people? How can we attract them? But right here, Kristy and I were like, cool, we got that.   And they're like, wait, this is another idea. wait, what about this? I just realized like once you start brainstorming, more ideas come from you. And I think let's not look like, let's ask better questions. Questions of like, where do these people hang out? Where does my avatar hang out? Where's like another cabbage patch I could go find that maybe we haven't thought of that might be like out of the box thinking. Where is this profile, like personality type, not profiling, but personality type. Where does this person hang out? Where do they like to be?   where can we go for this? That's what I'm gonna start to like think about. That's where the brainstorming happens. And this is where I feel like you are able to win when other people are just posting an Indeed ad and walking away. You're literally got like 10 fishing lines out there. Other ways you can do it that way too. So kudos on the brainstorm session, Kristy. I love it.   Kristy (16:52) Yeah.   Sounds good. And to your point, if they're not finding who they want, I like to redirect them and focus on what can we do right now while we're looking for this person. And like you say, continuously looking. think about the tools you have within your practice. Like, could we use Mr. Thirsty and maybe not have to have the extra set of hands right now or, you know.   I mean, there's just so many different solutions. Is there a hygienist maybe that would be willing to come work as an assistant or, you know, we've got to be creative.   Kiera Dent (17:25) And I think,   yeah, and Kristy, when you said that, like, I think it's important not to say no, right? It's very easy to give that pushback, like, no, I don't want to do this. I understand, and Kristy understands that you want the most perfect person to land in your lap. Well, guess what? You still have to do dentistry, and we still have to get through this until that perfect person shows up. And also, I think, Kristy, like, we can use a Mr. Thirsty. We could use a hygienist. We could have someone flex up front.   Like whatever it is, what that also does is it buys you time so you don't make a desperate hire. And I think that's one of the biggest pieces we're trying to help you see is then you buy yourself some time. I know you and I were talking to an office and you brought up the great idea of virtual assistants. Like virtual assistants, they're not long-term. They can be long-term. They can bridge gaps. They could answer phones. They could do billing for you. Things that you could outsource that maybe then would like alleviate the load. We had an office hand turn. You and I were like, all right, well, why don't we have a virtual assistant do?   all these pieces for you while we're waiting for your front office team member. I thought it was one of the most brilliant, think kudos to us. Like let's just like brush our shoulders off here. But that's like where I think a consultant and a guide can help you see. But I think you also have to realize like you're in a pickle right now. So let's get out of that pickle and make it to where we can be more creative. Any other thoughts you have on that, Kristy?   Kristy (18:47) No, I agree with you. think because even when we're talking virtual assistant, one of one of our teammates had a virtual assistant. Literally, they had no admin team member and that person was sitting on a screen greeting people when they walk in. And when we mentioned that the team's eyes were like, what? I'm not gonna lie. I kind of like mind blown to but think about it. That is still better.   than having to put a sign up and say, hold, because there's nobody here to greet you. At least they have a live person. It might be on a screen, not in flesh, but they're there and acknowledging them and greeting them. So truly getting resourceful, if we will, and like you said, thinking outside the box. And it doesn't have to be a long-term solution. It's an intel solution.   Kiera Dent (19:39) And I love that you said   it's an until solution because when we have that, like it's so brilliant because now I, what I love is this then opens up your, I'd say like treasure box of options that you have for the future. Like, great, I know I could do a VA. Great, I know I could do a billing outsource. Great, I know I could do a Mr. Thirsty. Like it's not optimal, but then also what this does is you're no longer handcuffed and shackled to team members being there because team members will come and go forever. That is the reality of owning a business.   We hope and pray they'll stay with us forever, but guess what? Like that's just not the reality of life. And that's also not the flavor of business either. And so with that, I think it teaches you resourcefulness. It teaches you what things you can do. It's kind of like, I always say, man, if I have to, I know I can scrap down to top ramen and like I can live so cheap because I did it before. And I think this just allows you to have that flexibility and creativity. And I think what I would like people to know, and I know Kristy's on the exact same pages,   Kristy (20:25) you   Kiera Dent (20:35) making sure we use these resourcefulness so we don't accidentally desperate hire. Like truly, it can be so tempting to just hire someone to make the pain go away, but it's choose your heart. Is it harder to like deal with this resourcefulness? like agreed when I heard about that person on the screen, I was like, you know what? But hey, it's 2025, everybody's on virtual. Like it's not that weird for people to have like maybe a little off, but I mean, Kristy and I hang out on virtual all day long. I don't see a single team member 90 % of the days that I work.   Kristy (20:55) Thank you.   Kiera Dent (21:04) that it's not as weird as we might think it is, but I think what it does is it forces the discipline so that way you can truly wait for your ideal hire rather than being desperate, hiring somebody, having to terminate them or they're not the right fit. I think it just allows you almost like a longer rope before you're like at the end of your rope as well. So I think it was brilliant, Kristy, great ideas on that.   Kristy (21:25) ⁓ thank you. ⁓   Kiera Dent (21:27) Of course. So with   that, think that's our that's kind of our wrap for you guys of what do I do? How can we get this? If we can't hire maybe helping you think of outside the box, how can we bring these people in? What do we need to do as far as looking at our practice, looking at what we want to bring into our practice, getting resourceful on where we put our fishing rods. And then how can we like do this, like beginning and ending to make sure that we're really in the right spot for this practice. So, Kristy.   love consulting with you. I love what you do for our clients. I love that you bring so much positive energy. I love that you think outside the box. And I think that that's why you can like, this is why I think you find money in practices because you're like, all right, it's not on this avenue. It's going to be over on this avenue. If it's not on this avenue, it'll be over here. But I think that same resourcefulness goes into how you consult. And I just want to say kudos to you and appreciation for being on the podcast and also serving so many of our clients as well.   Kristy (22:21) It's an honor. Thank you.   Kiera Dent (22:23) Of course. All right. For all of you listening, if you're struggling with hiring or you're struggling with motivation or you're struggling with all the things that business owners deal with, reach out, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com or go click on schedule a call. The call is so fun. We literally show you gaps in your practice, things that you're doing really well and make it to where you can truly sleep better at night. And if we can help you, amazing. We'd love to help you. Otherwise just come like figure out where your blind spots are, but reach out. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. And as always, thanks for listening. We'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.  

Dental A-Team's marketing mastermind Eve joins Tiff on the pod to discuss the top marketing strategies that can be easily implemented in your practice. They touch on social media, offline marketing, retention, and more. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript:   The Dental A Team (00:01) Hello Dental A Team listeners. I am in the studio air quotes there because you know, we're in two different places I say that all the time, but I am in the studio with someone very very special today and I'm so excited I just I adore this human being more than I think she will ever know I think she thinks she knows how much I adore her but she has no freaking idea   And I'm so excited to bring her here with you guys today. And I always bring my consultants and they are by far and away the A team and they make the Dental A Team who we are. And I'm always just so happy to bring them to you. But today you guys, I have the most amazing human being. I have Eve with us. And some of you may know Eve's name. ⁓ All of you likely see her handiwork every single week in your inboxes, in your email. ⁓   invitations, if you're part of our doctors groups, you are seeing her sprinkles of fairy dust and everything that the Dental A Team puts out, our logos, everything that we do. Eve is our marketing genius behind the scenes and she hates that term, but she really is our marketing genius. I have.   Eve, I'm just so happy to have you here. Like I could sit here and talk about you for the whole podcast and the amazing things that you've been able to do with us and for us. But first and foremost, massive welcome, massive thank you for taking this on. This is not, you love to be behind the scenes, but being in the face of everything is not your favorite space. And I somehow convinced you to do this. And Eve, thank you so much. And how are you today? How excited are you to be here with all of us?   Eve (01:37) I   am equally excited and nervous to be here. This is definitely one of the things that I had to challenge myself to do. you know what? It scares me and it's something new that I've never done before. So ⁓ let's do it.   The Dental A Team (01:52) I'm so excited. for all of our listeners, if you've ever attended one of our monthly webinars, we do free webinars so everybody knows every single month. It's the third Thursday every month. Eve actually, that's her. She is responsible for those. She puts them on. You've probably heard her amazing voice on there and maybe even seen her face a time or two, but that is the handiwork of Eve. And I know most of the content and most of the stuff, the engagement that you're seeing is put on by the consultants, but I want you guys to know   Eve is freaking brilliant. She is a mastermind and she has so many tools in her tool belt. And honestly, she, and I are constantly just in awe. Eve of the, we've told you this before, where we'll create content now, you guys. we, Kiera and I create the content. We're like, yep, let's rock and roll. And we send it over to Eve and I'm like, my God, I didn't even think of that. Like she's thinking of like dental things for us now too, because.   You've just done so much of it with us and you pour your heart and your soul into everything that you do. And I think when it comes to a great marketer, that is a massive piece of what really makes you shine and makes the company that you're working with or for truly shine as well is that you pour your heart and soul in there and you become who you're working with and you become that piece of content and you just embody it and you literally, like, ⁓ it makes me think of like Jim Carrey.   Jim Carrey does really, really well studying everything that he's going to his characters, right? So he does all the studying and he literally becomes them. And I've watched documentaries about him where he's like this different human. And that's what I imagine you doing Eve, when you go in and you do all of our content and all of our slideshows, our decks, all of that. You just become that content and you make everything just shine a little bit brighter. So massive kudos to you. Huge thank you and.   Again, thank you for doing this podcast with me, you guys. This is gonna be huge. Obviously we're doing it about marketing. I get so many questions about marketing and if you know I love marketing, it just lights up my soul, I don't know why. I love changing something a little bit to get a different result and to see what happens and use different words, use different tools, and it really, really lights my soul on fire.   I get asked a lot of marketing questions and something that even just what you talked about right now when we're prepping for this, I'm like, gosh, I actually get asked these questions constantly and I get asked for marketing companies. We have a ton we can recommend. We have time we work really closely with, but Eve, I really, really wanted you to come in today and really help us narrow down some effective marketing strategies that you've seen that you think can translate very easily to dental practices. We are a dental consulting company.   So our marketing might be a little bit like a smidgen different than an actual dental practice, but I think that a lot of it translates and marketing is marketing in my opinion. So there's a million things. And I think there's two that you just talked with me about that I want those to be like, this is the meat of it. But one question I get asked a lot that I wanna pick your brain on and I want just like, put this out there. And first off, before we even get started, everyone know Eve is like,   She told you she is equally as excited as she is nervous. And she is really, really fantastic at making sure that anything that goes out is as accurate as possible. So just know this is coming from ⁓ her marketing brain, The learning, the training, everything that she's got behind her and also opinions. Like these are things that we've...   tested, these are things that we've done, things that she's done, whether it's with our company or not, and opinions that we have on things that could or could not work. So with that said, one of the biggest questions I get asked is social freaking media. do I, dental practices on social media. And there's a whole bunch of different avenues for that and a whole bunch of different genres of dental practices. think I see like cosmetic practices or these smile design practices, obviously, they're gonna get a good   foothold and it's going to be more important for them to be on social media. But something Eve that I've always thought or been told is that for a general dental practice, your social media is really there to help boost SEO and it's really there to like get in front of your patients. It's not necessarily going to be something great to get in front of people who don't know you. And I think of that because I think of like the stretch within the country.   of how many people are randomly coming across social media accounts, what's your opinion on social media and dentistry?   Eve (06:29) ⁓ Well, think first and foremost, think social media is very important. And no, first and foremost, thank you so much for all the kind words. Thank you. Is this episode about me? That's great. Glad I came. Now, I do think that social media is very... And I think that more and more dentists are realizing now that social media is super important, is one of the main pillars of marketing. Because if people don't know that you exist, they're never going to come to your door. ⁓   The Dental A Team (06:36) Of course, of course. Yes.   Eve (06:59) One mistake that I think many ⁓ business owners in general do is they treat social media purely as a sales tool. ⁓ Social media can be that if you play it right, but it's more about awareness. It's more about building that trust with your community. It's about ⁓ showing like how you show up for your community. actually, my dentist, ⁓ I love their social media. They really just, their social media makes me feel like we are best friends.   ⁓ Like even seeing the familiar faces, ⁓ just seeing everything that they do kind of on a day to day or them taking me behind the scenes and stuff. It's really, something that really does build that trust with the audience.   The Dental A Team (07:40) Yeah, what is it for for dental practices? like you said, like sales, they're using it for sales. Are they going to gain new patients from it? What should it be used for?   Eve (07:51) You definitely can get new patients from it, but ⁓ for, if we're talking about acquisition, I would definitely recommend running ads. So your feed is not just basically covered with, I don't know, promo on whitening. And then the next post is ⁓ kids are going back to school, book your checkup and stuff like that. ⁓ Social media is to build that trust with the community, to kind of show who you are to them enough that they   are going to like you and they're going to trust you and they're going to come to you. After all, feel like dentistry is a very, and I don't think people really think about it this way, but it's a very kind of like intimate service really. ⁓ So I think that trust is just very, ⁓ very important.   The Dental A Team (08:36) Thank you. Yeah. And what I'm gathering there is that it should be a reflection of who you are. So who your practice is. And I think that kind of flows into a lot of podcasts that we've done on really knowing who you are, how you want to show up in the world. So what your core values are, what your mission and your vision are. And I feel like then if your social media is speaking to that, it's kind of as just putting yourself on display rather than saying,   please come schedule. hate, I hate, like I always think of like the Easter bunny, right? And the like Easter bunny picture that everybody posts. It's like happy Easter. And it's like everybody posted that or happy St. Patrick's Day and it's the little leprechaun. And it's like, huh, just be different. Like do a picture of your team with little leprechaun hats on and say happy St. Patrick's Day. Like do bunny ears on the doctor and not this like stock photo that everyone's using and then following it up with,   by the way we've got a whitening special for wedding season. Like everybody's doing that. So I love the way you said that.   Eve (09:40) Yeah. And I would challenge anyone that's listening to it to kind of try to be themselves for a minute and try to actually present themselves the way they are. Not what, not in the way that everybody else expects them to be. Like you're saying, it's, don't know, Christmas is coming. Everybody's posting happy Christmas from X, Y, and Z. ⁓ dental try to be different, try to, try to do what you as a person would do because that there is a massive chance that whatever you do or whoever you are will actually.   really make someone relate to you ⁓ even more.   The Dental A Team (10:12) Yeah. And you're trying to attract that patient avatar of the patients that you want, not everyone you're trying to, you're trying to narrow down your niche. So thank you. Perfect. ⁓ massive piece that I wanted to chat about B and I actually just got off a call this morning, ⁓ with a client and she had asked me for ideas on this and, ⁓   really just like boots on the ground marketing is what I like to call it and community outreach. And I love that style of marketing, especially for practices that are in a really community based town. like LA, maybe not like as many things to do, but there's still some, think boots on the ground style marketing you can do, but especially for those rural cities or rural communities within a big city that can do that kind of community outreach. What do you feel, how relevant do you feel?   that is or earlier you called it like offline marketing. How relevant do you feel that is? Because I do feel like a lot of marketing companies even are pushing so much online, so many Google ads, so much SEO and everything is like this online presence. And I do believe in Google ads and I do believe in Google reviews to boost all of that, but there's still gotta be something else that can go in.   Eve (11:05) Mm-hmm.   The Dental A Team (11:28) line with it, but what are you seeing that works really well or experiencing yourself?   Eve (11:33) 100%. And I think, and that's something that I mentioned to you earlier, that I feel like so many dental practices move online so much that there was so much room in offline marketing. There was this whole pool that is basically uncovered. And I brought an example of myself where I really, I do love my dentist and if he's listening, I love you, but I have moved. I have moved. now it means that it's like a 45 minute trip for me to go and visit my dentist.   The Dental A Team (11:55) Yeah.   Eve (12:02) I'm on a lookout for a new dentist. And what I've noticed is ever since I moved, I've been getting flyers from literally everyone with my name on it. So obviously they have access to my name, my address and everything. I've got flyers from the pest control guys, from people that are offering to fix my roof. People that are doing landscaping, driveways, everything else. I have not received a single one from a dentist. And this is someone that I actually genuinely need. So I know my job now is to go on Google.   The Dental A Team (12:31) Yeah.   Eve (12:32) run all those reviews and pick a new dentist ⁓ that I hope that I can trust. But that kind of shows that there is that massive gap, really. Because if you were in my area, so if you're in South Ogden, Utah, look. Yeah.   The Dental A Team (12:48) I have a dentist for you. I didn't know that's where you moved.   I have a dentist for you, but go on, go on.   Eve (12:55) Perfect.   So if you're in this area anyway, just know that there is zero offline ⁓ competition for you. So you can for sure attack this area. ⁓ But seriously though, I feel like he has that everything is moving online so much that there was more room again for offline marketing or even when it comes to like community ⁓ inspired initiatives. ⁓   The Dental A Team (13:16) Yeah.   Eve (13:21) You know, and you can be as creative as creative as you want. I've seen one dental practice around dropping like toothbrushes. think their slogan was smile more or something like that. And they were dropping toothbrushes and they were hanging them in, in a little bags on door handles of the houses. ⁓ so even doing things like that as well, even though obviously it might be a little, you know, it might be time consuming. It might need a lot of planning, but those things do, they might not get you up.   The Dental A Team (13:36) ⁓ smart.   Eve (13:48) They might not get you a new patient right away, but they slowly build up that kind of trust or it slowly shows people that, hey, we are in your community. We're serving your neighbors.   The Dental A Team (13:57) Mm-hmm.   I could see that. Yeah, I think a lot of dental practices pulled back from the flyers and they became, I don't know, think that, I think in the, I know when I was in practice, when we were in, we did thousands, we would do drops of thousands of these.   flyers and they would come back. would get the fly with the patients would bring them in. They would get them. But it takes so many times for those to get in front of someone before they're ready to call. And they would say, you know, I've had this here for six months and it's been hanging on my fridge and I finally decided to call or I was finally due for my cleaning that I think people just got they shied away. They got scared of it and felt that the ROI might not have been there, especially when maybe like the marketing   marketing budget, there's so much of the marketing budget going to Google Ads and going to website revamps and a lot of marketing companies just to host the website. It's a huge chunk of the marketing budget anymore that I think they stopped doing so many of those styles of marketing. But I can think of actually a handful of clients right now that   could probably benefit from that. And especially Eve, like you're saying now in a saturated market in Utah, is a very saturated dental market. If you're not receiving those and you're kind of looking out for them, that is a huge untapped area that those dentists could probably get. Yeah. Yeah. Just waiting.   Eve (15:23) I would be a very easy patient to just tip over. I'm literally, I'm here right now. Just come.   I'm literally just waiting. Yeah. But also what you mentioned, I think is really important when, when you said that, they might get a flyer and then they might get something else. Those are called touch points. And right now it's, it's proven that it takes seven to 12 touch points to actually convert a lead, which is like the patient to be, if you will. So now imagine how many.   The Dental A Team (15:32) Yeah.   Yeah.   Eve (15:52) how many in how many different areas you need to do those touch points to get in front of those people. ⁓ For example, you I'll give I'll give you my example. Let's say I got that flyer a week later when I see the same practice on social media, I'm going to probably pay a little bit more attention. Right. I'm going to go on Google and check their Google reviews, check out their websites, see what they do, see, look at the doctors, see if I think that I will actually gel with any of the doctors. ⁓   The Dental A Team (16:09) Yeah.   Eve (16:21) And so all of that are little touch points that actually lead to me picking up that phone and scheduling my first appointment with them. So it's not, you know, like, obviously sometimes it might happen, but usually it's not just one thing. It's a combination of a lot of, a lot of things. And that's obviously that's, that's work. And that's, you know, that's going to take up a chunk of your ⁓ marketing budget. ⁓ But it's definitely something that, something that works.   The Dental A Team (16:48) Yeah, yeah, I love that you said that I talked to practices about that constantly that it takes seven up to I think you said 12 and I've heard 13 times. And that's I talked to them about that for treatment planning. So if a patient needs treatment, like we're telling them multiple times, or speaking in or around it, we're not saying you need a crown seven times, we're saying like, there's something going on here, because of that same reason. And I tell them   I use the example of social media and you're scrolling on social, you're on Instagram, right? And you're like, ⁓ you like slow down because you're like, that's a cute pair of leggings. Like, and then you're like, gosh, it's an ad. So you scroll faster, right? But then the leggings come up again. And then it's like a different picture of the leggings. It's a different girl wearing the leggings, but it's the same leggings. And then all of sudden you're like so many times over, you're like, this is a sign I'm supposed to have these leggings. And now you're clicking on the boutique and you're like, am I buying these leggings? And next thing you know, the leggings are on their way, right?   You had no inclination, you did not go on social media to find leggings, but the leggings found you. And that's what that marketing is. It's like so many touch points, right? Yes, that's how they get you. And that's kind of, that's also what we're working against, right? Because that $30 pair of leggings that I just bought off Instagram that I have no idea if they're good or not, could have been a copay for a dental appointment too. So if we're not getting in front of our patients and we're not advocating for their dental health more,   Eve (17:45) That's how they get you.   The Dental A Team (18:08) than these legging companies and these boutiques on Instagram or whatever ads you're getting, because it's going to go off your algorithm, they're advocating for you to purchase whatever that thing is. So if you're not advocating for the patient's health and getting out in front of them, you're not really doing your due diligence as a dental practice. The sitting and waiting for patients to find you just isn't, I just don't think it's a thing anymore. I don't think that there's like walk-ins, you know, I don't.   Eve (18:30) 100%.   The Dental A Team (18:33) Some where for sure there could still be walk-ins, I just the sitting and waiting. I don't think is working anymore, you know   Eve (18:39) And also I think it's worth mentioning that you as a dental practice owner, you are competing with so many other practices who are literally pumping their money into their marketing, who are always chasing the next trend, the next thing to do to get in front of your patients really. So there is always that competition. And I know it's never a kind of a relaxing feeling when you know that there's someone out there trying to get even your existing patients.   But that leads us to another point, which is the retention. And as we know, to retain a client or to retain a patient is always, always cheaper than acquiring a new one. So when we talk about marketing, we also need to mention that ⁓ retaining your current patients. So making sure that, you know, making sure that your follow-ups are in check, making sure that you're reaching out, reaching them out with emails, that your reactivation process is   you know, is in place is just so important because that's actually, it's, it's so much easier to retain your existing patient who's already been there, knows you and hopefully trust you. Right.   The Dental A Team (19:46) Yeah, they're already bought it and you've built that relationship. And I think if you're a dental practice listening to this podcast, you are a dental practice who's likely relationship based. But I do think Eve, to your point, it gets so lost in ⁓ the other pieces. We get so focused on treatment or so focused on acquiring new patients. I walk into practices all the time and I have one practice in mind and he's going to listen to this. He's going to know exactly who he is.   And he's constantly asking me, what about marketing? And I'm like, bro, you just, you took over this great practice. You've got like 8,000 patients right now. Like your job right now is to retain the patients that you have. And maybe even, you know, if you're in a practice and you've had this practice for a long time, or you just took over a practice who's been around forever, there are thousands of patients who have not been seen in two plus years.   that know your practice. And so like Eve saying that reactivation space, like hit up those patients that already, they're already near you. If they've moved, they'll tell you. They are already bought into that location and reestablish that relationship because it is the cheapest form of marketing. And again, like Eve said, you already have that relationship started. And so you don't always have to.   pour a ton of money into marketing. And if you are in an area that you do, then do it. Your marketing budget, we usually say to keep marketing, our consultants advise like 3%. I've seen it all the way up to 5 to 8%. But 3 % to 5 % is usually a pretty decent chunk. And that should be of your collection. So that's of your overhead. So 3 % of your collections. Yeah.   Eve (21:25) like is that of your total budget or is that   your... Yeah, okay.   The Dental A Team (21:29) Yep, of your collection. So whatever last month's collections were, whatever your average collections are, we usually recommend 3 % up to 5 % of that poured into marketing. But to that point, I have so many practices that are like new patients, new patients, new patients. And I worked with doctors personally who just, everything was about the new patients. And if we're not remembering the patients that are already coming, we're doing a disservice to every patient that walks through that door. So.   strictly only focusing on those new patients is not going to build that relationship that keeps patients coming. And you're always going to be in the rat race for those new patients. And you don't have to be. One day you're going to be like, we're full. One day it's going to be like, well, I'm actually almost ready to retire. Like I'm good. And we want to, we want to see you get to that point. So I think that was massive Eve, what you said, and that retention and that reactivation is huge, huge.   What do you feel like, ⁓ to kind of wrap us here, I know AI is coming in really, really strong for a lot of practices. Is there anything that you've seen offhand, just off the bat, working well when it comes to AI in the marketing world?   Eve (22:44) ⁓ I think plenty, and especially for dental practices. And I feel like right now there is a, there is, ⁓ an uptick in companies, specifically dental companies helping out with that. And I don't know if I can mention names of the companies or not. So keep it quiet. I think, I think we know which ones we're, we're talking about. There are just so many companies now that are specifically designed for dental practices to help you out with it. Exactly. With the retention, right? there are companies that will.   The Dental A Team (22:59) You can.   Eve (23:14) literally do all the job really for you when they send out automated follow-up emails or follow-up texts, or they'll send out texts that are confirming patients' appointments. There's just so much happening right now. And I get that for a lot of ⁓ dentists and dental practices that might seem very overwhelming or the word AI itself might kind of not make you feel all fluffy and fuzzy inside because it is a little bit scary in the direction that it's   going in. But I think there are a lot of ways beyond what we know like chat GPT and stuff that the AI can do for you. I would say as a general advice, would just say you can always give it a shot. You can always try it. You can always track it. And you can measure your results. Because at the end of the day, if you try something and it doesn't work, you can try it again in a different way, or you can move on to a new thing.   One thing I would say though is just don't be scared of AI because AI for businesses is actually a very powerful tool.   The Dental A Team (24:20) I've even seen practices follow up with new patient calls. They'll keep a list of new patients that have called the practice and maybe not scheduled. They've asked a couple questions and then they'll call and follow up or they'll shoot them and.   in AI message, right? They'll have a system in place where it's like, hey, kind of like, it makes me think of, I use a lot of this protein company, right? This first form and they do fantastic at emails. And I'm always like, what is this one? Like, what's this new product, right? And as soon as I go look at it, a couple minutes later, right? I get that, we saw you looking email, right? And I'm like, yeah, I know. And so it's just getting that, it's the touch points though, right? It's like, hey, don't forget about this. And they'll gear.   a lot of the marketing towards the things that they know I want. And I think it's brilliant and it's AI. There's not a man on the other side that's like, Tiffanie looked at this, let me shoot this email. Like, it's all automated. So in the same voice, the same situation, even when patients are calling and they're just asking questions, it's like shooting an AI message that says, hey, did we answer all of your questions? Like, what questions do you have left? Because a lot of time patients will call and they'll still have more questions, but they might not   And so getting that extra touch point, I've seen them turn unscheduled like calls into a completed new patient. It works. And so in the same vein, doing all of those pieces to retain and to follow up with patients that maybe just didn't, they're not a patient yet. But as I'm speaking that I'm going back to like our original conversation of social media. And I think Eve,   something you do really well with our marketing is that everything is consistent and it's constantly in Dental A Team's voice. And so even down to your confirmation texts and emails that are asking if patients are coming to their appointments, if it's not in your voice of your practice, who you are, it's confusing. And it's not confusing.   Eve (26:20) and it's not finished.   The Dental A Team (26:22) Right? Like it's not like I sit there thinking, is confusing. This is weird. Sometimes I do. Right. But in subconsciously in the back of my brain, it's like a detachment. Every time something's different or something just doesn't fit, it's a detachment to that place. But when they're all succinct and everything flows and they're consistent, I'm more attached. Think about like Lululemon. If Lululemon all of a sudden was like this sterile email that came through, it wasn't like, girlfriend, I found the best set.   set of leggings you need, right? They were just like, look at these leggings. I'd be like, that was weird. Right. And it would detach me from that brand and that company. What do you think about that Eve?   Eve (27:00) 100%. And I am a big, I think I'm like Dental A Team's guard when it comes to branding and that goes for, that goes for everything that goes for your brand colors that goes, that goes for the use of your logo or even the images that you use, the videos that you use as well. So I think all of it. and I know we could probably talk about branding for another two hours or so, but yes, that consistency. And I know we might sound fluffy, but that consistency builds that trust. If, for example, you have a patient that.   The Dental A Team (27:05) You are.   Eve (27:29) goes to your social media and looks at all your posts and then decides to go to your bio and actually click on the website. If that website is different, speaks differently than your social media, there is going to be a little bit of that in trust, right? All of it basically should follow the ⁓ same branding. And the same goes for your voice as well. So at least then people also know what they can expect from you. If you are a dentist and there is a dentist in Salt Lake City and that's a...   pediatric dentist ⁓ and Tiff, you might know who I'm talking about as well. I didn't even know he was our client, but I've been following him on Instagram just because I love his Instagram. But he definitely comes to mind for me as someone, as a dentist or as a practice with a very strong branding. ⁓ I can be scrolling on Instagram. know exactly, even if there is nothing written on it, I know exactly which post is his. ⁓   The Dental A Team (28:02) Mm-hmm.   Eve (28:28) And it's crazy, but this does build that trust that we are talking about. The whole branding really is about building that familiarity. Like, of course we're going to trust things that we find familiar.   The Dental A Team (28:38) Yeah, I totally agree. And I think pedo practices do it, they do it really well. Pedo practices, they can speak their voice really cleanly. I oftentimes have like general practices. I'm like, go look at the pedo practices. Like look at these ones. These are ones I work with. Like look at their messaging and their branding because they really do know how to speak to it. But it's because the specialty practices, ortho, pedo, oral surgery, perio, they have to do so much more marketing because they're not   they're not getting the like, I need a cleaning phone call. Their specialty, so they're getting more referrals or they're getting patients that's like, gosh, my kid needs ortho. So they have to do so much more marketing. think they're more in tune with it. And I think recently in the last 15 years or so, marketing in the general dentistry world has really had to ramp up more than it ever was before. And we're just still learning so much. I think that speaks to like this massive change of   not having the flyers going out. It's like, okay, well, this might not be working, so let's cut it. And I hate that. You said something earlier about tracking. I only cut or change things if I can prove black and white that it is or isn't working. if a patient calls and they're upset because they got too many confirmation texts, like one patient out of 600 is upset and then practices are changing their method. And I'm like, but it worked for 600 other people, this one patient, you know? So I definitely agree with all of that. And I think   I think the key takeaways today are to, one, would say evaluate your area, right, Eve? Like look at what your competition is and what are they doing? I think something you said earlier was like really, really sticking to the boots on the ground, still working and still being one of those touch points. And I actually really love that touch point because it's so much different.   than the online ones. You're just getting blasted with online ones, but all of a sudden you have one that's in person in real life and you're like, oh, this is new. This is different. Exactly.   Eve (30:34) It's so crazy because it used to be the other way around. You get   a stack of flyers like this in your mailbox every single day.   The Dental A Team (30:41) Yes,   I remember being in office and getting calls from just mostly cranky old ladies. And I'm like, one day this is going to be me. I'm going to be this cranky old lady. And they would be so upset that I kept sending these flyers. And I was like, I didn't send them. Like I have a company and I don't know how they got your name, but they're like, take me off your list. You know, but that's not happening anymore because we're not sending them. Like you need those calls. That's how you know it's working. If you've got patients, non-patients, if you've got people calling, complaining that they're getting your flyers, that's how you know it's working guys. They're looking at them and they're calling you.   So due to diligence, figure out in the area, like what's best for you? What's gonna work? I do think I love the community outreach. I love getting in front of patients in that way. And then remember your social media is a brand, you guys. Is this supposed to be speaking who you are? And like Eve said, it should mimic what your website shows as well. So if your website needs some revamping, reach out. We've got some great companies that work on that.   It's a really great tool to have and I think we undervalue and underestimate how much our website actually does for us. It's an insanely helpful tool because people still aren't going to look at them. So,   Eve (31:51) And especially,   I feel if your website hasn't been updated for long, ⁓ make sure that it's mobile friendly. right now, obviously, I don't know the exact figures for dental practices, but I reckon that maybe 80, 90 % of people that look at your website look at it on their mobiles. And I don't know about you, Tiff, but for me, if I go on a website and after five seconds, I'm all lost and nothing makes sense, I'll click that X button very quickly.   The Dental A Team (31:55) Yeah.   ⁓ yeah.   For sure.   so fast. Yeah. Our attention spans just, you got it. You got to catch people literally five seconds. You guys, it's not our. Yup. my God. Tick tock killed us. I know. Yeah. Well, Eve, I think that was fantastic. I super appreciate you doing this podcast with me. I knew I wanted to pick your brain selfishly and ⁓ you're just the best human I could possibly think of to help dental offices really understand how they can.   Eve (32:23) It's right. Tick tock, tick tock. Tension span.   The Dental A Team (32:47) effectively market their practices. So Eve, thank you for today. Thank you for prepping for this. I know you've been stressed for weeks because I asked you weeks ago. So thank you. I think this was fantastic and you just gave so much information to so many people. So thank you for being here.   Eve (33:02) Thank you so much. And yeah, thanks for having me. It wasn't as bad as I thought. You made it easy too, so thank you.   The Dental A Team (33:07) Perfect, then I'll let you know when the next one is. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Good.   You're welcome. You're welcome. I promised you I would do my best. So everyone, hope if you are driving, you re-listen to this and you take down some tips and some tricks. If you weren't driving, I hope you were writing notes. Re-listen to this a few times, you guys. There's a lot of nuggets in there to pick up from Eve.   a lot of really great information. As always, drop us a five star review below. We'd love to know which tips worked best for you or which tips you're most excited for. And I always say this, you guys, if there's something you're doing that we didn't talk about that you think someone else should know, put it in that review because people really do read them. And we are here to just spread as much knowledge as we possibly can to as many people as we can. And as always, you can hit us up at Hello@   Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. If you have any questions, if it's marketing, like just FYI, I tell you all the time that the consultants really do answer most of those, but Eve is in the background of those as well. So if you have a question and you're like, Eve, what do you think? Like we're here for you, okay? She would freaking love that. So Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. You guys can reach us and as always, thank you for being listeners. Thank you for sharing these with other people. This is a really, shareable episode, you guys.   Marketing is hard, it's hard to understand, it's hard to see an ROI, and all the help that we can give each other is what we're here for. So go share this episode and we'll catch you next time. Thanks guys.   Eve (34:35) Thank you.

Kiera talks about the concept “going into the storm,” aka how to approach those difficult conversations with team members, and how this builds trust as a practice.  Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent (00:01) Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera. And today I think is gonna be a really, really, really beneficial conversation. This is something that I've worked with tons of offices on. It's something that I feel is such a good just reminder of the type of practice, the type of leader that we wanna be. So, and it's called going into the storm, how to have hard conversations with your team and actually making them easy. So with that, ⁓ this is like, it's just random. So Buffalo, ⁓   I I'm going straight into a story for you. Why not? Happy dental day. Happy everything for you. But when Buffalo, there's a storm coming. So they watch this, basically like Yellowstone area over like the Rocky Mountains. When a storm comes, they've watched Buffalo behavior. What Buffalo do is they actually, the storm's coming at them, like these big, we're talking like a big, snowy, scary, terrifying storm, blinding. They can't see. I've been in some of these storms. Buffalo actually turn.   face the storm and walk through the storm. Like they literally go into the storm, whereas cows, what they do when the storm's coming, they see it and they actually pivot and they run away from the storm. And what's interesting is the buffalo, when they go and they hit it head on, they're actually able to get through the storm and be able to come out on the other side faster and with less like heartache and burn on them versus the cows that are actually in the storm so much longer because they avoided it.   And then they actually, the storm just like goes with them for much, much longer rather than hitting it head on and taking it on. So when we talk about this in teams and kudos to an awesome doctor up in New York, he's the one who introduced me to this. We talk about it in all of his practices. His practices are thriving. We've taken this to other offices. We do it within our company, but it's where can we go into the storm in our practices? Where are we avoiding conversations where if we would just have them head on, we'd actually be able to move it so much faster and further ahead.   And I think about this a lot of like those storms, if you realize, are actually the things that are the building blocks of gaining greater trust and vulnerability with each other. So we go to Patrick Lincione's five dysfunctions of a team. The bottom layer is trust and vulnerability. Then the next layer is healthy debate. Then the next layer is commitment. Then it's peer to peer accountability. And then it's results in winning. So if we look at all that, we break it down. People who go into the storm that's building trust and vulnerability and it's having a healthy debate.   versus those who avoid it or are avoided. Like it actually just makes it last longer. And I my little sister said, she's like, here, it's like 10 seconds of courage to overcome these things. And when you look at other opportunities and other stories and other scenarios, when people go into the storm, they walk out on the other side and they're like, gosh, I'm so glad I had that conversation. Even though it was a hard conversation, it ends rather than being avoided on it. And so having those...   All it does is it's going to build resentment when we are like the cattle and you're in it so much longer and it's more exhausting for you and it's more draining on you rather than turning it and going into the storm. So in your practice, I have some offices who have literally made like hats, t-shirts, swag, and they say go into the storm. And I think it's a really good reminder. And I'm even tempted to do it in our company. So like, Hey team listening, ⁓ I really think it's an awesome idea to just wear shirts, to make bracelets, to have it on a hat of go into the storm.   So you're reminding yourself that you're always going into the storm. I want to have this ⁓ conversation because true leaders go into the storm. Those who are followers avoid. And I just want you to realize like, who am I and what am I doing and what's my behavior? And so this healthy debate or healthy conversation actually allows for more direct conversation and builds trust and it builds a stronger practice. And it's wild because I had an office, we talked about this and we talked about their quarterly meeting.   And then three months later, I asked them how they're doing in their life. We've been going into the storm so much more. And when I talked to this office manager, she's like, Kiera, it's crazy how many times I need to go into the storm and how many times I was avoiding it in the past. But now that it's on the forefront of my mind, I'm thinking about it more. I'm doing it more. And I'm actually making it to where it's just better experience for me. So the dentistry team, our job is to like make your life easier. Our job is to make you more profitable, less stress, better patient experience. But when we make changes or when we do things in offices,   We've got lots of different behaviors in the practice. So we're going to have lots of different people there, which in that case, we're bound to have conversations that don't match. We're bound to have conflict. We're bound to have people that like, there's just going to be a misalignment, which is going to have the opportunity for frustration, confusion, chaos. And so when we have these conversations, when we teach you and your teams how to do this, your team actually flows. This is how we get flow in a practice. This is how we get ease. And actually, instead of having artificial harmony,   we actually have true harmony in our practice. And this will actually apply to your personal life. ⁓ Me, I have two sisters, so hello, welcome to three. There's always an odd man out or odd woman, if you will. And one of my little sisters, we realized that there was some pretty awesome opportunities for some healthy debate. My family is really solid on people pleasing. We think that that's the right way to go. Seven kids don't make a big mess, like it's fine. And I've noticed the more I coach and the more my company and the more I work with teams,   the less and less tolerant I am to people pleasing and not having conversations when they need to happen. And I remember my little sister and I was for my birthday. ⁓ She's 15 years younger than me. So life lessons, like I've clearly had a lot more life than she has. And ⁓ we went into the storm and my little sister felt like maybe I didn't like her and   We talked about it and I remember telling her, I waited about a week and I said, hey, Leticia, are you open to a conversation? And she said, yeah. I said, let's talk about what happened. And I helped her realize that like me having that kind of a conversation with her, like, let me know how it landed because in no way, or form, do I want to be rude or aggressive or anything like that. Cause I know I can have a bit more bold of personality site if you couldn't guess. I'm sure all of you can guess that. And I told her, said, like,   Me coming to you and having that conversation actually is me wanting to build more trust with you. So that way we can have conversations. You can tell me what you're feeling. I can tell you what I'm feeling and we don't have to sit here wondering and guessing or talking through other people. And I was actually like really, really proud of my little sister who's 23. Actually she just turned 24. But at 24 to learn these life lessons.   and to be open to it and to see that like going into the storm is not a bad thing, but it is uncomfortable because I think a lot of our lives and a lot of society has taught us to avoid to make sure people like us. But the real way for people to like us is to know that they trust us and that they can be real with us. So on that, this is something of like, Hey, if you're avoiding conversations or you're nervous about your leadership, this episode is your permission and your playbook to have these conversations and to truly go into the storm, to hit things head on and to not have the   the problems last for so long. So step one is like, let's get the facts in the right intention. So I'm really big on like, when we're highly charged and we come in and we are berating people or we're being rude, that actually can damage a relationship. So like you can go into the storm, but the way we go into the storm, let's have finessing grace rather than like attack mode. So what are the facts of the situation? What happened? What was said, what was done and what's needed to resolve it. And then, excuse me, I'm really big on like say what needs to be said.   So let's not just like go into it like, all right, facts are that you were a jerk, did this. Those are actually like someone being a jerk is not a fact. A fact is you said X, and Z on this date. This is how it landed. And these are the clear examples and we stay grounded. So this is where also metrics and KPIs are really great. So if your hygiene team is not hitting it, it's like the facts are that we're actually not hitting our three times our pay like we need to. We looked at all the open time in the schedule. So there's a scheduling issue. We also looked at what our   dollar per procedure has been for each hygienist. And we know this hygienist is hitting it, this hygienist is not. We also looked at like what's going on within those and what are the procedure makeups? Do you see how many facts I just brought to the table? So instead of being the hygienist is like, well, you don't give us the time. We can't hit three times. It's like, okay, here's the facts. Here's the data to back it up. Now let's figure out a solution together to make sure that we're able to hit three times our pay. Cause we need to take care of our patients and we need to make sure like this is something other offices can do. So let's make sure we do it. And then what we're going to do   is now that's like, we've got the right intention. And what I say is we spend like two minutes on talking about what the issue is very clearly clear as kind. And then we spend the rest of our conversation resolving it and finding solutions to it. So really the goal is to improve, it's not to shame or to blame or to nitpick that person's like, you did this. Like, no, that never is going to land well. That is one way to go into the storm, but that is not the best way to go into the storm. Like kudos, you actually have the combo.   but it didn't land in a way that somebody felt respected, heard, and that they're able to accomplish it. So the next step is we have that, prepared our facts and our intention. Next step is going to be like to communicate clearly and directly. Like I said, clear is kind. So we can use words like I've noticed or help me understand, or I'd like to understand your perspective on this. And we speak with empathy and firmness. So it's like we address the behavior, not the person. So it's never like, well, Sarah, you're not hitting your three times a pay. It's like, hey,   We've noticed this is happening. These are some of the facts. Help me understand what's going on so we can create a solution together to get to three times our pay. Notice on that, I did not tell them like this is open for negotiation, but I'm also not blaming you and telling you that you're wrong. It's like, hey, this is what's going on. Here are the facts. Help me understand your side. And then let's create a solution together that we both agree to that's going to be able to resolve this once and for all. ⁓ So when doctors and office managers come into it, I had a coach and she told me, always come from curiosity.   So when we're going into these, from curiosity, that's going into the storm in a way that's going to yield a positive result. It's like, hey, help me understand, or like, I'd love to understand more about this, ⁓ or hey, help me see your side on this. I'd really love to understand where you're coming from. So a lot of it's like, help me understand, help me understand. I'd love to know more. ⁓ Help me see your perspective on this. I'd love to understand your side. And truly, we're now listening to understand. We're not listening to respond.   And I hope you heard that you're listening to understand you're not listening to respond. And then from there, like honestly, I had a doctor, I giggle, I had a doctor who had to practice this with me. Like they literally had to sit there and have an uncomfortable conversation with me and they had to send me the video. So was like, how are you going to come into this? How are you going to approach it? How are you going to say like, help me understand this? How are you going to address the issue with facts? Help me understand more, Kiera. I remember the doctor said it to me and.   I watched it I was like, my gosh, we have to this conversation again. Like I swear we just had this and I called the doctor and I said, hey, I got your message. Thank you for it. Like help me understand like what we need to resolve with this conversation. The doctor like, no, we don't resolve anything. You just told me I had to practice. So had to send you another video of this, but we are resolved. like, but notice how you even came into that. Like I'm annoyed. Like, my gosh, I have to freaking have this conversation again.   But my ultimate intention is I want to get this resolved so it doesn't come up and I want to resolve it forever. And I really do want to understand what you're hearing, how this is landing so we can be on the same page. When we communicate, going to the storm for me is we are on the same page, we've made a resolve and we're committed to solving this forever. Notice, trust and vulnerability, then we go into healthy debate, then we go into commitment and then it's peer to peer so we can win. So on this, I'm like, my ultimate resolve is like, what do we need to commit to? What do we need to do to resolve this?   Like what do need to hear? What do I need to understand? So that way you and I are on the exact same page. So then after that, we then are able to have a follow up and accountability. So once we have that, like I just said, like we had the conversation, we have the intention, we had the healthy debate, whatever it is we commit, we commit 100 % and what we're going to follow through on. So we have a culture of follow through accountability. So it's like amazing. This is what we agreed to. This is when we're going to get it done and this is what you need and this is what I need. And this is when we're going to...   touch base and make sure it's good to go again. What I love is when these emails are like, you send this in a recap email form. So both of us, like there's no misunderstanding because what they've actually studied is people's memories are not actually real. We actually don't remember and we fabricate and we change. So like when you have eyewitnesses, actually not great witnesses because everybody's memories change all the time. So when we have black and white of a recap of, this is what we agreed to. This is what we said. These are the dates. Now there's no room for miscommunication.   And also what I like to do is on this follow-up accountability, I like to ask them, like, hey, also, I just want to make sure that what I was trying to communicate is what you heard. ⁓ Help me understand, like, what did you hear and how did this land for you? So you say this with Vanessa, because someone might say, like, Kiera, I heard that you think I'm a terrible hygienist and I'm actually doing an awful job. At that point, it's like, thank you for telling me. ⁓ Once again.   Help me understand what I said that made you feel that way, because that's not my intention at all. And I want to make sure we're on the same page. I appreciate you so much. So then they'll be like, well, when you said that I wasn't doing blah, blah, great. Well, now we can resolve it. We can fix it. Like, thank you. This is what I was trying to say. Is that more clear? Does that work? Are we on the same page? Then we have the follow up, the support. We follow through. We make sure it's going to be resolved forever. Now, this can be really awkward at first.   This is not something that I feel people are naturally born with most of the time. And I think that this is something to practice. So what we've got to do is the three steps for these going into the storm is we prepare with facts. We communicate with clarity. We're like, it's very clear. Like, hey, here's it. We have the facts in our intention. We communicate clear as kind. This is the issue. This is the resolve. Let's work together to find a solution. And then we're having accountability follow-up to make sure that we're on the exact same page with that email recap. And like, perfect. Help me understand. We're coming from curiosity.   This will help you have courageous, strong leader conversations. This will help you go into the storm more. And what's interesting is if you even want to take this podcast to your leadership team and help your whole leadership team hear this, like, we're going to go into the storm more this quarter. We're going to start practicing these conversations. We're going to start asking each other how it lands. What's amazing is within your office, it's like a little breeding group of everybody knows what's going on so I can practice on them. So then when I go to my family,   it's not as awkward and I can start to have it. And what's interesting is you will actually start to have less and less tolerance for artificial harmony and more and more craving to be on the same page, to have this conversation, to make sure we're communicating on the same page that we're actually communicating. And we're not just trying to talk through a window, right? Like at the stoplight, when you see a car over there and you're like, hey, your music's great. And they're like, what? That's how oftentimes communication is versus like, let's roll down the windows. Let's truly communicate. Let's go into the storm. Let's hit these issues head on.   hit the issues, not the person. Let's do it with poise, with finesse and grace. And you can even tell people like, hey, I'm practicing this. I heard it on a podcast. I'm not a hundred percent like great at this, but I'm going to do my best. And I want you to just give me feedback of how it landed for you so I can get better and better and better. This is where it's going to be where you can truly become an incredible leader. And I promise you, if you'll go into the storm, your life will be so much better. Let's get through it. Let's see that these are opportunities for you to grow all these storms, if you will.   are opportunities of your soul to grow, to evolve, and to become the person you were meant to be. So see it as the opportunity, see these as great blessings, see them as worthy opponents, see it as like, my gosh, I get an opportunity to grow and become a better version of myself. Thank you for showing up, thank you for this opportunity, and become the leader that you were meant to be. So if you're avoiding a conversation right now, this is your sign to go into the storm, and I'm sure all of us have it. What is the storm that you need to go into? And honestly, you can DM us, like, difficult conversation guide. We have a whole recipe of how to have a hard conversation.   ⁓ And we're happy to share that with you. So just message us or email us. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com ⁓ This is where I want you guys like the podcast is here for leadership tools. It's for tactical practical pieces. And honestly, maybe send this episode to a colleague to another doctor that maybe, know, doesn't go into the storm as much with their team. Send it to team members, office managers, send it to your office manager and say, Hey, I want to start having these conversations with you. I know I've been avoiding that. I think this is a great framework for us to now start to go into this and giving us permission to play.   to have these conversations together to grow ourselves. And honestly, if you're struggling with that, this is where we coach up leadership teams. We coach doctors how to have these conversations. We coach team members how to have these conversations. We have it in a safe space where you can practice, because you're not going to be perfect at it, but we want perfect practice to get these great results. We want you to practice having going into the storm. We want to push you and say like, hey, this is the storm, let's go into it, and having an accountability buddy that won't let you shy away from it.   So if we can help you out in that, reach out Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.

Tiff and Kristy discuss the ongoing challenges of hiring, including how incentives and mentalities have shifted over the past five years — and what you, as someone hiring, can do about it. Part of the discussion includes the pros and cons of how to pay team members. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:02) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. We are back today. I have Ms. Kristy again with me and we are just having a good old time over here recording ⁓ Love and Life and getting our time in together. I think you guys have heard us say it before. This is like, and I know Dana says the same thing, this is some of the only one-on-one time that we get in our lives. I don't know if you guys know this or not, but we are a completely virtual company, meaning we are all at our homes.   We don't have like a workspace that we come to and then if you're a client of ours, you know, we're on calls or in offices quite a bit as consultants or our consulting team. We really just don't get a ton of time together. So these couple of hours that we bust out some podcasts are near and dear to our hearts and I just adore you Kristy and I appreciate you blocking out the time when your schedule always for it and for always just putting so much value into everything that you do.   with your clients, with your podcasting, everything that you do. So Kristy, thank you so much. Thank you for being a part of the Dental A Team. Thank you for being here today. How are you? How are things going over there?   DAT Kristy (01:09) Good, thank you for having me. It's wonderful. I love what I do serving people and it just brings great joy. So happy to be here with you.   The Dental A Team (01:18) Amazing. Good.   Thank you. And I have a question that I haven't asked you yet. How are, how's your family adjusting to the heat to being here and your puppy who's not necessarily a puppy anymore, but he'll always be a puppy. All your dogs, I guess, both your dogs, but how's everybody, how's everybody doing kind of getting settled into Arizona?   DAT Kristy (01:40) Yeah, everybody's loving it. Thank goodness there's pools around so we can get cooled off. the dogs, they're definitely staying indoors right now. It's especially the little Frenchie, you know, that you have to be careful because they will overheat really easy. He's I can tell he's missing his walks right now, but they'll swim.   The Dental A Team (01:46) Thank you.   Yeah.   Yeah, good, good.   I had a black lab that hated water, like couldn't be anywhere near water, which is so not allowed. And summers were rough. He would get hot, but he wanted to be out there, but he was an Arizona born dog, so he was fine. But I was just thinking about earpups this morning, like, gosh, they're not used to not being able to just go outside and chill in the backyard for a couple hours. Well, I'm glad that they swim. I'm glad that they're enjoying that.   DAT Kristy (02:25) So true.   The Dental A Team (02:31) ⁓ and yeah, we're just, we're excited to bring you some information this, this day. We've got, gosh, what four podcasts for recording. So I'm super excited for them all to release and you guys, we always want you to know that these podcasts are for you. So if there's ever anything that you have hopes, wishes, desires, things you want us to talk about things that you want us to dive in deeper on, please just always reach out. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. We are always taking suggestions and we're always here to help.   And also if there's anything that we say on these podcasts that we're like, we'll get you that. We really do mean that as well. have clients that write in all the time and say, Tiff said, and I'm like, sometimes my marketing team is like, what were you talking about? I don't know, but we figure it out. Whatever it is that we say that you can have, we want you to have it. We are here to deliver massive amounts of information to the dental community in the best ways possible and that.   comes with a ton of free resources. That's our podcast, that's our sheets, our documents, our website. We have all kinds of stuff everywhere, our ⁓ social media, we're on Instagram and Facebook, like wherever you can find us, you're gonna find a slew of information. So we're here for you and when you're ready for one-on-one consulting and not just getting all the information on your own via the web, please reach out, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. We are so excited to serve all of you guys in whatever way fits you the best today. Kristy.   I wanted to chat this podcast today. I've had, well, number one, I've had a lot of hiring in all of my practices. So I actually chatted with a doctor yesterday, a very successful doctor in Colorado, and he was like, Tiff, what the heck? Like, we lost another one. We just filled our hygiene spots and now we're in front office. And like, what is it? What's going on? He's like, just as soon as I feel like I'm making progress, someone leaves. And I said, you know what?   And he's like, it's hard to not take it personally. That's what he said. And I said, you know what? I understand that. And I, and I feel that. And on the level of, you know, being a lead on a team, I don't own this company, but I have a lot of vested interest in this company and its success. And it's hard. And I said, we come from, we come from a time of, of being employees, right? When we were employees and we were working and, and our work ethic.   Not even ethic, I don't even think it's ethic. Just like our tendency to stick around one place longer, is, it was there longer than it is now. So we just, we didn't leave. We stayed where we were. We became part of the family. We allowed work to become a bigger piece of our lives than it does for a lot of people in this day and age, in my opinion. I think that we,   made work our, like we tied our identity to work. And so leaving was a bigger ⁓ undertaking than it is when you're not so tied to what your job is, your title is, or the place is. And it's much easier to say, you know what, I can, I want to grow into something different. I want to be someone different. I want to change. And so they do, they leave more easily. And I think from   our point of view, it makes it really hard because we tied so many emotions to our job and our identity to our job that we're like, gosh, do they not like us? Do they not like where they work? Am I not doing good enough as an employer? But the reality is we've actually created an environment and ⁓ a social standing that people identify with who they are as a human outside of work better.   than we ever have in our lives. So it's like a catch-22, no matter what, there's a pro and a con to everything. And the pro is that they're not so identity attached to their jobs or their titles. The con is that it's easy for them to jump ship and try something new. We're much more apt to dip our toes in and try that new thing. And so I think the hiring has just over the last, realistically five years, has had a lot more turnover and we spent a lot more time hiring.   than we ever have in the past. And I could be making all of that up. That's my opinion. That's not like scientifically proven, but it's just something that I've noticed by studying people and studying myself as well. Like how am I transitioning? How am I changing my identity tools and all of those pieces as I watch the climates change so much. Kristy, what are your thoughts on that? I know we both have a lot of clients. I have experienced a lot of hiring this year. What are you seeing?   DAT Kristy (07:11) 100 % exactly what you said Tiff and it is hard. It's a hard reality. I think ⁓ Back in college. I took sociology not that I really liked it But now I'm like man I wish I would have dug into it more because I think there is something with the new generation and ⁓ Not to go woo-woo, but I think there is something with those personalities. You know what I mean and It's kind of funny and listening to you talk about it because our generation is   always like speaking to work-life balance, work-life balance, and I think the new generation actually has it figured out better.   But we're angry at it. We want it and they're doing it. And I get it. And I also get it because of being in a, in a practice administration role. Like it's hard hiring and training and retraining and hiring. And so I think ⁓ we've got to find a way to maneuver around that easier versus ⁓ taking it so personal and choosing to see it as a good thing. Maybe not necessarily a thing, but yeah.   The Dental A Team (07:50) Mm-hmm. agree.   Yeah, that   was beautifully said.   You're totally right. I love that you said you pointed out the work life balance because I agree and I whenever I hear the words work life balance now I think of that like yeah, I'm like it's like that live laugh love that we had all over our houses like every room had a live laugh love sign somewhere and it's like so outdated and overplayed when I hear the words work life balance. I'm like, my gosh, like stop saying that just have balance. just have balance balance balance. If you continue separating work and life.   and not understanding that it's one, you're one person, you're gonna continue to be out of balance. So just have balance. And I think you're right. think they've, lot of people have found that balance where neither tips the scale and they just understand their boundaries and their priorities a little better than maybe we did when we were their ages. So there's our spiel on that. But one of the...   DAT Kristy (09:10) I was gonna tell you, it's kind   of ironic, I'm spilling the beans and being vulnerable now, but my daughter's in dentistry, you I roped her into it. And so I hear it from her often, mom, it's not my life, like it is yours. And I was like, ⁓ stab me, right? Like, it's so true. So I'm living it.   The Dental A Team (09:32) Yes, it is. Yeah.   Yeah, so   you're seeing it firsthand. You're seeing it with your practices and just watching, but then also within your own home. So I totally get that. And I have a actually happy practice out in Rhode Island near and dear to my heart. The office manager's daughter is their billing rep. And I see the same kind of conversations, the office manager and like stop taking work home, like just do it at work. And then her daughter is like, why are you working at home? Like put it away. And so I do, I see that same dynamic there. And I think, I actually think the ages are   about the same, like you guys are both in the same spaces there. ⁓ So it's interesting, but I think with that conversation, doctors oftentimes and office managers are like, what can we do more of? What can we do better? How can we offer things differently? And the hygiene market is wild still, okay? It's 2025, I don't know when you're listening to this, but I hope if it's years from now, things are better.   Because the hygiene market is still a little wild. It's just still hard to find hygienists So if you're listening to this now like go apply to hygiene school because the demand is high Go get your degree go do your thing and come out a hygienist, but we oftentimes get asked for provider information on pay, right? And so we have a couple of different scenarios a couple different options. I Mean dollar per hour still near and dear to my heart when it comes to employees. I think that it just   I just, for me, it's an ease of life. It's just easier. And so I love dollar per hour, but I do like the stipulation that a provider should be making three to 3.5 times their rate of pay in order to pay for themselves so that the overhead doesn't get out of control. So dollar per hour, three to 3.5 times their rate of pay. You've got to do the digging on what your area.   is hiring at or what they're paying their hygienist or their dental assistants, whomever, because it does change, it does differ by area. More rural is going to be maybe a little less, city life is probably going to be a little more, Indianapolis compared to Phoenix, compared to San Francisco, compared to, I don't know, New Mexico, right? They're all going to be very different rates of pay. So I can always, you know, we can always spew out some numbers to you, but Google is a really fantastic tool and Salary.com gets it right every single   So go check those for sure dollar per hour and then I really wanted to chat a little bit and we talked about this a little bit ahead of time me and Kristy did on paying based off of production or collections and in my opinion I've seen this I've seen this and in my opinion it's kind of the same structure that you would give to an associate so Don't over complicate it a lot of practice owners a lot of office managers like to over complicate it so just don't do that and   pay like you would an associate? What would that look like? What would those stipulations be? What would the percentage of production or collections look like? ⁓ And pay based off of that. There are pros and cons, right, to everything. And I think there are pros and cons to paying off of production or collections. And Kristy, I think I'd love to hear from you on that production-based pay, because I know that you've seen that and worked with some clients that have done that. What are some things that you've seen that work well? Why?   Some clients, like I've had clients recently ask, should I move to a percentage structure rather than a salary or a dollar per hour? What do you see work well within that percentage structure on production or collections? Like you said earlier, I do think collections is a little bit more difficult for providers, especially for hygienists that don't have a lot of say in that, but production-based maybe as well. Kristy, what are your thoughts?   DAT Kristy (13:08) Yeah.   To be honest with you, this is something a little near and dear to my heart. And I think we will probably see ⁓ a little more of it just with, ⁓ I don't want to get in the political things, but we know that there are some states looking at assistance getting into hygiene. so with that being said, we all know that hygienists come out of school and they take their boards and they're all expecting to come in at that same level. Right. And just like associates, we know   they   all do their testing as well, come out with their doctorate and get their license. But we know they likely aren't going to produce at the same level, right? So hygienists are no different. Usually your seasoned hygienist can carry conversations different than, you know, somebody brand new. And their skill set is likely a little bit different, whether they've gone through more CE or not. So to be honest with you, I do   I'm a huge proponent of paid for performance ⁓ Yet I also feel in hygiene ⁓ Paying them a good going rate like you said, you know know what they're in your area and Give them that good going rate but just like you mentioned tiff with associates if somebody's performing and when I say performing I'm not just talking like production numbers or monetary That's just a side effect, but I'm talking like   moving your patients to health, getting them healthy, calling perio perio and having those different, you know, difficult conversations with patients. If they're willing to do that, why wouldn't we compensate them for that?   The Dental A Team (14:52) Yeah, I think that's fantastic. That is a very good point too. And that is something I think that comes up a lot for practices is that perio space. And if I've got one hygienist who's just rocking it out and having those difficult conversations and diagnosing correctly for our patient's health and not just for the production or just for the accolades, but really, really doing due diligence for our patients, how do I repay them? And I think that is a great point that that production-based pay   is.   an effect of that. think that's fantastic. I also see practices that will do dollar per hour and bonuses. So if you go above and beyond that 3.5%, they can get, you know, a one or 2 % or whatever you decide you want your bonus to be of what's above that. So one mistake I do see practices make with this, I'm going to give you a caveat, is that they'll do it the bonus based off of the total. And I typically would do the bonus based off of what was above and beyond the threshold. So we don't total it, we say this was our threshold, anything above   that is what you get the bonus off of. So any bonus programs is that's typically how I'm gonna run it because that's your excess. This is your overhead, this is your excess. So we're only bonusing off of excess and then also a small caveat, I did talk to an office the other day that was, they're making some transitions and they're like, do we change the structure? And I'm looking at it and I'm like, well.   they wanted to lower the threshold. And I said, well, no. Number one, no, never do that. ⁓ Number two.   You also didn't add in my overhead caveat and you're at 66 % I think overhead for the year, but the team's been bonusing. And so we're digging in trying to figure out like what's going on. I have a couple offices going through this right now. This one kind of East Coast stern was like a little topsy turvy upside down. So I think no matter what you do, you've got to make sure that it's going to work the best for your practice for your overhead. So if dollar per hour right now is the best bet and you're able to manage and control your overhead with   that, do that. If you've got a team that you're like, want to, I want to make this more production based and Kristy, like you were saying, like really give that energy to what we're pushing for and kind of pay them back right for the work that they're putting in. You have that flexibility and that level with the percentage on production collections and or bonuses. I love the, if you're asking me either or I would say   in my opinion, production-based over-bonusing. ⁓ It just is easier. Again, I want easier, and it's easier, and it's like tailored for this position, this person. It doesn't have to be across the board for the full practice if we're not to a point that we're ready for that yet. So cons. ⁓   I think there's cons to everything. There's cons to dollar per hour because often times, especially in the ⁓ temperature that we're in right now with the dollar per hour, it is hard to do three to three to point five times their rate of pay. I tell hygienists and I tell doctors all the time, I'll pay you whatever you're asking for. I'll pay you whatever you want. If you can make it work with the numbers. If you can do three to three point five times that rate of pay in production per hour, you've earned it. That's the point is that the overhead has to match.   and for our team members that are listening, I just need you guys to really hear me when I say doctors can't pay you from nothing. So if we're upside down in our overhead, we're not making profit on the company, the business is not profiting.   It's not just for the doctor to profit. It's not just for the doctor to go buy a house or whatever you think is actually happening behind the scenes. It's to ensure that things are paid for. And so if we're upside down in payroll, it's got to come from somewhere else. So then we got to pull it from supplies or from labs or from somewhere. And so the pay always just has to make sense. So if you can make it make sense, I don't care what it looks like. So there's pros and cons to all of it.   So there's the dollar per hour making sure that you're staying in line. There's you know, collections production based and then there's the accelerated which we're not going to spend a ton of time on the accelerated. kind of feel like it's a dying breed in this.   day and age. I love accelerated myself and I loved being hygiene assistant to accelerated hygiene, but that's a really great space too. I do have a hygienist that I know out in like the Chicago area who does accelerated and she's paid on production. She kills it. She is making really pretty numbers over there, but there's pros and cons to everything and it kind of runs the doctor a little ragged, so you just have to have the right system   for that and to make sure that it all just makes sense. And Kristy, you've got a ton of practices too in this same space. What would you have seen like really working or not working within any of this, whether it's associates or hygienists, really just what do you see that works really, really well?   DAT Kristy (20:08) Yeah, honestly, Tiff, I'm gonna say the one that I've seen work the best is a combination, right? ⁓ Again, a good going pay rate and then incentivizing them on.   I'm going add in it's more of a profit share model, right? Because like you said, it has to make sense with the numbers and be profitable. ⁓ And again, I do see a lot of ⁓ accelerated, but I will caution there too. The ones that I've seen work the best is when you give them a very good assistant that can perform. You know what I mean? Don't give them an entry level person that can't carry conversations. And I shouldn't say can't, but is   as developed right and or let them hand pick them and develop them right so that they work in tandem together and I've seen it work very well in both models but you have to have the right personality and desire there.   The Dental A Team (20:57) Yeah.   I think that's a fantastic point and to that point I've seen it work really well. ⁓   with the right assistant as well. And oftentimes what we do is we hire a hygiene assistant who's like the low level training, not quite the doctor's assistant yet. And the reality is it needs to be someone who knows how to run a schedule, how to talk with the patients, how to sell treatment, how to take the x-rays correctly and really give that concierge service because we've got to make up for not having as much time with the hygienist, right? So the hygienist does all of that in your hour appointments, but when you're   shortening them and they're doing accelerated, the hygienist is only in there for 30, 40 minutes, right? You're losing a lot of value there from the hygienist transitioning. So that assistant definitely has to be top level, top notch. And we make that mistake a lot. I've made that mistake in my own office and hiring many, many times. So it's kind of opposite and you really need a skilled assistant to be your hygiene assistant. I agree. That's a great point. Awesome.   DAT Kristy (22:15) And you know   what, Tiff, you mentioned earlier that the margins are getting hard, especially with PPO and they're not reimbursing. You made a good point about the co-diagnosis aspect. Make sure you're factoring that in. Like look at what's coming out, know, track it and see, because that also needs to be factored into the pay scale, right? It may not just be 100 % hygiene services. You almost have to look   The Dental A Team (22:37) Yeah.   DAT Kristy (22:45) at hygiene sometimes as part of your marketing strategy in a way, you know? So.   The Dental A Team (22:48) Yeah, that's a great point. I totally agree.   Yeah, I love it.   Thank you, Kristy. ⁓ I think there's some great ideas in here. You guys know we did not give you the do this answer because it is really case by case. I mean that with every ounce of my being, it is dependent on what's going to work best for your company. If you want help diving into that, figuring out what might be best for you or your company model, we are more than happy to help you on a one-on-one basis. Reach out. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. We'll be happy to get on a call with you to dive into your practice statistics.   sticks and needs with you. Again, no, I don't have a do this, do that, but we can help you. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com and we are so happy to help any of you guys. We are all here for it. We have a team standing by, always ready to hop on a call with you.   Kristy, thank you for your amazing words of wisdom and for your vulnerability. And we have more to record, you guys. We got more coming up for you. And we are just so excited to deliver you so much amazing content this month. Please drop us a five-star review below letting us know how helpful this was. If you have ideas, if you have things that you've done that worked or didn't work, send them in. You can put them within your review. People really do go through and read those. Or Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. You can send them over to us and we'll be happy to   with you or put that information out for others to read as well. So go find us, Instagram, Facebook, all the places, and we'll catch you next time. Thanks guys.

Kiera and Kristy break down a few reasons why your practice might not seem (or might not be, period) to have any money. They touch on how to find your profit point, knowing your debt, staying on top of collections and AR, and more. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera. And today I have Kristy with me and I'm super excited because today is one of my favorite things to do as consultants and I call it office autopsy. ⁓ Don't worry offices, this is a mix of a few offices because believe it or not, offices think that they're on individual islands and believe it or not, you're not. ⁓ Multi-practices actually struggle, they actually do the same things that you struggle with. And so we just wanna make sure that we bring, we're not going to ever disclose who this office is.   We will mix a few offices together, but I think for people to see what the office's pain point was and then what as consultants were able to do. Kristy, we have some really fun ones. so Kristy and I decided we wanted to podcast today about some office autopsies of what, hopes to help more offices. So Kristy, welcome to the show today. How are you?   DAT Kristy (00:48) Good, thank you. Pleasure to be here.   The Dental A Team (00:50) Of course. Well, I'm super happy because I think the one that we run into a lot ⁓ is we call it cash flow row or cash flow woes, like whatever you want to talk about. But it's really when an office comes to us and they seem to not be able to figure out what's going on. ⁓ They feel like they're producing. Sometimes they're producing, sometimes they're not. So we'll kind of discuss like how to know if you're producing enough or not. But then they feel like they just like have no cash. And so giving some background.   Like I said, I'm going to blend a couple of practices together, but we have kind of going to do like two simultaneous ones. One practice was producing really, really well, but literally the owner felt like they had no money. We're talking like flat broke, felt like they were completely going to go under, had no money, but yet their production numbers were really good and their P &L looked really good. And we're just like, it showed on the P &L. I think, Kristy, you'll find this too, offices get so frustrated.   I got so frustrated and angry with my CPA when they said, well, Kiera, like according to the numbers, you have money. And I'm like, great, high five, jerk. I have no money in my bank account. Like it's the most infuriating feeling in the world of my CPA tells me I should have money, but there's no money. Flip that too on the other side when a practice isn't quite producing what they need to be producing to pay for their expenses. And they feel like they have no money and they are flat broke, which in reality that practice is flat broke because they need to produce more or they need to cut.   So we're gonna kind of dig on both sides of these with office autopsies of what we see, what we've been able to do. And let's start, Kristy, on the side of what do we do? Like, okay, first step, how do we find like the profit point? Like, how do we figure out what should an office be producing? Because I think that's also infuriating when doctors are like, but I'm just producing. I feel like I'm trying to out-produce my problems. Like, I don't know how to produce more. ⁓   how do you, Kristy, as a consultant, come in and help offices just gain that clarity? Because I think sometimes when we know the North Star and we know what we should be targeting, it actually becomes a lot easier to then build block schedules and then figure out what our overhead should be. But how do you help offices even dig into that? As point one to figure out, let's autopsy both of these practices, I think this is step one to really getting clarity.   DAT Kristy (03:00) Absolutely. I agree with you, Kiera. ⁓ The first step is to understand how much we're paying for things. What is the cost to keep the doors open? You know, we talk about overhead, right? But what is overhead? It's everything that we have to pay within a month. Rent, utilities, staffing, right? The other thing that I want to point out is many doctors don't include themselves in that. And I definitely want to pay them   The Dental A Team (03:16) you   DAT Kristy (03:30) Just like if they were an associate in the practice and so we want to include that in that overhead cost if you will and find that What I like to call profit point so we know where we're what's our? BAM right   The Dental A Team (03:48) bam, that bare ace minimum, like what do we have to   do? It's kind of like in real life. I mean, I think all of us have a bam in real life. You know what your mortgage or your rent is. You know how much it costs you to like do your groceries. You know how much daycare is, you know how much it costs you for like your Amazon spending. And some of those are fixed costs. So fixed are like your mortgage or your rent. You can't really change those. Those are fixed for you. Yes, like I get it. The semantics, we're not CPAs here. We're not like, that's not our world.   The semantics are can you change your rent? Potentially you could go find somewhere else. That is an option you could do. But most of the time those are pretty fixed. Just like our utilities are pretty fixed. You can be like my husband where literally our AC goes off at 6 p.m. at night. He freaking freezes us until 6 o'clock to save on these utilities until 9 o'clock. It drives me wild. I'm like in a hoodie freezing, shivering. And then the AC goes off and I'm like roasting. It's really entertaining because he wants to save the $3.   But genuinely speaking, like you're not really going to be saving on those fixed costs. are some fixed ones. Staffing is usually pretty fixed. However, we could add team members or take team members away. So therefore it's not as fixed. But like you said, Kristy, I think it's figuring out in a practice and agreed, doctors should be paid. Like nobody, think that that actually causes more stress for owners. If you don't even know what your paycheck is or you're just taking draws, because then how do you budget your life on a up and down volatile paycheck?   I think that creates a lot of stress versus like, okay, great. Let's just put you at a hundred grand or let's put you at whatever is a reasonable salary. Talk to your CPA. They'll be able to give you that. ⁓ And that can be agreed with Kristy. I like to pay you as an associate, but if right now the practice can't support that minimum should be a reasonable salary of say a hundred grand. So that way you can at least bank on that of getting that paycheck in your practice. Sometimes you have to adjust that, but generally speaking, if we at least give you some type of certainty and clarity,   that's going to help you then be able to budget your life around that too, in addition to budgeting your practice.   DAT Kristy (05:49) Absolutely. In fact, Kiera, sometimes even with startup doctors, I like them to even keep a spreadsheet of their production as if they were paying them as an associate. And then when they start to get profitable, we can back pay those wages. But definitely they have to take care of themselves first. ⁓ I've even seen where they get a little bit of animosity if not, right? Like, staff's driving these cars and they're getting their nails done and they're doing   The Dental A Team (06:00) Agreed.   Mm-hmm.   DAT Kristy (06:19) and I can't even pay myself. So I think it's very important that we understand what that is and work toward that, number one, if we're not there. And then if we are there, adding additional ⁓ percentage to that, which us as consultants can help guide that depending on your goals. If it's paying down debt, paying you as an owner doctor.   ⁓ And you know, we follow the EOS system, so adding those buckets for taxes and those sort of things that come up and we can be prepared for.   The Dental A Team (06:55) Yeah, no, I think it's brilliant, Kristy. And when you said that, I agree. You don't want to not be paid in your practice, because that gets, A, it's stressful, and B, it's annoying, and C, you've got all this debt on you. ⁓ But I also think when we're looking at our practices, there are pieces, so when doctors are like, I'm not getting paid, I just want to remind that sometimes we're being paid through things running through our practices. And so we've got to be careful, because that is,   Like if you didn't have your practice, you'd be paying for that out of pocket. And so that is technically part of your salary, doctors. And I don't want to be the like balloon pop girl over here. I do want to be realistic because a lot of times doctors are like, I'm not making money. And I'm like, but you forgot that these things are running through your practice. So you are being paid for those or those things are no longer coming to you, which is totally fine and legal. Talk to your CPA. Like we want you to do that. There's nothing wrong with it.   But when we're looking and we're like stomping our foot saying we're not being paid, sometimes I even have to remind myself of like, yes, but Kiera, if you didn't have the business, all those costs would be coming out of your W2 paycheck, not your business right off. So agreed with Kristy, when we're looking at this, step one is let's find that BAM, let's find that profit point, let's find out what you have to produce. And then from there, what we need to find out is also in addition to that, how much is our debt?   Because a practice should not have to be covering your debt, but you as a human needs to be covering your debt. So if your student loans, your practice loans, things like that, the practice isn't necessarily a poor performing practice. You just have all this excess of like, my gosh, I have to pay this off, which that's real life for you. And I think that's the difference of a CPA's bookkeeping for you versus your real life living through it. And I can tell you from personal experience, like this is very hard. Sometimes practice loans do go through your   your practice profitability. Again, this is pending on your CPA and how they recommend you do it. But most of the time your student loans and different things like that don't run through the practice. So, but you as a human need to have enough money to be able to pay for all those things. So I think it's finding out the practices, BAM, like Kristy said, finding out your personal BAM, because that might be different. And then from there, let's tack on 10 to 20 % beyond that. So let's say you know you've got to produce 50,000. Well, awesome. 10 % of that would be 55, adding   20 % excuse me, so 10 % of that is going to be an additional $5,000. To do 20 % of that's going to be an extra $10,000. So if I know I've got to do 50, I've either got to produce 55 or 60. Now that becomes much easier and I know beyond that I'm going to have 10 to 20 % leftover of the practice after everything's spent. Our ideal is to get it to where your 50,000 is 50 % of your practice and there's 50 % quote unquote profit beyond that. Now again,   that profit is a little bit funny because if we're doing a 50 % overhead and 50 % profit, doctor salaries usually are not included in that. If doctor salaries are included in that, then usually it's a 20 % profit at the end of that. So I know those two numbers feel a little like disjointed. They've been very disjointed for me. So if you're doing true overhead, we want it at 50%, 30 % doctor pay, 20 % profit. If you want to combine it all together, then it would be 80 % quote unquote overhead, 20 % profit. Now that 20 % profit though,   does technically pay for debt services. So watch that. You might need to scale down our 50 % down a little bit more or 80 % to then be able to offset that. So hopefully that wasn't too confusing for everybody. This is why we're consultants. This is why we help you. But I think when you understand like either need a 50 or an 80 % ultimate goals, we're trying to get 20 % cashflow at the end of the month. think for me, that's like the easiest thing. Like, okay, if I'm producing a hundred grand a month,   I want 20 % of that, so that's 20 grand. So like I'm trying to do easy numbers for all of you. I want 20 grand after everything's paid to still be remaining. Now, one other kicker as a business owner is that 20 % is also taxed. So don't forget that that gets taxed. So if you're at a 30 % tax bracket, well, you gotta take 30 % of 20 grand and then the rest of that you can spend. And this is why I think owners get so frustrated, because it's like, oh my gosh.   Like just tell me how much money I can have. And when I talked to a CPA and Kristy, I think you come across this, like our whole lives up until owning businesses, we've been paid at the W-2. So everything we got paid, we were able to use. Well, now as business owners, everything we're paid, we don't get to use. That's not the way the game works. ⁓ And it's due to write-offs and different pieces like that. So I think just knowing the rules of the game, I remember being so fresh with my CPA and I said, I like you're playing Monopoly with me. Like just tell me the dang rules.   So, and like, don't tell me like, no, you can't pass go, but you can pass go if you do X, Y, Z, but then like, no. So it's really, you've got to have a profitable practice of overhead. That's what we as consultants are really obsessed with. You also as an owner need to be responsible of how you spend. That's not to say you can't spend, but you do need to spend responsibly and you do need to set aside your taxes. And I think when you have all those pieces set up, then you can have guilt free spending because you're paying yourself.   Plus, you know what your true profit is. You've saved for taxes, you've saved for a rainy day, like Kristy was saying. We can put buckets into place to pay down more debt. You can put buckets in place for emergencies in your practice. You can put buckets in place for ⁓ vacations. I have a doctor I was just talking to on Alaska cruise and I was like, how's that bucket working out for you? And he's like, I love it, Kiera, you set it up for me. And I know how much I can spend on vacations. I know how much of my paycheck goes into that portion. He also used to spend an absurd amount on CE. So we set a true budget of how much CE money he could use.   But that's kind of where you then as owners aren't just trying to waffle through this and actually can figure out those profit points. And I do think, Kristy, like as much as we've belabored this so much at the beginning of this podcast, I feel this foundational piece is what makes owners crazy because they don't know the rules of the game. So they start spending all the money. Then you get this huge tax bill. Then you feel mad. Then you feel like you have no money when it's like, no, you did have money. just we accidentally spent it. So now we got to make up for it later because we didn't put these rules of the game into play.   Kristy, you might have a simpler way to do that. What are your thoughts around that?   DAT Kristy (12:49) No, I agree with you 100%. Otherwise, what I find is, you know, business owners, doctors, they just come up with this arbitrary number that they want to hit. But again, just because we're producing something doesn't mean we're profitable. And so they go together, but we have to understand the difference.   The Dental A Team (13:12) I agree. And I love that you said that because production feeds the ego and profit feeds the family. And so it does not matter what you're producing. And I agree with Kristy. It's like, I want to produce a hundred grand. I want to produce 200 grand. Well, high five. Let's help you do that. But on the flip side, let's make sure your expenses are there. And there's another practice I'm thinking of right now where they're like, we have no money. And I'm like, all right, if we have no money, truly it's let's do the checklist. Number one. Like, do you see me even scratch my head? I'm like, if you're not watching the video,   Just know when I hear people say, don't have money. I'm like, all right, it's either a production issue or a spending issue. It's one of the two. So just know those are the only two levers for when you're saying, I don't have money. It's either actually there's a third. There's technically a third. And that is a collection issue too, because we're either not producing enough. And if we are producing enough, we might not be collecting enough. And if we're doing both of those two things, then it's a spending issue. So let's break it down to this office autopsy. Kristy, let's go for a practice that is producing enough.   they don't have money, how did you fix or how did you find out that this practice had a collections issue?   DAT Kristy (14:14) Yeah, well number one we would look at.   How much was their net production and how much are they currently collecting? My minimum benchmark is always to be at 98 % or higher. Obviously, if we can get reservation fees to pre-collect on things, we may see that up a little bit higher. But if they're not at that 98%, what can we do to get them there? What's getting in the way? Is it patient? Is it insurance? Are we not submitting clean claims and getting them back in a timely fashion?   The Dental A Team (14:26) Agreed.   DAT Kristy (14:47) ⁓ But definitely that would be the first place to look.   The Dental A Team (14:51) Yeah. And so Kristy just said the benchmark. If you're not at 98 % collections, then there's a problem. Second piece is look at your AR and if you have more than one month's worth of production in your AR, we also know it's a collection problem. So when we diagnose on this practice, I remember we talked to a doctor and they're like, Kiera, I have no money. Kristy, I have no money. And I remember we're like, so actually you do have money. Believe it or not, the money is there. It's just sitting in uncollected amounts. So Kristy, you even went with another office and like they didn't have money and you just straight up called.   You like went with the office manager and you guys just picked up the phone and started calling on balances to get the money. And I really want doctors to know, and Kristy, I think this is the infuriating part as a consultant where I'm like, no, like you're producing well, you just have to collect the money that you're producing and don't like, don't even feel bad about it. So what do you do for teams that don't want to collect, that have these big ARs? Like what are a few simple steps? Like if that's my practice, I'm-   Hi, Kristy. I'm the doctor today. My team, this does not want to collect money and I feel like I can't pay any bills. What do you do in that scenario as a consultant, Kristy?   DAT Kristy (15:53) Yeah, well, I think we have to dig deeper into their own, like the team members own biases and what's getting in the way and get them comfortable to realize that we're not doing good by our practice and or patients if we're not collecting those balances. So, you know, really seeing what's the roadblock and let's work through it to overcome it because people deserve the care. Patients deserve to be healthy and   And part of that is also paying for the treatment, right? So just digging deeper, figure out what's getting in the way and helping them to overcome, create some verbiage for them to feel confident in being able to collect.   The Dental A Team (16:39) Yeah. And Kristy, I think you do an amazing job as a consultant. think this is where I love being consultants is like, you will actually help them sometimes call on accounts and help them see how easy it is. And ⁓ I also think when we're looking at AR, let's get our best bang for our buck. like, let's sort it to biggest balances and let's call on those first. Like, let's figure out different pieces. And like you said, there might be a myriad of reasons why your team members don't want to collect. don't think typically it's due to the fact that they don't want to collect. I think they're just scared. There's fear.   They're afraid of a patient being mad. They're afraid of not being able to explain the balance on the account. They might not understand why insurance is denying claims. Billing is a whole black hole, just so doctors understand, like there are a lot of nuances there. But I think on that side, if you are producing, like I remember this practice, they are producing like 150 to 200. And I was like, what do mean you don't have money? And we looked at the P &L and we're like, no, according to your P &L, you have money here. And we just realized it was a lack of collection process.   We implemented that Kristy, you helped this practice. They implement, they started collecting and now the doctor's like, wow, like two months later, I feel like I'm like happy as a clown because they literally have money now, but the money was there all along. And that's really like, I think a myth to dispel on this office autopsy is a lot of times the money is actually there. We're just not collecting. We don't have the correct processes in play to do correct insurance verification, to have better estimates, to collect in practice, to then have better ways that we are posting payments.   We don't have a process for how we're calling patients and insurance. And if you don't have that whole process dialed in, that can actually get really daunting for a practice. But Kristy, let's flip sides to the other dark side of this coin where they might not be producing enough. So like we said, it's either a production process, a collection process or a spending process. What do we do on the dark side where they're not producing enough? Like that's scary to me. So what do you do on that? I think there's like two zones here.   DAT Kristy (18:33) Yeah, absolutely. Well.   Number one, once we figure out that benchmark, typically, Kiera, we go and look at how much are they diagnosing, right? If we're looking to hit 100,000, we typically need to be diagnosing minimum three times that number ⁓ if we want to hit it, right? So where are we with diagnostics? And then where are we in case acceptance? how, if we are diagnosing that much, how much are we   actually getting patients to say yes to that treatment if you will.   The Dental A Team (19:09) Mm-hmm. And I think, Kristy, great point on that because it's twofold on this dark side of the coin of if we're not producing, are we diagnosing enough? And if we're diagnosing enough, are we closing enough? And those are two different people actually in this scenario. So doctors, have to diagnose. And if you're a doctor who's scared of diagnosing a couple tools, it's OK. I always tell doctors, it's your moral obligation to diagnose. As a patient, if you were to go in and there was someone who saw   Let's say you did a scan, I've had multiple MRI scans on my brain. Do you know how mad I would be at a doctor if they chose, because like they don't know if I can afford it, if I don't wanna hear the bad news or like whatever it is, they choose not to tell me what's on my brain or a broken bone or if I've got something in my blood work, I would be livid. And yet doctors, you're diagnosing, you're taking x-rays and if you're not telling these patients what's going on, ⁓ that's your moral obligation to do that. So if you're nervous about it, that's okay, I'm not here to tell you.   there's anything wrong with it. I just want to remind you that this is your moral obligation as a healthcare provider. So there's Pearl or Overjet of an AI solution that might be a solution for you ⁓ or just diagnosing one more thing than you normally would. If you're used to like watching, ⁓ that's okay. Maybe like just watch 75 % of it, but diagnose one of those things that you would normally watch and just notice patients don't get mad. They don't get angry. ⁓ Remember when you do get that frustration, it's just due to their expectations not being met.   So if you can even help them co-diagnose with you. So having your hygienist call out their perio numbers and let the patient know before they do it, like, hey, we're looking for the health of your gums, anything above a four, that's something that we need to watch if there's bleeding. And I'm gonna show you, so listen with me, you're gonna hear, ⁓ and then you'll be able to hear. Well, now that patient's listening actively with you of, wow, I heard like seven fours, or I heard like a six in there, now you don't have to try and teach them and say like, you've got perio.   They actually heard it and they co-diagnosed with you. You can show them x-rays of here's a healthy tooth. This is what a healthy tooth should look like. Now look at this tooth and what do you see? You guys, if there's decay in there, even the untrained eye usually can see that pretty big chunk of decay taken out of there or use intraoral photos to where that patient's co-diagnosing with you to gain the trust. And that actually makes it easier for you doctors, because then you're not teaching them. Or if you're like really nervous about it.   AI teaches them. Like it literally just puts the puts it up on there and you don't even have to hardly do anything other than just presenting it to them and educating them. So something simple there. And then if your team's not closing cases, amazing simple things like an NDT our handoff. next visit date, time, recare that can help tremendously. ⁓ having your team members track their treatment plans, having a consultant help them. Like we literally help listen to treatment plans, guide and give coaching on different ways that they can do it. So there's two ways if you're not diagnosing or producing enough.   that we can easily do that. And the next one would be a block schedule. Kristy, any other thoughts on that? Because I'm sure you've got pieces working with so many team members too.   DAT Kristy (22:06) Yeah, listening to you talk about the case acceptance, it's just hitting me that sometimes I think our fear is in telling them, but really if we take a step back and just include them in the process and figure out what are their long-term goals for their mouth and being able to speak to them in a relational way that...   The Dental A Team (22:23) Thank   DAT Kristy (22:29) really is flipping it to what is their goals and getting them what they want. I think that takes the pressure off of us telling the patient, right? And so, ⁓ truly, I think when we master this, it's a beautiful thing and you get patients to stick for very long time because they feel heard, right? And they still are in control of their care. So.   The Dental A Team (22:53) Totally, I agree with you, Kristy, and I love that you talked about like, they're part of the solution with you. And I agree, like, I can't as a treatment coordinator want this more than they do. It really has to be something that they're a part of. ⁓ And also just helping your team see, similar to doctors, when we're watching so many things, team members can accidentally be saying one or two words that's guiding a patient the wrong direction. We might be highlighting insurance more than we're highlighting total treatment. We might be putting emphasis on like your max on insurance or   Like we could just start with one thing because we're afraid of presenting total dollar amounts. All of those things are normal. That's like very normal. Your team's not struggling, team members listening. You're not doing anything wrong. Just highlighting that there are different ways that you can present it. And I call it like the sequence. So think about when you're back in high school and you had your locker combination. If your combination code was 321, you could put in the number 213 and your lock wouldn't open. You could also do 123 and it wouldn't open. You could also do 32...   three and it won't open. You can have the exact same numbers and just do them in the wrong combination and it won't open versus if we have the right pieces in the right combination, we actually get more case acceptance. So just realizing like what are my tools that I'm using? Am I putting them in the right sequence? Am I using the tools like insurance is a tool? It's a coupon. So let's maximize that, but it's not going to guide my treatment. Let's maximize getting full case acceptance. Let's maximize like Kristy said, knowing their ultimate goals and tying my treatment back to those ultimate goals.   just using the tools in the right sequence can also help with that case acceptance. Now, if you are a practice that's not diagnosing enough, I think that this becomes like a little bit of an ego check and I'm sorry to be the ego check day today, but it might be something where if we're not diagnosing enough and we are collecting and we're not producing enough, it might be time for us to look to see about cutting costs. And this is something where I don't love to have this conversation. However, bottom line is the practice has to thrive.   Otherwise we all will fail. And doctors like you won't be able to help your team. You won't be able to help patients. And ultimately your livelihood is on the line too. Nobody is happy in this scenario. So when an office is like, don't have money, great. We've looked to see, you diagnosing? We've looked to see, are we collecting? We've looked to see our case acceptance. Like let's check all the boxes. Flip side is what are we spending money on? Immediately I'm gonna go to anything that you no longer need in the practice. So I know we might have been in the glory days.   doing all these ITero scans. Well, guess what? Glory days are gone. We're no longer there. And I hate to be Debbie Downer, but the reality is we need to sell that. We need to get out of that contract. Anything we are not using in the practice, we need to cut those debts off of us. And this is just a yucky moment. And I'm sorry, but you've got to do it. And as a business owner, this is your job as a CEO is to watch the profitability of the business. Like you have to, and you have to make those hard cuts. And I will tell you, you do it one time. You're a lot more cautious on things you'll purchase in the future.   So we start cutting costs of things that are not paying for themselves. So if we've got extra equipment in the practice, if we've got other things that we can sell. Also, team members, we might have bulked. I've done this as a CEO, so I'm just gonna tell you, like, it was a really, really, really bad day when I realized I over-bulked anticipating something to happen in the practice, and I actually had to scale back and cut. That does not feel good, and it's something that we want to avoid. However, if we have ultimate, like, more team members than are necessary, or we could outsource to things,   I'm not here to say, determinate team members. Like we said, like we went through all the different scenarios, everything we possibly could do. But the reality is you may have bulked too much in a practice and you need to scale back and cut. And that's just a zone where you walk the walk of shame and you commit you're never going to do it again. But ultimately you have to get yourself to a profitable zone. You've got to look at your own spending. A doctor was like really struggling on spending and they had multiple credit cards. Consolidate those credit cards down to where you only have one. We pay it off every single time.   We look to see what other things we like work out deals with the lab or different people. ⁓ But you've got to be realistic. You might have to get a line of credit to get yourself out of it. You might have to take equity out of your home or your practice. Those are things I hate doing, but I also feel sometimes the pain of discipline is better than the pain of regret. And I would rather go through the pain of discipline and learning to like cut my costs and watch my costs and not hire. Like I might extra hire.   a hygienist. I might extra hire a treatment coordinator. Those are two players on my team that will actually generate revenue for me. And not to say assistants don't because assistants can, but I could get by with a Mr. Thurshy. Now, dentists, I know I'm going to get a lot of flak for that. The reality is you can do that for a short amount of time. And I just want to highlight like it's inconvenient, but it's also inconvenient not to have money to pay your bills. So like choose our heart on this. But this is a zone where like I heard a doctor and they were struggling and they   They spent like 10 grand on something unnecessary. And I'm like, that's a spending issue. That's a you issue. That's not a practice issue. And it's not a diagnosis issue. If you cannot produce what you have for your costs, it's like the person has to accept the fact that they bought too big of a house. Like you've got to scale down. You got to size down. And as much as that's an ego blow, that's also smart business ownership. So Kristy, that's my like soapbox. So doctors, like we said, it's first, let's make sure we're producing. Like, let's figure out our amount. have to, then we're going to check our production. Then we're going to check our collections.   Then we're going to check our diagnosis. We're going to check our case acceptance. We're going to check our block scheduling. Then we're going to go into any unnecessary costs that are on our PNL. ⁓ Look to see, there anything we could do to reduce costs? And then it's going to be, we've got to cut. And like, you've got to make that decision before you go under. ⁓ You owe that to your patients. You owe that to yourself and you owe that to your team. And it's a sad, crummy day, but it's part of business. Kristy, what are your thoughts?   DAT Kristy (28:27) Yeah, I think you nailed it. The only area we didn't uncover was you usually do have some unscheduled treatment that you may be able to tap into. And I would definitely explore that resource. But you nailed it, Kiera. I mean, you hit all of the boxes for sure.   The Dental A Team (28:46) So those are kind of like looking at a practice that says, I don't have cash. These are some of the ways to diagnose that we do within practices. And notice the very last thing that we went to was cutting. That's not our mission. That's not our process. And we're never going to tell you to cut somebody. That's going to be ultimately your decision. We're just going to remind you that as a CEO, that's part of your job. And I remember going through COVID, had a coach and she said, Kiera, you've got to have a list. You've got to have a list in your mind of like when things get tight, if they get there.   What are you going to do to make sure your business thrives and survives? And that has stuck with me when I realized like, that's why I'm paid a CEO salary. That's why I'm paid to make these hard decisions. That's why I ⁓ signed up to be a business owner. Like that's the hard side of success. Success has two parts of that coin too. There's the light side and the amazing side. And then there's the dark side that a lot of people don't talk about. So if you're looking at your practice and you're saying, I don't have cash, go through the checklist, Kristy and I just gave you. ⁓   And sometimes it does help to have a buddy in it with you, a consultant, somebody who's in it with you. Like Kristy, I think about the night that you picked up the phone with that office manager and you guys started calling, you called on accounts with them. I think sometimes not feeling alone in the process. think somebody pushing your team, because you're like, I don't know how to say this to my team. ⁓ Someone who can help guide them, someone who can help look at your diagnosis and help you diagnose maybe one more thing, ⁓ really can be an asset. And I call Kristy our money bloodhound.   If I have a practice on cashflow row, I'm like, all right, Kristy, I don't what you're gonna do, but girl, go to work and go start looking. And I think having an outside set of eyes, it's not sitting in there floundering with you, but can have a cool, calm, collected head, sometimes can be the most beneficial. So if you're struggling, reach out, we're here to help you. And it comes with no judgment. Kristy, don't think I've ever once heard you judge a single practice. You come with love, you come with open arms, and you come with solutions quickly.   to make sure they get there. So Kristy, any last thoughts you have for these practices who might be struggling, who are hearing this office autopsy being like, my gosh, that's been me, or my gosh, I feel like I'm headed that way. Any other thoughts you might have for them?   DAT Kristy (30:43) ⁓ Just again that you're not in it alone and having us to help ⁓ guide mentor and just make sure you have you know daily weekly monthly Systems in place and balance, you know a checklist balance. We got ya we can help   The Dental A Team (31:00) We do. do. Well, Kristy,   thanks for being on the office autopsy with me. Thanks for just loving our clients so much and helping them. I think that client who two years after you started helping say to us, I like have never been this free or like, my gosh, like this is what ownership should feel like. I think those are the wins that we live for as consultants of hearing you thrive, hearing your successes, hearing you have your dream life and not being so stressed, ⁓ even in possible situations that are stressful. So Kristy, thanks for being that consultant with us.   DAT Kristy (31:30) It's a pleasure. Thanks.   The Dental A Team (31:32) Of course, for all of you listening, don't be on cashflow row. Don't be struggling about these things. If you are part of any of the scenario, if you're like, my gosh, any of those things resonated, reach out. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. Go to our website, click on TheDentalATeam.com book a call. Like truly it's a no judgment, just clarity, just momentum. Even if we can't help you, we've got resources. Even if you're not quite the right fit, that's okay. Like we will be there to support you. ⁓ but I think it takes courage to book the call. It takes courage to admit you need help. but there's so much freedom.   to know that you're not alone, that you're not having to do this alone and that there's somebody who truly can help you get out of the scenario and that's been there, done that and done it successfully many times. So reach out and as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on The Dental A Team Podcast.

Kiera walks listeners through the science of giving raises without breaking the bank or falling into the feel-good trap. She gives three steps to implement around the topic of raises: Know your numbers Raises are earned; they're not automatic Communicate with clarity and boundaries Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera. And today I am excited to talk about something of, can you give out a raise and can you actually afford it? Like, how do even know there's got to be like some better model than just like a hope, a wish, a prayer? Like how often do I do this? And I thought it just be an awesome podcast to connect with you, to share some valuable tips and to really just empower you to make these decisions confidently, competently, and with ease. So welcome to the Dental A Team Podcast. I'm Kiera. I love dentistry. I love helping you have a better life.   a better quality of life, more happiness in your life, more ease, more joy, more flow, truly doing life and business on purpose. We're here about the yes model. So you can say more yes to more things in your life. So that's about you as a human being, making sure that you are fulfilled, that you are flourishing. stands for earnings and profitability and S is for systems and team development. Truly, truly, truly growing you, evolving you, making sure that you have all these pieces in place so that when you're able to live life on purpose, have your business on purpose and truly just   magnify all of this. So today, raises aren't just something that are feel good move. Like this isn't something of like, ⁓ hey, like I feel good. Let's just give you a raise or I do it out of desperation. They're honestly a financial decision that truly can impact your bottom line. It can impact your practice. can, and like with hygienists coming through and dental assistants and the economy, it's like, how do we do this? And so I wanted you guys to just see kind of like three steps to know, can I give these raises out? How do I do this confidently? And what's kind of the flow?   without risking cash flow. So this is something that we're about. love doing this. Races don't, when they're done right, they increase retention, they boost morale and they elevate their culture. Like that's really what it's about. They're super helpful and they have to be timed and strategic as well. So it's not something of like, let's just willy nilly this, which I used to do. used to say, I don't have a set plan. Like it's just whenever now I'm like, wow, let's actually have a plan for this. Let's go through this. And I want to break this down into three simple steps for you.   So first steps before we ever give out the raises are we need to know our numbers. So payroll should be 30% of your collection. So if you're collecting $100,000 payroll, and that includes all fringe benefits, our 401k, everything, should be 30% or less of your total collections. Now that's across the board, it does not matter geographically. Some specialties are a little bit higher, a little bit lower, but the goal is we want it around 30%, or in some offices, they're around 27%. So again, I'm here for like great cases, great...   We want to take care of our team members, but we want to know how that's going to be there. So that's what we're looking for. And we want to make sure that we're profitable. So our goal is to have a 50% overhead of that 30% is payroll. So team members, are you hearing? The bulk of our monthly costs should be paying you. That's what it is. After that, our 50 % overhead, 30% doctor pay, 20% profit. That's what we're aiming for. That's what we strive for. That's what we try to get our offices to. So this way, we're not just giving raises haphazardly because   There's practices out there that like, let me just give them a raise, but their collections are not there. They don't have the money to do it. They backslide, their profitability is not there. And the reality is we've got to know where we're at right now on payroll. So the only ways to have that is we either decrease costs. So like maybe we can cut labor expenses that we don't need, or we need to increase our production or our collections.   So it's really our levers that we have to deal with in this scenario. So when you look at it, before we go in like, oh, we need to get everybody raises, you've got to run the numbers to see where are we at now and where would we be? So I love to have, when I'm running numbers with offices, I love to have a conservative. It's like, hey, this is my bare bones. This is what I can have running my practice. Then I have my like middle tier, like this is where we basically are at right now. And then I love to have on the higher end, what do I have if I'm giving raises out and hiring new people? What does that look on the high end?   because then I can look at my total costs and I can see how much do I need to actually add in? What do we need to produce to be able to afford this of a practice? And I look at these three areas on my spreadsheet constantly. I call it my monthly costs. I have my conservative, my middle of the road and my advanced. This way it helps me see. Now, after that, we're going to have our raises based on performance and value. So we don't want, so this is step number two, raises are earned, they're not automatic. I understand that.   There are things with inflation, there are different pieces, but the reality is, long as what I do is I look around every year, we have it set up to make sure that what we're paying out for payroll is in the higher end of what is within our area. So you can actually go look on Indeed, you can look on Glassdoor, you can look on other areas to see what is the average pay for dental assistants in our area? What's the average pay for hygienists in our area? What's the average pay for billers, office managers, schedulers, treatment coordinators?   And our goal and our practices is to be in the top percent of those. We're not maybe going to be the highest, but we are going to be hopefully in the top 90 % of that. So that way you know, are we in line? Are we not in line? What do we need to do? And then what we're going to do from there is we're actually going to build out job descriptions. So we have an entire thing of dental assistants and all the pieces where it's tiers. So like a basic assistant. So let's say our range for assistants is 18 to $25. Well, at the 18, here's the range of what the assistant needs to do.   At the 20, this is what the assistant needs to do. At the 22, this is what they need to do. And at the 25, that's a lead assistant. So it scales it up so you're able to see like, okay, if I want a raise, this is how I'm going to grow in the company to then know what I need to do to be able to get a higher pay. I think this is so valuable for offices and it's also valuable for team members because now team members can look to say, if I want a raise, this is what I need to take on. This is what I need to learn. It's not just like, well, I've been here for two years. Give me my raise.   it's no take on more responsibilities because we are going to pay you but it's based on the experience that you bring to the practice as well. So with that, these are going to be performance based raises. And it doesn't mean that like just because someone hit that 22 that I have to give it to them right now. What it can mean is like annually you can look at it, see where your assistants and your team are at front office every position and see who qualifies for raises and who doesn't. Now when I'm running my projections and I'm looking at my costs,   A lot of times I will run my assistance on the high end or if I know they're like on my high end of those monthly costs, I'm going to look to see, all right, what do I have today? Now, if they went up one bracket or two brackets and I wanted to pay them this amount because they're doing it, what does that impact my overhead and what do we need to do? Because hopefully as people are expanding on those tiers, they're actually able to take on more, they're able to produce more, they're able to do more within the practice to make the practice more profitable or to grow.   So that way it's linked. So it's the tier raises are based on performance and value, making sure they're adding more value to the practice. And this way we can have it. And we have all these broken out for every single position. We call them tiers in it. And it's really beautiful because now for me, I know the high end of my assistants will be this amount. The high end of my hygienists will be this amount. And I'm not sitting here vacillating on these decisions. And then every year we just go through and assess and adjust as needed. But we run the numbers to make sure it makes sense. And then we do an end of year potential review of all of our people.   to see who gets raises and I can then put that into my projections for the next year when I'm building out our block schedule, building out the projections on the practice. All of that can make it really, really ⁓ special and also accurate to know what are we going to do and what do we need to hit in order to keep our overhead and our metrics in line. Hopefully that made sense because I feel like it's really like one, know your numbers, two, have your raises tied to performance and value, but based in the projections that you need to have within the practice.   And then after that, step three is to communicate raises with clarity and boundaries. So raises do impact your morale. Like, so you've got to make sure communication is key and you don't want it to be where we're giving one raise to an assistant, but then we don't give it to someone else. And then people talk and they get really angry. We also don't want to raise up all of our hygienists just because someone got a raise when they're not qualifying for it. So I like to have reviews with our teams. I like to review where they're at, where their compensation is at, what they're doing.   This is all where team leads can also put it into play to see how is this team member doing? How are they going? What's the next level? And then being transparent in what's needed to move from tier to tier. So having those one-on-ones, showing people, hey, what are your goals? And I like to find out team members when I'm having my one-on-ones, what's their personal goal? What are their life goals? And how can they move up to the next level? Now, if you're newer to business ownership, you might not know how you can do these raises. So that's really where I love my conservative.   my middle and my high end, so then I can look to see what do I need to produce? What do we need to collect to be able to make sure that we can actually afford this? So when we have offices, I have a lot of offices, like don't make decisions about this on emotional decisions. This is not a zone where we want to like, my gosh, well, Sarah came and talked to me and she's going to quit unless I give her a raise. Well, what that does is it sets a standard across the board for all the rest of your team members to see that. And they're watching, your team's watching to see what are you going to do? And I would rather,   like have a hard conversation and let them know like, I'd love to give you a raise. The reality is we know the process, we know the tiers. I know that there was another opportunity that came for you. I'd love to keep you. I'd love to find a solution. I also need to be fair with the rest of our team and I can't adjust policy just for one team member. So this way you can have like truly structured review time. You can not have off the cuff, like someone comes in like, I want a raise. And I'm well, what am I supposed to do? The team now knows how they can get raises and everything's very transparent.   very clear. And this way it's very clear for all team members. It's clear for you. It's clear is kind. So ⁓ practices, we have this for dental offices, I'll be honest in dental team. This is something Britt and I have been working through. We have a lot of positions in our company that we have never, ever, ever worked with. So we're very naive of like, okay, well, how much should this person get and how like, what should we have them do to qualify for raises? But for you, you're really lucky.   We've worked in the dental office. We know all the tiers. We know what they should be adding in. So you don't need to be like I am in our company where I'm like, how do I give these raises? What should people be getting? What does it qualify? We literally have it broken down for you, easy for you. You can adjust it. And then we just check in your area of what you should be doing for your raises in different areas to make sure you're paying in that top 90 % of your area. So hopefully that helps you with like know your numbers, tie your raises to values and have it tiered and then have set times where we actually review it and communicate with clarity.   I will not be doing raises throughout the entire year. We have it, we assess it, we know when we're going to roll out our raises. We talk to team members, we let them know, so it's very clear, it's very transparent, it's very open with them. And this way, you guys don't have to have struggles. And I will tell you, offices that do this honestly use their numbers, their alignment and their structure for raises. It's not based on emotion, it's not based on willy-nilly. They literally can walk in confident, like no, yes, yes, no. Team knows.   And that just makes it a lot easier. Then team members aren't like me where I was always like, okay, so it's my one year. Are they going to give me a raise? Are they not going to give me? I don't really know. It was always awkward. And unless we went and asked the doctor, we didn't get a raise and I hated it. So don't make it that way. Like make this where it's something easy for your team, easy for you. You make it something where everybody wins. Everybody knows it makes it easier for your office managers. They're not in question. They can hold the line for you. Everybody wins through this. So this is truly where we want you guys to look at your   Like action items are look at your raise process and see do you actually have a process and what can you do to make this where it's clear, confident? For me, I review all numbers in September and October and I build my budget for the next year. That's when all raises go through. I do it really much like corporate, so I know who's getting raises, who's not. We have a lot that are production based within our company, so the more they produce, the better off they're going to be. I don't wanna have to worry about those, but I still need to assess and just make sure are our bases accurate, are the pieces there?   Britt and I worked through this for a good solid chunk of time where we're reviewing it, we're looking at it, we're making sure it fits within our numbers of what we need, and then we know what we're able to do. So review it, see if you have it, and if you need help, email us, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. These are tricky numbers, these are tricky pieces, these are like, how do I know? The tiers are amazing, I'm happy to help you with that. So email in Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. Truly, this is where you can elevate in your leadership. This is where you can be more clear.   This is where you have hopefully a little bit more clarity of how do I give raises? How do I know if I can afford it? Giving you the numbers as your guide, giving you the tiers, giving you the parameters within your area, and then having set times where you look at it, you project it out, having your monthly costs. So again, we're looking at multiple different lenses to see yes or no. So we're not emotional, but we're truly directed.   This is something I love. I love giving owners ⁓ clarity. I love being a fairy godmother for you where we literally can answer all these questions. You can call us. We'll pick up the phone. We'll help you out. This is what it's like to be part of our consulting. If we can help you reach out, this is what we love to do. And if you're ready to reward and retain your team the right way, reach out. Let's help you out. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.  

Kiera is joined by Zaneta Hamlin, owner and founder of Cusp Dental Boutique. Zaneta, who built her practice from the ground up, shares with Kiera her journey, reflecting on what got her to this point and what she would've changed and focused more on if she were to start over again. Plus, Zaneta talks about how she's turned even the smallest items and exchanges into branding opportunities for her practice. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and today I am so giddy. I have one of my favorite humans in the entire world. Like that is not an exaggeration. She's got a million dollar smile. She's one of the funniest people I've ever met. She makes me laugh all the time. She really does. Like Zaneta when you smile, is the world just makes like it's just a happier place. Zaneta Hamlin, one of my favorite doctors. This woman can brand like nobody's business. Surprise fact, I even have her all of her branding sitting here. I have her stickers.   I love the business card. That was my favorite thing that you added in for me was a business card for me. But Zaneta Hamlin, one of our clients, one of my faves, welcome to the podcast today. How's your day today?   Zaneta Hamlin (00:39) Great, how are you? I'm happy to be here in the chat.   Kiera Dent (00:43) I'm so happy to have you. My day has been amazing. It's been podcast day and by far my favorite podcast is you today. So I'm really, really excited because I have wanted this podcast to come out for so long. So Zaneta I don't want to like do you a disservice. I just said a few things as to why I wanted you to come on the podcast. Like I said, being a part of our community, I just watch you and something I've noticed about you since literally the day one is you dress incredibly well and you're always branded. Like you're a walking   machine of branding every event I've seen you at you have Cusp Dental I know where you are I know your colors you have everything branded you think so intentionally but you're just an amazing human so Zaneta kind of tell us and honestly I want to go with you and do ⁓ dentistry in other countries that's something that you and I are gonna do outside of that so to fill our listeners in a little bit Zaneta kind of walk them through who is Zaneta Hamlin how did you get to be into Cusp Dental just kind of give us a little background on who you are the dentistry you do   Zaneta Hamlin (01:29) Absolutely.   Kiera Dent (01:40) Whatever you feel like sharing, this is Zaneta's time. And I want everybody to get to know you because you're just an amazing human. So walk us through, how did you get from where you were to where you are today?   Zaneta Hamlin (01:46) Bye.   So am   a second generation dentist. ⁓ I started off as an associate. I went to my dad's alma mater, went to Howard University College of Dentistry around this area in the Virginia Beach Hampton Roads area. I would say Howard is the real HU, so that's going to probably offend some people great. Yes, yes.   Kiera Dent (02:01) Amazing.   That's okay. She's here for it. There's no shame. Zenita, this is your podcast. You get to say whatever you want   today. No filtered.   Zaneta Hamlin (02:19) yeah. So second gen dentist, ⁓ I started off as an associate. So I associated for about nine years, ⁓ until I, ⁓ birthed the idea for Cusp Dental Boutique. It was initially going to be an acquisition. That was the plan I was with, ⁓ coaching prior, but it was more, it was geared more towards, ⁓ acquisitions and   That didn't work out for me. ⁓ just, everything just didn't work out. And the type of practice that I was looking to create ⁓ just didn't fit in the other practices. So ⁓ my husband actually found the space that we are in ⁓ and we just built it from scratch. It was a shell. ⁓ And then we have Cusp Dental Boutique. Now, ⁓ yeah, I do like to brand. So.   Kiera Dent (03:12) That's amazing.   Zaneta Hamlin (03:17) you   Kiera Dent (03:17) Please do, I want you   to, because I also hope people hear, like I said, I brought you on for a reason, Zaneta. This is where I want you to brag. I want you to share about who you are, because I think so often we don't, and so many times dentists feel they're doing it all alone. So trying to bring different dentists, different perspectives. So brag, Zaneta, I'm gonna brag about you too. So this is your show, brag as you should.   Zaneta Hamlin (03:38) I do love my practice. I love how we do things differently. There's a lot of technology. mean, lately I've had a few temps in my office. And so just having the temps has shown me how much my office does that others don't. And so, the expectations are bit higher with what they should do. ⁓ But everyone comes in and like, my gosh, this doesn't feel like a dental office. doesn't smell like a dental office.   ⁓ even the swag they get is different. Now, yeah, I'll give the Cusp Dental Boutique chapstick or things like that, but the koozies, the ⁓ wine tumblers, because you can have wine. ⁓ I think one of the things that you might be referring to is ⁓ my luggage ⁓ cover.   Kiera Dent (04:18) Why not? Why not?   Yes. Yes.   Zaneta Hamlin (04:30) I   do have that because look, your bags, when you check a bag, even if you are rolling, like it's carry on, people see it as you're dragging it wherever. So it's advertising, you know, they might be in a different state. You might come visit Virginia Beach. You what? I was on a flight to Detroit and I saw, you know, this Cusp Dental Boutique. I want to see where that is. Maybe they have an emergency. Top of mind.   Kiera Dent (04:37) Mm-hmm.   don't   disagree with you. This is why I brought you on the podcast because the way you think about branding and advertising, like I remember meeting you first at this conference and like you're repping it. Like you've got your Cusp Dental Boutique and it makes me so happy because that's also, think why you do so well in your practice. Like you love what you've built. You can see the love and the passion and the pieces. Yeah. The luggage. just wrote it down. Dental A Team needs to freaking put those on because we travel everywhere. Think of how many dentists are traveling to conferences and we are not branding. So   Zaneta Hamlin (05:22) All the time, yes.   Kiera Dent (05:27) Dental A Team, if you're listening, which most of them do, ⁓ surprise, maybe it'll be your holiday present. Shelbi, we need to get these. So, you know, there we go. Yeah, it's brilliant.   Zaneta Hamlin (05:33) There we go.   They are great.   Nobody's gonna rep your brand better than you. So if you aren't proud of it, you know, so you gotta rep it. And yeah, I put it on anything. We went, ⁓ our family went on a Disney cruise, our first ever Disney cruise. And I just randomly saw, cause ⁓ a sorority sister of mine told me we need those ⁓ clips for your beach chair to put your towel on so it doesn't fly away.   Kiera Dent (05:45) Mm-hmm. I love it.   ⁓   right. Of course. Of course you can.   Zaneta Hamlin (06:03) Well, I happen to find there are stretchy versions, like ⁓ elastic versions, and you can customize them. So of course, mine, one side says   Cusp Dental Boutique, the other side says Cusp Untethered. So either way, you're getting something. And it went on. So on the Disney Cruise, you could see four chairs. Cusp Dental Boutique, Cusp Untethered. You know.   Kiera Dent (06:19) Something.   Amazing.   It's incredible. So, okay. So I think Zaneta, something that you do so well is you built this practice. And I mean, even, I think people seeing the clips of this online, I mean, you doesn't even look like you're sitting in a dental practice. Like you're in this very different vibe, different feel. So walk me through how has it been being an owner? And then I want to go through like what have been the struggles, what have been the good things? Like you have this amazing space, people you've got raving fans.   Like you have built this boutique dental practice, which I think is so great to stand out when I think dentistry has been a little bit tricky. And I think you're doing a great job of that. And then we're going to pivot to like some of your favorite brand. I mean, she's already listed her luggage covers. can like literally Zaneta. feel like if there's something she can put a logo on, she will like, it is like, Oh, I could put this here. I could have a bracelet. I mean, your jacket, I guarantee you there's a Cusp Dental pin. I guarantee. Yep.   Zaneta Hamlin (07:15) Really.   yeah,   I mean the back of my jean jacket says untethered on it.   Kiera Dent (07:26) It's all there. She's constantly, it's constant. Like Zaneta, I think you are one of the few people that thinks in their branding so much that it is a part of you. It's what you do. It's who you are. It's not like I'm Zaneta and here's work and here's Zaneta. It's I am these pieces. So walk me through, you started this scratch start. How's it been going?   Zaneta Hamlin (07:27) The symbol is right there.   you   Kiera Dent (07:50) The wins, the stresses, the struggles, like where are you at on the business ownership path?   Zaneta Hamlin (07:56) I mean, there have been ups and downs. I will be very honest and frank about that. I've never been a business owner. So this is my first kick at it. ⁓ But I'm very frank with my team, like, hey, guys, I'm learning too. And I rely on them to also give me their feedback. Now, I always take it into consideration. It doesn't always mean like, hey, we're going to do what you recommended this time around. But I do like to listen to them and see what they think, because they have great ideas. But you won't know unless you actually listen to them.   It's been up and down. Like when people opt to leave the practice to go somewhere for whatever reason, ⁓ I've taken it personally in the past. Now, ⁓ my gosh, I mean, hopefully Dana has seen how much I've grown in that department.   Kiera Dent (08:38) I was,   I would agree. Dana's been coaching you for quite a while and Zenita, I will even say not being in the day to day with you all the time, you have grown exponentially. It used to be this, I remember being in the Dr. Masterminds, different places. It was just this like complete stress. And I feel like you have definitely grown as a business owner, as a leader, and I'm really proud of you. And you seem happier, but you still haven't lost your flair of like loving your practice. Like it didn't jade you even though it stressed you out. And agree, Dana, Dana will for sure be watching this and she will be so proud of you.   She already is, but you have definitely grown in the time that we have known you. And I'm really proud of you because I don't think everybody does grow. Some people just stay stagnant, but you have wanted to grow. You've wanted to evolve. You listen to what people say. You've made friends in our community. You and Christie have become BFFs. Christie Moore, she's been on the podcast too. Super excited to hang out in person, but you do a good job of executing and implementing Zenita. You're very humble. You're very coachable. And you're also just a ton of fun. Like you keep the Zenita piece of you while also growing and evolving too.   Zaneta Hamlin (09:38) Thank you. Yeah, I mean, it's there's no way you can't change stuff if you don't accept it. Because if it was working the way you were doing it, then why are you coaching? So no, it's it's been up and down. I've learned to delegate. I wasn't doing that before. And I'm still learning to ⁓ give deadlines because sometimes I will suggest that something needs to be done and not say when I need it done by and in my mind, that means you've done it already.   Kiera Dent (09:45) Right.   Zaneta Hamlin (10:04) ⁓ so working on that, but I am doing better with letting others, ⁓ do things for me and that I don't have to do all of it. And I have a great team that understands that I will do it all if not, if they don't step in and they will be like, no, no, no, I got it. You go do something else or maybe go eat. about that? so, ⁓ I think it's who you surround yourself with that. ⁓   Kiera Dent (10:18) Mm-hmm.   Yeah. Yeah. Good.   Zaneta Hamlin (10:33) helps and like you mentioned like Christie, for example, I was talking to another doctor when I went to a master class a couple of weeks ago for the AGD and he was telling me like, hey, when you are looking to move your practice into different levels, like moving up, like for example, me, you know, trying to add an associate and grow, he was like, talk to people who have done it or people who ⁓   Kiera Dent (10:54) Mm-hmm.   Zaneta Hamlin (11:02) have been in that seat before, or coaches that can help you. And I was like, well, definitely my coach can help me with that. And to like, you know, talking to somebody like Kristy, who's been there, done that, probably even read a book about it, you know. So ⁓ it's who you surround yourself with too, that can help you.   Kiera Dent (11:20) Yeah, no, I think you've done an amazing job and it's just fun. It's fun to watch you evolve as a leader. It's fun to watch you. I mean, I remember some of our first emails were I'm staying here so late. Everything's on my plate. I don't know how to do this to now hearing you of I delegate and I built this culture of a team that knows who I am. They give it had to change yourself as Anita. That's something I love about you is I don't feel you. There's been a huge change of Anita. I think there's been like Zenita 2.0 is Anita 3.0.   where you just keep like, keep the core of who you are, but you evolve as your business evolves and like letting the team know, yes, this is who I am and this is what I'm expecting. And I'm very honest and very frank. I think it's really helped you tremendously. And like, let's give some snaps. You are bringing in an associate. You are evolving your practice. You are growing into these things. And so if you were talking to somebody, say in your shoes, they just found this space, they found the shell. They're super excited. There's Anita, who you were at the beginning.   Zenita today, what would you maybe tell that practice owner of some things of like, hey, as the wiser version of me, this is what I would maybe do or I would execute on XYZ or I would do this again of something that I did. What would you say are some of those tips you would give maybe a Zenita coming in doing a similar path?   Zaneta Hamlin (12:36) probably would have learned to delegate earlier. I think, yeah. Yeah.   Kiera Dent (12:40) I agree.   Yeah, I remember   some long emails and some hard nights on NotDelegate and a lot of hours at the practice unnecessarily.   Zaneta Hamlin (12:48) Yeah   I was quick focusing it. Don't do quick,   you can, but why? know, like, I can't believe I did that and how much time I put, but it's interesting though, like some, the things that I have delegated, I'm still busy. I still have to do things. it's like, now I'm like, how did I have time to do that? Like, no wonder why I was stressed. No wonder why I wasn't sleeping, you know, like, so I would have definitely, ⁓   Kiera Dent (12:57) I agree. I agree.   Yes.   Zaneta Hamlin (13:20) delegated sooner. I would have gotten an aura ring earlier. That's something she knows talking to her about. I would have gotten that earlier. ⁓ But I also would have trusted my intuition more a earlier. I mean, I did, but not at the level in which I do now. Like, for example, if I extend an offer or like,   Kiera Dent (13:24) Right? ⁓ It works great. Yes, agreed. Okay.   Zaneta Hamlin (13:49) you know, I make a decision, because I like to make decisions pretty quickly. Like it's this and we're going with it, right? I don't go back and like ponder it like, oh, did I really make this mistake? Like, was this a mistake? Should I have done this? Should I have done that? I've had those thoughts before, but then I quickly am like, no, no, no, it's, this is the way we should go if an offer was made and it wasn't accepted.   Kiera Dent (13:53) Mm-hmm.   Zaneta Hamlin (14:17) It's because that wasn't for me and it probably would have been a headache. You know, I've gone down that route with like negotiations and stuff like that. And I thought to myself, hey, had that actually worked, it would have been a disaster. So I'm glad it didn't. So definitely ⁓ intuition, like leaning into that and just going with the flow.   Kiera Dent (14:35) Yeah.   Mm hmm. No, and I do. I do think that there's so many times that we feel like there's all these other experts, which I do agree like great job. Kudos to you. You you jumped into consulting and you hired coaches and you talk to mentors and talking about Sheena and Christie like you use your doctor community around you and you work with other mentors. But I do believe that there's an internal knowing that I think we often lose by thinking I've never done this before. So how am I supposed to know? But I do think that there's a core knowing that   I really love that you brought that up, that people really do need to trust themselves. They need to execute on that more. ⁓ So many people are like, well, someone told me I shouldn't do this. And I'm like, but you know, like you know what you need to do and you're gonna, you'll figure it out and it will work. So, okay, I love your story and I love what you've done. And I'm so happy that you're sharing with other people. And now I wanna pivot to, let's talk about your branding. Talk me through, you said everything is branding opportunities. Every single possible thing that you do.   Zaneta Hamlin (15:18) It doesn't feel right.   Kiera Dent (15:36) Like has this always been a part of you? Did it just come with buying the practice? And then I want you to walk through some of the specifics that you do of branding intentionally, maybe even like who you use or where you get these things. Like, I don't think people realize like marketing is a lot easier than they think it is. You did a scratch start. So you have had to figure out how to market yourself with no money. So kind of walk us through like, how have you done this? How has the marketing been for you? How has it been finding more new patients like?   Zaneta Hamlin (15:54) Mm-hmm.   Kiera Dent (16:02) I don't know, whatever you want to take on this branding, because honestly, you are one of my queens of branding that I've met as a dentist. You do it so well. So walk me through just whatever, however you want to take this branding, marketing side of the business.   Zaneta Hamlin (16:15) No judgment. Okay. Ready? Okay. One of the cheapest things you can get and y'all don't, well, let's just go through it. So ⁓ pens. Okay. So I would go to Pens.com. They always run promos and stuff like that. Get some pens, get your favorite pen. ⁓ they send you, they'll send you something. See exactly. Yeah.   Kiera Dent (16:17) No judgment. I'm ready.   No judgment, we already put it there.   You do.   I have it. It's literally right there.   Zaneta Hamlin (16:42) What I, how I started was, mean, of course, Studio 88 did my logo, my colors and all that stuff. That was a process to get to what it is now, right? Because there were different versions of it, right? And then I started putting it on pens. So here's what I would do. would, when I go to a restaurant, family, friends, myself, whatever, you know, they give you a pen, a Bic pen or some whatever pen.   Kiera Dent (17:08) Mm-hmm.   Zaneta Hamlin (17:10) I will sign with my pen and I will leave that pen.   Kiera Dent (17:13) You're so clever. Okay, keep going.   I want to hear all these ideas. I'm writing them down by the way. They're brilliant.   Zaneta Hamlin (17:20) So   I always have a bajillion pens on me in my purse or in my pocket. wear scrubs, so I have them in my pockets and stuff. Like even where, like my car, where I take my car to get it serviced or I'll change whatever. They've got my pens floating around too. The wine shop that I go to with, that I have membership at, they've got my pens. They always ask me, what color is coming out next? You know, like, cause I do different colors based on different seasons, as long as it's within brand.   Kiera Dent (17:45) Smart.   Zaneta Hamlin (17:48) So I can tell when that pen was from because we've only been orange orders. And black was the last order we had. We have a teal one now. That was a mistake, but still I have 500 of them. So we're gonna work through that. Yeah. And then I also did a partnership with a restaurant that's not too far from my office, half a mile away. They're out by the water. They gave me gift cards that I can give to new patients.   Kiera Dent (17:54) That's incredible.   So we're giving them out. Yeah.   Zaneta Hamlin (18:17) I gave them a boatload of pens. So when they are having people sign their checks or whatever, you know, they finished their eating and all that stuff, they've got a Cusp Dental Boutique pen that people usually jack, they steal those. And so they've got 200 to sort through, whatever. So that's how I really started getting the brand out. I would wear what I had, if know, if I had t-shirts or something, I would wear those. Now I have sweatshirts and stuff too.   Kiera Dent (18:24) Mm-hmm.   Mm-hmm   Zaneta Hamlin (18:48) But it was just really wherever I can show folks. When I go with my kids to their games or their school or whatever, I might have something. And people ask, ⁓ are you the one that owns? Yeah, hi, you should come to this. You know, just really, so it could be anything. mean, again, pen is a simple and easy thing to do to carry, not a huge investment.   Kiera Dent (19:03) Yeah.   Zaneta Hamlin (19:16) you know, do that. And then when Stanley does promotions and they customize them, you do that too. Yep. Yeah. And koozies are cheap. ⁓ I use ⁓ Citi Paper. They are in Alabama. A friend of mine, another business owner, she's a pediatric dentist. Quinn, sent them or referred them to me and ⁓   Kiera Dent (19:23) On brand, on color. Excellent.   Zaneta Hamlin (19:44) They do all of my koozies, whether it's the regular size koozie or the tall ones, which we did one season for a beach, because we're right by the water. ⁓ And then even like our goodie bags, we don't do the traditional goodie bags at the office. They're cotton, because also check out the environment. I have to come up with something for my patients who bring theirs back to reuse them. Like, hey, maybe if you bring your bag back, so we can just refill it with your supplies if you need it.   Kiera Dent (20:02) Yeah.   Cute.   Zaneta Hamlin (20:14) ⁓ But things like that have been great and people love it because it's different. Now I use mine for like when I travel for makeup, like my makeup brushes. It's, you know, I've had patients that will use it for their sunglasses. We have Cusp sunglasses, which patients use when they're sitting in the chair anyway to protect their eyes and 90 % of the time they want to walk out with it anyway. So again, take it. has my logo.   Kiera Dent (20:25) Mm-hmm.   Take   it, please.   Zaneta Hamlin (20:44) Yeah,   take it. Yeah, by all means. So yeah, and sunglasses can be pretty cheap too.   Kiera Dent (20:47) ⁓   Mm-hmm. So what do you feel? Okay pens koozies sunglasses shirts sweatshirts reusable bags What do you feel are if I'm like on a budget? Pens obviously what else you feel has been I mean and also I'm hearing you you know your population You're by the beach. So you're thinking in beach like they're gonna want drinks. They don't want sand on those So koozies are gonna be great. Keep them cold. They're there   Zaneta Hamlin (21:02) Mm-hmm. Yes.   Kiera Dent (21:14) the towel thing at the beginning of the podcast. Well, yeah, that makes sense because you're at the beach. People need those are going to use those are going to see them. ⁓ I like what things would you say if I'm on a budget are going to be the best bang for my buck? I love the Stanleys. I didn't even think about like you're watching promotions on every single thing that your patients would use like sunglasses, clever. Again, you're a beach community. So what has been your best ROI?   Zaneta Hamlin (21:33) Yeah.   Yeah.   Kiera Dent (21:39) because branding is like awareness, but then there's also like, I need patients to come back with that. So what do you feel has been your best ROI that you could say these patients came from this if I could only choose like one or two of these items?   Zaneta Hamlin (21:53) If we, my team probably would have to help me with this, but if it's based on what people have asked for, I would say it's chapstick.   Kiera Dent (22:04) Interesting.   Zaneta Hamlin (22:05) Yeah, because you don't have to be at the beach to use chapstick like chaps you should keep these puppies moist like drink your water and Moisturize your lips ⁓ SPF all the things the chapstick folks have asked for like hey Do you guys still do the chapsticks because I think and I don't know I know there are different types, but the one we do is like the big daddy one I have one in my ⁓ pocket somewhere, but ⁓   Kiera Dent (22:14) Yeah.   You   Zaneta Hamlin (22:34) Um, people really like that. You know, someone once someone said to me, Oh yeah, a friend of mine was using it and I just liked how it went on. And, you know, she said she got at her dental appointment. I was like, Oh yeah. Okay. I'm glad you came because would you like one today after your appointment? can give you one.   Kiera Dent (22:52) because we've got   some and you can share them with all your friends.   Zaneta Hamlin (22:56) Yeah, so I think that has been great.   And then the koozies are the second ones because people ask for that again. You could be anywhere. I mean, my neighbors use the koozies when we're out in the neighborhood, you know, hanging out with the kids and stuff like that. So yeah. ⁓ look at that.   Kiera Dent (23:16) Mm-hmm.   Look at that. She has it. I'm telling you, this woman walks in her logo. I would not be shocked if you told me you had pajamas in it.   Zaneta Hamlin (23:28) That's it.   That's a good idea.   Kiera Dent (23:32) There you   go. Pajamas. know our team has been asking me for workout clothes, like tank tops. Um, and then also they want the branded shoes of Dental A Team shoes. So that way they're like, we do a different one every single year. Cause that way, like your team is always wearing stuff also. So like if it's stuff that they do, yes. Um, you can do that. We also found out you can make a custom Nikes. Uh, you can make other customs that.   Zaneta Hamlin (23:47) Yeah Chuck says it converse   Can you put lingo on   it?   Kiera Dent (24:01) So those are things, again, I haven't done it yet, but write down the, get your notebook. ⁓ But honestly, I think Zaneta, some of these things, even post podcast, if you can send me and we'll include it in the show notes, some of the suppliers that you use and some of the ideas that you have. like we've listed off, she's got the Stanleys that she brands, there's the ChapStick. But if you looked and if you saw on the video and if you miss it, it's not the cheap ChapStick. Like this is not a cheap ChapStick. There's some dental offices that give.   Zaneta Hamlin (24:29) They have...   Kiera Dent (24:30) Gross chapstick.   Zaneta Hamlin (24:31) yeah, the minis. I know!   Kiera Dent (24:33) The minis or the ones that just like get in your mouth and they taste disgusting or they like don't actually moisturize. They almost like dry it out worse. So you're like putting it on. ⁓ You know what I'm talking about. Excellent. Do you hear this? She's coming to our doctor in-person mastermind, which is in September and we're super excited about it. It's a doctor in leadership one and Zaneta is already thinking I'm bringing it for everybody. And that's not because these dentists.   Zaneta Hamlin (24:40) Yeah.   Yes. you're getting one. I think I'm bringing some for everybody when I come to the meeting.   and you get a chance to.   Kiera Dent (25:00) These dentists are not her client. We don't even live by her, but yet all of us are going to be wearing it. She never knows where one of us is going to be. I'm going to be on the airplane sitting there flying out to the East coast. Someone's going to see it. They're going to look it up cause they're going to love her logo. And lo and behold, they'll be like, ⁓ I saw some girl putting this chapstick on, on a plane. You never know where people are going to be. And that's very easy. I thought your restaurant idea was so clever and like pens. I did not even think about signing with your own and just leaving it there constantly.   the luggage, our team's getting luggage carriers. Like that's going to be part of their standard onboarding. Cause we fly all the time and dentists are on planes all the time. So Zenita.   Zaneta Hamlin (25:32) Thank you.   Dentists,   their assistants, their office managers, their spouses, somebody, it's fun. And I saw this cute lady walking by with this and took a picture of it and sent it to their spouse or whoever, best friend. Have you been in this company? Or why aren't you doing that?   Kiera Dent (25:43) Mm-hmm.   Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. It's a very, it's   so clever, Zenita. I think, okay, so what's your most random favorite thing that maybe wasn't the best ROI, but you just loved it. It was one of your favorite like things that you created that's been branded. I mean, you got a jean jacket that's unbranded. You've got your shirt, which is a super darling shirt. Like what have you loved that was like, yeah. And then you also said you got sweatshirts.   Zaneta Hamlin (26:16) Thank you, you really sound interesting.   Kiera Dent (26:20) What else do you have? Like, what was your favorite?   Zaneta Hamlin (26:23) well, I really like our, wine, ⁓ tumblers. I have a Yeti that has, ⁓ Cusp Dental Boutique on it, but we have tumblers or two versions again, depending on which one you break out. know when you got it because we only rotate certain things and we've, we've done some promos where like our Cusp Circle folks get, which we have to get better about it. But when people do our in office, ⁓   membership, yep, they get those things. So like the t-shirt, I'm not going to just give to like our regular PPO patient. Like it's going to be, you know, our membership folks that get those, like the nicer branded items. But I really like the ⁓ koozies or not koozies, the tumblers. ⁓ I use it often enough. ⁓   Kiera Dent (27:01) Mm-hmm.   Mm-hmm.   often enough, all the favorite things and you can have it as   a business write-off because you want them. They're branded. You pull them out for parties. You can put them on social media. Obviously, it's a complete business write-off. I agree. Yeah.   Zaneta Hamlin (27:24) Excellent. Yeah. I had   my previous coach, she would put when she would go to the beach or wherever she would go, she would take pictures with her wine tumbler in different places. I did like a, I think it's in my ⁓ Cusp merch on my Instagram, where it just shows people with Cusp Dental Boutique things in different places. ⁓ And sometimes I'll still do that. Like I'll set it somewhere or whatever.   Kiera Dent (27:40) Ha ha ha!   Zaneta Hamlin (27:54) I've had patients who will send me pictures of themselves out in the wild with random Cusp Dental Boutique things. yeah, but the wine tumbler has been great because no one else has that. no dental offices, you know, like it's something you wouldn't think of for a dental office. So yeah.   Kiera Dent (28:09) Yeah.   Mm-hmm.   Totally. Well, and as you're   saying, I hope people picked up on, I wrote down some notes that I think you maybe don't even realize you're doing, but you don't call it a membership plan. It's called Cusp Dental Boutique Circle. So it's your, and as soon as you said it, I was like, that's her membership plan. But notice the way you say it, Zaneta, is you want your people to be part of your group. It's a community, it's a group, it's not, and like they're getting the special stuff. They're getting something that's different than everybody else. So you're setting it apart for people that are a part of your inner circle.   Zaneta Hamlin (28:27) Yes.   Kiera Dent (28:46) Then it said Cusp merch and I was like, probably gonna start selling your merch like honestly, but right now it's just on social media, which then helps patients realize they go, they tag you, you're gonna be putting it on there. People will see it. ⁓ You also are very clever. You said two versions and I was like, that's so smart because then people are going to want things at different times. They're gonna see other people getting it, which then creates retention of people wanting to come back because they saw the merchandise. They saw different things.   Zaneta Hamlin (28:51) Mm-hmm.   Kiera Dent (29:15) but also you strategically know like when were, when did I see them? Where were these pieces based on what they're, they're having? So it's a very like thought out process that I don't even think people, I don't even know if you realize like the depths of the pieces you're doing that are just very fun. And it seems like you just have a ton of fun doing it too.   Zaneta Hamlin (29:22) there.   I do. mean, it's, I don't know. It's, I, now I will say if you are wearing your brand, you can't be outside acting crazy. So you can be fun.   Kiera Dent (29:41) I would agree. I was going to say, do you ever get sick of like having people be   like, hi, who are you? Like, I'm like, no, sometimes I want to go incognito on a plane. Like I don't want anybody to know me. So.   Zaneta Hamlin (29:48) Yes, right. I   do have those times. Like tomorrow, I'm supposed to be going to Cape Charles with my husband. It's our wedding anniversary. I have gone back and forth because we're going to be visiting an artillery. I'm like, do I go? Because I will wear my Cusp baseball cap. I have it in three colors. My team, some of my team members have them.   Kiera Dent (30:01) No.   Thank   Zaneta Hamlin (30:15) I think one   of our videos, were wearing it for like, it's our like new patient welcome video we have for wearing the hats. But my husband wears his often. But I've thought, do I go to this place wearing my Cusp Dental Boutique hat? Because it has the symbol in the front ⁓ and the name of the practice in the back. ⁓ Or do I go incognito? Nobody should know who I am. But the Eastern Shore,   Kiera Dent (30:42) Mm-hmm.   Zaneta Hamlin (30:43) is close enough and we do have patients that have come from there. So just from talking to you, I'm thinking that I'm probably going.   Kiera Dent (30:50) at least have   like, there'll be a little Cusp Dental Boutique cameo if not the full show. So yeah, of course she's taking pens.   Zaneta Hamlin (30:55) I'm also taking pens. So I'm going to be leaving them at the   distillery strategically and the restaurant. ⁓   Kiera Dent (31:02) The pen, the pen.   And I will say, Zaneta, I mean, you shipped this to me at Summit, because this is where it came from. We were at Summit and I was like, I need a notebook. And you messaged in the chat, I saw it come through, Zaneta said, I'm sending you a notebook. And lo and behold, this shows up in like the super cute notebook. I still have it. It's got a beautiful, I mean, it's a real nice pen, Zaneta. She did, that's something else I'm noticing with you. You're not scrimping. Like this is a very heavyweight pen. It's a nice feel pen.   Zaneta Hamlin (31:14) It did.   Kiera Dent (31:32) which also is on brand with a Cusp Dental Boutique office. You're not going for this like hot, like you're not going for the burn and churn, which is fine. If you were, it'd be a different type of pen. Your stickers are very high end stickers. Your business card is high end. It's on brand. There's the untethered. There's the Cusp Dental Boutique. Like just, I mean, you guys, I still have these. They're very nice. They're cute. They are not, I feel like I'm selling Cusp Dental Boutique. Like I feel like we're on an infomercial. Like here, here we are.   Zaneta Hamlin (31:59) Please keep going.   Kiera Dent (32:02) But I think something like this pen is compared to some of these crummy ones, like, you know, Pens.com, they do send you some really junky ones. They also send you some really nice ones. But I've been in offices writing with pens, like from the Pens.com, like they ship them to me. I'll have a rose gold one. I'll have a white one. And in offices, the dental assistant's like, I love your pen. And I'm like, well, you can have it. Here you go. Like take it, write it, share it with everybody. But I do think there's something to be said. You do nice things.   Zaneta Hamlin (32:10) Thank you. Yeah.   Yeah.   Kiera Dent (32:31) rather than doing just cheap things to slap a brand, but your brand is higher end. Your brand is a nicer brand. So you're making sure it's very intentional with your brand.   Zaneta Hamlin (32:42) think when you are going to brand your items, and I get it, it depends on which season you're in in your practice, right? But when you are going to put your name on something, you want it to represent you well. And so yes, the things that I have done are probably, you know, I will always say they're top tier. But some of these things you can also get when they go on sale. Like they'll send me stuff like, it's now 85 cents.   Kiera Dent (32:48) Mm-hmm.   Mm-hmm.   Zaneta Hamlin (33:11) you know, to get this pen or 50 cents for that pen. I'm like, oh shoot, get it, get it now. We're gonna get this color. This is gonna be this season or 2024. This is the color, you know. So it's just, and it's something I think it's probably my mother, cause she's always like, like if I'm gonna go out with her, like sometimes I wanna just dress down and wear sweatpants, right? She's like, where are you going? You're not following me like that. You know, and so it's like, okay, all right, I get it. Like I gotta represent you and myself well.   Kiera Dent (33:20) Mm-hmm.   Mm-hmm.   You   Mm-hmm.   Zaneta Hamlin (33:41) So yeah, for things you're gonna put your logo on, you do wanna make sure it's something that people are gonna want, that it looks good and it represents you. So if you can't, maybe hold out till you can get the one that you really want. Because if it's crappy and you don't even like it and you're not gonna use it, why get it? Save your money, invest it in something else. Get AI.   Kiera Dent (33:55) Mm-hmm.   Yeah.   Get AI.   was a mastermind conversation we had this week. There is a podcast inspo'd by Zaneta. I will not say exactly which one. She knows, you guys can all guess on the podcast coming out. I recorded it right before this one, but Zaneta, I think it was just so fun. I really wanted to hear just about the different ideas. So anything you have of like, like you said, Pens.com or where you get your koozies or any of those. Cause I think that's also the hard part of there. So much out there, like who are the good brands? So even if you can send some of those that you like.   Zaneta Hamlin (34:06) You   Kiera Dent (34:30) I'd be happy to share those along. But I think if nothing else, I hope listeners today start thinking of differently of how can you brand your stuff? How can you do simple things? Where are your patients hanging out all the time that are the ideal patients you want? Not just patients, because we don't want all patients. We want your ideal patient. So like you said, they're going to be at the distillery. So you're going to a certain place. Like I picked up on that. You're not like I'm handing these out at, we won't say certain names.   Zaneta Hamlin (34:32) Yeah.   you   Kiera Dent (34:56) but I know you would not be dropping pens at certain places. You will be dropping them up. They don't go to all locations. They go to intentional locations where you know, it's like you said, there's a restaurant on the water. Well, I can already tell what type of a clientele is at that one based on where this restaurant is. So without Zaneta even telling you who her ICP is or ideal customer profile or avatar of patient, she's intentionally putting all of her brand in the places she wants people to be at her ideal patient base.   Zaneta Hamlin (35:10) You   Kiera Dent (35:25) to grow and Zaneta, mean, without even sharing any of your numbers, the fact that you've taken a scratch, start shell of a practice, built it with your own branding, your own pieces to now you're going to be bringing on an associate. think people can attest that some of the things you're doing clearly have been working really, really well. So thank you for sharing. I got excited. I I wrote a ton of notes over here and I hope other people did. And these are the type of conversations that come out at the mastermind.   Zaneta is talking about all of her problems, but then she's branding her Cuspware everywhere and all of us want it. So it goes like, you know, it's a good, it's a good thing. And honestly, Sheena needs to talk to you. She needs help on her branding. So and Sheena shout out to you. Just like, you know, you need like these are the things.   Zaneta Hamlin (35:57) Ha ha!   I would love to, but I do think   though, just, I probably picked this up from Studio 88, just because you're a dental practice, a dental office, you do not have to do everything dental. Like my logo doesn't have a tooth anywhere, right? It can, and that's great, but it doesn't have to. So just because it's a dental practice, like my logo or the things that I brand aren't specific to dental things. So my recommendation is,   Kiera Dent (36:20) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.   Zaneta Hamlin (36:33) Put your logo on something that you like and you would use outside of work. That is the best way to market your practice is on things that you would even want to use. It doesn't have to be like things you would expect from a dental office. You know what I mean? Like, hence the rumblers and yeah, the wine stuff.   Kiera Dent (36:52) right? The wine. Yep, yep. It's   stuff that you like, but also what I think is important is we often attract the people that are like us and as patients. And so Zaneta is doing things that make her happy, that make her want to do it, that are going to attract people that are very similar to her. Not everyone's going to love this pen. There will be some of you that will be like, that's too thick, that's too fat. Like I don't like how that one writes. And you would prefer another style of pen.   but people that like this high end vibe feel where it's this gel. mean, I already know Tiffany would love this pen and in the other colors. I also love that you do different colors. It's so clever, like so many fun things and you just have fun, but you do it. I'm really proud of you on an overhead budget. Good job. Like when it's on sale, when these things like, not just buying the Stanleys, you're literally being an intentional business owner too, which I think shows that you can do branding and marketing on like within an overhead budget.   and still have a ton of fun and make beautiful, high quality things. I mean, your logo just stands out even in this video. It's strong. It's, it's Anita. It's beautiful. And it just definitely represents who you are as a person too.   Zaneta Hamlin (38:00) And the final thing I'll mention about that is not every, like right now I'm the only one with the Stanley, but I will say my, if I make more of these, cause I wanted to try it out. I wanted to see how it would do. And my team members were like, I love that. You there are certain things that only squad members have. So like, right. So you want to get it. Like there's certain jackets or sweatshirts that we have.   Kiera Dent (38:14) Mm-hmm.   Zaneta Hamlin (38:28) You only get that if you're on my team. So ⁓ there are certain things you and like this t-shirt patients don't get this, you know, and it has our ⁓ humble hearts, skilled hands at the back. If they're wearing it out, they're like, well, where'd you get that shirt? Even if a patient from Cusp Circle wants a shirt, theirs is a little bit different, right? So again, strategically, you know, no, how'd you that? Cause only team members have that or whatever. So.   Kiera Dent (38:41) I love it.   Mm-hmm.   ⁓ Mm-hmm.   Zaneta Hamlin (38:56) If it's a little bit more expensive, yeah, maybe do that for your team during the holidays or their anniversary ⁓ or their birthday or something like that ⁓ that you're not just giving to anybody else.   Kiera Dent (39:05) Mm-hmm.   It's really clever. So for birthdays and anniversaries, do you have swag or gifts? I'm guessing it's all Cusp Dental Boutique. So tell us kind of about that. I mean, I didn't mean to go down this path, but I'm just very curious.   Zaneta Hamlin (39:20) So, not always, so give me some credit there, not always. our first, so for my office, the first anniversary, you get a Marc Jacobs tope.   Kiera Dent (39:24) Yeah, yeah. Okay.   I love it. I love it. No, there is no judgments   they needed. These are the things that make offices stand out. I love it.   Zaneta Hamlin (39:37) It's the mini though. So they get,   it's the maybe, I guess it's the small. So ⁓ far I've given four of those out. But anyway, you get that in whatever color. I order them, get them in bulk during the holidays. So I have them hidden somewhere in my office. So whenever someone's anniversary is, I can get in, I know what color they want, I can ask, and then they get that for their first anniversary. Second anniversary, what I've done is, ⁓   Kiera Dent (39:51) Mm-hmm.   Zaneta Hamlin (40:06) I have, we did like the, I think it's like the Turkish towels, because again, beach, and then ⁓ city paper put my logo on it. It's in like leather or something like that on the side. ⁓ So they have that, and you know, the Turkish towels have like, it's like tied at the bottom or whatever, like the things hanging off of it. So we did that in a wine. So the wine shop that I go to, they custom made a, they, brought the towel.   Kiera Dent (40:11) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.   Mm-hmm. Yep. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.   No.   Zaneta Hamlin (40:35) They put that in there with, so my team members that have gotten to their second year anniversary, they fill out a questionnaire from the wine shop that tells, ask them specifically what kind of wines they like. We put that in the box with other goodies from the wine shop. So it might be like truffle almonds or whatever that will pair well and little things based on what they like. And then that goes with it. And so that was year two.   ⁓ I'm still thinking what's gonna happen for those that make it to year three, ⁓ but it's always gonna be something different. They'll get at least something that has Cusp on it. It's just the first anniversary has the Marc Jacobs tote. And that started from like a joke that we had in the office, because people would walk around with these Marc Jacobs. And my admin at the time, Rachel, she was great before she moved. She had, and it's on social media somewhere where,   Kiera Dent (41:05) Mm-hmm.   Yeah, I love it.   Yeah   Zaneta Hamlin (41:32) She wrote on a brown paper bag, the tote, and she would walk around the office with it. And I was like, I get the hint. I get it. So that's when I bought it and I just made it a rule. Our first anniversary, that's what you get. So it's the same.   Kiera Dent (41:36) Mm-hmm.   You   It's amazing. And I love that you   think about like buying it on sale, there's different things. And then it's part of the Cusp. I love that it's called the Cusp squad. And you've got the Cusp Dental sort of like Boutique circle. So it's like you've got different names also for your groups that people want to be, which is so amazing. I have a friend and she does this in her dermatology and I didn't think about it. But she has it so exclusive that people like fly in from other places to go to her dermatology and be like, how did you get into joyful?   And she's just done a great job of branding it, of making things special, of making it to where this is only for, and I mean, I wrote so many notes because this is not my specialty. That's why I wanted you on the podcast, Anita, because I think hearing what other people do really can help us out. And like you are literally thinking in branding all day, every day, what can I do? But also doing it in such a beautiful aesthetic way as well that people want it. I mean, who doesn't want to Mark Jacobs bag that, yeah, I'm okay with it saying Cusp on it. Like I'll take that, right? ⁓   It's a beautiful thing that people do want, which is amazing. I love it. Well, Zaneta, I adore you. Any last thoughts you have, anything on branding or business ownership or anything that you feel leaving our listeners today would put a nice pretty bow on this for you today, because I've loved it. I've enjoyed all the tactical pieces, so many different fun things, like something so far from what I normally talk about that just makes me excited and psyched ready to do this. So any last things you want to add, any advice, any pieces?   to put a on our podcast today.   Zaneta Hamlin (43:19) Just make it fun, get stuff that you would use, doesn't have to be dental related. mean, ⁓ yeah, you can check in with your team too. They might have some great ideas that you can use, but yeah, just have fun with it and be obnoxious as you want to with it. Yeah.   Kiera Dent (43:40) I love it.   Amazing. Well, Zaneta, thank you. Thank you for coming on. Thank you for sharing. And I think this is just something really special about our dentist community of like people like you and Christie and Sheena and like, Jamin and all Kevin like so many cool amazing doctors that we get to hang out together. I didn't know how that community was going to shake. had visions of it becoming what it's been where you pop on your hair is always wrapped up because you're coming from patients on your computer hanging out.   Zaneta Hamlin (44:07) Yes.   Kiera Dent (44:09) And then all of a sudden I see the like eyes flash to the screen like what? And I'm supposed to do what? You guys want the what? But just like a fun community and having doctors like yourself that just bring special different ways. I think it's just amazing. So thank you for being on the Dental A Team's family. Thank you for being a part of our crew. It's just like, and thank you for sharing on the podcast today. I really appreciate you.   Zaneta Hamlin (44:30) Thank you for having me. Like, yeah, I'm glad Brandy got us to this point because, I'll definitely, I won't disappoint next month. I'll have some new ideas for you because my pin is going to be on, so you'll see that too, on my blazer.   Kiera Dent (44:41) I know you won't. Zaneta, I guarantee you. I can't wait.   I cannot wait. Yeah, you walk around with this pin. I'm telling you Zaneta dresses herself to the hilt with her brand and it's amazing. I love it every time and I never know what you're going to show up in and it's always different. You're always thinking but I also love that you highlighted because some people can go crazy and not be smart strategic business owners and you're able to do both and that's really what I wanted to highlight. So   Thank you and thank everyone. ⁓ And as always, thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.  

2026 might still seem like a ways off, but now is the time to start chipping away at preparation. Tiff and Kristy walk practices through what to do to be ready for a fresh start come January 1. They talk about lag and lead measures, what to put on your calendar now, fee schedules, and a ton more. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:01) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. I am back at you today, Miss Tiffanie, Spiffy Tiffy. No one's called me that in a while. I have not recorded with Kiera in a hot minute. That's how I know I have not recorded with Kiera, because I haven't been called Spiffy Tiffy in a minute. ⁓ We're here today. I have Miss Kristy with me today. She has just done a slew of recordings with me. We blocked out two hours today, and we said, you know what? We're just going to bust out a bunch, and we are doing it. Summertime gets a little wild.   and it gets hard to schedule these suckers in there. So Kristy, thank you for being here with me today. Thank you for scheduling this in your schedule and making sure that we could get this done. How are you?   DAT Kristy (00:39) It's always fun spending time with you. We don't get to do this all the time.   The Dental A Team (00:44) I agree. We really don't. And I started doing ⁓ for you specifically because I'm like, gosh, we really don't. I still get like so much time with Trish, Monica is in, you know, we're doing so much onboarding. ⁓ And so I was like, no, we need, I need Kristy, like just touch base, check in one on one time. Like I need that outside of our monthly one on one. So I agree. And I'm excited to be here today. I think we both have animals at home and it's funny. We like   go a certain amount of time and then they've hit their limits. And I don't know, I've got a cat that's running around just screaming right now. I don't think you guys can hear it, I hope. But I think what happens is she's just like, okay, I'm tired of hearing your voice. Even when I'm on coaching calls, like maybe my inflection is different or I don't know. There's something about podcasting that she hits her limit at about an hour in, hour and a half. She's like, I'm done. I'm either podcasting with you or you're being forced to turn it off.   Yeah, anyways, animals are wild. ⁓ They are. my gosh, they are like kids. They're exhausting. Yeah, they are like, because I think they're worse than kids. You know, when I was little, they used to say, I don't know if people still say this or not, but they used to say, when you think you're ready for kids, get a dog. And I used to be like, that's easy, right? And I'm like, actually, I find that my animals are way more work than my son is. they just require so much of me at   DAT Kristy (01:43) I like kids.   The Dental A Team (02:10) their own discretion. Like it's just, it's when they want it. And I have, I have two cats and a dog and the dog is much chiller, but even puppies, I'm like, puppies are hard. Puppies are not like a newborn. I does not, in my opinion, the same apples to apples, but maybe that's why they say that because you get exhausted by the puppy and you're like, I can't, I can't do this right now. So who knows, but we're not here to talk about dogs or cats. We are here.   We're here today because we are rounding out the year you guys. August is always like such a weird time ⁓ for me because it's like the beginning and the end. It's the beginning, like we're not even too fall yet for Arizona. It feels like fall. We don't really get a fall so we start in August. ⁓ But it feels like we're coming up on the end, but we just started. We get to August so quickly and so.   With that, a lot of times we can kind of forget to prep for the upcoming year until it gets to the last minute because we're like, gosh, it's so early, Tiff. Like, Kristy, we've still got so much of our goal left. We're still working on these things. How am I supposed to think past that? But we really truly do have to prepare in a lot of different ways to ensure that we're ready when January hits. I don't know about you, Kristy, but I know in my practice, I think the   before I was office manager, my office manager and my doctor probably sat down and like did some goals, right? They knew what they were doing. But we didn't know until the end of January when we had our team meeting what those new year's goals were. And that was really hard because I'm like, well, shoot, we're already behind because like, what are we doing here? We had no idea that we had increased our goals because we're still working off of old goals. And I think that that likely happens more often than not.   Because we want a fresh start. We want our January kickoff and it's like if we're not doing January kickoff on January 2nd It's not a kickoff anymore. I guess now we're playing catch-up So a lot of practices really need to start doing this in December November even but December really talking about what next year is going to look like with your teams ⁓ Kristy do you feel that that kind of we talked about this a lot today? Like what was it like back went back in the day when we were in office But did you feel like you kind of ran that same?   trajectory that same calendar year advice.   DAT Kristy (04:31) Yeah, 100%. I think ⁓ in dentistry, we get so focused on lag measures. And I don't know that we ever intentionally focused. It's just the way it's always been. And so you and I talked about this before. We just do it because that's how somebody else did it. And we think it's the way to do it. But I think, again, when you know better, you do better. And we always need to look at the lag measures. looking at lead measures and starting literally now,   The Dental A Team (04:38) Yeah.   Bye.   DAT Kristy (05:01) is a great practice and and to be honest the ones that I see hitting goals for my teams ⁓ we look at them early and we set the tone early. Yeah.   The Dental A Team (05:11) Yeah, yeah,   it does a great point. You hit the nail on the head. We really do focus so much on lag measures, which are a lot of my lag measures will feed into our lead measures. So totally. But I do think that dentistry as a whole misses the mark on lead measures. Even like I had a client the other day that said, Oh, I died, because he died. She's   DAT Kristy (05:35) you   The Dental A Team (05:36) She said, yeah, my CPA, I'm just not too sure about them. They said that not to get too crazy about it, but that I would get my PNLs by the 28th every month. And I about fell out of my chair, because I was like, what the heck? That is a two-month lag measure at this point, because by the time we're reviewing them, we're into two months later from those statistics, those overhead stats. And how are we supposed to make adjustments and change? So you're telling me,   that we are gonna have potentially two bad months because we didn't know it was a bad month until we're at the third month. And I was just like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. If that's the case, if that's their standard, it doesn't fit our standards. This is not going to work. We have to have better, quicker lag measures so that we can change the lead measures. And I think what you just said plays right into that. Because to them, that CPA, it was like totally natural and normal. It was like, yeah, fine, we'll get them to you.   You can see them, but they're not using them to tell you how to change your business. Some CPAs are, work one-on-one with a couple of different CPAs for my clients and with my clients that are doing that. They're fantastic, they're giving them information and advice every month based off of what they're seeing. That's massive. It's very uncommon also. CPAs at the end of the year would be like, well, this year you overspent in this category, so drop this.   ⁓ for the love, could I not have seen that earlier and made adjustments so that I didn't overspend for an entire year and then could have changed this entire P &L? That's what we do. We look at the P &L with you and we dive into it. And like I said, I do have a couple of CPAs that dive into that with me with clients or sometimes I'll have questions and I'm like, hey, I'll shoot over an email and like, what is this? What are you seeing? And they'll give me the answer. And I'm like, fantastic. Thank you. Those are   freaking phenomenal. Those are clients that I can really dive into numbers and be like, let's change this. Let's turn the dial on this. Because at the end of the year when they're like, next year you can't. I don't want to ever tell you that. Next year you can't. No, next year you can because we adjusted things on the lead measures, meaning what's to come because we were able to see your lag measures. So Kristy, that was brilliant. That was a massive tangent, but that was brilliant.   And I think it really flows into all of those because if you're year to date at August and you don't know those numbers, you haven't looked at them with someone with a CPA, a coach, a consultant, get on that. Do that because what's gonna happen is November, your CPA is gonna be like, let me tell you all the things you shouldn't have done this year. I don't want that to happen. Get on it today. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com if you want advice, if you need help, if you want to one-on-one coach with us, we can help you dive through it.   We are here for it. We have had plenty of clients that have seen incredible profit year over year because of the consulting that they've received, because of the directions that we've been able to push them that they weren't able to see. Again, focusing on the the log measures to push the lead measures. Now, other things, I really wanted this to be like a let's prep for the next year, which I don't know when you're listening to this, but right now it's August, 2025. So we are prepping for...   2026, which is crazy to me. I told, actually I told Kira this morning, my son, started senior year today as I took his little picture and I'm just like, my gosh, and he graduates, you know, 2026. And I'm like, I knew this day would come, but it always felt so far. Like this is, I think when I was a kid, I thought we'd be flying around in cars by now, which I think we're actually really close, which is crazy. But.   To me, like 2026 felt so far away when I was a kid, I thought we're gonna be the Jetsons by then. So again, I think we're actually really close. But it's crazy to think we're prepping for 2026. You guys, we gotta round out 2025 and really be able to project into 2026. And there's some simple things, you guys, we have checklists for this too. So reach out, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. We can pop you over some checklists, but there are some really simple things. Kristy, like.   I want you to go through, like you were talking earlier on another podcast we recorded about really scheduling some things out. So what are some things that can be done next year that should be in the schedule? And then we'll kind of dive into the goals and stuff that they're going to have to do before we get to the 2026.   DAT Kristy (10:11) Well again, we're all about projecting forward right because you touched on not saying no and part of saying no Maybe adding things so we can say yes, right? So looking at the schedule putting in your HIPAA your OSHA any training CPR, right? ⁓ Is there CE we're planning on let's research it. Let's figure out how much it's gonna cost Are we taking team not taking team? What's the what's the average?   cost because all of that can be factored into our lead measures right and and what is what do we have to make in order to have that happen is it a year for raises have we done fee valuations for the upcoming year a lot of offices don't look at that yearly and I encourage my offices to because here's the thing especially if you're a high PPO you never get to go to the insurance companies and say   hey, I haven't raised my fees in five years, so now I'm gonna make this big jump. They don't let you. So doing those incremental jumps every year, ⁓ another area where people fail to ⁓ evaluate is if you're selling products. Have you looked at the invoices to see what you're paying? And nowadays, that's a big thing, right? Adding in the tariffs and different things that are affecting what we're paying for. Have you adjusted it? Because a lot of my practices charge just what they're paying for it, and then   The Dental A Team (11:15) Yeah.   DAT Kristy (11:40) we look at it and go, my gosh, we're in the hole because we've never adjusted the fees. ⁓ getting your new fee schedules, right? If there's any negotiations that need to happen, I would add that to the list too.   The Dental A Team (11:45) Yeah.   Yeah, and now is the time to do that to start negotiating it so that you can have it for that new year. That was massive because that hits both making sure it's scheduled out to update your fees, but then also right now sending in the request for increased fees to be updated. So that was a twofer right there in my opinion. So good job. Yeah. I also remember earlier you said the PCI compliance. So making sure all of those PCI OSHA HIPAA   all of those training CPR, everybody's up to date and checking all of those. Like when was the last time anyone, that any one individual did those pieces and are there people that need them updated? I know there's a lot of, gosh, specialty practices that will offer for GP practices, the CPR training. We used to do that through the orthodontist we worked hand in hand with. He would just, I mean, it was a referral, a referral mechanism for them, right? It's marketing for them, but they would hire the CPR trainer and then they would invite   dental offices to come get the CPR training for their team. So it's free for us and that orthodontist paid for it. So check with those things as well, but making sure those things are scheduled out. And that's something doctors that your office manager should have that kind of a yearly checklist to make sure that they're going through those. Another thing that you kind of touched on there was like maintenance of different. ⁓   everything right you've got all of your everything needs maintenance so what does your practice look like what are your compressors looking like do they need to be maintenance your ultrasonics like really just diving in and every year it should be that fresh start and looking at what are we going to do now Kristy you mentioned which i love because it goes hand in hand with that too of really budgeting that so budgeting your ce's i had a practice this year they're like help me   our cash flow, what is going on? When we delve into it, there were a ton of ⁓ auxiliary necessary purchases and updates that were made to the practice, to the ⁓ exterior of the practice. So these things were necessary, but they were unplanned for that.   I think you can look at and probably project towards the end of the year to really build out a budget and a percentage and a bucket within your 2026 goals because you guys, it's really easy. If you know it's going to be X amount of money, divide it out over the 12 months and say, great, how am I going to make that up in production and collections to get that money so it's not costing you? It's coming out of the profit for that year, which is what happened with this other practice. We just thought there'd be more profit, but that profit then   went towards, you know, the renovations, excuse me, that needed to be done, but we could have built it in a little bit better had we known they were coming.   So that leads into our goals and really looking at what would a 7 to 10 % increase. Those are the numbers I typically go with increasing from this year 7 to 10 % next year, 7 % for inflation you guys, 10 % because why not be profitable on top of inflation? So you can do 7 % and kind of call it status quo. 10 % is gonna be that growth space that you hopefully and probably are desiring. And really when you look at it 10 % over the course of the year,   is really a drop in the bucket. Kristy, have you found that same thing where that 10 % is like a couple hundred thousand over the course of the year split up over the month is realistically not that much? Kristy, do you see that same thing?   DAT Kristy (15:27) 100 % TIF, I think the problem we get into is we wait till the last minute and then we're trying to crunch it in that short amount of time. But when we look forward and we have the whole year, guys, it can be as simple as one more crown a week, you know, or one more crown a month, depending on where you're lying. and when we break it down like that for teams, it makes it so digestible and and it helps fire us up when we make it that simple. Nine times out of 10.   The Dental A Team (15:41) Yep.   DAT Kristy (15:57) I see them even going further because it's like wow it was so easy right and it never I mean Think about it in our field and we all know this to be true I don't none of my doctors are immune from this but November and December are crazy months. Why do we do it to ourselves? Let's start now   The Dental A Team (16:11) Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yeah, I agree. And that makes me think of   a practice I went into one time, and we did their goals. And I said, Okay, well, in order to finish the year where we want to, we need to ⁓ increase your daily goal by $2,000 across for hygiene to doctors, right? $2,000. They were like, you're crazy. And I'm like, No, I'm not.   This is how much it is per provider. And they were like, Tiff, we love you. We love your training. And we think you're crazy. going to put it on there. We're going to try our hardest. And we're going let you know. The next day, they went above and beyond that $11,000 goal by almost $2,000. The next day, they hit the goal consistently. After setting that goal, they hit it.   and they were like, Tiff, I was getting texts from the team members for days. Like, I can't believe we're doing this. We didn't think it was possible, but actually it was right there, because it was all within the scheduling, right? How are we scheduling things? What are we prioritizing? How are we looking at the structure of our schedule and still serving our patients? So I totally agree. The increase is easy.   as long as it's broken down in a digestible amount. The full yearly amount, you're like, all right, guys, we did 1 million, we're gonna do 1.2 this year. And they're like, my gosh, like, when is it enough? But if you're like, 1.2 is X amount per month, X amount per day.   They're like, okay, we can hit that. We can figure that out. And you're like 30 % from hygiene, 70 % from doctor or 25 % from hygiene, 75 % from doctor. Like figure out the numbers and then figure out daily goals for everyone so that it is digestible, because that's much easier to work with.   ⁓ Another thing to be really, really prepped for is, ⁓ what did we say? We said, updating the paperwork, you said, Kristy. So making sure we know what next year needs to look like. We just did a podcast on OSHA and HIPAA compliance, so making sure you're scheduling that out, but then also making sure that your HIPAA paperwork is updated, is gonna be massive, your health history.   If you are taking CEs, does that need to be updated on your health history? Do you need to ask sleep apnea questions or Botox questions or implant questions? Like, do you need to update that at the beginning of the year and making sure you have all of your patients' data? Kristy, I know you talked about too, you have some clients that just don't have everyone's emails. This day and age, most of our communication is going out by emails. I know most of my clients are sending statements by text and email. There's really not a lot of paper. So making sure   updating those as well. And then Kristy, I don't want to glaze over those you guys, practice software updates too, but I kind of do because I kind of want to talk a little bit very quickly though.   As we're adding goals, Kristy, I you do this a lot. You help practices project what their profitability point is, which is also like your BAM, your bare ace minimum, right? Same thing, different words. How do you also help them project? Do they have enough people? So as they grow their goal, they need to potentially increase staffing and making sure they have the right seat. How do you help them see that when you're helping clients build out those goals?   DAT Kristy (19:36) Yeah.   think that's an important piece of it. Running some reports in your software is going to be helpful. Look at your active patient base. Has it grown? If it's not growing, why not? Are we missing working re-care? And again, lag and lead, guys. I have a lot of practices where maybe capacity, they're booked out, and so they don't work re-care, and those people are falling through the cracks. I would challenge you, even though you are booked out, to still work that re-care.   because every day we wait, they're getting pushed out that much further, right? And it's nothing that we have to shy away from, but again, it's like, man, our hygienist are in high demand. Let's get you scheduled, right? And bring that information. You guys need to look at that. our next new patient openings, when can we schedule for perio maintenance? When can we schedule for root scaling? We need to look at our procedure counts and add in maybe extra blocks.   The Dental A Team (20:40) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.   I totally agree and making sure at the same time then that we have enough team to accommodate those patients that act as patient based how many patients can one hygienist see in a year? How many hygienists do you have compared to your doctor time? How many assistants do you have compared to the columns of treatment that you're working with? And then one piece I think gets missed, Kristy, in that conversation too is front office team. So like how many back office team members do you have in comparison to your front office team?   I usually like to use an easy ratio of like the number of dental assistants it takes. I should have front office as well to kind of duplicate that to make it super simple. But you're right, pulling those simple reports from the system to ensure we're doing everything we can to get those patients in. But what is that active patient count? Because that's gonna tell a really big story on how much growth we can sustain on the size and the capacity that we have now and the team that we have. So, beautiful. Thank you, Kristy. ⁓   you guys this wraps up a ton for 2026. hope you're feverishly taking notes if you are not driving. If you are driving, re-listen. But as always, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. We can shoot you over some really easy end of the year, beginning of the year prep checklists ⁓ for office managers, doctors, whomever. And just make sure you guys that you're pre-scheduling things. And I would even pre-schedule this time of year, next year, start prepping for this stuff. Put it in your calendars as an office manager. I had everything in my calendar this time of the year. I was starting to   for the following years, so 2026 goals, but I was also...   ⁓ requesting fee increases. I was sending out end of year letters, right? Like get your treatment done because what happens is we tend to wait till October and that's why November, December is crazy. If you send them now, you can fill September, which we also call September. Start reaching out to those people now and get September filled, October filled and don't make your life too hectic November and December. You can even those out. So you guys go do these things. They're not hard. They're actually really easy and they can be really fun.   Hello@TheDentalATeam.com we can send you over this information and you guys, have so many consultants on our team, Kristy, Trish, Monica, Dana, they are here helping clients every single day to work through these things and so much more. We would love the opportunity to chat one on one with you to see what we can do to help you as well. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com, you guys, we'll catch you next time. Thanks so much.

Re-releasing a DAT listener favorite! The Dental A-Team is seeing a lot of burnout across practices we visit, so Kiera's here to offer tips about delegating. Just because you can do a bunch of tasks doesn't mean you should. Kiera provides DAT insight on the best/easiest way to delegate, how to fill the time you've delegated out, and what the delegator and delegatee should absolutely not do. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript Kiera Dent (00:05) Hey everyone, welcome to the Dental A Team podcast. I'm your host, Kiera Dent, and I had this crazy idea that maybe I could combine a doctor and a team member's perspective, because let's face it, dentistry can be a challenging profession with those two perspectives. I've been a dental assistant, treatment coordinator, scheduler, pillar, office manager, regional manager, practice owner, and I have a team of traveling consultants where we have traveled to over 165 different offices coaching teams. Yep, we don't just understand you, we are you.   Our mission is to positively impact the world of dental. And I believe that this podcast is the greatest way I can help elevate teams, grow VIP experiences, reduce stress, and create A-Teams. Welcome to the Dental A Team Podcast.   Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera and you guys I hope today is a great day for you. I am car casting today I am headed down to see my parents for a little bit today and Decided you guys know me when I drive between that Nevada, California state line I love to podcast if you have not heard about the time I was headed to my little sister's graduation and I was Car casting with a microphone. They have an agriculture check   point and go take a listen to that one. If you don't know which one that is, email us Hello@TheDentalATeam.com guys. just want to say a massive, massive, massive thank you to all of you who have been stepping up, taken on our review challenge and honestly leaving us reviews. I've seen you guys posting on our Google reviews to help deadly team. Get the word out. You've also been posting on Apple, Spotify, YouTube. I have been seeing those and I just want to say thank you. Shout out today. I saw Annie.   had posted and gave us a massive five star review and Annie, thank you. There's so many of you that have been listening in. Brooke Birdie saw your review as well on iTunes. And I just want to say guys, number one, it feeds my ego. So thank you. I am a words of affirmation girl. So that definitely is the best way to give back to me and make me feel like a million bucks. That's number one. So if you really want to make my day, please leave us a review and just tell us how great we are. I would love that. And number two,   Thank you guys for helping us help more practices. We have actually been seeing an upward trend on our podcast downloads. That is kudos to you guys. ⁓ Massive, massive, massive boosts on our downloads. And I just want to say thank you to all of you for doing that, because this is helping us help more practices. You know, when I started working at the dental college, the dean asked me why I wanted to take on this position. And I said, you know, I want to find a way to positively impact the world of dentistry in the greatest way possible. That's honestly why we   I did my job at the college and then that's also why I decided to ⁓ take on and work with the consulting company. And then that's why we started the podcast. So you guys, the only way for us to reach every dentist in the world is by you guys helping spread this. I think that that's the way we'll be able to positively impact the world of dentistry in the greatest way possible. So guys, keep hitting those downloads, keep leaving us review, keep sharing these.   When I see you guys on social media platforms where you're sharing our podcasts with people, it's been so helpful. So thank you guys for taking that on. So today's topic is how to delegate. I know I've chatted about this a few other times, but it's just been coming up more and more. And I know a lot of offices are struggling. I'm seeing more and more burnout amongst team members and owners. And so I thought that this would be a very applicable topic for you guys today. So basically number one, when it comes to delegating,   We've got to look to see what is the reason for delegating? Are we trying to find more time for ourselves so that way we can be more balanced? Are we trying to grow team members into another position? Or are we just trying to ensure that all team members are being utilized throughout the day? Maybe you have another reason you want to delegate, but oftentimes I find that the number one reason we don't delegate is because we're concerned about losing our place in our job.   and the value that we're bringing to the practice. When in actuality, I think it's let's get people into their zone of geniuses so we can work more effectively and consistently together. So for me, I think one of the best and easiest ways to delegate is for everybody just to do a brain dump on the tasks that they're doing day in and day out. Now the reason I like a brain dump rather than a time journaling is because oftentimes those things that we put on a brain dump are going to be the things that we can actually think about.   that are for for for front of our mind. So those things tend to be the ones that are consuming the most of our time. There might be other things on there that we don't think about, so you can always add back to this list. But what I really love to do is I love to brain dump all the information and then after I brain dump, I go back through, you guys know if you don't know, my favorite color is pink, and I go back through with a pink highlighter and I literally look at all the tasks that only Kiera can do. A lot of times the tasks that I'm doing are not things that only I can do.   Or if they are only things I can do, I might need to train. So for example, I used to be the only person who could podcast on our team. So we decided, Hey, the consultants actually have a lot of great information that they could be sharing. And it doesn't necessarily have to just be Kiera. So we decided to start training the consultants to see could the consultants ever podcast if something were to ever happen to me. And the answer is yes, I trained them about the microphones. I taught them how to podcast. taught them how to do cadences, but I realized.   That was something that only Kyra could do before, but you guys, I am looking to try and have a baby. We've been talking about this forever, but guys, don't worry. I'm a walking bag of, I feel, lethal hormones right now. We are starting the process of IVF and ⁓ if you haven't done it, that's great. Congratulations. If you have gone through it, please send me help because I literally feel like a lethal bag of walking hormones and don't even know how to control myself right now. It's like one minute I'll be fine. The next minute I'm bawling my eyes out. And I heard even after you have babies,   this doesn't go away. I don't, I don't quite know what to do. But the bottom line is our team had to be able to start delegating things to our other team members that they could do just as well, if not better than me. But that also came up with, I had to realize I needed to start training. So delegating, we've got to look at like, what's our ultimate goal. So for me, my ultimate goal was I wanted to ensure that Dental A Team could continue to grow, bless people's lives, positively impact the world of dentistry in the greatest way possible. And for me,   to also be able to be a mom. So in order for those two things to happen, I had to start delegating and utilizing it. I realized I don't delegate that much. I like to swoop in and save the day because I think I can do it faster and better. Well, the answer is yes, I theoretically can, but that doesn't mean I should. Okay, I'm going to say that again. Well, yes, I theoretically can do everything potentially faster and better. That doesn't mean I should because what that does is that actually means that I'm a one man team.   rather than a multiple person team. So I want to have all of the people on my team working super well. And I want to ensure that they're all able to do the task. And it's not just me. So I would say that you guys are going to be able to start looking for your why of why you want to delegate. So once you have figured out your why as to why you want to delegate and the plan,   Then we go through, like I said, and you highlight all the tasks that are actually tasks that only you can do. Like I said, some of those tasks that only you could do, maybe if you trained, you could actually get those tasks passed off your plate. But I really like you guys to ensure that you know exactly why you want these tasks to be completed, why you want to delegate. I think having a strong why helps you realize that that's what you're actually going to do rather than it just being a wish that you're hoping one day will come true.   Like I said, I'm not a great delegator and I realized that because I like to swoop in, save the day, make everything better and theoretically I can do it better, faster. However, I can't ever grow the company. I can only grow as big as I can grow. So realizing that sometimes delegation also will be an avenue for growth for your practice is one of the best pieces of advice I could ever give any of you. So realizing that when you delegate, you allow other people to blossom and shine, you allow yourself to blossom and shine and grow to a larger scale.   Now I will say some people I watch them delegate and then they get lazy. They will pass all their tasks to other people. They'll grow everybody else, but then they forget to grow themselves. So when you delegate off of your tasks, say if you're an office manager and you get a front office lead and then you get a clinical lead, well, sometimes you as an office manager, no longer know what you should do. This is where you start diving deep in the areas. Maybe you don't know. Let's talk about the business aspect. What are the financials of your practice? What about overhead? Do you know how to adjust that?   You're going to start thinking like a business owner. Also go to your dentist and figure out what's on their plate. Have them brain dump and look to see what tasks you can take off immediately and what tasks you need to learn and grow into. So making sure as you delegate, you don't get lazy. You don't pass too many things there. Also before you delegate, I want to make sure that you've built an admin time into your schedule. So doctor time, you can have that as CEO time. You can have it as admin time. You can have it as golden time. I don't care what the heck you call this time, but it's set block time every single week in your schedule.   Oftentimes the practices all notice that they'll want to hire somebody else before they put in this admin time. I chatting with a front office team. Typically we like to have one front office team member per doctor, unless it's a solo doctor, then I for sure want two front office people just so we avoid any temptation of embezzlement or fraud or anything of that nature. So what happens is a lot of times people feel like they need to get more people upfront, but they don't realize you can delegate tasks that would actually make the patient experience better. For example,   chairside treatment plans on an iPad, taking fluoride payments in the hygiene operatories that make it so much faster and easier for every single person in the practice. What about tasks like insurance verification? That might take a long time and it might actually be cheaper to outsource that. So looking at that, but also before we even consider that, I want to see, you actually doing ⁓ that admin time every single week?   And if you're not, that might be a critical place to start before we even start delegating. Because a lot of times, a lot of those projects that we want to delegate, if we just had one or two hours in a week where it was dedicated, not interrupted time, we could actually crank a lot of those things out and be super hyper productive. So for me, I have a business focused time. I have a three hour block every Wednesday from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. My team knows, do not even think about scheduling something there. Don't do it. It's not good for you or for the business.   So that is my blocked golden time and I work on big project items. So for me specifically, I work on, I'm looking to bring in a different position in our company and I'm mapping that out, talking to mentors, figuring it out, writing job descriptions for it. Other things like I'm not going to use that time to podcast. As much as I love to podcast, I have that built into my schedule in another place. I'm not going to use that time to answer my emails. Instead, I'm going to use that time to work on high level.   most productive projects. For some dentists, that's where you might be designing cases. So getting all that ortho completed or designing those cosmetic cases that you know you need to get completed. That's where we're going to be able to have a much more successful and productive schedule if you actually block that time. For office managers, this time might be where you actually go through your one-on-one employee check-ins. It also might be where you work on maybe sign development or looking at all the KPIs.   and figuring out what KPIs need to be adjusted, doing a deep dive on the numbers. For billers, this is the time where you call on those collection calls. You work on your AR, that's the deeper projects, the ones that have to have a ton of time dedicated to solving them and figuring them out to get them paid. That's where we utilize this time. For our scheduling team, this is the time when you call all those unscheduled re-care calls. Same thing for treatment coordinators. We call those unscheduled treatment lists.   Just think of every person did this. ⁓ I forgot the clinical team. Let me give the clinical teams some ideas. Don't want to let you guys feel left out. So for our clinical team, we might want to give them some block time to maybe get those crowns or those ortho cases done. This might be the time that our team actually orders for the practice. It could be the time ⁓ for a lead hygienist. This might be the time that you create like the perio protocols or review the numbers on your hygiene, on your hygienist and see.   How is their fluoride ratio? How are their perio numbers? This is the time when you'll deep dive in there. It's not the time we dedicate for sharpening scalars. This is the time where we literally are maximizing and doing those high level projects that will move the practice forward. Hey, Dental A Team listeners. You guys have heard the early bird gets the worm, right? What does that even mean? Well, it means that the early bird is the person who maximizes on benefits.   optimizes their practice and they take advantage of great deals. So guys, right now, this week, last chance to save on Dental A Team's virtual team summit. It's all about optimization and execution with an emphasis on full team. And then Saturday is all about leadership. So guys, don't miss out. You know, you're going to come. So you might as well pop on over to TheDentalATeam.com snag those early bird tickets, because once they're gone, they're gone and you'll be paying more for the same event. So head on over to TheDentalATeam.com.   Snag your early bird virtual summit for April 22nd and 23rd, and I'll see you there. So again, before we ever delegate, I want you to make sure you have that time built in. After that, I want you to figure out why you want to delegate. What's the bigger purpose as to why you want to delegate these tasks. Then what we do is we come up with a game plan of, fantastic. This is what we are going to delegate. This is how we're going to delegate. This is why we're going to delegate.   then we actually have to delegate. Okay? So we have to delegate guys. That's part of the game. That's what we have to do. Now people get really nervous to delegate because why? We don't want to what? Dump on somebody else and make their life stressful. Well guess what? They might already be doing half of what you're doing and if it just was their project, you might make their life a lot less stressful. Let's just pivot that a little bit. Also, we might be able to do things like, ⁓ we might be able to find efficiencies.   I will tell you if I give Shelby a project that I've been working on for quite a while, Shelby is way more efficient and organized and structured than I am. And so she usually can come up with a better way of doing it than I can. That's going to create ease and efficiency for our entire team. So when we go to delegate, we can check in with people, ask how much time and say, hey, here's the list of items. First and foremost, you can have a team meeting and be like, here are all the items up for grabs. Who wants to own this section? Now.   I say to team members who are being delegated to one of the number one ways for you to lose confidence in your practice, the person who's delegating to you is by not following through. If you say, yeah, I'll take that on, but then you never actually do it, I do not want to delegate to you again. I lost trust. So when people do this, I'm going to say you've got to own it with integrity. So if I say, yes, I'm going to take this on, I don't care how I've got to remember it. I don't care how I need to figure it out.   my job because I committed, I'm going to own this process. I'm going to own the fact that I need to do this because I committed to it and I own my word. It's not accountability. You don't your office manager following up like, okay, Kara, I know you said you take on ordering. Did you get it done? The answer is yes, the office manager should still do that. But me as a person who took this on, I need to have an attitude of ownership in my practice where I don't need somebody to come follow up with me.   check in because I know when I say I'm going to do something, I will fall through a hundred percent. So team members, leaders, everybody listening, check yourself. Are you a person who actually owns your word, takes ownership of the things that you commit to doing with your job, with your personal life, all those areas. Do you actually take ownership of it? Do you take ownership of your health? Do you take ownership of your happiness? Do you take ownership of your financial wellbeing? Do you take ownership of the schedule if you're a scheduler?   Do take ownership of making sure every doctor hits goal every single freaking day if you're a treatment coordinator? Do you take ownership as an office manager that you will continually hit a minimum of a 10 % growth rate every single year and make sure that your team is super happy and content? As a doctor, do you take ownership that you are going to produce and increase your clinical skills so you can be the best provider that there ever was? As a hygienist, do you own that you should be producing 3.3 times   or 3.5 times your pay or 3.0, I don't care guys, choose your number and stick with it. There's a million of them. Minimum three, maximum 3.5 and less your fee for service. Then I for sure, for sure, for sure, for sure want you to be producing at least 4.5 times your pay. Okay? Do you take ownership that it's your job, not the scheduler's job to ensure you're hitting your production every single day, that you're mixing your schedule, that you're maximizing, that you're getting a 98 % reappointment percentage?   Assistance, do you own the fact that you should not be getting up in a procedure to go get something because you didn't set up your operatory? Do you own your job? Do you own that you should be looking for same day treatment you can add on because you look at their treatment plans. You don't just robotically do what's on the schedule. You actually proactively look for things and own that as your job. Okay, so if you're not there, let's start there. That way when people come to you to delegate to you, you know that you can count on yourself to.   own whatever is coming to you to delegate. So then once we delegate, we pass it off. We have to make sure we've got clear expectations of when we want people to follow back up with us. So for example, I passed a task to Shelby. I wanted to find out a report on our consultants. That was something guys that was on my to-do list for about nine months. Yes, nine months and I did not complete it. So I decided this is something that is not just a Cura only task.   Shelby is probably much faster and could probably get this done faster for me. So what do I do? I pass it to Shelby. I asked her, Hey, this is what I need done. What do you need help with me? I gave her all the resources and tools so she could actually execute on it very well. And then I asked her, okay, what will you need from me? ⁓ she told me, and then we said, what date could you get this completed by? Shelby had to methodically think about, Hmm, this is going to take me a while. I have a lot of tasks on me. I think Kiera, I could get this done by the end of Q1.   does that work for you? So that means March 31st. And I said, totally no problem. We put it in, we have a task organizer. We utilize a CRM. So it's kind of like your guys's Dentrix open dental. And it's where all of our clients are housed. Plus it's where all of our tasks are housed. So we have it there. Shelby and I put the deadline on there. And then when she gets it done, she checks it off. If you guys don't have a task manager or things that these projects, I would suggest you get one. For practices, I've seen the software Asana or Trello.   or Google Docs all work really, really well when we're assigning out a bunch of projects and needing to have deadlines on them. So those would be the ones. Some offices love Basecamp, other offices love monday.com. For me, Asana is probably your easiest, fastest one to set into place. Or a simple task manager, ⁓ Google Docs is honestly going to be your easiest one. And then just make sure you review it every week and check it off. We noticed with our team, we were delegating. Our team was taking ownership of it.   However, we didn't have a consistent follow-up process. And I would say that's the next piece of delegation that oftentimes fails in a practice is we don't follow back up. So for us, we just said it as Friday morning at our morning huddle. We pull up the task sheet and we pull up our Asana board. And we go through every single task that should be done and everything headed up for the next week to make sure our team stays responsible and they don't forget. And we have a consistent follow-up process. So that way it's not sitting here thinking, well, I'm sure Shelby will do it.   We actually have a set process in our company where we follow up every single week. That was because we realized we were passing out tasks. Our team was doing a great job. But then we all kind of would get sidetracked and forget what we had committed to doing. And we need to have a place where we could have everybody aligned. So those are some of the key pitfalls that I see with delegation. Those are some of the solutions that I've seen work well. But at the end of the day, we can sit here, we can talk about it, we can create solutions, all these different things.   But what really is the number one piece is actually doing it and then following up. Those are the two most paramount pieces with delegation. I will say having a strong why is going to make you delegate faster and more consistently than just talking about it until I decided, Hey, I'm getting pregnant. Hopefully fingers crossed. I didn't really see the need to delegate. Yes, I did for my own mental sanity, but until I had that why.   And other times when I've opened up a second practice, instantly I've got a strong why that I need to delegate these tasks so that way all the information can come back to me as a regional manager and I'm not having to micromanage or check in all the time with my team. Guys, there is a different between micromanaging and checking in. Checking in, keeping track of all the projects is not micromanaging, period. Micromanaging is where it comes sit over your shoulder and tell you how to do your job. That's micromanaging.   but checking in with you to ensure that you're actually doing your projects, that's just called running a business. That's called running a team. That's making sure all the team is growing in the same direction and the team knows the set expectations. So guys, try delegation. I see it happening. You can make your team work so much more effectively and efficiently. So I suggest, one, get a list of all the things that could be delegated. Two, let's pass it out to the team and ask people who can own it. Three, let's make sure we have a set time of where we can actually follow up as an office.   and ensure all projects and tasks are being completed and done. And four, create a culture of ownership where when we say we'll take something on, we own it, we don't drop the ball. I want to sing this song to you guys like, we own it. You can go look it up. I didn't do it justice and I'm not going to sing karaoke for you guys. However, get your team to own it, delegate, rise everybody up, make sure that you guys don't have a set process for it and realize how much more effectively your team can operate when all of us are working together.   growing the company in the way that's best for the company to grow. All right, guys, as always, so much love to you. Thank you for being a Dental A Team listener. I super appreciate it, guys. So thanks for listening, and I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team podcast.   that wraps it up for another episode of the Dental A Team Podcast. Thank you so much for listening and we'll talk to you next time.  

Kristy and Tiff discuss the new treatments they're seeing practices adopt these days and how to successfully start the process (if you want to). They touch on the best ways to gauge interest, training and implementation tips to start off, how to track results, and more. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript The Dental A Team (00:01) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. We are so happy to be back here with you. We are recording today from the comfort of our own homes with the ACs blasting. I am about to bust out my fan. is on the charger right now. I don't know if you know this or not, but Kristy and I come to you from the sweltering desert of Phoenix, Arizona. And I have to say, I'm crazy. My boyfriend is like, it is hot. We're getting out of here. We're moving to Prescott. And one day I'm sure we will, but.   I love where I live and every time I go travel to an office and I'm gone for like a week, I'll see two, three offices at a time. I come back in and just coming into Tempe on that plane over in the mountains, you can see the Buttes, you can see South Mountain, you can see the city and just like the buzz of it all makes me so incredibly happy every single time. I love where I live. I cannot at this point in my life imagine living anywhere else. So when I say that out loud,   People think I'm crazy. And I'm like, listen, it's beautiful here. My best friend, bless her heart, she's like, Tiff, it's brown. It's all desert. And I'm like, it's not. Do you see these colors, like the saguaros and the pink flowers that bloom and the yellows? And like, I don't know, Kristy, am I crazy? Or what are your thoughts? You came back to Arizona. So obviously, there's something to be told about that.   DAT Kristy (01:25) It's too funny that you say that because it's so true. I'm you know when I moved to Idaho everybody's like Arizona it's a desert and I'm like but there's desert here. I have to agree the Arizona desert is much prettier. ⁓ Southwestern Idaho is very deserty and we're talking brown. There's where the brown is but Arizona desert is very beautiful. Even this time of year like come on Palo Verde's aren't brown they're green.   The Dental A Team (01:35) Yeah.   Yeah.   Bye.   Right? Literally   in their name, right? Palo Verde. My boyfriend always says, yeah, Arizona is like so inventive, the green stick. And I'm like, well, it's green. It is green, okay? That's our state tree and it's green. Yeah, I agree. I agree. I just think it's beautiful. And there's nothing like a desert rain. I know that sounds so cliche. Everyone says it, everyone hears it, but I swear to you, the smell in the desert after a good rain or even a light sprinkling is magical.   There is something about it that just changes the composition of your body and you become a much happier individual. just, can't be, you can't be angry in the desert rain. So.   DAT Kristy (02:33) agree with you Tiff   and if you and I can figure out a way to bottle that stuff I've always said we'd be millionaires.   The Dental A Team (02:39) Yeah, well, you know,   I just, my friend just told me this a couple months ago. There's actually a bush out there. I need to just take a picture of it and figure out what it is. We were hiking one day. There's a bush out there that you, when you pick the leaf and you like put it between your fingers, it smells like the desert rain. I'll find it. Yeah, I'll find it and take a picture. I don't know what the bush is, but I'll find it and take a picture and Google it so that we can, we could bottle it. My point there. Yeah. I actually had a friend in town.   DAT Kristy (03:02) Yeah.   The Dental A Team (03:06) Um, he lives in North Carolina and he was visiting and he was like, I'm taking some of this home so that other people can smell it. Cause it is incredible. And I'm like, yep, that's what Arizona desert rain smells like. So anyways, everybody who wants to come visit, we are here for it. We aren't taking any new visitors like to stay. I'm just kidding. You can move here. It's just, it's just getting crowded, you know, but visitors are welcome. Come.   share in the heat. I know most people come in the month of February for the Waste Management Open and you just let us know when we're here and Kristy and I will pop over and say a little hello to you. So Kristy, getting on to business, I love talking about Arizona and I would do it forever, ⁓ but we're kind of rounding out the year right now. We're heading into quarter four. This is the time of year I'm like, well,   we can still make massive movements, we can still make massive changes and hit those goals, but really we need to start thinking about what are we doing ⁓ after these goals are hit. So lot of people don't think about the next year, which is 2026 until December, but I'd like to start talking about it here in August. So one of those pieces, Kristy, I really wanted to chat today about offices that we've seen implement new treatment. And I know right now, ⁓ fillers, Botox, I've seen   a ton of practices doing like facial aesthetics and the lasers and I don't even know what they're called the ones and like all of these amazing things and takes me back to when I was ⁓ working in office gosh when I first started I was like 19 and my doctor's like where are those paraffin wax things can we get those and I was like you're crazy we are not a spa like we're not doing paraffin wax for our patients I have enough to do   chair side, have enough to clean up, we're not doing this, right? But he really wanted it and so we did at least, we did warm towels. So it's like, I can handle warm towels, it's all you got. But now, there is really like this spa aesthetic feel to a lot of dental practices. And I know there's plenty of us out there that are like, no, not doing that. I am a dig my heels in kind of girl. So I dig my heels in until the very end. But I'm kind of getting on board with it. I kind of like it. And it's adding a different sense and a different value.   And honestly, I love marketing and it's adding a different marketing avenue because it's a different demographic of people who can come for the aesthetic side and see, I love these people. Let me switch my dental as well. They may not, that's okay. They may love their dentist. But if you can come to one place and get multiple things, that's kind of cool. So, Kristy, I just wanted to chat a little bit about some of the things that we've seen. We've worked, you guys, just so you know, we worked with a ton of practices on adding aesthetics.   Botox fillers, ⁓ implants, just like simple single tooth implants, multi-tooth implants, all on fours. Gosh, what else? Orthodontics, making sure that the marketing is there, making sure that the treatment coordinating aspect is there, making sure that case acceptance is working, the schedule is working, the block scheduling. We have helped implement this in so many practices. So as we're talking today, just know we're speaking from that implementation experience and what we've seen really work for practices.   from our experience working one-on-one with doctors. If you're someone who's looking to implement new products or new services in your practice and you're not really sure on the how-to, please reach out. We would love to help you on a one-on-one basis. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. Again, we have a ton of experience in this. have five experienced consultants ready to work one-on-one with you. ⁓ Kristy, Monica, and Trish are...   freaking incredible you guys. I have just seen them move mountains for clients in very short amount of time. if you are ready to take that step, let us know. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. But Kristy, I know you've had a lot of clients. You've actually had, you've had some fun clients that I can think of off the top of my head that are kind of fresh and new and starting out. And I know one in particular I can think.   probably is this like go-getter wants to add everything, wants to take all the CE, wants to implement everything and wants to just run with it. And then you've got some others that are like, I'm going to like take my time. I'm going to buy it my time. I'm to take the CE. Maybe in a couple of years, we'll be able to implement it. Like there's like such drastic differences there, but what kind of ⁓ procedures have you seen implemented recently? And what do you feel like your clients are doing really well?   to implement them within their practice with your support.   DAT Kristy (07:45) Well.   like you, the med spa thing has really taken off in dentistry. So adding in the Botox, the laser ⁓ and sleep, even for little kiddos, the tongue ties has been an area of exploration. with that being said, Tiff, think first and foremost, yes, you're right. I have one client that's kind of a go getter and and honestly him bringing the energy has worked really well for him because his excitement is   driving it, right? But one thing that I would say in the very beginning, if you're exploring this and you aren't that go getter, energetic, I'm going to do this attitude and you're kind of thinking about it, start to take a pulse with your patients. know, explore, hey, if we offered this service, is this something you'd be interested in? See if people are interested in it because you may be leaving room on the table, right?   And maybe you'll find out they're not interested and it will drive you in a different direction But with that being said, like I said take a pulse of your own patients, but I also doctors recommend that you ⁓ Get your admin team ⁓ Keeping a list of things that patients are calling in and asking for and they have to say no we don't do that because that's an area of opportunity that perhaps if you have a hundred people calling and asking   The Dental A Team (09:10) That's a great idea.   Yeah.   That's a great idea. I have never in my life thought of that. That's beautiful. I love that you said to ask the patients themselves as well. If I started offering this, is this something you'd be interested in? And that one's kind of an easy one when it comes to like Botox and things like that, because you can tell when someone has utilized that procedure before. So I've even had doctors say, where are you going for your Botox? Like, do you like where you go? Are you happy there? What are they doing well that keeps you coming back? even as far   is   to ask what they're paying because it really helps them to figure out.   how they can generate that within their own practice based on a scale of like, know, chatting with a couple of different patients, because you really can tell fillers as well. And all of that stuff, you guys, to be redone at some point. So I think that's a great idea. apnea is huge. I think the kiddo stuff is massive. I have a couple of doctors, couple of doctors, but then also I have a GP doctor that does a ton within the lip tie, the sleep apnea, all of those pieces for the toddlers and children.   She's so passionate about it that her team is behind her as well on it. So I think that's a really good point. And I think, Kristy, something you touched on was that passion and how excited that specific doctor we're thinking of is about everything he does, everything he does he's excited for. And so I just feel like walking into his practice, you're just amped up. Like the energy's got to be so high. But for...   everyone no matter what anytime you go take a CE, anytime you have an idea, anytime you're like I want to implement this and you go get trained on it, I think the biggest missing piece that I've always seen myself as a consultant and then myself even as a dental assistant or for an office is that information lapse between you taking the course and coming back with the information and that ⁓   I get from a business standpoint and a doctor's standpoint, it's hard to take your team to the CE with you. And sometimes it's not even offered to bring your team. So I get that, but that's where training comes into play. And I think that's where having someone on your side, a coach and a consultant, someone who's working hand in hand with the team who really can help create protocols, who can help with the verbiage because you're over there implementing. And I don't know, Kristy, if you've ever experienced this, I remember my doctor, he would get so deflated.   because he'd go do this thing, he'd be rammed up sleep. He wanted to sleep so badly and I hope to this day that he's doing it, but it was so difficult and we didn't get the training, we didn't get the courses, he was training us which was great, but it was like also we are doing everything we were doing before you took this course. So the space for me to learn how to add this, for me to take the time out of my day,   to implement this just isn't always there. And so the space to do the training is sometimes lacking if you can't take your team with you. So I know I've got a practice that I've helped a ton with sleep just in general at their practice because they needed the protocols put in place, but they didn't have the time to even sit down and type them. So it was like,   We're going to do this together real quick. Our tips got these ideas. We've got templates that we utilize with our clients that we're like, hey, these are my ideas. And we go back and forth. And we figure out what's working, what's not working. And Kristy, I know you've done that too. What have you seen work really well with practices for that training and implementation?   DAT Kristy (12:57) It's kind of funny because the ways you're talking I'm thinking of a client right now that literally just went she did take her team to Vegas for clear liner course and Thank goodness. were blessed to go right because you're you're right getting the whole team behind them and the energy coming back in is huge the energy really does propel the momentum as you're Trying to ramp up and to your point not everybody can take the whole team So so I get that yet if you can get one or two chances   to go and help you wonderful. If not, would definitely recommend coming back and having the conversation and have doctors speak to their why. You know, why do they want to implement this? What is their vision for it? And then create benchmarks. Like how will we implement this and what can we do? So if we want to do more clear aligners, what is   The Dental A Team (13:37) Yeah.   video.   DAT Kristy (13:56) something we can do every day to help that outcome, right? Is it add one more scan to a patient? You know, get those commitments from team and buy in and then have fun with it. We're always talking about the sprinkles and adding the fun. So find a way to gamify it. And if I do this action every day, it's going to create a better chance of my outcome, right?   The Dental A Team (14:00) Yeah.   Mm-hmm.   Yeah,   yeah, and to that point, you're then tracking your results, right? Which is something that we have all of our practices tracking their results consistently for that reason, because we want to see the things that you're doing every day. Are they creating the result that you wanted? Are we moving closer to the goal that you were set after? Or are we moving further away from it? Because then we can see what we want to tweak or change or what needs to be added. And then again, to your point as well, what's one thing that we can add?   A lot of times we come in with all of the things and it's like, that's too much and we can't process it all. So if you do that, like one thing, so for sleep apnea or Botox or any of those spaces or though it's like, what's one thing you would change aesthetically if you had the opportunity? Like what's one question? You can start asking every patient that walks through your door. Do you find yourself waking up a lot at night? Do you find yourself, know, do your partner say that you're snoring?   Do you have a hard time falling asleep? Do you have a hard time waking up? What are the key factors? What's one question, two questions you add onto it? How can we layer this and stack to get things done? And like you said, maybe we're taking one more scan today than we took yesterday. We're gamifying it, we're tracking the results, and we're making sure that it's fitting. And that's something that I think as consultants, we've been able to really help teams get excited about.   and really be able to help them break it down because for doctors, for our visionaries, it's sometimes difficult for a visionary to see the path. They see the end result. They see what it is that they're after. They see the dream and the finality. We have to take it layers backwards and say, how do we get there?   The visionaries have a hard time figuring out how we're going to get there. And when they're the only ones who are trying to figure that out or there's no one on the team that's like, okay, I got it. I will figure it out from here. That's where the consultants come into play or training office managers to see that space to say, okay, what are the steps it's going to take to get there? And how do we incrementally layer and add onto those steps to ensure that we do? So, Kristy, I think you're hitting some massive spaces there.   with the tracking the results, the just one thing and making sure that we are training the team as we can. I also think don't wait too long.   If you've gone to a course and you've learned something, you need to start practicing it because you learned it. And then if you're waiting a year to implement it, you're going to need to go back for a refresher course because you haven't been doing it. And I've seen that happen. I don't know if you have. I've seen that happen, especially with like Botox, where they go get the training, but they're just like dragging their feet, probably out of fear and actually implementing it. And then they're like, well, shoot, I need to go get a refresher course because I haven't done it since I did it at   my training. Have you seen that too, Kristy?   DAT Kristy (17:27) Absolutely.   I love that you mentioned that because I think one realm where we're really good at this if you think about it is ⁓ Milling same-day crowns because they force you to find patients, right? They're like, okay have your patients lined up because we're gonna do it in those other realms We don't necessarily do that. So a component that I think we miss a lot is we plan the CE we schedule it we go the course But we didn't block out time to meet with team coming back, right?   The Dental A Team (17:36) Yeah. ⁓   Yeah.   DAT Kristy (17:57) So make sure that time dedicate the time to make sure it happens and Hey, let's line up the patients. Let's get them in the chair and start because you're right Otherwise, we just get back into routine and it's gone to the wayside and you know See is wonderful and it's all knowledge. But unless we're interpreting it into something It's just money spent right? Yeah   The Dental A Team (18:22) Agreed. Yeah, agreed.   And it makes me think of two of ⁓   Like you said, they tell you to have patients ready for the crowns, but same thing for implants, right? Same thing for Botox, same thing for any of those, but implants especially. I always tell doctors, before you go to the course, I say take inventory, look at how many outgoing referrals you had to oral surgeons. How much revenue did you feed oral surgeons in your area of that thing that you're going for? Because they have had practices in areas of their city   that it was like it didn't make sense financially to implement the thing because they weren't getting it in their doors, right? They were a younger demographic, they were college demographic, and they really just weren't getting a lot of need for the implants or for whatever it was that they were looking at. And so they actually decided, you know what, like that was just, there's so much that we see that we're supposed to do. ⁓   like all on four, all on X. Like there's so many GP dentists that are like, well, I just felt like I heard that that was what was going to change my life forever. And I'm like, yes, in a lot of ways, it's really hard. So don't do things just because it's what you're supposed to do. And it's like the next best up and coming thing. Cause I have seen doctors who have taken inventory and they're like, actually, like I was going to do it because I thought I needed to, but I don't think my patient demographic shows me that I need to. I may actually focus   in on this and they switched their CE focus completely because they saw the need wasn't there and for me that's massive because now you're you are getting an ROI on what you're doing. Now for a lot of dentists they want to learn the thing because they want to know it and that's totally cool. don't I don't I have no ifs, ands, or buts about it but just make sure you know what you're getting into and then like Kristy just said I love that idea of making sure you've got people lined up to get the service.   once you come back. And it's an easy conversation. It's not, I'm going to go get trained on implants. And so when I come back, I'd love for you to be one of the first people I place an implant on. That's uncomfortable, right? But it's just like, hey, I don't have the tools for this right this second. ⁓ You can go to an oral surgeon if you want it sooner, but I am going to be equipped with those tools here in the next six months. I'd be happy to revisit this with you at your next re-care or call you as soon as I get the stuff in.   Same statement, different words. so vulnerability on one hand. If it's family, like shoot, I've had plenty of doctors that's like, hey, I'm testing this on you and you're getting it for free. Or I'm testing it on you and you're gonna pay for the lab fee, like fine.   whatever, but patients maybe be a little bit more tactful with. But Kristy, I think those were some great points. Those are all wonderful things that I've seen you help doctors implement. I've seen Dana, Kristy, or Trish. I've seen all of you guys. Monica, know she's done it too. We've all implemented on some level some of these systems and protocols with practices for things that feel really hard when you're in it. The great part about consultants,   I'm not attached to it, you guys. Kristy's not attached to it. We're attached to you seeing results and we're going to bird's eye view it and see where the missteps are happening, where the gaps are that can be filled to create a different result because Kristy's not emotionally attached to it. So they do really, really well. Kristy, Trish, Monica, Dana, all of them do really well at being able to see those gaps and see how you as a team can fill them and then train you guys on how to fill them. Our job is not to do   it for you because then I'm not teaching you anything, right? Kristy is not, she becomes your regional manager and that's not what we signed up for. But what her job is to do is to show you the path, train you how to do it, watch those benefits, you reap those benefits at the end. So we're excited to help you guys. Kristy, I know you're excited. You love implementing and Kristy loves nothing more than finding the money, finding the money, finding the production and helping you implement structures that really work to make a difference in your practice.   Kristy, thank you for your words of wisdom today. Those were fantastic. think my biggest nugget today is the idea of duh.   have people lined up and ready to go for whatever it is prior to you ever going and getting the course. And I think as I say that, Kristy, there's a lot of protocols and a lot of training that can be done prior to the CE to get your team ready too. Because otherwise the team's just upside down trying to figure it out. But those protocols and things can be put into place before you actually get trained to place and plan. So Kristy, thank you for being here with me today. ⁓   Everyone, I hope you took some solid nuggets from this and you can see how beneficial this can be. Drop us a five star review below. We'd love to help you. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. We can't wait to hear from you guys. Thanks.  

Derick Van Ness of Big Life Financial returns to the podcast to discuss with Kiera the new realities of the recently passed One Big Beautiful Bill — and how dentists can capitalize on the impacts. They discuss bonus depreciation, research and development credits, and more. Further, there's an opportunity for DAT listeners at biglifefinancial.com/DAT, where you can learn if you're overpaying on your taxes and what new opportunities exist. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript Kiera Dent (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera. And today I'm excited to welcome back a popular guest. He and I have chatted multiple times. We've gone around and around on different topics of how to help dentists build more wealth. So Derick, ⁓ with Big Life Financial, we talked about our research and development credits. Today we're going to be talking about this big, beautiful tax bill, how it's going to impact dentists, how it's going to impact building wealth. I do think it also impacts team members. So Derick, welcome back to the show. How are you today?   Derick Van Ness (00:29) I'm great, Kiera. I really appreciate you bringing me on the show again. It's always fun to talk.   Kiera Dent (00:34) Of course, we all know that I love wealth strategies. love ⁓ it takes time like you and I were talking about pre show. ⁓ I think it's something to educate ourselves on and to be around really smart people and to constantly be looking at different things like I know hot in the real estate world right now and with buying businesses and buying practices, the big beautiful tax bill is actually great for the bonus depreciation coming in. So just like educating ourselves and that's what I wanted today to be.   not getting high into politics. These are bills that are into place ⁓ and how to take advantage of them, how to maximize them. Derick, you work with a ton of dentists. So Derick, for those who don't know, you kind of give a little bit background on how you and I even got connected, how you got into dentistry, ⁓ how does Big Life Financial play into this. We have a lot of mutual clients together. So just kind of give people a background on who you are and how you got to the dental space.   Derick Van Ness (01:26) Absolutely, you know, I started out back in like 2010 2009 2010 helping small business owners with taxes and financial strategy I was working for another firm at the time and I had been a house flipper and if for those of you who remember 2008 wasn't so good if you're a house flipper, right and When that whole thing fell apart kind of fell in my head I took a lot of the skills that I had and a friend of mine hired me to help   Kiera Dent (01:46) It is not.   Derick Van Ness (01:55) small business owners with taxes and financial and business strategy. ⁓ Working with them, I had a chance to work with about 1,500 business owners over seven years. And then eventually went out and started doing my own thing because there were some different things that I wanted to do that they didn't offer. ⁓ essentially, in that time, I worked with a lot of dentists and a lot of doctors. ⁓ And so I kind of stayed in that arena, which led me to ⁓ meeting you, Kiera.   through Mark over at DSI and all the stuff that I'd done with him and then found you guys and just love what you guys do with helping people to build their teams. Cause I'm such a huge advocate of how important that is to have the right team to run your practice, right? Especially if you're going to have multiple practices, it just can't be about you. And so it was just kind of a natural fit. And like you said, you, you definitely love financial strategies. So.   We got into it, we talked about a bunch of different things, had a chance to work together. Like you said, have shared a lot of clients along the way, but it just seems like dentists have a lot of the problems that we solve, which is they pay a of taxes, they make good money, and most of them didn't get an MBA in college to understand how business and finances work. They've had to learn along the way. And so we see ourselves as part of that process of helping dentists become.   better business owners, better entrepreneurs, and honestly create freedom in their life instead of just having a business that runs them, because it's easy to have that happen in dentistry. So that's sort of how we got connected. I don't know, over the last, since whatever 2008, 2009 was, last 15 plus years, I've probably worked with somewhere between 2,000 and 2,500 business owners. I would say a good chunk of those have been dentists. So that's how we ended up together.   Kiera Dent (03:48) Yeah.   I love the journey. love hearing what you've done. I also agree on like building wealth. And I think going through dental school, working at the dental college, dentists are coming out with, you know, upwards of 500, 600, 700, $800,000 in debt somewhere up towards that upper million. Midwestern was a very expensive school. looking at that and then watching offices and I remember the first dentist that I worked with and we were partners. We, called her 2.5 because we were 2.5 million debt.   Derick Van Ness (04:03) Cheers.   Kiera Dent (04:18) was like, you better straighten that spine 2.5. Like we need that spine for a long time. But it was something where I realized like, that's a substantial amount of debt. One to walk out of school with two you buy a practice on top of that and then you want to try and like even remotely live your own personal life. It just felt like the odds are possibly stacked not in a dentist favor. I've had several dentists where this is the case where they're multimillion in debt, trying to get these practices off the ground. And so really coming up with   Derick Van Ness (04:43) Mm-hmm.   Kiera Dent (04:47) like yes, long-term, if they make it, awesome. Hopefully it will pay off for them. But what are maybe some strategies and tips that they can do now? I think like so many of us look at real estate and wish that we would have gotten in at the 2008 because now you're selling them out or even in 2020. And so it's like, what can people do now, even if they didn't maximize or we didn't buy practices back in the day when they were so cheap, they were pennies on the dollar. What things can we do now to maximize? I was even talking to this girl the other day.   And she's like, yeah, my baby was born on New Year's Eve. And I was like, wow, talk about a great tax write-off. And she's like, I didn't even know that that was a tax write-off. I didn't even know the benefits of things. And so I feel like just so many little pieces that could make us smarter business owners to, I'm here, I love living in the United States. I love paying taxes for the country that we get to live in. I love the opportunity that we have to be business owners. With that said, I also think it's smart for us to be very wise stewards over our money to figure out different strategies.   And no, it's not sexy. No, it's not fun. A lot of it is just like save, like invest, do the things you're supposed to do. And it's going to be part of what is it? Like the eighth wonder of the world of compound interest. Like there are other pieces, but Derick, like, let's talk about this big, beautiful tax bill. How does this work? How does this impact business owners? What are some of the benefits we can take care of? Now we're talking in 2025, things will change and shift as the landscape shifts, but knowing that's in place, what are some of the things dentists owners can do now?   to maximize that coming out.   Derick Van Ness (06:18) Yeah, you bring up a good point, Kiera. You know, it's not that this stuff happens overnight, but it is, it's systemic, right? You're doing it day in and day out. And tax is one of those things, whether you like it or not, you have to file them every year. And I'm not going to lie to you, that's part of what I like about being in the tax world is people have to do it every year. It's a pretty good business model that way, right?   Kiera Dent (06:30) Right.   I   was gonna say you've got the reoccurring opportunities because it has to happen every year just like dentists have profis every six months. I mean it's a great built-in business. mean kudos to you. I don't enjoy it but it is a necessary evil to be done.   Derick Van Ness (06:52) I totally get that. If you would have told me you're going to work in taxes even 15 years ago when I first got into it, I would have said absolutely not not interested. But what I can tell you is every dollar you make in taxes is the same as a new dollar you make in your business. Right. But you don't have to have employees and risk and additional insurance and additional equipment and all this other stuff. So it really is pure profit when you can reduce your taxes. So   even a small amount of tax strategy can go a very long way in increasing what you get in the bottom line, right? And if you could just take a lot of dentists across the country, they're in the 40 % tax bracket, maybe a little higher or lower depending on your state, but somewhere in that range, if you could even lower that by 10%, that's keeping an additional 10 % of your income. That's a lot of extra money for people to be able to save and put to work without having to go do more risk and...   buy a bigger building and do a build out and deal with more personalities in the office because all of those things are variables, right? So I see it as a pure profit machine if you get it right. And so I've chosen to think it that way because I spend so much time in it, but it really does come down to just keeping a lot more of the money you make. And it's a very potent way to do it because honestly, with 10 to 15 hours a year, so think of that as like one hour a month.   you can really add a lot to the bottom line of what you get to keep. In some cases, we can cut taxes almost in half for high, high income earners. So it's a pretty big deal.   Kiera Dent (08:25) Well, and as you said that I think it's a big deal for today because yes to have that back to you is great. But like we talked about compounding, compounding until you've experienced compounding seems like not real. Just like I think when like you have bought your first house and it's like, how am I ever supposed to do this and make money on it until you bought your first practice? A lot of those things I think feel ⁓ arbitrary, they feel false. And then once you get into the compounding world and you're like, my gosh, like   we're making money without having to do anything. It's like, yeah, I could save on my taxes in a legal, ethical way, have more money at the end of the year that I could then put towards this, like you said, make it work for me. Well, now that it's just duplicating, it's multiplying, it's replicating, those things to me are things I get excited about. Those are things that I look for, because I don't think there's a lot of money.   I call it the money making machine. What things can we put into your money making machine to where it's working for you day in, day out without you having to do any extra work? I think all of us check yes, let's say yes to that. So Derick, let's talk about how we can create more of these money making machines, putting our money to work for us rather than constantly trying to chase the money dream to where at the end of our careers and even during our careers, we're living the lives that we wanted to get to when we first started out into these careers.   Derick Van Ness (09:29) Yep.   Yeah. And I can tell you guys this, if you only walk away with one thing, it's the idea if you want to build wealth, you need to create systematic savings, right? Systematize putting money aside, whether that's actually savings account or investing or however, but just getting money out of the spending cycle and into the building cycle. And it's like watching your child, right? Like in the beginning, kids grow and it's like day to day, you don't see it, but year to year,   it starts to make a bigger and bigger and bigger difference. And then, you know, when they're teenagers, you're just like, what's happening, right? So it's the same kind of thing with your money. In the beginning, if you're just watching a day to day, you don't really see the growth. You have to trust the process, right? But the biggest thing you can do is put that on autopilot, because if you have to automatically go into your bank account every month and move money over or every year, move money over, it's much harder. And like writing,   Kiera Dent (10:28) Mm-hmm.   Derick Van Ness (10:42) 25, 50, 100, $200,000 checks feels hard. Setting aside 2,000, 3,000, 5,000, $10,000 a month, and then you cut that in half per pay period, and all of a sudden it gets a lot easier. It's like, oh yeah, $1,000 a pay period, not that big a deal. Much easier than writing a $25,000 check, right? Or two or $3,000 per pay period. It really does add up. And that's where the tax piece comes in is, in many cases, it's like found money. I try to teach our clients to...   Kiera Dent (10:46) Mm-hmm.   Derick Van Ness (11:11) save like you're going to pay full blast on taxes. And then when we do the tax strategy, all this money is left over. And so it feels like extra money, and then you can put it to work, right? And that's where you do get to play with some bigger chunks. ⁓ But really, it's that habit of automating, setting money aside. If you can just only take one thing from this, it's that. And taxes can create a huge amount of that for you along the way. So let's talk about the tax bill, right?   Kiera Dent (11:24) Mm-hmm.   Yeah,   let's talk about it. And I just want to highlight on that, Derick, of I was talking to a CPA the other day on the podcast and he talked about how like there's a different psychology of business owners. ⁓ We go from getting a W-2 paycheck that we're used to being able to spend all of it because taxes have already been taken out to them becoming business owners and not having taxes automatically taken from that and needing to be super disciplined on saving. And so I agree with you. And when I realized like,   I got so annoyed when I'm like, great, so now I never get a refund check ever again in taxes. I was like, no, actually it's actually so much better now than it ever was. Because if I just set it aside, I'm like, taxes are pretty simple. I guess there's some nuances to them, but it's pretty much like whatever tax bracket you are, take your profit at the end of the month, set that aside. And lo and behold, if you do the tax planning strategy, like you said, usually I'm ending up with a pretty good substantial chunk at the end of the year that I count as my like quote unquote, like   the refund check or whatever. It's been so long since I've gotten one that I don't even know what it is. But it's awesome because then you have this huge lump of money because you've been saving it. You weren't expecting it. All your expenses in your life is taken care of to where now, like you said, it is really fun. Is that an investment? Is that buying something that I've always wanted to get? Is that real estate money? Because the amount of cash, if you are strategic in how you do it, is exponentially substantial.   It is truly life-changing. So I'm excited, Derick. Let's talk about the tax bill, but I will second you and ditto you and just say, yes, there's discipline to it, but that discipline equals so much freedom on the other side that just try it. Trust us on this. Save, learn to save on it and ⁓ be blown away at how much you're able to have at the end of the year if you do it really well.   Derick Van Ness (13:25) Yeah, I 100 % agree and I love your approach, Kiera. That's exactly what we try to teach with people. So let's talk about the tax bill, right? There's a ton of stuff that's in there that we're not going to touch on because like the child tax credit go up $200 a year. Yes. Is that going to move the needle for you as a business owner? Not really, right? Is there a little bit for senior tax relief in there where there's $6,000 of income that they don't pay taxes on? Yes. Does that really matter for you? Probably not, right? So we're going to...   Kiera Dent (13:33) Okay, let's talk.   Derick Van Ness (13:55) we're going to talk a little bit about a couple of key things that can really move the needle. One of them you alluded to, Kiera, that I think is really important is the idea of bonus depreciation, right? People who don't know what bonus depreciation is, it's when you buy certain types of equipment or real estate, you can take all the depreciation in the first year, right? And that can be ⁓ a huge chunk, especially when you combine it with something like cost segregation. For those of you who don't know what cost segregation is, the two really   Kiera Dent (14:04) Mm-hmm.   Derick Van Ness (14:24) work well together. So I think it's worth taking just a sec, even though it's not new, it really enhances this strategy. ⁓ Cost segregation is when you have a piece of real estate, you bring in an engineer, and there are companies that do this, right? So you don't have to know all this stuff. ⁓ But they come in, they reclassify as much of your building as they can as equipment. And so what you get to do is depreciate a portion of the building, the stuff that's equipment much more rapidly. So a lot of times five, seven or 15 years.   versus either 27 or 39 and a half years. So you get a lot more depreciation on the front end. It's not like you get more overall, but money today is worth a whole lot more than money 20 or 30 years from now. You can invest it and use it to grow your business, et cetera. But then when you add bonus depreciation to that, you can get a lot more of it in the first year. what this really means is if you're   Kiera Dent (15:06) Mm-hmm.   Derick Van Ness (15:21) buying the right kind of equipment or you're buying a building or you're doing big improvements, you can get a lot more depreciation and that depreciation can save you in taxes, right? And this is one that I feel like most CPAs kind of get bonus depreciation, but a lot of them don't bring in the cost segregation piece. So if you own a piece of real estate, especially if you bought it in the last few years and you haven't done a cost segregation study, this is something that you would have to know about because someone has to physically come to your building. If you haven't done one,   Kiera Dent (15:39) Mm-hmm.   Derick Van Ness (15:51) should talk to your CPA about it or talk to someone about it. I'm sure Kiera knows people, we know people, there are plenty of people out there who do it. But that's something worth looking at, especially if your building's worth, I would say, $250,000, $300,000, and you've had it less than five years and you haven't done this, yeah, it's totally worth looking at. It could be a real nice windfall. So that's a big one. It had been in place, then it started phasing out from 100 % to 80 % to 60%.   Kiera Dent (16:04) I   Derick Van Ness (16:20) but now we're back at 100%. So this is a big one, especially if you own your building or you're buying a lot of equipment. ⁓ Another really big one is the SALT tax. Now, people hear SALT tax and they're like, what? They're thinking of like the SPICE, right? SALT stands for state and local tax. And really to simplify this, and there's kind of a workaround in almost every state where you can do it as a pass-through setup. And essentially what that means is,   Kiera Dent (16:27) Mm-hmm.   Bye.   Derick Van Ness (16:49) If you pay all your state taxes before the end of the year, those state taxes become a write off for your federal taxes. Now this was in place up to $10,000. So if you were in a 40 % tax bracket, it could have saved you $4,000. Now it's up to 40,000, four zero, $40,000. So if you're making a lot of money or you're in a high tax state, you can pay those state taxes before the end of the year and it creates a federal tax write off.   And so like if you were in a, you know, paying in a 32 % tax bracket and you paid $40,000, it's going to save you, you know, between 12 and $13,000 in taxes that year, which is pretty significant for found money. All it has to be done is you have to pay those taxes and then your, your CPA or your tax pro has to claim that. Right. So that's another big one that got raised and you probably heard a lot about it in the news because   People were trying to get it raised higher and some people thought it should be lower. It really does favor business owners. It's not something a person who doesn't have a business can do. And that was part of the controversy, right? ⁓ But at the end of the day, it's law. So you should be taking full advantage of that.   Kiera Dent (18:03) I feel like that definitely impacts like the high state tax ⁓ states like California, New York, like some of those bigger ones, definitely because I live in Nevada, it's a no state income tax state. So if I understand correctly, Derick, and this is where I love bringing smart people on, the salt tax doesn't apply to me per se in Nevada, because we don't have state income tax. Is that correct? But in those higher ones, it definitely helps you out tremendously by being able to take those those credits and apply them.   Derick Van Ness (18:32) That is correct, yeah. And like another really high one is Oregon. They have quite high state tax, whereas Washington has none. So yeah, that doesn't apply to everybody. But if you're in a state that has even medium, like I'm in Utah, income tax there is right around 5 % for the state. It's still significant, right? You can still do up to the same amount. You'll just get there slower than if you're in California.   Kiera Dent (18:36) Mm-hmm.   I agree.   Right.   Derick Van Ness (19:00) Once again, just one of those things like you talked about, know, having kids or, you know, having the ADA like disability access to your building or a lot of these other things that like there are a bunch of little things, but they really do add up doing the Augusta rule. I'm sure you guys have talked about a million times and paying your kids properly. And we have a whole strategy of actually how to help people use tax strategy to pay for their kids college, which is a pretty cool one using some of that.   Kiera Dent (19:15) Mm-hmm.   Derick Van Ness (19:29) But those aren't part of the tax bill, so we won't dig into that today. ⁓   Kiera Dent (19:32) But they   are smart things to know because as you're listing it off, I think when someone's making, let's say your practice is doing a million, let's it's doing 2 million, 5 million, let's say you're at a 50 % overhead, let's just do 5 million, that's 2.5 mil. Not all of that's going to come to you as profit, but let's use like, it also could be coming to you as profit, even if it's in the form of distributions and different pieces. I'm like,   Derick Van Ness (19:42) Mm-hmm.   Kiera Dent (19:55) on that 2.5, if that's your taxable income, now let's just do, let's say you're in the highest, like that would put you in the highest tax bracket. So we're at a 37%. Like that's almost a million dollars worth of tax money right there on 2.5. So I understand that say 12 grand doesn't seem like that much, but I'm like, but 12 grand is still going to chip down this tax bill. And then you do another 20 grand here, then you do another 15 grand here.   All of that does exponentially chip down and like the bonus appreciation. That's why I think Derick, you're talking like the $200 on a million of taxes, not really going to move the needle, but 12 grand, 15 grand. It's the stacking and being able to keep that money. You have to pay this tax no matter what. And why not like benefit and minimize and reduce it and keep that money. then even worst case scenario, you even go invest it or you put it somewhere like a high yield savings account, but still making 4 % for you.   that you wouldn't have been making so that money's working for you. I think it's a no brainer ⁓ no matter what tax bracket you're in just to see. But like I also think this is where I don't like to get lazy on my taxes like, is it really worth doing the Augustus roll? Yes, it is. Because like you said, every dollar saved today, if I could even take that 600 or that 2000 or that 12 grand, put it in right now, like go back to college. How many of us wish we would have invested at that point in time? 20 bucks when we were in college.   Derick Van Ness (21:02) You   Kiera Dent (21:19) into the stock market and what that would be worth today, I think that there's just value in being strategic and smart and this is how you build wealth. It's not sexy, but if you do it consistently, you will exponentially become wealthier much faster than otherwise. I think it's the fastest way to get to wealth long term because you've got a runway in front of you.   Derick Van Ness (21:38) Well, I'm going to throw something out here, Kiera, because I get to see behind the scenes, right? I work with a lot of successful dentists and dentists have a really good income. Dentists generally are not great at creating wealth. I'll just be totally honest with you. A lot of them, they make enough money that they, ⁓ they can spend and they have a good life and they're able to put some money away, but proportional to their income, a lot of them are not great savers because of exactly what you talked about. A lot of them make all this money, but they got to pay off a lot of debt.   Kiera Dent (21:42) Mm-hmm.   I would agree.   Derick Van Ness (22:08) right, student loans and a business loan. Well, that's a lot of cash flow, especially in the first five years going out of lot of people's pockets. So a lot of times I'll see a dentist and they're making, let's say they're taking home $500,000, which is very common. ⁓ But you look at their investments and everything and they've got 300 grand saved. And they've been at it for 10 years and you're like, what happened? it's they paid off student loans, they paid off business debt.   Kiera Dent (22:27) Mm-hmm.   Derick Van Ness (22:33) They've had to invest in equipment along the way. They've had to remodel their office. They bought a house. You know, and they have some nice things. But now when you start going back and saying, hey, we can do this, this, and this, and now you get to save an extra, let's go really, really low, an extra $20,000 a year. Okay. I did some math the other day for our newsletter, $20,000 a year. If that's what someone saved and they just put that money to work at 7%. Over 30 years, they'd have $2.1 million roughly.   Right? So it's like, it's not, it doesn't appear to be a huge thing, but over time it really does add up. And to be quite honest, someone who makes $500,000, I can think of a bunch of ways that are outside of the new tax bill, things we've been doing for years that can really save them a whole lot more than that. And so for a lot of people, like if somebody is making two and a half million dollars, there's actually some advanced strategies that can really move the needle in a big, big way. But these small things like paying your state tax by the end of the year,   It takes you five minutes and you saved 13 grand. Okay, that's a big deal. Doing, making sure you're paying yourself properly so that you don't end up paying self-employment tax unnecessarily on more of your income than you. Okay, that's another seven, 10, 15, 20 grand. ⁓ Paying your kids, Augusta rule, bonus depreciation. Okay, now all of sudden we took a bill that was maybe 120,000 of taxes for someone who makes 500 grand and now they're paying 50.   Kiera Dent (23:34) Hmm.   Derick Van Ness (24:00) So they kept 70,000. Like that's a big deal. You put that together and using the math I just did there, that's about $5 million over 30 years, right? So it's significant and I bring up the two and a half million thing, because I don't see a lot of dentists. I have a few clients that make that kind of money, but most of the dentists, especially people who own one or two practices, they're making between on the lower end, maybe 300, 350, on the higher end, maybe 800, 900,000.   Kiera Dent (24:00) Mm-hmm.   Mm-hmm.   I agree.   Derick Van Ness (24:29) You know, so suddenly an extra 50, 70, 80, $100,000 a year is a lot of money. It makes a really big difference.   Kiera Dent (24:37) I agree.   I even think though, on no matter where your bracket is, I think like, well, one, I just hope I don't know, Derick, I need to surround myself with people like this. I hope that no matter what income I make, I don't ever like pish posh 70 grand. Like I just hope I hope I never I mean, I hope that I'm a freaking billionaire at one point in my life, like that'd be incredible. And like the amount of good that we'll be able to do in this world, like even today. But I'm like, I hope that I stay   humble and grateful enough that I would never say like 20 grand or 50 grand is not worth my time to do ⁓ in a small effort. ⁓ And so I think that that's just a zone of like, let's remember the humility as well of like, yes, these things are tax savings, but they're also going to exponentially grow you, you, your practice, your family, like your contribution, your good that you're able to do in this world. So even if you're not using it for yourself, think of the good that you can give back to this community in this world. So I think   And then I'm also like, yeah, and if you're at 300, 70 grand is a lot. If you're at 900, 70 grand should still be a lot. If you're at 2.5 million, 70 grand should still be a lot for you to where I think like, I also feel it's a skill of staying sharp rather than getting lazy and sloppy as we evolve. I know I've done it. Like I used to be way more scrappy when I first started the company and I'm like, yeah, well, do we really have to do all this? And it's like, but I think this...   sharper we can keep ourselves and the more disciplined we can to be expert saviors. Like I talked to Ryan Isaac of Dentist Advisors often and he and I talk about like the biggest thing is like being a great saver, like building your wealth, but then also not losing your wealth by doing dumb things or not being disciplined and watching what you've built. Like it's kind of two sides of the coin and being able to get there at the end of the day, I think is what we're all striving for. So I think it's brilliant and I hope that nobody says pish posh to us.   Derick Van Ness (26:12) Mm-hmm.   Kiera Dent (26:34) 70 grand if we could save you that much in taxes.   Derick Van Ness (26:37) I sure hope not, right? And if you do, it's because you've got a better use of your time than that. But quite frankly, most of this stuff, especially taxes, the cool thing is we've had a few tax rewrites in the last, you know, 10 years or so. But typically we don't have a lot of tax rewrites. So once you know the rules, it doesn't change that much year to year. A few little things change here or there, but for the most part, if you can take the time.   get yourself the right team or learn the rules yourself. mean, I think even people who know how to do this themselves, having a good tax pro on your team can be worth a lot because things do come up. ⁓ But honestly, most of it, once you know it, doesn't take a lot of time, right? We're talking a couple hours a year. And if you know what you're doing, a lot of this you kind of do along the way or it's already set up, like setting the money aside for taxes that's already set up, paying before the end of the year. That's just the thing you do one time, you write one check or make one payment online and   Kiera Dent (27:17) Mm-hmm.   Derick Van Ness (27:32) and you're done, right? And a lot of these things are easy. ⁓ Another one that's a really big one that came up with the tax bill that I'm very excited about is they brought back the research and development credits. And this is another thing that for a dentist, it'll probably take you two hours of time ⁓ to do it, like an hour to work with someone to do the projects, which is basically an interview of what have you done, what's the research so that the tax team can look at that.   Kiera Dent (27:43) Mm-hmm.   Derick Van Ness (28:00) And then just getting your tax returns over because not only do these credits come back, but you can retroactively, we've got one year to do this retroactively. You can go back and claim the credits for 2022, 2023 and 2024. And so that gives us three years where you can amend and go back and get that money. And I mean, for a typical dentist, I see on the low end, there are a lot of them. If you're investing in equipment, trying new stuff, which   Kiera Dent (28:15) Wow.   Derick Van Ness (28:29) most dentists to compete have to be doing today. If you're doing, you know, still doing mercury fillings from the seventies, then maybe that's not you. But most people who are listening to your podcast are...   Kiera Dent (28:32) Mm-hmm.   I was going to say you, most of the podcast   community should be in that realm.   Derick Van Ness (28:44) Yeah, I'm kind of joking, but typically, I mean, it's between $10,000 and $20,000 a year. if you have a big practice, I mean, we've had clients that have gotten multiple six figures back because they did some major overhauls and a bunch of stuff. But let's call it $15,000 to $20,000 a year for a lot of dentists. It takes 45 minutes to do it, the interview, and then a little bit of time to review that, make sure it's good.   So let's call it two, maybe three hours of total time to get that money back, right? And you can do this every year when we amend. You have to amend them and they go back to the IRS. And the IRS is taking about a year to get checks out. They're a little buried ever since COVID. They got behind and they just never caught back up. But once you get on top of that for 2025 and beyond, like you can just do it proactively. You just don't pay the taxes. You don't have to wait for a refund.   And so it's another one of those things where you spend an hour or two a year and you get 10, 15, 20, $30,000 a year that you just get to keep. Right. And so this one to me is a huge one for dentistry because the rate at which the industry is changing, right. Uh, went from, from cone beams to milling people, milling their own crowns. Now it's 3d printing pretty soon. It's going to be, you know, a lot of these things you see at the shows with the robots doing things and all kinds of different things that   Kiera Dent (29:50) Awesome.   Totally.   Derick Van Ness (30:12) Dentistry is a very progressive industry, right? A lot of AI coming in with answering phones and scheduling people and answering questions and all of that kind of stuff. You may as well get credits for it. You're doing the work, you're buying the equipment, you're figuring this stuff out. So if you're doing anything where you're upgrading, trying new technology, looking to get better, faster, more efficient, you're probably accruing the credits. ⁓ And it's just something you don't want to miss out on. R &D credits are... ⁓   not as well known as they could be because it's very much a specialty thing and it's relatively new to the tax code. It only became permanent in 2015. It's been around since the 80s but it changed a bunch and became permanent then. And the reason we didn't do it through 2022 through 2024 was there was a change in the 2017 tax code and you know they gave tax breaks.   Kiera Dent (30:43) Mm-hmm.   Derick Van Ness (31:07) to corporations, they had to make it up somewhere. And this was the place where they said, if people claim R &D, they also don't get to write off all the expenses without going into all the detail. It just wasn't worth doing. Now we can go back and recover that. Congress didn't think it was even going to become a law. I think they thought they were going to amend it. And then COVID happened. And they sort of forgot about it. So it became a law in 22. Anyway, this is all fixing it. So to me, this is a huge one. It's an easy win for a lot of a.   Kiera Dent (31:18) Yeah.   Derick Van Ness (31:36) a lot of dentists to be able to go out and just get a bunch of money back in taxes you've already paid for stuff you've already done. And it's pretty minimal effort. ⁓ There are lot of different people out there who do it. We do a free estimate for people so they can kind of see what's on the table. But yeah, it's pretty straightforward. To me, that's probably the one specific to dentistry that's going to apply to almost everybody listening almost every year. And so   I kind of saved it toward the end here because I think it's the big win. know, the others, the bonus depreciation can be bigger, but you're probably not buying a business or massive amounts of equipment every year. But if you are, then that's going to be a huge one too.   Kiera Dent (32:20) Yeah. No, Derick, I love that. And I did some math because you talked about like one hour approximately per month to do these things. And I just I did some really, really conservative numbers. So I was like, if we were doing 20 grand of how much we get for tax savings of like actual dollars to you. And that was in 15 hours a year. That's 1333. So about 1400 per hour. And so thinking about a dentist who's producing 1400 per hour.   That's actually, that's a pretty high production. You're producing about $11,000 a day as a dentist at that rate. Then I was thinking like, okay, the R &D is 10 grand, 20 grand in two hours. That's now producing $10,000 an hour. I was like, that dentist would be producing $80,000 a day. Just to put in comparison of your dollar per hour on production, you apply that to your tax savings. I think that it's to me,   Not all dentists are even producing $1,300 an hour. Even very, very skilled dentists, like 500 to 1,000 is actually pretty great. That's what we try to target for doctors to do. 8,000 a day is a pretty good amount. So when I just did the quick math and I'm like, a lot of dentists are not working five days a week. A lot of you are working four days a week. So if you just added this as part of your CEO time, one hour per month to dedicate to this.   What's the ROI of that time? think it's very well worthwhile. And I will agree with you, Derick. We've had you on the podcast before. That's why I had you come back on, because I am seeing multiple clients get these R &D credits coming through that I just think it's a worthwhile thing. Again, I feel like it's Geico. That's what I feel like right now. Like one hour or like one quick call could save you 10 to 20 grand. I think that that to me, again, let's be sharp. Let's be savvy. Let's make sure we take advantage of these opportunities because again,   Derick Van Ness (34:00) you   Kiera Dent (34:13) Like you've said, the compound of that 10 or $20,000 that you get over the course of the next 20 to 30 years while you're doing dentistry, even if it's five years, even if it's 10 years, ⁓ that to me is so worth your time. I feel like that's the best use of your time you can possibly do as a CEO, as a business owner. So Derick, that's why I want to do back on because I think everybody should connect with you. Everybody should talk to their CPAs about this.   I know you guys do the R &D credits. I also know that you guys do accounting. So if people are looking to connect with you, Derick, like what's the easiest way? Like I'm fired up listening to this podcast. I'm committed to my one hour a month. It's like one and a half guys. So you're gonna have to be a little bit more, but I'm committed to that. Where do I start? How do I get going to make sure that I can maximize this big, beautiful tax bill and also the R &D credits for my practice.   Derick Van Ness (35:03) It's a great question. So we actually set up a page just for Dental A Team listeners, right? So it's just, my company's called Big Life Financial. And we do that, it's not big money financial. Our goal is to help you get money out of the way so you can live the life you're here to live as a human, right? And really spend the family time and make the contributions and express yourself as you want to. But it's BigLifeFinancial.com/DAT. So if you go there, it's a research and development credits   opt in right for the page because I think that's the biggest win. But we will also do, if you would like, a full three year tax review for people. Anybody who wants to see, have I been overpaying? There's a million things we didn't touch on today because they're not part of the new tax bill. There are things that have been around for a long time. ⁓ But we can help you to get a good idea of have you been overpaying and what are the opportunities out there? ⁓ And so that's a great way to start. And then from there, if it seems like you want to   Kiera Dent (35:46) Mm-hmm.   Derick Van Ness (36:03) find out more, you have questions or things come up, but that's a good starting point, right? It's like a diagnostic that gives us a good place to start from. So BigLifeFinancial.com/DAT will set up a free call. It should only take maybe 15, 20 minutes at first just to answer any question. That's great.   Kiera Dent (36:19) 15 or more could save you.   It really fills up, it's true. It's true. Daria, I do have a question though, because people get creeped out by taxes. How often do doing this and looking back at past taxes alert audits within the IRS? Because people creep out about this.   Derick Van Ness (36:37) So doing it,   so the R &D credits, especially this because they literally passed a law and said, yes, you can go back and do it. So there's going to be a ton of people doing it. So I don't think it's going to be any type of audit unless you really weren't doing research, right? But that's what the interview is for, is to help us to identify it. And our team will essentially tell you what does and doesn't qualify. But there's no risk to it, especially because they're saying, hey, yeah, you can go back and do this. You could.   I mean, you could have claimed it before, but nobody did. So it's not going to stand out. also, even in the past, when we've done this for people prior to that law change, I think out of 16,000 filings, there's been like maybe 12 or 15 audits. It's lower. It's even lower than a typical audit range. And I don't know how that's even really possible, but it's just been very low. It's not something the IRS is really worried about. It's not huge amounts of money.   Kiera Dent (37:10) Mm-hmm.   Derick Van Ness (37:35) You know, some of these other strategies care that you're aware of. people are getting 50, 100,000, $200,000 tax breaks and those are much more highly scrutinized. You really doing this work, which dentists do, uh, and based on your industry, I don't think they're really going to bat an eye. It doesn't mean there's a zero chance, but it's very, very low. Just like if you had a piece of equipment, forgot to depreciate it. Now you went back and amended to do that. It's that straightforward. It's a permanent part of the tax code. It's not gray area stuff.   Kiera Dent (37:42) Right.   which is super helpful. And that's just where I wanted to clarify because I know people get kind of weird of like, yeah, I want to save on my taxes, but I'd rather not get audited. And so I think this is a world where you can be both. You can save on taxes legally, just like the Augustus rule. Like that is something very common. People do it if you don't know about it, talk to your CP about it, ⁓ your kids having real jobs. So I feel like it's something where, like you said, it's not talked about as much, but that does not mean that it is not as commonplace or that you shouldn't bonus appreciation on real estate, on big equipment.   Derick Van Ness (38:10) Yeah.   Kiera Dent (38:36) These are things that I also feel this is the time like a political landscape for you as a business owner to take advantage of tax benefits. The person who's in the White House currently, whatever you choose to believe or not believe is very pro businesses in a lot of ways. And so I'm like, if you're ever going to try it based on who's in office, ⁓ I think now is a great time ⁓ with how many things are coming forward for businesses and being more business. ⁓ I would just say   business friendly, I think is where the political landscape is currently. Again, not to go down a political path, just to be looking at like, if I'm hedging my bets, now is probably a really good time where odds of audits are probably a little bit lower than maybe at other times of the political landscape. So just things to think about. Derick, I love these podcasts. I love building wealth. So guys go to BigLifeFinancial.com/DAT, so Dental A Team. So it's just DAT our initials.   Derick Van Ness (39:15) Yeah.   Kiera Dent (39:32) And Derick will take great care of you. Derick, any last thoughts as we wrap up today? I appreciate you so much being on here.   Derick Van Ness (39:38) No, just think, you know, dentists work really, really hard and I feel like a lot of them don't get the fruits of their labor because there's a lot of these little things that they haven't been taught. And I think all the little things do add up. So, you know, this is one of those things that if you choose to just take it on, figure it out in a year or two, you'll be way ahead of the game and you get to benefit from that basically forever. Right? lot of this stuff, once you figure it out one time, you can just ride.   80%, 90 % on autopilot. So if you've been afraid of it, would say it's climb over that hill, whether it's with us or someone else, it is really worth it. You guys work too hard, take too many risks, deal with too much headache to not get the full amount of the money that you really deserve to keep. So yeah.   Kiera Dent (40:23) I agree.   That's why Derick gets to be on the podcast because we're very aligned. I've always said I want dentists to be insanely wealthy, insanely. I see what you go through in school. mean, 2.5 million debt ⁓ to even get the opportunity to practice. ⁓ That's really where I was on a very strong mission to help dentists just like Derick to be as successful as you want to be. And there's little strategies like what we talked about that are big strategies. So take advantage, get over the hump.   Chat with Derick or your financial advisor or your CPA. But these things, I think, need to be part of your every single year conversations. They need to be talked about multiple times. You need to be asking what's been changing in the tax bill, keeping yourself a part of it. Very simple moves, big gains this year. Derick, as always, thanks for being a part of it. I really appreciate you. And for all of you listening, thank you for listening, and I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.

High-performing practices don't happen by accident, and in this episode, Kiera shares the steps that the most successful practices put in place to get there.  Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and I hope today is just an incredible day for you. I hope you guys are ready to be on the podcast, whether you're driving, listening to us as a team meeting, going to work, going for a run, going on a hike, driving in the car, whatever it is. I hope today is just an incredible day and I hope you remember dentistry really is the greatest place for us to be. I'm so excited to podcast. I'm your host Kiera Dett and truly I'm excited to help you make dentistry more fun, to make your day more fun.   because we have done over a thousand episodes. So if there's ever anything you're struggling with in your practice, be sure to head on over to TheDentalATeam.com click on our podcast tab and make sure that you download whatever podcast it is. Like you can type in case acceptance or overhead or PNL or staffing or hiring or hygiene. And every single episode we have ever done in the archive of the thousands, literally of episodes we have done, they're there for you.   And I just want to say thanks. Thanks for hanging out with us. Thanks for being part of our Dental A Team podcast family. If this podcast is serving you, if it's helped you, if this made you laugh, if it made your practice better, be sure to leave us a review and share this in groups. Honestly, our mission is to positively impact the world of dentistry in the greatest way possible and get this podcast into the hands of every single dental office out there. So share and hey, let's have a great day today because I wanted to go through three systems that every productive practice has in place. And honestly, a lot of practices don't have them.   This is something where like these high-performing practices, they don't just happen by accident. They run on systems and most practices are missing these top three. Like truly I've walked into hundreds and thousands of offices and I'm shocked that they don't have these three simple easy ones in place for them. ⁓ These right systems are going to help drive consistency, reduce your stress, increase your profitability and they're very, very easy for practices to implement. Now, just because something's easy doesn't mean that practices...   actually do it. So I want you to be part of the elite. You're part of Dental A Team. Why not tell you the best of the best of the best? I mean, why not? Like you're here, you're listening. Let's make your time effort energies worth it. I'm on board. Are you on board? Cause I think it'd be great. guys Dental A Team was truly created for you. We are obsessed with building smart, scalable practices and systems to help you have the life that you want to live. We want to make teams and practices happier. We want to make patient experience happier. And this is something where we don't want you working harder.   One of our top core values in the Dental A Team is ease. We want everything to be easy. As team members ourselves, we don't want to put hard things into place for teams. We don't want doctors to be working late nights and not spending time with their families. We want you to be profitable, happy, successful with ease. So the first system that I found that we've talked about many times, and I'll just go to a high level today because there are deeper podcasts on it, but to kind of break this down into the three simple, sexy systems that are not so sexy, but they really truly will help you drive.   profit, efficiency, happiness. And the number one, da-da-da-da, I hope you're ready for it, is block scheduling. Like yes, block scheduling, it's crazy. ⁓ Literate people reach out to us just to help them with block scheduling. And I am shocked because block scheduling is something where you literally can put it together in such high value ease. ⁓ I'm obsessed, we do have a block schedule template that we work with our practices. And it's one of those things where we keep making it like,   more and more and more and more and more because we realize there's easier things to do on it. But just as a quick sample, I really, really, really love helping offices make this so fun. Like, let's make it easy for you. Let's make this exciting for you. So I'm actually going to do a share screen. So if you guys are watching, amazing, hey, welcome, I'm super happy. And if you're not, that's okay. What we're going to do is I'll walk you through it as well. So if you're listening, driving the car,   but I will also try to share this with you. So on here, what I've done is we have actually created these boxes for you to fill in, okay? So we fill in all the green boxes and on the left-hand side, what I have is basically all of your procedures in the practice, what they are, how much time it's going to take you and how much it's going to cost you on average. Now we want time, if crown prep and buildup, how much time is that going to take you? Well, fantastic, it's gonna be an hour and a half. Awesome, put that in.   How much is the cost approximately? Don't go for your highest fee and don't go for your lowest fee. We wanna go right in that like sweet spot, middle spot. And then what about what providers? Cause some providers do procedures and others don't. So put that in there. We also wanna look for our new patients, our SRPs, how many perio maintenance as we have active patients over the last 18 months and 12 months to make sure we have enough blocks for that. We wanna go through our current hygiene spaces and our weekly availability.   I want to look back at last year and see how many pro fees we did, how many SRPs, how many periomaintenances would be needed based on that. And then any specialty procedures we've got, then we look at how many hygiene hours we're going to need for new patients, how many SRPs, how many hour pro fees, how many periomaintenances, and then our goals if we want any of those specialties. So that's like master sheet number one. Then we move into Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. This is awesome. You actually start to look, you know, every single week I need X number of new patient spots, X number of SRP spots.   X number of procedures. And what I love to do is at the top of this ⁓ Excel spreadsheet that I'll show you, I actually put dollar amounts for how much each hygiene group be producing, how much our assistant only columns are, and how much our doctor columns are. So when we look at that, it will actually give us a total production based on how much that procedure should cost us. Now, of course I could have an endo here, but I also could have a couple crowns there. So it's just a dollar amount approximately what I'm trying to do. And then what was really amazing is we'll get to a grand total page.   tab that will tell us what does our weekly total equal. Then we do a monthly total based on four weeks, it's gonna break it down. So in this practice example, their weekly total is about 94,000. That means their monthly total is about 379, giving them an annual total of 4.5. What's wild on this is this is a real practice. These are real offices doing this. And what's insane is this practices are usually doing like three or four million and we're able to then add 500,000 or like 300,000 or an extra million.   just through great block scheduling. It's wild. It truly is something where they get out on time, they have less stress. We guide patients to the appointments. And this is where I obsess about showing all of you how to do block scheduling. It is literally a super easy, sexy, simple system that takes a little bit of planning, a little bit of prep work, but then you execute on it. And if you don't have one in place, this is something where you have got to get it in place. You've got to guide your patients where you want them to go. And like I said, this is one of the top three systems that   the productive practices are using, whereas the not so productive practices are not using it. People are like, it's too hard, Kara. Well, if it's too hard, reach out. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. We literally work with offices. We put these into place. We bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars. So when people are curious about consulting ROI, I'm like, listen, I can easily go into your schedule. We can add hundreds of thousands of dollars with no extra effort on your part, just utilizing your schedule better. It's kind of like people when it's like, gosh, like that person can just get so much done in their day.   Well, it's the same thing with your schedule at your office. You can get so much more done in a day when you're just more effective, more efficient with your scheduling. So this is the framework that protects production in your practice. So audit your schedule, get block schedules in place. And if you are struggling with or heard this a million times, reach out, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com, book a complimentary practice assessment. We'll show you blind spots. We'll give you free tips.   We will literally help you whether you work with us or not. So there's really no cost to you, no effort other than you swallowing your you know and booking the call and saying like, hey, I've tried, I need help. And even if you can do it, what's your time worth to you? Doctors, you're producing five, six, $700 an hour. Well, think about it. If you can outsource that to a consultant, hashtag the Dental A Team, think of the ROI of your time. And I actually think it's a better use of your time to go produce.   and let us help your team put this into place. All right, system number two is my favorite thing, excellent handoffs. Excellent handoffs that are going to boost and increase your case acceptance. And we call that our sexy NDTR handoff. This is wild. I tell offices about it. They hear it on the podcast and they still don't use it. And I'm like, why? This is our 50 % to 100 % case acceptance. It literally does not need to be hard. It's how you're able to add same day treatment. It's how you're able to have better scheduling. It's how you're able to perfect your handoff.   from every single team member and that's to literally at the end of every exam, every appointment, tell them next visit, date to return, time needed for that appointment and is there re-care scheduled? NDTR, it's the magic formula. It literally boosts your case acceptance. It is not hard, it is simple to do. The only thing that's annoying about it is you have to remember to say it at the end of your procedure. But we've even made that easier and we throw it on your route slips. We put it on your computer, we put it in your exam notes. So you should not be forgetting and every team member should be prompting you for it.   I promise you, if you will just put this one system into place, you will see massive growth all the time when people are interviewing us to see if they want to work with us and we're interviewing them to see if they'd be a great client. I literally am never afraid when people are like, Kiera, can you cover your ROI? Like what's the ROI? And I'm like, well, on average we have it, started it out. Most of our practices within their first three months are seeing a 30 % increase in production just across the board. Okay. So now there's some that are 10%. There's some that are 50%.   all across, like on average of hundreds of offices, they're seeing a boost of 30%. Well, let's just say you are a million dollar practice today. That's an extra $300,000. We are not even like, are barely, you're like a 10X of what you're paying us versus what you're getting. And that to me is something that's so insanely valuable is you need to make sure that you're adding your consultant in who can add these results for you. And we do it through non-sexy ways. Like, hey, let me give you an awesome handoff to say at the end of the procedure that's going to   and eliminate the excuses a patient's going to bring to you, but it's going to help teep all of your treatment. It's going to make your handoffs perfect. It's going to make it to where patients want to say yes to you. I've literally watched them leave the operatory and they don't get operatory like hallway amnesia. They literally like our little robots and they walk right up front and they're like, hey, Dr. Smith wants to see me back for that crown in two weeks for an hour and I need to get my cleaning scheduled. And they just smile. And you're like, where did you come from? And why did not all of my patients do this?   is because you don't have this in and it's something that's so easy to do and yet most practices don't do it. So I would recommend every one of you, doctors, add it in. I want you to look at that exam room when you walk into it, every hygiene room, every time you walk through the door, you are just going to say it every single time and you will be shocked at how great your case acceptance goes, but not even just your case exceptions, your patient's happiness. They're not confused. Where do start? Why is dentistry so confusing? Why do I not want to do this? You've literally given them the roadmap.   eliminated half of their excuses that they're going to go up and have objections. Treatment coordinator like, here teach me how to get over objections. I'm like, hey, just have a better exam. And 50 % of those objections are already gone. They're not confused. They don't have amnesia. They know exactly where to go. And then we ask them, what questions do you have for me? I want you to be rock solid moving forward. You told them we're moving forward. It's not a question of are we doing dentistry or not. It's, hey, we're doing dentistry. Next step is going to be, you can talk about how you want to finance it. But what questions do you have for me? I want you rock solid moving forward.   This is how the elite practices do it. You guys wanna know? I've been in hundreds of offices and I'm here to show these are the three sexy systems that your practice needs to have in place. All right, get it done, get that in place. And if you're struggling, this is something we teach to teams. We get the whole team on board, because sometimes you listening, trying to get your team bought in, sometimes that's hard. So fly in an expert, we'll come and train your team. There we go. That was a little bit of a tongue twister. We will train your team to do this.   to have great case acceptance. And this is how we're able to add in one practice, we added $25,000 in one day just by doing this. All right, system number three, this is going to sound so silly, but a morning huddle that's truly a huddle that drives performance and alignment. Like literally this is what we do in office. We cut our morning huddle and I'm like, rock on, you cut out your secret treasure trove. Like this is something that can take five minutes, 10 minutes, and our job is to look for what did we do great yesterday?   what's on our docket today and are we going to win the day? I do not need to hear about every patient. do not need to hear about Mrs. Jones has high blood pressure. Fantastic, that's something hygienists you need to know. The whole team does not need to know it. We need to look at the scoreboard just like football players, basketball players, baseball players, whatever it is. We look at our scoreboard, AKA how we did yesterday, where we are on track for our month and we say is today schedule two goal? And if not, what are we going to do to truly win our day? Now I understand that numbers can sometimes not feel like patient care.   I want to reverse that mindset for you. And I want you to know that when we hit our numbers, that is our benchmark, our measuring stick to show that we served our patients at the highest level. And we did not let little gaps fall into place like missing fluoride opportunities, missing x-ray opportunities, missing same day treatment opportunities, missing diagnosis opportunities. These little simple things are what we're trying not to do. So that's why we set our goal. We have our block schedule. We know the treatment we want to do.   We know the hygiene patients that we need to be seeing. We know the open schedule time that we need to make sure that we've eliminated. And when we morning huddle it out, we can literally strategize how we're going to win our day. So we have more consistent days, more consistent treatment, more consistent patient care, more consistent happy teams. This is where we look for bottlenecks. Where are we going to get jammed up? Could we move a patient by 15 minutes today and make our schedule a lot easier? What does hygiene mean? Hygiene, are you scheduled to goal? And if not, what are you going to do to make sure that you get your patient base scheduled to goal?   It's wild when every player on the team takes ownership of their position over their column, over their goals that we've all committed to, to ensure that we're not missing any patient care. Now you might not get to your exact goal on hygiene side, but I promise you, if we're looking for every single thing those patients should be getting, you will always hit goal. I promise you, we don't set goals to make it to where it's like impossible or you have to do extra dentistry. We set them so we don't miss little things. And I think like, if you just have it that way where we remember, we do it, we chart prep.   Every person's chart prepping the night before, they're looking for their opportunities and we come to Morning Huddle to strategize how we're going to win. We can identify VIP patients to ask them for reviews and referrals. We can do challenges within our team of who's gonna get the most reviews in a day. There's so many little things that Morning Huddle can do and it's also a combination where we connect, we have a game plan and then we go and execute and go to work. So this is really something where it's like, let's use metrics in our Morning Huddle. Let's figure out how we're going to truly strategize and win.   and let's look for same day opportunities that we could use to, it's crazy, it's wild when you will use morning huddles like this of the strategy, the huddle to win the game, you will be insanely shocked at how much is there that you might be missing here and there. So these are the three non-sexy systems that every single productive practice has in place and they're incredibly good at it. And that is our block scheduling, our NDTR handoffs and our morning huddles that are setting us up to win.   This is something that will significantly improve your productivity and team alignment. Like they get everybody on the same page. We're rowing in the same boat. People are like, Carrie, I got to put all these systems in place. And I'm like, no, you don't. You just need to put the systems in place that are going to help you win. And that means winning on the number side for sure, but winning on team alignment, happier patients, getting out on time, more time with your family. Let's put those systems into place. Let's not be spending a lot of time wasted time on things that don't truly move the needle forward.   why we put systems into place. This is why we're obsessed with it. Because the reality is one small change. Any of these changes is going to radically improve your life. It's going to improve your practice and it's going to improve your happiness. So why not do it? And if you are struggling with this, you're like, gosh, Kara, I hear your podcast. I listened to you. I've heard you tell me this a hundred times. Book the call. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. Book the call. Let's stop living in mayhem. Let's stop living in madness. Let's have expert consultants literally look at your practice, look at your numbers and put these things into place.   We had a doctor, I'll just pull this up, literally texted us their first month and said, I have never been as confident as I am working with the Dental A Team. I've worked with a lot of other consulting companies and in just one month, I already feel less stressed, more at ease and excited to come back to my practice. I was curious if I needed to sell my practice and now I'm confident that I can live here, be happy and enjoy dentistry again. It's in one month. So if that's you, if you feel like that, you're like, gosh, I just need this, book the call. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com.   Make sure you're on our newsletter list. Make sure you're getting our tips. But more importantly, make sure you're getting the life and the practice that you deserve. Guys, we get one practice, we get one life, we get one opportunity. Let's make it the best we possibly can. For all of you listening, I'm so grateful for you. I know these things can be yours. I know you can put these systems into place and I encourage you to do it. It's your time. Execute. I put up on my mirror a long, long time ago. I said, don't just dream, do. This is the time for you to put the things into place that you know will move your practice forward.   Refine if you're already doing it and reach out. It's time. Let's do this. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.

Kiera shares a personal experience of reaching an incredible milestone but feeling depleted — and how she changed what being fulfilled meant. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent (00:01) Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera and I feel like today's podcast is going to be, I don't know, we're about to find out how it lands. So I hope it lands incredible. It's a space of a little bit of vulnerability for me. And ⁓ it's going to be something where I'm probably going to read it more than I just riffed podcasts. I was asked by our marketing team to write some of my stories, some of the founder's stories, some of the pieces of my life journey. And as I wrote it, the first one, ⁓   the bulk of our team members said, Kiera, you should actually make that into a podcast. And I have thought about it and I decided, you know, I think I'm going to do it, but I don't know that I can rift it. Every single podcast I've ever done has been a nice rift for you. It's all knowledge, it's experience. I want to make it engaging. So I'm super curious how me reading one is going to land versus me telling you. And I might add some few embellishments because let's be real, I didn't write all the pieces of the story. And so I hope that it inspires you. ⁓   It's called the empty millionaire. And I feel like it's hopefully very relevant for a lot of you and maybe just walking you through the journey because as I've talked to a lot of different people about the millionaire journey, so many of us want to hit a million dollars. And so that's why I titled this one the empty millionaire. And so we'll see. Like I said, I have no clue how this is going to land. It's my first one. feel like very   really vulnerable. If you're even like watching this, my team's probably going to clip this part. Like my shoulders are hunched, like my arms are, my hands are in my pocket. Like my hands are a little sweaty. I hate when this happens. Like I don't really get sweaty hands thankfully, but like they're, they're a little more clammy than usual. ⁓ but I think it's because it's my story. It's my life. And, ⁓ I think on Dental A Team, one of the biggest things I've really always committed to is that no matter what I share on the podcast, you should always be able to peel back the curtain of Dental A Team and see exactly what we're doing, exactly who we are.   never wanted to make up stories because I feel like then you're trying to chase a false reality. And so this is my story, the empty millionaire. So hopefully you love it. And if not, then I'll never read a story again. So give us some feedback and we'll hear if you loved it, send it an email. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. If you didn't also send it an email. Don't worry. Our team fills that so you can be honest. They feel that they tell me so you won't hurt my heart. You won't break my feelings. But at end of the day, this podcast is for you more than it is for me. But thank you for allowing me to have a space to share. So   The Empty Millionaire by Cara Depp. So I had always envisioned what it would be like to hit $1 million. You live on the yacht or the beach house or the incredible mansion overlooking the ocean while drinking the fanciest drinks with your head back laughing and truly living life with zero stress. Happiness exploding on every level and feeling like you're on top of the world. This, in my opinion, was living. This, in my opinion, was the mountain that I was destined to climb and hit. This was my future. I literally imagined I could see myself like, ha ha ha, like sitting back there laughing like,   what you see, driving these fancy cars, looking at these exotic views, that's the million dollar ⁓ mission that I was destined to climb. And then I hit a million dollars in my bank account. I remember the day, it was in September, and where was I at? I was sitting in my apartment on my futon alone, like literally alone. My husband and I were talking about this story last night, and he's like, Kiera, tell me more about it. And I was like, Jace, you were actually at your niece's wedding.   There was a mariachi band, so when I tried to call and tell you, like, here, I can't hear you. There's this huge band playing in the background. Can I call you later? I had just finished an event with my team. My whole team had flown out. I was exhausted. I remember sitting on this futon. I saw our blinds swaying. And I was like, I hit it. I hit it. And I'm in an apartment, sitting on a futon alone, completely and utterly alone. My family wasn't there. I wasn't laughing. I felt empty.   I felt spent. I felt overwhelmed. I felt the weight of what I had created crushing the air out of me. Like I was so exhausted. I literally remember sitting there on my futon. Like I said, like I was laying on my futon. The reason the futon was there is because we'd had people come visit and our house was like so small that we had to like move our futon around to have it there. So I wasn't even sitting on our couch. I was sitting on this futon and I remember just laying down and I thought, hmm, I truly did not think that this is what this moment would feel like. I didn't think I'd be sitting here feeling like it took every ounce of energy to smile.   to show up for work, I was depleted, exhausted, overwhelmed, crushed, and empty. And the best word I think I have to describe was just hollow. Like I just felt hollow. And I'm like, yeah, I climbed this freaking huge mountain. Like I did it. Where was the yacht? Where was the laughter? Where was exploding happiness? Where was my fancy drink where I was sitting there overlooking the ocean, like laughing and being so just in pure euphoric bliss? And this was the moment I realized one million wasn't the destination.   Instead, it was all those feelings of exploding happiness and joy and carefree and totally living, like living, not just living, but living that I was chasing. ⁓ and I had been grinding away at an empty hollow dollar amount that was met with unhappiness, met with like sadness, met with loneliness. And it was this number and I'd been grinding away at it. And then I had this freaking lightning bolt moment. So it probably was such a blessing that I was sitting there. My husband's off to a wedding. Like, I was like, gosh, like I couldn't even go and be there because I'm grinding for this number.   But that wasn't actually true. These were just rules that I was pretending to tell myself that weren't true. And I had this lightning bolt moment. I call these lightning bolt moments because I feel like they hit you in an instant, they rock your soul, and they change the trajectory of your life. And I said, living is having your family and friends, relationships, being fulfilled, laughing so hard that your sides hurt, or whatever your variation of being utterly fulfilled and happy looks like. That's the million dollar life. And so a few things that I wanted you to consider as I wrote this out is,   What does your million dollar life look like? Create it, imagine it, really feel it. What does it look like? For me, it was sitting on this ocean balcony laughing so hard. ⁓ But what are the emotions that you really wanna feel? And if I look back and we listen back to what I said about the, it's being carefree, it's having a ton of fun, it's laughing so hard, it's being with family and friends, it's traveling the world, that to me, those are the emotions. I wanna feel free, I wanna feel fun, I wanna feel fulfilled.   I want to feel loved. I want to feel care, kindness, like expansion. Those are all the feelings that I wanted. And then the question is, what are you already doing that is your million dollar life today? Like, what is it? Even if you've hit a million and now this is your two million or your five million dollar life, like what are you already doing today that's a million dollar? Are you laughing? Are you happy? Are you having a good time? Like, I want you to see how much closer to this reality you are than you thought you were.   ⁓ And then my question is how can you create more of the million dollar life emotions today? So looking at my life I'm like, okay, if it's me sitting on this yacht, like I don't even know where I get this stuff. This is rifting. This is not reading anymore, just so you know. But I'm like, where do I even get these thoughts? Like, is it from the movies? But I'm like, no, what it is is it's fun. Like fun is one of my number one core values. I want to just have fun. And so I'm like, how can I create more fun in my life? How can I create more love and laughter? How can I create more deeper connection?   How can I create more travel and experiences of experiencing the world? And I'm like, wow, well, an easy way to experience is to like just experience around me in my own community. Like I have like Tahoe literally 20, 30 minutes away from my house. Why don't I go experience that and enjoy it? I have a lake just like not far away that I could go boating all the time on. That's something like instead of a yacht, like it's not quite the yacht. Cause honestly I don't want to yacht it. I just want to be on a boat on water. So how can I get more boat and water time in my life?   Well, great, we go to Hawaii all the time. It's so fun. We go surfing over there. Like that's what I was wanting to do. What if I, what can I do for more fun? Every single week there is fun put in my calendar. So when I talk about like what we do in our masterminds with our consulting, I tell people like figure out your life categories that are super important for you to feel fulfilled and like a balanced human, not equal, but balanced. Like where you're just, you feel an equilibrium, I think is a better way to put that.   And for me, fun is a huge portion of it. So every single week I make sure there is something freaking fun. It's written in pink in my journal because I know it's going to be like the fun and the highlight of my life. Those are the million dollar emotions that we're truly seeking when we're looking after that $1 million mark. Yes, there's financial gain to it, but the reality is like, I don't like to sit on a futon by myself. I don't like to be alone. I don't like to feel depleted. I don't like to feel exhausted. I don't care like the number of money.   I want to feel happy. I want to fulfill, be fulfilled. And what's wild is those emotions, the more you feel the emotions of that million dollar life, it actually is the momentum to create the million dollar life. You don't create the million dollar life through grinding it. Like clearly you can, but when you reach that summit, you reach that peak, it's actually not freaking fun. You actually want to feel those emotions and those emotions will fuel you because that's your soul. That's what you're looking for. That's the intention. Those are the moments that you're actually seeking. It's not that top summit peak.   So then my last question on this for you to consider is what are you going to do when you become a millionaire? And I want you to create the fire and excitement today and make the reality for you today. So like, what are you going to do for me? I'm like, I wish I would have done that. I was like, I just wanted it. Like I wanted to see it so hard. And then I got it. I'm like, sweet, my husband's gone. I didn't even attend the wedding. I'm exhausted. I'm tired. I'm sitting on my freaking futon, which by the way, I still have the futon and I still love this futon. It was just like, I think it's so funny that like of all the places, of all the things.   That's where I was the day I did it. And I closed my phone and I'm like, huh. So it's like, why do you want to become a millionaire? I had never thought it was like for me, honestly, if I look back, was because I wanted to prove to people that I was worth it. That was it. That was literally why. Like when I look back at it, it's because someone told me once that I would never be anything more than a insert F word dental assistant. So they told me that I would be and it set me on this path to prove, to prove my worth.   to prove who I was. So for you, what is it for you? Is it, why do you wanna be a millionaire? Like truly, don't lie to me. I just told you my honest, ⁓ it was to prove myself. It was to prove my worth. And I realized, screw that. The person who said that's not even in my life anymore and yet I'm like chasing this summit versus like, why do I wanna, what do I wanna do with that? Well, gosh, Dental A Team's live to give is one of the greatest.   blessings in my life and it helps me see how I can give back for the beautiful life I have. Creating a space at work for all of my incredible teammates, like to give them their dream lives. my gosh, like that is so fulfilling for me to have that, to be able to ⁓ give my family like things that they never experienced and opportunities like, wow, like that's so much more like screw the yacht. Like let's be doing that. Like let me create experiences that just create magic moments for other people in my life that are going to just be so special for them.   To be able to do that, like that's the fire and excitement for me, but what is it for you? And I want you to start creating this million dollar life now. Million dollar lives are not something you stumble into when your bank account finally hits that million. Instead of being like so many millionaires, commit to truly living and loving that million dollar life today. There's no need to scale the million dollar mountain and hit the summit and feel unfulfilled, hollow and empty when you reach the top. Like truly that is so sad. And Tony Robbins has an incredible quote where it says, success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure. And I had it.   literally had it. And I feel like there's no need for that. Instead, you can feel the emotions that you're seeking today. And all those emotions will fill you, fuel you to reach that million dollar summit and hit that summit and have it where instead of being like Kiera sitting on the futon where my family's like nowhere around and I'm just like, wow, this is it. You actually can have the insane happiness, fulfillment, growth, whatever those emotions are. You can hit that and you can commit to that. That like when you pop the confetti, when you celebrate, you are doing   the million dollar life because you've already been living it. Now it's just like another milestone that you've achieved in your life. I want you to have like truly cheers to that million dollar life today. Start living, like living this today. Why wait? Why hold off on this happiness and all these emotions? Like why not just live it today? So I want you to commit to being happy, fulfilled and the joyous millionaire today. And just so you know, this is like truly very vulnerable of me. I'm on a mission.   to create a hundred happy fulfilled millionaires in the next decade of my life. I've really been thinking of what do I want in the next decade? What do want my 40 decade to be? And it hit me that I'm like, I used to say I wanted to help create a hundred millionaires, but I actually had a friend and she's like, here, I actually don't want the million dollar life that you've talked about so many times. Like you're stressed out on your mind all the time. You like never have time to work out. You're exhausted. She's like, I actually don't want that. And I was like, yeah, me neither. She's like,   but I want to be the happy fulfilled millionaire. And so I decided I'm on a mission to create a hundred happy fulfilled millionaires in the next decade of my life. And I'd honestly love for you to be one of them. like join us and like truly, if you want to be a part of this, join me, join us, join our company. Dentistry is our platform. Life is my passion. And truly I want you to start feeling all the happiness today on your journey to the million dollar summit ⁓ together. Like why not do it together? Why not have somebody who celebrates you? I'm like, what the heck? Like I sat there.   by myself. What? Like, no, there should be people that are celebrating, they're rocking it, that are like celebrating all these pieces. And so for you, if that sounds fun for you, you wanna be a part of it, join us. I'd to have you be a part of it because there's no reason for you to reach that. And even if a million dollars is not your goal, maybe it's 200,000, maybe it's 500,000, whatever your goal is, whatever that summit is, again, why do you want it?   Let's create it. Let's figure out those emotions that you're chasing. Let's create more of that. Let's give you that fuel and that fire to create more of that in your life because life is our gift. Like truly I think about, get this one life to live. And when I think about when I'm 90 or 100 or 150, what do I hope the feelings and emotions are that I feel? And I want to start creating that because to me, that's living. The million dollar mark is not living. The life and the person you become is living. So let's create that. Join us if you want, like I said.   Tell me if you loved this, tell me if you didn't. But this is my story. This is where I was. This is what I felt. And this is what I decided, forget that. I want to help people become happy, fulfilled millionaires in the next decade of my life because I believe that it can be so fulfilling because I know the person who does that is going to give back to this world, is going to have great impact, is going to serve their community, serve their patients, serve their team. Like now I'm on a mission. Like how can I help all my team members become this? How can I help the people that are around me become this?   Like let's give it because there's no limit at the top. Like it's not a summit, a peak where only like 10 people can be there. No, this thing is a freaking next level euphoria that we can create and we can change this world. There's no limit to the amount of money in this world. There's no limit to the growth and the goodness that we can create. And I want people who want to give back to create, to build this incredible world together ⁓ because that's where fulfillment is. That's where life is. So join us. And as always, I hope you think about this. I hope you reflect on it.   Team members, dentists aligned. ⁓ Let's figure out how we can have those million dollar lives. There was a survivor, I'm a big fan of survivor, and there was a guy on there, I think his name was Keith, and he always said, he had like a tattoo on his booty, like I'm not even joking, and it said, livin', L-I-V-I-N. And I've thought about that so much, and what am I doing today to be livin'? Like this is livin', and looking at all the magic moments in my life right now that are my million dollar livin' life.   Again, million dollar I think is a societal piece. The reality is we want the rich, fulfilled, happy, living life today, no matter what our bank account is, no matter what our financial state is, because that is going to create more of that. I'm not here to say that striving for the million dollars is not a great goal, ⁓ but it's something where I really want you to see why do you want it. So when you reach that summit, AKA the euphoria space, that you are so fulfilled, that you are so happy.   that you are vibrant rather than hollow, bleak and unsatisfied. There's no point to grind your life away. We get one life, it's our gift, it's our special opportunity. So let's make it the most magical version of you. Join us, I'd love to help you. It's truly a huge passion of mine and something so special to be able to share, share everything I learned, share all the pieces. So that way, instead of your story of being the empty millionaire, your story is the fulfilled, the vibrant, the exuberant, the...   Like, whatever it is, the victorious, the so happy, whatever it is, millionaire is you. And as always, thanks for listening. And I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.  

Tiff and Kristy take a look at patient privacy and the regulatory compliance associated with that privacy, including HIPAA and OSHA. They touch on their own experiences with compliance, how to better educate your practice, what not to do, and more. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript:  The Dental A Team (00:01) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. We are so excited to be here with you today. I have Kristy on crew with me. We have a slew of podcasts we're recording and just some really, really exciting information. We're gonna make it as exciting as we can, at least, that we wanna get out to you. We are more than halfway through the year, which is pretty massive. And so we're gonna be talking about...   a ton about how to end the year, things and pieces to look forward to, things you should be doing now to wrap up for the end of the year, and realistically things to look forward to for the upcoming year, which at this point of recording is 2026. So no matter what year you're listening to us, a lot of this should still be incredibly valuable. Kristy, I am so excited you're here with me today. Thank you so much for clearing your schedule, being here.   being open to this and just always coming with some really invaluable information for our listeners. How are you today, Kristy?   DAT Kristy (01:00) It's a good summer day and a good day to be with you as well. So happy to do it.   The Dental A Team (01:04) Thank you,   thank you. And for those of you who may not know, Kristy, Kristy lived in Arizona a long time ago. she originally, like her formative years were here, but then she left Arizona for quite a little while and she's recently relocated back to the desert. And she decided to come right at the beginning of summer, which I used to tell people like,   don't move here in the summer, like come in different months. But then I started realizing, I'm like, well, if you move here in the summer, you get the worst of the worst. And then the rest of the year is like icing on top of the cake. So Kristy, I actually think you did it in the right direction. And I keep telling you, I think you brought some awesome weather with you this year because we have not broken record heat this year for like the first time ever.   Honestly, we keep breaking records every year and I'm like, these are records we don't need to break. And this year, I think the record has been that it's been so nice. Like it truly, truly has been really light summer. So Kristy, thanks for bringing your weather with you and giving us a little reprieve here in Arizona. So I told you we're going to make these as fun as we possibly can. You guys, we always aim for that fun is actually one of our core values. So it's something we work really, really hard for.   I say that today because I really wanted to talk to you guys about some regulatory compliances, which just even in those words sounds like womp womp, right? Like we're just, how do you make that exciting? Well, with the Dental A Team, Dental A Team can make anything exciting. We can have fun with whatever we want in everything. We truly believe that if we're not having fun, why are we even doing it? So it doesn't mean that things aren't hard, things aren't difficult, that you won't have to push through hard things. It just means that there should be fun on the other side.   and it shouldn't be, you know, tears of pain the whole way through. So here we are, regulatory compliance. You guys know that this is actually really important in the dental industry. You guys have all heard of OSHA. So we'll dive into a little bit on the OSHA, but you guys have also heard of HIPAA. And I have to say, and Kristy, you can tell me what your thoughts are as well, I have to say that when I was in practice, like physically working in an office, we never talked about HIPAA.   We talked about OSHA constantly, like OSHA is going to come in and you've got to have everything six inches from the ceiling and off these certain walls. And you've got to have so many fire extinguishers and the fire escape plans and like all of these, you know, barriers and masks and gloves and don't wear gloves outside the door. All of these pieces for OSHA safety compliance, but   I never heard about HIPAA. I knew as a front office team member that patients had to sign the HIPAA forms and that they had to update them every so often, but I didn't actually know what it was. And when patients would ask me like, oh, what am I signing? I'm like, ah, it just says we're not going to give away your information. Right. And I'm like, I don't know if that's what it says or not, but like, that's what I heard someone say. And so I'm just repeating it. Right. So Kristy, I don't know if you had a different experience in office, but I really truly felt like until   I had to train people on it until I had to be like, no, you have to do HIPAA in the office. And until as a company, we had to start taking our own HIPAA courses every year. I had no idea exactly what it meant for a dental office. And Kristy, you may have had a different experience, but tell me what was your experience when it came to HIPAA in your dental practices that you've worked in?   DAT Kristy (04:36) Yeah, my experience   was actually you made me laugh. It was very similar to yours. I think it was what around 2013 that those forms came out and it was pretty funny because when it first started even patients were funny about it. Like I remember this big long form and you'd hand it to patients and say the same thing. ⁓ it just means we're not going to sell your information or give it to anybody and patients would start reading it and they're crossing things out. And then I'm asking my doctor like how   The Dental A Team (04:50) Yeah.   Yeah.   DAT Kristy (05:06) can they just rewrite it?" And he's like, it doesn't matter. It is what it is. It's just a form. And yeah, so really I started the same place you did. And then later years, ⁓ we ended up doing more formal training on HIPAA. But yeah, started in the same place.   The Dental A Team (05:23) Yeah, I remember   those sheets. They were like longer than it was. It was like a car contract.   where was like you had to fold it a certain way, like they were longer than the rest of the sheets and my patients did the same thing. They're like, well, I don't really agree with this. Like, and they just cross it off and then initial it. And I'm like, all right, like whatever, I just need to scan it into your document center. Like that's all I've got here, right? And if it's like in the paper folder, I had to like fold it so that it would fit. yeah, it was around 2013 and it was like so odd. And then every year they had updates to it. And I was like, I don't know what any of this means, except I did know at the bottom.   them it said, if we were to release your information, who would you want it released to? So my point of that is it's   2025 right now, I don't know what year you're gonna listen to this. 2013 we started this and it took many years for any of us to really learn and understand what it meant, let alone our patience even know and understand what it means. But it is incredibly invaluable and I'm not here to teach you HIPAA by all means, that is never my gig ⁓ or OSHA, but I do know that there are plenty of courses and even just like online forums or...   whatever that will go through it. There are two sides to it and they're incredibly important, especially for business owners. So doctors and owners out there, my doctor too, I was like, what is this? Just like Kristy, what you said, can they do this? He's like, I don't know. Just like, it's just a new form that they told us we need to do. So just do it. And I'm like, okay. He had no idea what it meant either. He just knew it was really important. So.   Doctors go get versed in it. We actually have to take a compliance course every year. All of us do for HIPAA compliance on the medical side, but then also on the business side. And that comes down, it boils down to really privacy, right? And what that looks like. And it actually will take you through what it looks like as far as electronic privacy, verbal privacy, ⁓ patient charts, like how long do you have to keep things? Where should they be kept? Like certain   certain things that honestly and truly your front office is looking up all the time. I don't know how many times I asked like wait a second how long do we have to keep these x-rays for? Wait how long do we have to keep these boxes of files for? Like we're going digital which crazily enough there's still plenty plenty of practices out there that are not digital. ⁓   I know some near and to my heart that are not digital. So like, I remember, but it's just these, these file boxes that you get from Staples and you put them together and we're putting the files in there and we're marking the year that we put them in there so that we could wait the right amount of time. But still in the back of my head, I'm like, is this even right? Like, am I waiting enough time? We would put the date that we boxed it and then the date that it could be destroyed, like, you know, destroy date.   But still I was like...   ⁓ this is still kind of scary. Like, am I doing this right? So my suggestion is to always make sure that you take those courses and that you're well versed in it, especially as a business owner. And I'm saying this after you're three of having to take the HIPAA course online for business compliance for our company, because it's really hard, you guys. I'm not gonna lie. When I go through it, it's like, Karen, I have this game that we play on who's going to get the better score. And to truth be told, like, it's like a barely   passing score and we're like how did how am I still not getting this we read through the stuff we tell we watch the videos and we get to the end and we're like what the heck I still didn't understand it so go take those courses it's just online it's super easy I'm sure we can throw you over a link if you want it so HIPAA I actually wanted to spend some time instilling in you the importance because I think the only thing we hear in dentistry is OSHA and we know so much of the OSHA stuff   But with that said, you also need to focus in on the OSHA. And Kristy, I don't know if you guys had this one too. I had that big red OSHA book that always went in the same spot up above the dental assistance computer so that we always knew where it was. We had the OSHA one, we had the MSDS sheets, and it was like, you did not mess with these books. They were always updated, the, you know, needle stick protocol. But still, you'd go in there and you're like somebody, somebody stuck themselves and you're just like,   frazzle and you're like I don't know what to do even though we've got this OSHA book that tells us what to do it was still a lot so Kristy how did how did you guys do HIPAA and OSHA within your practices like how did you make sure that we you guys had everything that you needed and then how do you train offices to do that now?   DAT Kristy (10:06) Yeah, that's   It's a good thing that you're touching on it because it's one of those things that I think even offices tend to not do because it's so complex. I will say ⁓ we just made it part of our yearly routine. And this is perfect timing because we're coming to the end of the year. And as we're future planning for next year, even setting our goals for the practice and all of that, looking at the calendar and making sure those days are marked out, just like you would your CPI.   The Dental A Team (10:14) Yeah.   DAT Kristy (10:37) are, you know, make sure your OSHA is booked every year in your ⁓ HIPAA training because they are serious, right? And they're one of those things, especially like OSHA, it could shut you down if you weren't compliant. So it is very necessary, but I would say do it as part of your yearly planning and just make sure it's booked on your schedule every year.   The Dental A Team (11:02) I totally agree with you. And I think one piece with that is to make sure you guys understand it too. I know that for us, in my practice, we always stressed about the OSHA because we were like, if they ever come in. And that's like one space of it, right? For sure, you want to be compliant. You want to have the right spaces. If they were to come in, you want to have everything you were supposed to have for sure. But on the flip side of that, like the reason that they do that isn't because they want to come in and like give you a bad grade or get you   in trouble, right? They do it because they actually want you utilizing the information. They want you knowing it and they want it to be helpful in keeping your business safe. And so   not only making sure that you're compliant for the passing grade, but that you're compliant in the fact that you understand it and you're able to use it because it really is truly beneficial for your practice. And there are actually some really valuable pieces in there, just like CPR. Like we have to take CPR to be compliant, but the day that you have to use it is the day you're like, thank God that they made me do that. Right. Like, gosh, this could have been really bad. Right. The day that my son   bless his freaking four-year-old heart at the time, decided to put gummy worms in his frozen yogurt and they turn into rocks and he's choking on it in the middle of the frozen yogurt store and I, thank God, knew what to do to...   pull it out of his mouth and make sure he doesn't have to resuscitate him, all of these pieces, right? We undervalue things because we think we have to do it because someone's telling us to. And if we don't, we're gonna get a bad grade or we're gonna get a slap on the wrist or whatever. Yes and. Like, Kristy, I love when you say yes and. This is a yes and situation. Yes, get the good letter grade, don't get a slap on the wrist, don't get a fine and.   save lives with this information too. HIPAA, you're not going to save a life, but guess what? It's better to be super safe because, I mean, honestly, cybersecurity is wild. And I have had many practices while consulting that have been hacked. And I don't know if you all remember a couple of years ago now, was it last year maybe? Yeah, all of the insurances got hacked and we were without insurance payments for three or four months. We couldn't even submit claims. Like it was wild.   these things do happen and if you're not HIPAA compliant, if you don't know what it means, things aren't stored correctly, you just you have a lot of patients that could be in a lot of trouble. So not only are you going to get in trouble from a business standpoint with you know the regulatory compliance people,   but you're putting your patient's information and your own information at risk. You've got payroll documents on there. You've got your team's information on there. There's a lot of very sensitive information that's stored on there. So OSHA is incredibly valuable. Know it, train on it. I know we used to do quarterly training for OSHA. We'd add it into our monthly team meeting. We'd do a two hour monthly team meeting and at least 30 minutes of that once a quarter would be OSHA training. And so it would be training on a   certain subject from the OSHA book. They literally give it all to you ⁓ and then what I would do now is actually add in some of that HIPAA training with it like quarterly, monthly, however you guys want to do it and yearly, especially making sure that we're all reviewing it, that we're all up to date, that we all understand it and we understand any changes because they change them at the drop of a dime and Kristy, I don't know if you've ever received a letter from OSHA saying, hey, these are the updates but I have not.   I've never seen anything that was just like, guess what? We've updated and changed. So you guys have to go out and look for that information on your own.   Kristy, how did you handle, I know in my practice we had two people. We had one that was responsible for OSHA and then one that was responsible for HIPAA, which at that point, you know, just made sure that we did the sheets. Now we know there's much more involved to it, but how did you handle that in your practice as far as someone like the accountability piece to it? And I never wanted the accountability myself, my doctor.   He's a very busy man. Personally, professionally very busy. I ran his schedule ragged. He was constantly on the move. There's no way on this earth.   that he was ever going to be able to hold anything accountable, especially Osher or HIPAA. So I never made him the owner of that. And then as the office manager, I tried to stay out of that lane as well because I didn't want it to get mixed up in other pieces. But Kristy, how did you handle it in your practice and how do you see practices now handling that kind of responsibility and accountability piece?   DAT Kristy (15:46) Yeah. ⁓   Honestly going back to what you said, it's it's having a champion, right? It doesn't mean that they're the only one responsible but somebody that is the point person that ⁓ Is checking on those things and reporting back? You know how it kind of makes me think of when you go into a restroom at a chain store one of those and they have those Checklists about they check the bathroom at a certain time using something like that to know   The Dental A Team (16:15) Yeah.   DAT Kristy (16:18) ⁓ Because even your fire drills guys we're supposed to have fire drills and make sure team right on Boarding did we teach them where the I wash station is did we show them our? Meetup area if something happens, so It's important and like I said have that point person that can report back   The Dental A Team (16:22) Yeah.   DAT Kristy (16:38) Potentially in one of your team meetings just check on it. Just make sure it's like we do our checklist and chart audits ⁓ I was gonna circle back to you too because I won't name names But we all heard of the corporate entity that also got hacked, right? It's maybe been a couple years now, but you know Think of that they they're a big nationwide chain lots of money, right? And so even if they it happened to them like us as little   The Dental A Team (16:40) Yeah.   Yeah.   DAT Kristy (17:08) guys that don't have that kind of money to spend, we have to be very diligent. I would also do like chart audit type thing. Maybe not necessarily chart, but listen, listen to your admin people. Are they breaching HIPAA in conversations? You know, are they checking IDs? Are we even getting photo IDs from patients?   The Dental A Team (17:18) Yeah.   No, most places   are not getting photo IDs.   DAT Kristy (17:34) Yeah.   And a lot of people, you know, they look, well, we want to know who's coming in. So we want to get your photo. No, don't share your secrets. But on the same token, like it is part of compliance. And if, if you guys have ever heard of red flag rule, if you're accepting insurance, you have a due diligence to make sure that that person is who they say they are. And I have experienced where somebody came in portraying they're somebody else. So ⁓ they're little things, but they can be.   big things and just like that corporate entity it was flashed all over the news and so it's also about saving our reputation those things are hard to come back from.   The Dental A Team (18:16) I totally agree. That's a really great point. And I don't think I know many practices, maybe a handful, that really truly understand the value of the ID portion of it. And I do hear that too, like, we want to know who's coming in. Yeah, but your ID is not going to... A lot of practices will use it for both, and I think that's great. But my picture on my ID, you're never going to know that it's me, right? But at least you took it. It's got my information. It's got my statistics, my demographics that match up   within my insurance card because that does happen constantly.   constantly patients or practices are reporting that they've had patients that come in with the insurance, but it's not actually the person who's on the insurance card. happens a lot. And as you're taking payments as well, like, you know, I'm, I'm surprised we don't get asked more often for our credit cards, but when, or for our ID with our credit cards, but when I do, I'm always like thrown off. But then at the same time, I'm like, actually, thank you for caring enough about my safety, right? My electronic safety that someone's not using my credit card. Who's not actually them. Cause that has happened.   I have had those charges pop up that my credit card is like someone's at Circle K trying to use $5 and they're just like testing it, right? So I do appreciate that and I value it and I think our patients would too. But it is a piece of the record keeping that you're supposed to have if you are going to accept insurance from those patients. So it is a massive piece. that was a great, great point, Kristy. Biggest takeaway today, you guys, two biggest takeaways. Go figure out what HIPAA is if you don't know what it is, medical and   and business like standing business HIPAA, go figure both of those things out. Make sure that you're OSHA compliant, that you've got your book, you've got your sheets, you've got everything that you're supposed to have and that you're training on both of those because those make them compliant as well. And then make sure you've got point people to ensure that these trainings are happening to ensure that we're up to date with everything we're supposed to have. So super easy, you guys, you just you got to dig in and do the work. And I challenge you guys to go take that HIPAA test. It's hard.   Even after taking the course that leads up to it, it is not easy. and I both have struggled with that sucker. So I challenge you to go take that ding test and tell me you know anything about HIPAA. HIPAA? OSHA? K?   Just be compliant, you guys, and figure out an easy way. Like Kristy said, schedule it every year. Schedule it out. You've got your Ops manual update, so do your Ops manual update, your OSHA update, your HIPAA updates, and then make sure that you've got a point person probably for each of those, and they should be three separate people in my opinion if you've got the capacity within your staffing to do it. Kristy, thank you so much for your nuggets and for letting me probe questions over to you about your past as well. You have always, always amazing points.   So thank you for being here with us. Is there anything else you can think of that I missed in that wrap up that they should be doing?   DAT Kristy (21:09) No, I think you hit it all. The only thing we didn't touch on was make sure you're doing PCI compliance because you mentioned credit cards and taking them. There's still a ton of practices that I go in and they're writing down cards. Guys, get rehearsed. You could be putting yourself into ⁓ some situations by doing that. So that would be the only other one that I would add in the mix.   The Dental A Team (21:15) there.   That's a that's actually a really good point. And I've had a couple of practices text me some office managers and be like, what does this mean this PCI like people don't know what that means. And they don't know what that is. So make sure your office managers do know what that is. It goes right along with HIPAA. And those two go hand in hand. So just make sure, again, that you're not running the team that's like, I don't know, we're just supposed to sign this that they actually know what they're for. Because with a reason behind it, things get done. So that was massive, Kristy, thank you for remembering the PCI compliance. Alright, guys, go do   the things they're not really that hard except for that HIPAA test and I do challenge you to go take it because I just want to hear from you on how fun it was. But go do the things if you ever need anything you guys know where to find us Hello@TheDentalATeam.com we are here to help you I know that we do the HIPAA test every year you guys know especially if you're my clients I don't actually know   the link for that, we can get it for you. So Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. We can send you the information for the company that we utilize within our team and our company. Just let us know. And as always, drop a five star review. We'd love to hear what you thought about this. And if you have any regulatory information or things that you'd like to share, put it in that review because people really do read through those and they'll catch it as well. Thanks so much, guys. We'll catch you next time.  

Kiera takes listeners behind the scenes of Dental A-Team, sharing what exactly happens in Doctor Mastermind conversations. This includes unfiltered Kiera and consultants sharing top-level expertise, elite doctors sharing secrets of the trade, wealth diversification conversations, and so much more. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent (00:01) Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera and I hope today's just a great day. I really do hope that you're thriving and not just surviving right now. I hope that you're fulfilled and you're not just living there, going along and really disliking your life because I believe we get one life. So let's make it the most fun that we possibly can. You guys today, I wanna take you behind the scenes of Dental A Team. Like let's take you behind the curtain and just kinda let you see what goes on behind the scenes.   There's some really awesome things that Dental A Team is doing and I feel like it's really fun to just know like, okay, what does consulting look like behind the scenes? What things do you have in place? And I wanted you to see like what happens behind the scenes. We have Dr. Masterminds, ⁓ what happens in there, what happens with your team meetings? What does it look like? And so if you've ever been curious of what's behind the scenes in consulting, well, welcome. I wanted to take you behind the scenes. So just so you know, Dental A Team was created to help doctors and practice owners ⁓ not just survive, but thrive.   to help teams not just survive but thrive, to be able to say yes to more things in your life by being focused on what you as a person want to achieve, improving your leadership, improving your life and like truly your personal life, making sure your business is working for you and not the other way around. We also do it on profitability, making sure you're profitable, that the cash flow is there, that it's predictable, that you understand where your numbers are at and then having systems and team development. We call that the yes model so you can say yes to more in your life. So you, earnings, system and team development. And that's really what our.   the whole thing about consulting is. So what we do is we literally take you and we have an introductory call and we look to see what your practice is like, where your gaps are, and basically build a game plan with you of what is this gonna look like over the next 12 months together. And we decide, hey, where are you at? you a practice where we're gonna fly into your practice? Is this a practice where we're going to just do virtual calls with you? What's going to be the best option? And I will say our most popular and what most people want is someone to fly to the practice. ⁓ And so behind the scenes, what happens from there is once we decide what...   what type of consulting is going to be best for you and your practice. From there, then you get paired with a consultant. You're like, how do you know the consultants? I'm like, well, my background needs to be marriage and family therapy. Like literally, I'm really good at reading people and 90 % of the time we get a perfect match. And what we're looking for is your practice needs the consultant skills and what they've done because all of our consultants have a clinical and front office experience and they've all had to grow multiple practices. So some come from DSO.   All of them have had to come from private practice. They literally have been there, done that, done it successfully. And we're looking for personality types. Are you going to jive? Some consultants are very high energy and some are a little more lower energy, more calm. ⁓ What's going to pair well with your team? What's going to be like, I remember there was one office and they said, Kiera, my team. There I was like, wow, Kiera comes in with a lot of energy. We get.   along better with no BS Brit, which is true. Brit doesn't come in looking like she's a hummingbird on Monster. She walks in a calm, cool, collected. She's chill. Some offices need a hummingbird on Monster. Others need a Brit who's more calm, cool, collected. So we're looking at experience, personality fit, and then also what's going to truly drive and get the results you're looking for. So that's really how we match you with your consultant. Then after that, your consultant, you and them, get on calls. We get on calls every other week.   So we're really working with you to make sure that there's accountability, but it's not too often and you're not depending on us, but you have time to actually make some headway in between those. So it's set calls. So you always know perfect. I've got my set calls. They're also really good accountability check-ins. So I have a personal trainer and we used to do only virtual and I had a call with her all the time and I actually did better on my workouts than I do when I see her in person because I knew we had a set call and I had to show up with my results because she was going to ask me about them. And that's actually why we have these set calls.   So you always follow through on the accountability because we're really big on making sure that what we commit to, what we put into place, we're truly driving results forward. You do not need to be perfect. We just need to make sure that we're getting the results we want. We're tracking our numbers. We're looking at the P &Ls. We're looking at your KPIs. We're looking at your team. And we're also talking about the issues and the growth of where you want to go in your practice. So we've got those two calls. And then in between those two calls, you literally get to texts, calls, emails, whatever you need. At any time you have a consultant in your pocket, any moment. So whatever comes up, because business does not happen on set cadences.   at the most random times. So you always have a consultant at your fingertips. And then I think the part that I really wanted to show you behind the scenes is every single month we have a doctor mastermind. It's the first Tuesday of the month and we call it think tank Tuesday. And this is where I ⁓ tell all of our doctors, this is where you're basically hanging out in Kiera's living room, virtually. Right? Like I want you to just like let your hair down. I don't care if you're making dinner. I don't care if your kids are there. I want you as a human. I don't care if you're driving home. I don't care if you're at the swim meet. We have doctors.   all over the place because this is your real life. And I want you to just pretend like we're hanging out in a living room, let your hair down. There are no team members allowed at these think tanks because I want doctors to fill a safe space where they can talk about it they can talk about with other doctors of what's going on. What do they suggest? On here we have guest speakers that come in. We also, a lot of times this is my mastermind. This is my billion dollar club group where I just want to hang out and I want to talk about things that aren't talked about all the time.   So for example, last month we went through and we did one on a P &L deep dive. And these are things that I do not share on the podcast. These are things that are not shared publicly. These are things that I reserved specifically. So it's the 10 % that's reserved for only our Dr. Mastermind. And I'm really digging deep with them and I'm showing them things that we specifically do in our company. So things that I'm not going to necessarily publicly announce on the podcast. I share a lot of our life here, but we actually went through an entire P &L deep dive and we showed them exactly what we do in our company and how we do it how you can get your office managers there.   and how you're able to look for the profitability, how we set up projections, how we're able to grow and scale, how we're able to get right people, right seats. We did another one with org charts and we broke it down. We brought in ⁓ Prosperity and Brian Harris talking about embezzlement, things that we will never share publicly, but specifically for our doctors. We bring in different guest speakers. ⁓ bring in, we have them like work on different business models. I did one where we worked on a lemonade stand to show them how they can in crisis mode on their business, pivot, shift and adjust.   We often will do like an issues list of what's going on, what are the hot topics people are dealing with, and then let's collectively work on it. So we have a doctor who's going through some interesting things with legal within their practice and using the whole team. We have another practice that's struggling with their finances and using collectively the whole team will sometimes hot seat our offices and let them work together. So really it's, I would say it's my most high level material that ever comes forward. And I think when you see behind   behind the curtain of what's happening in the Stockroom Master Room. Like I said, you get to attend, parts of it are recorded, but then I always do what's called the after party. The after party is where I feel like it's ⁓ Kiera unfiltered. ⁓ There are no cameras going, there's nothing being recorded, there's no AI bots allowed to be in there. It is literally Kiera unfiltered. And we will talk about where we think the world's going, what we think we need to be prepared for, what we think about political pieces.   These are things that honestly I will not publicly ever speak about and I only reserve them for our doctor mastermind. And the rules of it are there is no recording. And if I ever find out that people are recording, they will be immediately dismissed because we need a space in this world as business owners and as colleagues and as entrepreneurs to be able to speak freely, to be able to speak safely, to be able to share what's on our hearts, to be able to talk about team members without our team members being there. Team members don't worry, it's not in a negative way. It's truly like, hey, I'm struggling.   I don't know what to do with this and I need help. Because what I found is in business ownership, it can be so lonely. can be so just ⁓ sad, if you will. It can be like, gosh, I feel like I just need help. And so what we wanted is to create this space. Like I said, you're hanging out in my living room. We're having these ⁓ dinner conversations, if you will, of whatever's on your mind. And it's just, it's really fun. And I feel like it's, people have told me that they absolutely love being a part of Think Tank, because it's a space where people come and they,   They just, I feel like it's something where they just are able to be themselves. It's the first time you're not expected to be a doctor. You're not expected to be the one who knows everything. You're not expected to do X, Y, or Z. None of those things are an expectation. You're able to just show up and be. You're able to show up and feel safe. You're able to show up and just hang out. And so a lot of the pieces that we've been doing are, we also have like doctors. We have some of our elite doctors share secrets that they do in their practice. So.   people on how they do branding, other people on DSO conversations. We literally had a very ⁓ controversial think tank where we brought in and we talked to pros and cons of DSOs and should I sell to DSOs and what do people think and what are people navigating because it's so hard. It's hard to find out ⁓ like, what are we going to do and how are we going to do this? And like, what are the different pieces and what should I do and how do I navigate through this of people that truly are like-minded?   that are just like you. And so other things that we have are like wealth diversification. We're talking a lot about wealth and where we're going to go with wealth and how we're going to be able to do these things and multi practices. Should we do it or should we not do it? Should we, ⁓ how do we create one through 10 year plans? ⁓ Team conversations. Tiffany does an amazing job of talking leadership and hard conversations and ⁓ strategies like billing strategies again that we're not sharing on the podcast. And so really just showing you like behind the scenes we bring in.   We had a really awesome guest come in and talk to us about how to use resources and tools to hire better and get right people right seats. Talking about like, we have some authors that come and speak to us. We have some clinical dentistry. We have offices talk about how they're able to scale and grow and real talk. Like, what are we really afraid of? Like, what's really going on in our world? Let's talk about identity loss. Like, what happens when you stop having your practice? Like, what are you going to do there? And   just different zones, different areas. ⁓ Doctors who are really smart, we had a doctor come and chat with us about associate onboarding and how they're able to get their associates producing over a hundred grand like six to eight months into practice, like to hiring them. Like that's a huge feat that most aren't able to do. And this is straight out of school. And so sharing those tips, sharing those resources, ⁓ I think is one of the most valuable pieces of our consulting because... ⁓   business owner. attend Tony Robbins. I'm in Tony Robbins elite coaching where I literally have been to his house. There's about 40, 50 of us that go and I put myself in those circles to be able to bring back information to our group of things that like I'm working with multi-million billionaires across the board, rubbing shoulders with them, asking them of things, getting resources, figuring out like what are their VA companies that they're using for virtual assistants? How are they growing? How are they scaling? There's people in medical, there's people in real estate learning from   Ray Dalio speaking to us on wealth diversification, talking to really brilliant people to find out to make sure that I am living my best, highest self to then also bring back to our doctors. Our teams are bringing back things that they're hearing from offices to be able to bring their best pieces to help them create org charts and clarity and whatever it is, those are the pieces that we're bringing into our think tank. And like I said, being an owner.   Seeing this, I wanted people to truly figure out how can I do this? Like, can I, how can we create this? How can we build this? How can we sustain this? And so having that as a space every single month for our doctors. And some months I think we have better topics than others, but always the after party is a place where I feel like people really truly come to unite, to help each other, to grow. And I think it's just a really special place. So we have our, your specific practice consulting, then we have where we'll fly to your practice. And in that day and a half, had a   really awesome testimonial from a client. said, Kiera, Tiff, Britt, Dental A Team, what you guys are able to accomplish in a day and a half visit is what it usually takes me six to 12 months to accomplish. And I feel like that is something of just huge appreciation and gratitude because our consultants really do drive value. This is not an office that I consult, it's another consultant on our team. And I feel like just knowing that that's the value of us coming into your practice, like that's the ROI that I can't explain to you until you've experienced it. It is.   getting your whole team aligned, it's getting things in place, it's fixing little things that you didn't even know were a problem that we see in other offices that we can come execute and implement for you. And really getting your whole team aligned in such a fun, easy way. So we're working on doctor, we're working on leadership, we're working on case acceptance, we're working on getting team alignment, we're listening to hygiene exams, we're looking at your numbers and metrics. ⁓ And then what we're really doing is every single month we're assessing you as a person, your earnings and profitability and the systems and team development. What do we need to do based on those numbers?   And then in addition to that, we have one other fun thing behind the scenes curtain of our consulting where we actually come in person for these in-person doctor and office manager or leadership masterminds. And they are so special. These are really like being in a very intimate setting. So we cap it right now. It's around 50 people that we bring in and we we do life and business on purpose. And so we teach you how to do like the last time we taught people how to life map and how to look at their entire life, because we were like, how do I have time to do it all?   And it's like, let's actually teach you how to do it in a very strategic way. We did leadership hard conversations and how to make hard conversations easy. And we actually practiced with each other. So we actually lined up office managers and doctors from other offices and had them actually ask the questions and role play with someone who's not your person to give them feedback on how they could actually land these conversations better with their teammates and to have both doctor and office manager they're learning.   We did almost like speed dating where we had people go with other offices and ask their questions and give value. So it's always a give and receive within our community. We hot seated offices, so like your biggest pressing issues and had a group of people help you out on it. We had everybody like list off all the issues that they're dealing with in the practice and made this giant list of issues and actually started collectively as a group, solving it, sharing resources. And it was probably one of my favorite pieces of the entire event where we all worked together to solve.   We did a deep dive on the P &L and chart of accounts and teaching people how to look at them and saving for taxes and saving for their buckets and creating the fun in life and helping team members understand this as well. And just doing it in a really positive life on purpose, business on purpose. Like we had people tell us that those in-person masterminds were worth their entire year of consulting by the value that they got, the energy that they got, the... And then we do it a day and a half. Like we have five people in Thursday night, if they want to hang out, they do not need to.   We're there all day Friday and it's half day Saturday so you can fly home. We try to make it really awesome, really easy, really intentional, ⁓ but where it's high value. And then everybody hangs out Friday night together. We wanted it to be a networking opportunity and something really awesome that we did that I don't think a lot of other people do is we built it to where we had people's strengths. And so if I'm struggling with ⁓ office management leadership, we've literally listed off the office managers or the doctors that were there. And if they were really good at it.   who you should go talk to and made it really easy for people to network, to connect, to share ideas. We had AI innovation. Just again, things that are not shared publicly because I wanted, there's a zone where I want to give as much value to this world. There's also a zone of there's 10 % that I will never speak publicly about. It's a space where I want to hold it back for our clients, not because I don't want to share it, but because.   It's stuff of, it's maybe a little highly charged, ⁓ sharing opinions and doing it in a safe way where you know that you're not judged and that people want to hear the ideas and it's safe and it's a space for us to have deeper conversations, more in depth, working on your practice for you and really ensuring that we're driving your results. And so that hopefully is just like a sneak peek behind the curtain. And what does consulting look like? What do we do in these doctor masterminds? What do we do on these calls?   Like I said, it's always looking at your numbers. It's always looking at your systems, looking at you and your vision in your life and making sure we're getting the results for you. And like I said, collectively across the board, we're always giving at least a 30 % increase in production. Now again, some are higher, some are lower. You've got to show up to the table too. We are incredible at what we do, but it's a two-way street. You've got to be ready for it. It's just like, can't expect my gym trainer to get me six pack abs when I'm eating candy every single meal and I'm not working out. That's impossible. She gave me the plan. She gave me the map. She did everything she was supposed to.   I also have to show up. And so it's two way. But I think having someone there, having somebody who checks in on you, somebody who's not going to let you fail, somebody who's so committed to you and your results and your team on your side, it's a cheerleader behind the scenes. It's one of the greatest gifts I think we could ever give any business owner and team. And that's something I think that's just really special that sets the only team apart is we do this specifically for you.   and your team. We're not just expecting you to take everything back and go implement with your team. So we hear you in our doctor masterminds, we hear you in our visits and we get the whole team bought in as well. have implementation days to help your team get bought into it. That way it's not all on your shoulders, doctors. It's not all on your shoulders. And so I thought it would just be fun today of like what really happens in these mastermind calls, what really happens in these in-person events, what really happens when you fly to our practices. And what I will tell you is as a business owner, I believe in RO.   And so our team knows, we always say Dental A Team equals results. And our team has passion for excellence and results focused to make sure that you're getting the results you want, to make sure that we are delivering at the highest value. And I will tell you, it is magic to watch offices change. is magic to watch people get their lives back. It's magic to watch people get excited and reinvigorated over dentistry when they lost that passion and that sparkle of something that they loved so much. So that just inspires you. If you're like, gosh, I really am curious if I'd be a good fit.   Like I said, I'm really sticky on making sure that we have this great community of humans. Consultants are joining us from other consulting companies and like, Carrie, I don't know what you do. You bring in the best people. And I'm like, well, great. That makes me so happy. And it really is that I want people that are like-minded. I want people that are excited. I want people that want to give and to receive. I want people who are committed to themselves. I want people who want to live life on purpose, who want to do business on purpose, who, even though they don't know all the answers, they're not afraid to ask the questions. ⁓   that are willing to help their fellow neighbor to show up and to talk about things that aren't necessarily publicly talked about and to share opinions in a safe space and to hold space for one another with no judgment, but true like care and curiosity. I want people who know that there's a higher, a next level and they want to go for it. I want people who are curious about the future. I want people who ⁓ challenge and inspire. I want people and   As I say this list, you might be sitting there judging yourself unfairly and saying like, well, I'm not that person. And what I will say is, ⁓ you actually are that person. Because if you don't think you are, you probably are. And if you are that person that's like, yeah, this is me, this is what I want to do, you are also that person too. I found that 90 % of the people that we talked to are incredible fits. The only people who aren't great fits are those who are so egotistical and arrogant and rude to their teams that I'm like, thank you, but no, thank you, you're just not a great fit.   because I believe that I want people who are invested in their teams. I people who love dentistry, even if they don't love dentistry, but they love business. I want people that want to get to that next level. I want people that are hungry. I want people that love life and know that there's a better way and a higher way of living life. I want people who want to expand on their leadership and be their best leaders to show for their team and their families and themselves.   Those are the people. So that's your DNA. like, well, I just talked about, sounds fun and exciting. I'd love to chat with you. I truly would. I love meeting people. I love people on the podcast. And I love just giving you a space to feel safe, to feel seen, to feel heard, to feel like there's answers and solutions, to feel a lift in life, to feel like there's hope, to give you that silver lining and joy again. So if that fills and resonates with you, I'd love to have you join us. So reach out, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. Just know that we are committed to you, that we love you.   I think all of our consultants would say that they absolutely love their clients as humans and they're so proud of the work that they're doing. And I think it's just a very positive space. It's a very collaborative space and it's a very results focused space. ⁓ And so join us. I'd love to have you reach out. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team podcast.  

Tiff and Dana discuss how dental practices are being innovative in 2025, including A.I., apps, and other technologies that will streamline the busy work and help teams focus on being human. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:02) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. Dana and I are back here today. We are really excited. We just did actually a really fun podcast. think that was probably, I think Dana, I don't know. I think that was one of my favorite podcasts we probably ever recorded. I love that stuff. So Dana, thanks for being here. How are you today?   Dana (00:22) doing good excited to get you know I always I know I say this a lot but I truly am just excited to have some time.   The Dental A Team (00:29) Thank you. Thank you. I know I   actually I still have it on my mind. I need to put it in my click up click up organizer. You guys shout out to that. I need to get the soft skills training on there. So I was thinking about that a lot. So you make you make my day Dana. Thank you. I appreciate that. ⁓ You guys virtual teams are weird and they were like   It's just weird. But I think the weirdest part to me or the oddest part is how sincerely close I feel to everyone. Like Dana, I feel like we're best friends and we never get time together. Like the last time we had time together, truly the last time we had time together, I guess, was when we did the December, we did the shopping for the kids in December, the give back. Prior to that was like,   Disneyland last, that was two years ago, right? Two years ago, I think he's time flies, time freaking flies. So, but I feel like we were just together last weekend. Like it's weird. It's a weird thing that has come really far. So on that note, anyone who's considering a virtual team member, it can work really well. I mean, we've got Josh who's in the Philippines and I feel like I know that man. Like we've hung out together.   Dana (01:45) Thank   The Dental A Team (01:47) That's so weird. He's in the Philippines you guys it's nighttime when he's working for us And I'm like groggy just starting my day And he's already lived an entire day and his family sleeping like wild and I feel like I know   Dana (02:01) We know things about his baby girl. We know things about his wife, his band. And it's like he's not even in the country on the same time zone. It's just virtually over the computer. It's crazy. Yeah.   The Dental A Team (02:12) Yeah,   it is really crazy. It's insane to me how far things have come. I think it's really cool. think 2020, we're going to call it 2020, not the other word we could call it, did a lot for us in a lot of ways. There is a lot of bad, I will never just credit that, but I think it forced innovation. 2020 forced human innovation.   I think it was things that were already like in the works in the background or whatever, but it just pushed it to the forefront. And the innovation that has come in the last five years has been insane to me and the amount and what we've been able to handle and what we've been able to consume as humans is wild to me and working remotely and working on a virtual team is definitely something that came out of that. I remember, I remember Karen and I when everything first started happening.   We were like, shoot, okay, it is time to innovate or die, quite literally, innovate or die as a company, because things are drastically changing. Dana, we were in offices constantly, constantly. And then all of a sudden we were like, guess what? You're not allowed to leave the state. Actually, you can't even leave your house. Like don't breathe on anyone. Don't look at anyone. Like it was wild. And that was when,   Dana (03:22) Yes.   The Dental A Team (03:30) Kiera and I got on a call and we were like, what the heck? How do we continue to help offices? And that was when we switched and started doing so much virtual. And it really spun, like it worked really well. We had so many offices that during shutdown, we're doing a ton of training with us. We were building operations manuals and really prepping for reopening. But it also brought a space of like, holy cow, Tiff and Kiera cannot do this alone. Like it brought on so much.   And I think it just like speaks to the spiral of innovation that we've had in the last five years in our company and just in the country as a whole in the world realistically. But Dana, I'm so excited. You came not too far after our 2020 whirlwind of guess what? We're going to do everything by video now. And I was like, ⁓ crikey, here we go. This is going to be fun.   And you came on board with us. So thank you for being here. You have changed the game for us. And I know changed the game for so many of your clients. ⁓ And Dana continues to help us innovate constantly. It is something that she is really, really good at. is brilliant and just constantly thinking of another way, like, and then the, the, and then theory, like, yes, you can do that, but then also you could do this. I'm like, dang it. Thank you. So Dana, thank you for being here. ⁓   I don't know if you guys know this or not, a lot of our topics, we choose our topics, a lot of them, or we decide like, what are we gonna talk about today or what practice do we wanna highlight or chat about? then there are topics that are given to us that I can't really say that I don't have a lot of control on that because they're given to me at the beginning of the year, well, the end of the year for the beginning of the year.   And I go through them and I'm like, yes, these are fantastic topics. These are going to be great newsletters. Doctors are going to find a ton of value in this. And then as discussed about 15 minutes ago with Dana, I need to layer on top of that. This is the and then and say, how are we going to make a podcast about this? Because we have, we have run into that today. ⁓ but I'm really actually excited. We did our research, we did our due diligence and we've chatted about this a few times and   Speaking of innovations, there's been so many innovations everywhere that have helped dentistry just really take a new foothold in the scene of medical. And I think that you guys can all agree with that. Dentistry is one of the top survivors of 2020. And we're really thriving in this world. It's just never, never going away. So tons of innovations. We've talked about the tech. We talk about the tech a lot. actually did one, um, Dana, I did a podcast.   not too long ago with Christy about really getting dental assistants involved in the tech and the innovations there. And that was fun. And this one kind of, guess, is dental assistants too, but we really wanted to highlight some infection control innovations and not just like look at, oh, this is so cool. And, know, I don't know, when I started in 2003, we were doing this and now we're doing this. Like, I don't want to just dive into those, but I really want to talk about some things that are up and coming on the scene.   But with that said Dana thinking of my past and aging aging us both here. You're welcome Do you remember? Do you remember go walking into the room? No masks sometimes I had gloves like it was like whatever and dirty tray in one spot and just like spraying everything Everywhere to where you could barely breathe in that room. I remember I remember gosh   This must have been like 2006, 2007. I don't remember what happened, but something changed, right? With infection control. Do you remember stocking up on the Lysol cans? And like your whole office was like a cloud of Lysol. You couldn't even breathe. And now I'm, you know, curious to see what my lungs are gonna look like in the future and what Lysol really does to your lungs. But like, it's just so fun to look at.   Dana (07:30) Yep.   The Dental A Team (07:42) These are the things we used to do. I used to walk into an operatory with what was it called? What is it? It starts with a B. It's a Birex. I can see the bottle, the clear bottle with the green writing, yellow, you know, squirt, and just like squirting every surface I could possibly see. And then aerosoling with Lysol, walking away, coming back.   Dana (07:43) Hmm.   Pyrex, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.   This is... Yep. Everything. Yeah.   The Dental A Team (08:11) wiping it down with calvicide wipes, spraying it again, and then walking away and then walking in with a patient and being like, oh, let me dry that. And I'm drying the chair because there's still byracks on the chair or Lysol in the air and the patient's coughing. Dana, do you remember those days? I hope some of us do.   Dana (08:15) Yeah.   I do and   honestly too because I grew up like I was a child in a dental office a lot and I actually even remember when like gloves were optional.   The Dental A Team (08:35) That's right.   Yeah, I was like, I know what you're   gonna say. I know what you're gonna say. Yeah.   Dana (08:45) Yep, yeah, we're even gloves.   We're just kind of like an option for something.   The Dental A Team (08:50) Yeah. Do you remember   when they would say, well, this is more to protect me than it is to protect you. So that's why I don't wear them. I remember that too. I'm like,   Dana (08:56) Yeah. ⁓   I wash my hands. we're gonna like, I just think about it now all the time. I'm like, ⁓ my like, the places we have come.   The Dental A Team (09:05) ⁓ what we did.   places we   have come, the things we have done not knowing. hope there are so many of you out there laughing. I know that there are a lot of you out there that are like, what are they even talking about? Because you may not have even been born yet. So welcome to Jenna String. We're glad you're here. Just be happier. Be happier coming out of the scene now. ⁓ Anyways, some of the things that I have   Well, we looked up some things today, Dana, and some of the things that one thing I was really excited about something that you mentioned when we were chatting earlier. I want you to kind of talk about what you think, how you think ⁓ practices could really utilize this was one there's like up and coming on the scene. I don't think that there's anything really out there yet that's solid, but up and coming on the scene like automated ⁓ knowing automatically if a sterilizer needs to be ran or what.   write the sterilization pieces. So that's, that's looking really cool, the AI side of automating those types of things to keep a good schedule. But Dana, one thing that was on there that we were looking at was really like tracking those things and making it so that it is digitized. And I think that's massive, because these checklists that we create with practices, right, I have so many dentists that are like, well, cool, we've got like an end to day sheet, but like, what about their monthly? What about their weekly? What about the stereo?   strips. And as a dental assistant, I never remember to do those dang things. And when I did, I never looked at them, right? And I'm like, just having shine, take it, take it away. Tell me if it's good or not. Like, but these automated tools, I think will be super helpful. So Dana, what do you think? How do you think that innovation is really going to benefit practices? And how can they implement something like that right away, that they could truly automate some of these things?   Dana (10:53) Yeah, and I think it's really just doing some research and finding things that are definitely our companies out there who that have started and even in the AI platform where they're just automatically tracking your sterilization. They're automatically making sure that all of your sterilization batches that come out are.   are good and it's logging it for you with dates and paths and fail and, and all those pieces, which I think is just really, really super cool. I know that oftentimes when I get new offices, you know, they're like, well, how do I get my OSHA pieces in place? And how do I and having things like this that are just automated that like, what, what a cool tool and what cool things that I think we're seeing coming for dentistry in that area.   The Dental A Team (11:34) Yeah. Where do you feel like practices could ⁓ ramp up what they're doing now to automate it? Like, I feel like I'm thinking we use ClickUp for everything, which I mean, we have spent, I'm not going to lie. We spent a couple of years getting really good at ClickUp and we have a whole team working on it behind us, but something like that even, right? Where it's like sending these automated email reminders or there's apps out there.   Dana (11:45) Mm-hmm.   No.   The Dental A Team (12:01) with the Remind apps. I know the schools use a Remind app even, but there's like those ⁓ family calendar apps that text you when things are coming up. Like how can we be innovative without waiting for AI to get better or waiting for, you know, Elon Musk or someone to think of something incredibly crazy that no one's ever thought of, but how can we be innovative with the tools that we already have?   that maybe we're seeing people are just aren't really doing these things and they easily could.   Dana (12:31) Yeah,   and think some of it comes down to like that saying, know, know thyself and be free, right? Well, if you're somebody that needs automated reminders, find a way to do it. There's boomerang on your email that you can, you can simply just email yourself and say, sterilization test strip, right? And then you boomerang it to yourself every 10 days or every number of days that it's required for you in your area. And so I think just like finding ways things that are hard don't   typically have to be hard. You just have to find a way to make it easier. And there are so many.   things out there, software, resources, and oftentimes too, like they're even cost effective or there's no cost, right, for some of these too. And so I think it is finding the pieces that are hard for you to keep track of, and then find something, whether it is a management tool or whether it is just a reminder system or whether it is one of these AI ⁓ pieces that are coming or are here. I think it really just is looking and figuring out how you can pivot.   and how you can use the technology that is around you because man, just, the things that are at our fingertips to make things easy and to help with the things that we kind of like just hit our heads on the wall against every single day, they're here and even more is coming and it's really cool.   The Dental A Team (13:54) I couldn't agree more. I have so many systems set up. I tell my practices constantly. Like I my memory, I my memory has never been super fantastic. I remember the things I want to remember, I suppose. Right. But I have so many like I have it down to like, in my calendar, it'll say like, don't forget to leave for your hair appointment. Last Friday, like you've got to drive, right? You got so many pop ups and reminders, then I'll set. I'll just set simple alarms with a label on my phone sometimes that   we'll make sure that I remember to do that off the wall thing. I think you're right, Dana, that we, I think we tend to overcomplicate things. And we try, we try to tell ourselves that we don't, we're not smart enough, or we don't know the thing, or that's not my space, right? I'm not a tech person. I'm not a techie person, but I can tell you, there are plenty of techie people out there that have created systems that I can use.   as a template to create it to be and work however I need it to work for me so that no, they saw me true. You're 100 % spot on with that. I know that I need these reminders. And so I look for the tools that will help me do that. I think making sure doctors, practice owners, leaders, making sure you guys remember you don't have to be the ones that think of this for everyone else. had...   a call yesterday, Dana, with a group of managers that are near and dear to my heart. I've been working with these ladies for years, gosh, like, I think since 2018. And I love them. They're so fantastic. But one of the questions yesterday was like, what do I do when they just keep forgetting to do the thing I asked them to do? And I'm like, well, one, right, Dana, make sure that you've got a date set. And like you said, like a reporting back system, you said that earlier on a different podcast. But also, Dana, don't   You believe I know you teach this to like, I don't need to be the one that creates the system for you to make sure you get it done. If I take that autonomy and that creativity from you, you're likely going to forget, right? Yeah.   Dana (15:55) Mm-hmm. Yeah, I agree with   you. And I think team members know themselves.   Hands down better than you do as leaders or or we do as your coach and so sometimes I'm like just sit down and ask them like what can we put into place? What do you think will help you? What do you think we can do to support or what system do you think that we can build in? That's because not everybody is a checklist person Sometimes people need reminders on their phones. Sometimes people need reminders on the schedule. Sometimes people need Something that comes to them via email whatever it is, but oftentimes team members because they know themselves better than   anyone can come up with something that will actually truly work versus the 30 things we throw at them trying to solve it.   The Dental A Team (16:37) I totally agree with you. Totally agree with you. And that's, that's been helpful in my life for me to be able to have that autonomy and, be empowered to create what's going to work for me. And one of the biggest spaces there is, and then this comes to like the infection control things too, like what's the result we're after. If we know the result we're after, we are, we are very smart beings. We are insanely intellectual. If we know the result we're after,   likely we can come up with a plan to get us there. We just, we have to be given that space and the availability to be able to do that. So I think it's huge. think, gosh, Dana, like this little, I mean, we both have these notes up here that we're like, gosh, there are some really cool things coming down the pipeline. Like they sound awesome. Automated waterline disinfection system. Like, holy cow, that's so cool. If you have this, please write it and tell us more about it. Like,   I know there's so many things that have come out of the last five years and just watching these startup companies or companies that are just starting to do this new thing, watching them do this and jump onto the scene has just been really, really cool. I think do some research, you guys. There's some cool things in here that we don't know enough about to.   go on tangents with, but it is really amazing. And staying on top of that, staying in the forums, I know we've got our doctor forum that's constantly asking questions around things like this and constantly innovating and thinking of new things, but realistically, bottom line, make sure that it's getting done. Make sure that you know what the standards are that you're supposed to keep when it comes to infection control. Those standards, those are your goals. Give them to your team. Your team's really smart. And guess what? Most of us.   Right? Have teams that are way younger than us today. Shelby, shout out to Shelby. Shelby taught these old dogs a trick. That's not a new trick. It's a trick that we forgot about because we didn't have a reminder system for it. But Shelby, Shelby innovates like crazy. She is a solution master. She is a problem solver. And I think it's just that generation's way of   being they were raised with the internet, they were raised with these tools at their disposal and they know how to use them. We were not raised with these tools at our disposal. They came onto the scene while we were growing up and we learned to use them as they they were learning us, you know, and trust these team members to figure some of this stuff out and automate things for you. Simplify, create the systems that are going to work like let them work with these these things. I've seen   not only Shelby, but I've seen so many practices thrive because these young minds are thinking of some incredible, incredible things. And Dana, I'm sure you're saying the same things in your practices.   Dana (19:37) yeah, yeah, and you know, team members sometimes come with great ideas, they come with great resources, sometimes team members, you know, go do research and find something that will solve an issue that's happening and it is really...   need to see from an outside perspective, just how many changes are here, how many changes are coming and the pieces that technology bring. And you're right, younger team members tend to embrace them, ⁓ and find them.   The Dental A Team (20:07) Yeah, I agree. I agree. I call them, you know, the smarter, they're smarter. Those kids running around just thinking of everything and like, dang it, you know, I need that. But we all have our own things that we do really well and I make reminders really well. So that's what I'm gonna be super proud of today. So you guys, I told you, we have some really fun ones. Today was actually really fun. Innovations in infection control, like,   you guys innovate or die yourselves. Where is it? Maybe an infection control, maybe in anywhere else that's honestly driving you a little bit bad. Maybe we're forgetting the stereo strips. Maybe we're forgetting to the lines. Maybe we're forgetting to change the traps and our compressors are getting overworked. Like all of those spaces. What is it? Maybe we're forgetting to wipe things down or whatever it is. Where can we build in some automation? Because today's innovation is reminding you   that there's an automation for everything. So what is it that's driving your nets? What is it that's not getting done so your result isn't getting met? And then what can we create? What system can we create and put in a place that's going to get us there? Dana, thank you so much for taking this wild journey with me today. We've had some really fun podcasts. has been really enjoyable. I would not want to have done this with anyone else. So thank you, Dana, for spending your afternoon with me.   Dana (21:31) Yep, always fun.   The Dental A Team (21:33) Always an adventure with Tiff. All right, guys. Thank you listeners for being here. Whether you are a current Dental A Team client, a future client, or someone who is just here to listen, we love all of you guys. You are near and dear to our heart. We hope that you enjoy every podcast, but we hope you took some nuggets away from today. Please, as always, leave us a five-star review. Let us know what you thought.   And if you have some innovations, write into us. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. If there are things that other people need to know about, put it in your review as well. People really do read them. And also look for our doctor forums on Facebook or on Instagram. And then if you are a client, make sure that you're in our client only space as well so that you can help everyone innovate in their practices too. And that's a wrap. Thanks guys. We'll catch you next time.

Growing your practice can be incredibly exciting, but incredibly intimidating. Kiera tells listeners how they can scale with confidence by giving specific questions to ask yourself. These include: Are your systems running smoothly? Are your teams aligned and accountable? Do you have a clear data back-growth plan? And more! Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera. And today I'm super jazzed because I feel like this is such a great question that so many offices ask me of like, okay, Kiera, how do I know that my practice is ready for the next level? How do know I'm ready to add in more team members? How do I know I'm ready to add an associate? How do know if I'm ready to add another location? And I feel like so many of these things sit in our brains and we're always wondering like, how do you know? It's like, how do you know when you're ready for the next baby?   but instead of like babies, which like really, how do you really know? There are certain things to know or how do you know if you're ready to get married? Well, there are certain things actually. So let's take some of that guesswork out, make this a little bit more fun and have a great time on today's podcast. I'm excited and I hope you're excited. The Dental A Team was built for doctors. It's built for team members. That's why it's called Dental A Team. It's consulting for dentists and teams. I hate as a business owner where people just teach me and I have go try and take it back to my team.   but I love being taught, I love being focused and I love having high level and then I love having implementable things for my team, but from someone who's been there, done that and done that successfully. So that's what we've created. We have a space for doctors and CEOs and entrepreneurs to come and get together like-minded where we're talking high level. This is where I come into play. We have fun, we have business freaking tactics. We call it Think Tank Tuesday and we literally get all together and have a great time. And then we have our in-person mastermind where we're doing the same thing as business and life on purpose.   And then we have our consultants, including myself, our consultants then work with your team. We're going to be teaching your team members how to make your vision a reality, how to scale, how to have the conversations. I say we're like little fairy godmothers for your team members, where we literally are hanging out with them to help them know the resources and the easiest path to get the results they're looking for. That's what we're obsessed about. That's what we do for offices. And I hope that we're a part of your office. And if not, I hope we're apart really, really soon. All right, you guys, let's dig into how do we scale with confidence?   Because growth is super freaking exciting. Like, oh my gosh, we're growing. But back to me, when I first started, we were 500,000 to 2.4 million in nine months in my first location. We bought our second location and you better believe it was fire. And fire is exciting, but it burns hot. And it got hotter and hotter and hotter. And it was because I didn't have a plan. We just were like, sweet, we're at this amount. So let's buy our second location. And it became mayhem and it became crazy. And so it's one of those things of like fires can be beautiful and we can sit there and roast s'mores.   But fires can also be very, very volatile. They can destroy, they can burn fast and they can burn hot. And so this is a zone where if we have a plan, we're going to do really well. If not, we get burnout, we get turnover, we get stalled progress. We actually get sloppy. We actually could fall into really scary things. Like for us, it was full blown burnout. I was on burnout or my owner was on burnout. We were working from 2 a.m. till 10 p.m. every single day. ⁓ Our marriages were falling apart. Like everything was bad. Everything. It was not good.   and we would show up to work just to feel like we were like barely, like nose barely above water, but you better believe there's water getting into that. And so this is something where I really wanted to come on today of how do you know and how can we scale with strategy? How can we scale and know that we're ready for the next level? Because if I would have known this, I would not have bought my second practice. I would have optimized my first practice. I would have put a few more things into place and then bought the second location. But you know, I was young, dumb, I was reckless. We were just like.   We can do this. did the first one, but the first one wasn't like barely hanging on. We had two pending lawsuits on us. Like there were wild things going on, but yet shoot. I think that sometimes it's good to have a little bit of naive, ⁓ but I think it's more important to have a good plan and a good process. So this is the goal. It's not about adding ops and team members. It's truly about making sure our foundation's awesome, making sure that we know what we're doing, making sure we've got a good plan and then executing it. And that does not mean it needs to take a long time. You can scale very quickly, just making sure you have a few key places.   And I like to tell people our goal is to get flagship practice number one solid. We stamp it out and then we just stamp it out, map it out. We have a few nuances that we change based on location and demographics, but generally speaking, it's about the same thing. ⁓ $1 million, one practices versus multi millions, multi practices, multi ops, two very different models of business. So on that, this is what we love to do today. This episode is really for owners and offices asking the question of what's next, but scaling smart.   not fast and also looking at like the DSO landscape of where we headed. Do I DSO? Do I grow? I have a practice and what they were thinking about doing is they're thinking of selling out to a DSO. And I said, cool, but like, what's your plan? I'm like, I still want to keep doing dentistry. And I said, all right, let's look at the numbers. And what was wild is a DSO is going to pay this practice 5 million. And right now you might be like, dude, that's so much. Like I'd sell in a second, like one more bad day and like give me the DSO's number. calling them.   But we looked at and I said, all right, let's expand out a couple more ops, which you've already been thinking about doing. And realistically in the next one to two years, like that's what the DSO is going to do. They're going to come in, they're going to expand this out. So either you can sell to them and live here and do it with them, or you can do it before that. And literally we did that. And this practice in two years is making 5 million net profit. And I think about that because it seems so tempting to sell to the DSO and how it's like, but you're giving up all of this. And if we just had a quick plan.   This doctor now is working about two days a week. They have associate doctors in place. They have this beautiful building and they're looking for the next expansion piece. Beyond Happy, this is their plan. And they're literally making more than they would have with the DSO. And so just be careful, because I think sometimes DSOs can seem so sexy and alluring when we're having bad days. You better believe it. There have been days when I'm like, someone walks by and offers me a buck for Dental A Team. They get it, right? We all have those days as business owners. That's not a joke. It's real life. But I think this is where we can like,   not make reactive decisions, but actually figure out how we wanna scale. And what I will always say is when we scale and what's next, I want you to always ask the question of what do I want in my life and what do I want my life to look like? Because we can scale. You can have 10 practices and say, only wanna work one day a week. That's totally allowed. It's just a different strategy. Or you can say, wanna be a clinician. I love doing the dentistry. Again, different strategy. I was on an on-call yesterday with a potential client and they were like, Garrett, we need systems. We need to have help with our finances.   our financials and we also need help training our team. And I was like, rock on, that's right up our alley. And at the very end of the call, I said, Hey, is there anything else you feel like I should, I need to know? they're like, well, yeah, we're considering selling in a year. And I was like, wow, that changes the entire plan of what I would do because I would not be building all the systems if we're planning to sell in a year. I'm going to be cranking your EBITDA. We're going to be working on case acceptance, adding production to this practice to make sure we're getting top dollar for the sale while also making it easy and enjoyable to live there at the same time. So one of those things of   where you want to go and what your North Star is, radically changes your question of what's next. It's what's next based on what you want to do. So when we look at this, I really want you to think about and look at these pieces of what's next. And again, some of these things might change depending upon what your next is. If we're selling to a DSO, it looks very different than if we're building a legacy practice. So just know a lot of these pieces might be dependent upon where you want to go.   So number one, I think this is a great thing. If you want to grow, you want to add another practice, you want to add more ops, you want to add more team members, you want to grow to the next level financially, is make sure your systems are truly running without you. So you don't need to be there in every single decision. Doctor, you don't have to be answering, signing off on what are we ordering? We don't want to be signing off on payroll. We literally have built this delegation ladder. We have team leads in place. The systems are running where the team can execute daily. We have end of day checklists. We're not having to look over every single thing.   We have checklists of what people need to be doing. It's very clean. People are in the right seats. They know what they're doing. We have clear operations manual built out for scheduling, billing, case acceptance, hygiene, all these different areas of our practice. It's clear. We have it mapped. We have documented systems that are followed by all. So not just documented, but truly followed by all. ⁓ And honestly, it's something where doctors, would recommend, a fun thing. You're welcome. I'm giving you a vacation. You leave for two weeks.   I want you to leave the practice for two weeks. And when you're gone, I want you to see that practice thrive while you were gone. Did it barely survive? Was the team able to make decisions without you? What systems fell apart and let's fix that. This is something where doctors are always a little nervous to take time off for production. Yes. But I say it is absolutely essential and crucial doctors that you take time, you leave the practice so you can actually find out what's breaking down. Same thing with office managers and leads. We need them to leave. We need you out. And what's wild is when offices, I see them. So for example, I have a doctor.   They usually take about two to three weeks up in the summer. They usually take two to three weeks off in the early spring. And it's awesome. And what happens is on those months, production doesn't The practice doesn't fall apart. The office manager is able to execute the way the doctor would execute. Team culture runs the exact same, whether the doctor's there or not. And that to me is a sign of your systems are not dependent upon you. So if you want to do a stress test, rock on. Prep your team. don't just like spring it on them. That doesn't usually go well.   but stress test and go for two weeks and see what happens to your practice. And then also look to see when you go around and you're doing your CEO time, let's rate every single department in our practice on a one to 10 of how are they doing? Could they run this without you? Do they know what they need to do? Are we hitting the KPIs that we need to hit? And if not, do we need to put some systems into place that can run independent of you? So that would really be a good stress test of go on vacation and also rate your departments and see where maybe our system is lacking. Now.   I will also put a word of caution because a lot of times doctors, are very meticulous. That's why you're dentists. That's why you're working on that little box on the MO and you do so well with your very, very, very, very fine skills because that's what you do day in and day out. A lot of offices are actually ready to scale with their systems. Being systematized where it runs without you does not mean perfect. And I really want you to hear me loud and clear. It is not about being perfect. It's about being scalable and that this can run without you and that you're really able to move things forward. So.   A lot of people get stuck and they don't grow because like, don't have every system in place. No, we're talking that like the bulk of your KPIs are able to be hit. The bulk of our systems are able to follow. The culture doesn't dip when you're gone. Production doesn't dip when you're gone. ⁓ But you might be more ready than you think you are. So be careful. There's a second side to it. Make sure that we're good on that rather than just being like, ⁓ my systems will never be perfect. Cause honestly, systems will never be done. Your practice will never, ever, ever, ever, ever be done. But that doesn't mean it's not time to scale. So that's your system's text. Number two.   Teams aligned and super accountable. So this is different than the top one because it's about systems running. But when the teams align, this is us hitting our KPIs. So we have leads in place. They own their area. They own their numbers. They hit their metrics consistently. We literally have a weekly leadership meeting. Even if that's just your whole team, we're hitting our metrics. We're reviewing our wins and we're all staying accountable to it. So this is what we're looking for is team high level accountability. If we say we're going to do it, we follow through. If we say we're going to get this KPI, we do it. If we say we set this goal, we hit this goal.   And honestly, a big piece of that is we're not having a ton of turnover. So that's helping me know that your practice is stable. Your team is stable. We're hitting these KPIs. So if you're not tracking your data, you're not tracking your numbers, you have no clue. I would strongly advise not growing and adding more ops because all it does is it just makes the chaos even bigger. Trust me, I did it. I had no numbers. I had no KPIs. I had no accountability. I had no team members reporting up. And then all of sudden my problems doubled because now I had a second location and none of this was in place. I will tell you, it is a train wreck. You can get through it.   but it is not fun and I almost didn't get through it. So for this is just make sure that we have our leads, make sure that they're reporting. And I have a practice who started doing this and they were around like 3 million ish and they grew to 5 million, but just been putting their numbers in every single week, their leadership teams looking at their numbers, they're making adjustments every quarter. We're setting goals for them and we follow and that's just happening in one year. So exponential growth can happen and be careful because you can actually squeeze more juice out of your lemon.   in your current practice by even following these steps. So this can be growth internally. It's kind of like a house, right? Like we can go buy a new house or we can just make our house even more awesome. There was an office that I knew and they literally were like, we can go buy another house, but why don't we just invest the money here? And they've made their house this incredible oasis, made it even better. They have even more fun. That's something that you can do in your practice too. So don't, don't worry. It doesn't mean have to sell. doesn't mean you have to scale. It doesn't mean you have to have multi-practices. It doesn't mean you have to expand.   It means you could even do this within your practice, looking at these pieces will exponentially help you grow to the next level with ease. Number three that you're ready for is you have a clear data back growth plan. So we're looking at this and we're making sure that like, our KPIs are tracking and that we are profitable and we have the right patient flow to be able to grow. We have the right team members. We have a pipeline in place to bring on another doctor. We have a pipeline in place to have more hygienists coming in. Like we are not going to get stuck in that area.   We have an office manager or regional manager that has the bandwidth to be able to go. Our billing team is very consistent. Our collections sit at 98%. ⁓ And then what we have from here is we're going to have a scaling growth plan. So when I work with offices, we had a doctor reach out. They were at a four ops practice and they're going to an eight, they thought, and we pushed them to a 10. I asked them, are you so glad we went to a 10? And they said, Kiera, the answer is yes. I thought you were crazy. And I was like, nope, you will never regret having more ops. But they started with us. So we're talking four ops to 10 ops. And what we did before is we literally started with this practice.   about 12 months before they expand and we started putting together the plan of, all right, we're gonna start saving money. This is how much it's gonna cost. This is how many team members we're going to need. So let's start building the pipeline for it. We're going to need a doctor at this point in time. So you're gonna need to start working on that. We're gonna be meeting with the contractors. We're going to be expanding this out. And honestly, this doctor is so happy because they have the cash. So when they built it out, they weren't cashflow stressed. They had a new patient plan to grow. They had a plan for a new doctor. We had associate onboarding documents in place for them. We had a hygiene pipeline.   We had the new patient plan. We had the doctor's plan of what procedures this doctor was going to do. And literally this doctor was like, well, another building just came up. Do you think that I'm ready for it? They had just opened the 10 ops. And I said, well, the answer is I actually think you are pretty well ready for it because we had the KPIs. We were tracking the pieces. We had a plan and we did this for almost 12 months. There's another office that was bringing in a partner. And for 12 months, we figured out how much is their true pay of true compensation.   We worked through all those different pieces for them. So that way when the partner bought in, it wasn't this chaos for them. And I think this data-backed growth plan of knowing what the reality is of how much your expenses will be, having things in place, having your reserves, your financial reserves, that's going to make it to where you are not stressed out of your mind when you take this on. Because cashflow, resources, not having enough money.   That's going to cause chaos. That's going to cause frustration. This is going to cause like, oh my gosh, I don't think I can do this. Then on top of it, you have systems. Then on top of that, you have team members that aren't accountable. And you're like, oh my gosh, I now have like 25 team members and it's so stressful. And like, I wish I never would have bought the second practice or I wish I never would have expanded. And I'm like, it's not that you wish you would never would have expanded. You wish you would have just done it differently. That's what it is. You wish you would have just done it differently. You wish you would have had a plan in place. You wish you would have had the cashflow for it.   Because it does take, like when we expand out, I told this doctor, said, I want you to plan three to six months of reserve of cash of covering all these expenses. So we're building up, building up, building up. They were very profitable at the beginning, like very profitable on this for-off practice. They just were expanding it they were too stuck. Like they had no more space. Same thing with my other practice. They were eight and they went to 15 ops. They were just stuck. But if you don't plan for these pieces, I said, I want you to have three to six months worth of cashflow.   when you go into whether we're getting that as a loan or working capital or you're building this up over the next couple of months while we build this out, these doctors are so secure. And then what we do is once we expand it, know that we know the metrics that we need to hit to be able to pay for all these expenses that we just put into place, still give a great patient experience, still give great case acceptance, still give great exams, still give great hygiene, so we're not sitting here stressed out of our minds, we're having to do all these pieces.   because my gosh, we just bought this so now like sell as much as we possibly can because I'm stressed out of my mind. It takes all that stress out for these doctors and it really makes it to where they reverse engineer and we figure out staffing, space, systems, finances, protocols, when do we do this, how do we build this out? And it's wild because when you have someone who can coach and guide you through that, it's insane how much better prepared you are. Also with these doctors.   We squoze the juice out before they expand it. So how can we maximize and optimize? I another doctor who had four ops. Like, here there's no space. I'm building this building across the street. It was a beautiful building. And I'm like, but you actually have space for one more op in this practice. And they're like, what? Why didn't you come four months earlier? And I was like, well, hi. So we added another op, even in the time they were building the practice, we spent the money on it. And it's crazy because that one op produced about $400,000 $500,000 in just one year in that one extra op.   We were then able to take that money and obviously apply it to the next building and they were able to maximize that space that they were in. So looking at that reverse engineering is really going to give you clarity. And so when we look at these three strong signs of you're ready to grow with strong systems in place, team accountability, and then a clear plan forward that you're planning for, you're preparing for, you're executing on, and this is going to truly help you have confidence. Confidence comes from being prepared. Confidence comes not from being perfect.   Confidence comes from, know where I'm headed, we've got these pieces. And I tell every single doctor we work with, I'm like, listen, we're gonna do our absolute best to plan and repair. We're gonna do our absolute best to get the numbers in place. There will be things we forget every single time, because we're not perfect. But the antidote to fear is action. The antidote to fear is having a plan. The antidote to knowing if you're ready to go is to be prepared in these areas. And so I really think when you look at this, like, don't have to guess if I should go.   Don't guess and be like, Kara, where it's like, we've got the first one, let's just add on a second one. You're welcome to, it's just a thrill of a lifetime that I think adds more burnout, more stress, more chaos than necessary. And I'm like, you can have the same growth, you can have the same scalability, just with more strategy, more fun and more predictability. So if you're interested in about it, don't guess, like just DM us. We have ideas to how to scale, we have different pieces you can DM us scale, you can say like, hey, I'm thinking about this, how do I know? We'll get on a complimentary practice assessment with you.   give you like complimentary advice, truly, we're gonna help you build a plan and see how we can fit, how we can help you. But really, if you're thinking about it before you sell to a DSO, even this practice I was talking to, I was like, listen, there's other options because we work with hundreds of practices, we see different scenarios, this is why we get our doctors together, is because the more we learn and the more we educate each other, the better decisions you're able to make. Do not be paralyzed by fear and not make a decision, because what's worse than making a wrong decision is not making a decision. So make the decision.   Execute and truly let us be your guide get a guide guide through it. It makes it so much easier You're able to scale faster not be stressed out and really this is what we excel at This is what we're great at so reach out Hello@TheDentalATeam.com comm click on our link on TheDentalATeam.com podcast Make sure you're following along for more tips and tricks because our goal is to make your life less stressful More fun and more predictable and as always thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team podcast