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In this Ask Me Anything episode, Dr. Will Cole and his clinical team answer your top health questions - from the safety of Invisalign retainers and peptide protocols to long COVID recovery and gut health support. Plus, Dr. Cole breaks down the poop talk you didn't know you needed. For all links mentioned in this episode, visit www.drwillcole.com/podcast.Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.Sponsors:Take proactive care of your health and head to OPositiv.com/WILLCOLE or enter WILLCOLE at check out for 25% off your first purchase.For 20% off your first purchase visit linnebotanicals.com/willcole.Shop now at weareohho.com and use code WILLCOLE for 20% off.Get your free sample pack at DrinkLMNT.com/artoeingwell. Timeline is offering my audience a 20% discount on all first time purchases at timeline.com/willcole. Produced by Dear Media.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Kevin and Zach are joined by star hygienist Maryann McFarland. They kick things off with a competitive discussion about their favorite games, from Maryann's professional-level Scrabble skills to Zach's past as a ranked online poker player. The conversation then shifts to the clinical topic of the day: how Maryann champions the Invisalign workflow in the practice. She provides a masterclass on her process, detailing every step from initial patient contact and leveraging in-office marketing to using photos on a big-screen monitor, discussing financials, and performing the digital scan—all while emphasizing the crucial role of teamwork and efficiency. Key Takeaways: Empower the Hygiene Team: A trained and motivated hygienist can be the primary driver for Invisalign cases, from the initial conversation to the digital scan, freeing up the doctor's time and boosting production. A System Creates Efficiency: The practice utilizes a highly systematic, team-based approach. While one person engages the patient, others prepare financial plans or manages imaging in the background, eliminating bottlenecks and making the process fit within a standard appointment. Visuals Drive Acceptance: Using large, high-quality photos on a monitor is a powerful tool. Showing patients their own crowding, wear, or abfractions and then asking, "Are you happy with your smile?" is more effective than just describing the problem. Make it Easy to Say Yes: Streamline the financial conversation by having payment options prepared in advance. Presenting clear solutions immediately after the patient expresses interest removes a major barrier to starting treatment. Create Urgency (and Follow Up): Offering to scan an interested patient on the spot capitalizes on their motivation. For those who need to think about it, sending them home with a signed financial plan and following up creates a clear path to starting their case. Join the Very Dental Facebook group using the password "Timmerman," Hornbrook" or "McWethy," "Papa Randy," "Lipscomb" or "Gary!" The Very Dental Podcast network is and will remain free to download. If you'd like to support the shows you love at Very Dental then show a little love to the people that support us! -- Crazy Dental has everything you need from cotton rolls to equipment and everything in between and the best prices you'll find anywhere! If you head over to verydentalpodcast.com/crazy and use coupon code “VERYDENTAL10” you'll get another 10% off your order! Go save yourself some money and support the show all at the same time! -- The Wonderist Agency is basically a one stop shop for marketing your practice and your brand. From logo redesign to a full service marketing plan, the folks at Wonderist have you covered! Go check them out at verydentalpodcast.com/wonderist! -- Enova Illumination makes the very best in loupes and headlights, including their new ergonomic angled prism loupes! They also distribute loupe mounted cameras and even the amazing line of Zumax microscopes! If you want to help out the podcast while upping your magnification and headlight game, you need to head over to verydentalpodcast.com/enova to see their whole line of products! -- CAD-Ray offers the best service on a wide variety of digital scanners, printers, mills and even their very own browser based design software, Clinux! CAD-Ray has been a huge supporter of the Very Dental Podcast Network and I can tell you that you'll get no better service on everything digital dentistry than the folks from CAD-Ray. Go check them out at verydentalpodcast.com/CADRay!
If there's a topic that you are not likely to find any consensus about in the orthodontic world, it's which clear aligner to use in your practice.Perhaps the reason for this is because, as clinicians, we want to be the best at what we do and what we use, and in the process, we get very attached to one aligner over the other. In this episode, I am joined by Dr. Bill Dischinger and Dr. Trevor Nichols to talk everything about clear aligners. They are key opinion leaders for Spark, but if you know anything about these two gentlemen, you know that this won't make a difference in their opinion about this topic. But one point we all emphasize in this episode that should guide all orthodontists is that we are not in the teeth business but in the people business.We must be ready to embrace whatever technology or product that will help deliver excellent clinical outcomes to our patients with fewer visits and lesser time. Tune In!Key TakeawaysIntro to Dr. Bill Dischinger and Dr. Trevor Nichols (00:32)Spark vs Invisalign aligners (09:53)Aligners and brackets (16:24)Treating severe cases with aligners (19:54)Where Spark excels (21:54)Finishing cases with Spark (28:44)Having aligner days in your practice (37:11)How aligners and DentalMonitoring saves time for doctors and patients (41:42)The fallacy that exists among orthodontists (44:32)The why of orthodontics (48:36)“With Dental Monitoring, we're delivering better care than we ever have. We see these patients on a weekly basis. And if you don't know how Dental Monitoring works, I would really encourage you to find out. It has changed my life.” Dr. Bill Dischinger “There's this fallacy among orthodontists, and I don't know why, that we need to see patients more rather than less.” Dr. Glenn Krieger “We're not in the teeth business, we're in the people business.” Dr. Trevor NicholsAdditional ResourcesWant to connect with orthodontists who believe in lifting each other up?Come to the final Orthopreneurs Summit in Las Vegas this September. Trust me—it'll be the most impactful event you've ever attended. Go to opSummit2025.com and grab your spot today.- For more information, visit: https://orthopreneurs.com/- Join our FREE Facebook group here:https://www.facebook.com/groups/OrthoPreneurs
It's the 11th running of the Race For the Future in Fort Worth, TX on September 14, 2025. This is YOUR chance to make a difference in a industry we all love so much. Important links: All the money goes to The Foundation For Dental Laboratory Technology: https://dentallabfoundation.org/ All about the Race: https://dentallabfoundation.org/news-events/race-for-the-future/ Race website: https://fortworth.californiatriathlon.org/ TO DONATE: https://fdlt.memberclicks.net/donor-form#/ Select: Race for the Future Enter the name of the racer you want to support: BARB WARNER or THE CROWN JEWELS Enter the amount (One Million Dollars) It's hard to believe that IDS 2025 happened over 4 months ago and we are still bringing out conversations we got while at the exocad booth. This one is jam-packed with three conversations with 4 different people in the dental industry that really are making huge impacts. First up is two dentist that are using their time and talent to teach other clinicians from around the world how to implement the digital workflow in their practice. Dr. Milad Shadrooh (The Singing Dentist!) and Dr. Robbie Hughes are from opposite ends of England but both share the passion of education. They talk about their careers, what kind of courses they offer at Avant Garde Dentistry (https://www.avantgardedentistry.co.uk/) and how through a mentorship program, dentist can go digital both efficiency and confidently. Then we meet the CTO of Align Technologies (https://www.aligntech.com/), Zelko Relic. Zelko talks about getting into dental, the history of Align Technologies and when they merged in Invisalign (https://www.invisalign.com/), Itero (https://itero.com/), and exocad (https://exocad.com/). He also talks about the resources they put towards R&D, scaling a company to make over 1 million parts A DAY, what new technologies are currently being worked on, and how they are making the ultimate in providing the comprehensive solution to all. We wrap up the episode with Ben Weber from ModuleWorks (https://www.moduleworks.com/). What is ModuleWorks, well it's kind of hard to explain. You see, it's in about 90% of the manufacturing in the world. It's not the CAM, it's not the user interface, but it's in the background making it all come together. Ben talks about what ModuleWorks is, how it works, and why we can't live without it. Take it from Jennifer Ferguson from Ivoclar. If you have a PM7 (https://www.ivoclar.com/en_us/products/digital-equipment/programill-pm7) or are thinking about getting a PM7 (Take it from Barb, you should), Ivoclar had launched the "Ivoclar Block Module" that can speed up milling emax (https://www.ivoclar.com/en_us/products/digital-processes/ips-e.max-cad) by 45%!! The best part is that you can try it for FREE for 90 days. Al l you have to do is send them a message on Instagram at Ivoclar.na (https://www.instagram.com/ivoclar.na/) or send a email to jennifer.ferguson@ivoclar.com. Now go mill emax faster! Special Guests: Ben Weber, Dr. Milad Shadrooh, Dr. Robbie Hughes, and Zelko Relic.
Dr. Teodorina Secara este medic primar ortodonție și ortopedie dento-facială, fondatoarea clinicii Northo de ortodonție, cu o investitie de peste 650.000 euro, primul si singurul medic din Romania cu certificare diamond pentru aparatele invisalign. Este membru fondator al Asociației de Ortodonție Linguală din România, a urmat stagii de pregătire în clinici din SUA, Germania, Spania si Italia. A facut peste 60 de cursuri internaționale de perfecționare, in tari precum: Franta, Grecia, Italia, Africa de Sud, Coreea, Elvetia, Ungaria. NORTHO este o clinică unică, premium, de ortodonție avansată, integral digitalizată, creată în slujba pacienților.
In this episode, Kevin and Zach return from a hiatus and catch up on their summer adventures before introducing a special guest: Kevin's hygienist, Maryann McFarland. Maryann shares her journey through a 32-year career in hygiene, from a frustrating first job in a "prophy mill" to finding her work home in Kevin's practice. She discusses how embracing new challenges like sleep apnea treatment, clear aligner therapy, and administering local anesthesia has reinvigorated her passion for dentistry and transformed her job satisfaction. Key Takeaways Find Your "Work Home": A positive and supportive work environment is crucial for long-term career satisfaction. Maryanne's story shows the stark contrast between a high-turnover practice and one that invests in its team. Trust Empowers Your Team: Practice owners who trust their team members with new responsibilities and encourage them to develop their skills can unlock a higher level of engagement and satisfaction. As Maryanne says, Kevin "finds what we're good at and he lets us run with it." Hygiene is More Than Cleaning Teeth: Expanding a hygienist's role beyond traditional prophies to include comprehensive care like sleep apnea, orthodontics, and implants can combat burnout and foster significant professional growth, even for a 30+ year veteran. Embrace Lifelong Learning: Being open to learning new skills, like when Maryanne took on local anesthesia after 30 years without it, can be challenging but ultimately become one of the most rewarding parts of the job. Join the Very Dental Facebook group using the password "Timmerman," Hornbrook" or "McWethy," "Papa Randy," "Lipscomb" or "Gary!" The Very Dental Podcast network is and will remain free to download. If you'd like to support the shows you love at Very Dental then show a little love to the people that support us! -- Crazy Dental has everything you need from cotton rolls to equipment and everything in between and the best prices you'll find anywhere! If you head over to verydentalpodcast.com/crazy and use coupon code “VERYDENTAL10” you'll get another 10% off your order! Go save yourself some money and support the show all at the same time! -- The Wonderist Agency is basically a one stop shop for marketing your practice and your brand. From logo redesign to a full service marketing plan, the folks at Wonderist have you covered! Go check them out at verydentalpodcast.com/wonderist! -- Enova Illumination makes the very best in loupes and headlights, including their new ergonomic angled prism loupes! They also distribute loupe mounted cameras and even the amazing line of Zumax microscopes! If you want to help out the podcast while upping your magnification and headlight game, you need to head over to verydentalpodcast.com/enova to see their whole line of products! -- CAD-Ray offers the best service on a wide variety of digital scanners, printers, mills and even their very own browser based design software, Clinux! CAD-Ray has been a huge supporter of the Very Dental Podcast Network and I can tell you that you'll get no better service on everything digital dentistry than the folks from CAD-Ray. Go check them out at verydentalpodcast.com/CADRay!
Today on the Golden Age of Orthodontics, we'll explore the controversial topic of early orthodontic treatment. Dr. Daniel Grob, a board-certified orthodontist with over 40 years of experience, discusses the benefits and challenges of early intervention. He emphasizes the importance of developing facial width and addressing oral habits in young patients.Dr. Grob challenges traditional views on early treatment, arguing that cone beam X-rays have changed how orthodontists assess patients. He focuses on creating width for future development rather than just straightening teeth. Dr. Grob aims to complete phase one treatment in 15 months or less and phase two in 18 months or less.The discussion covers the prevalence of oral habits like mouth breathing and nail biting in young patients seeking early treatment. Dr. Grob shares insights on educating parents and general dentists about the signs of maxillary deficiency and the benefits of early intervention.The episode also addresses the marketing aspects of promoting early orthodontic treatment. Dr. Grob emphasizes the importance of building relationships with pediatric dentists and other specialists for referrals. The hosts discuss strategies for reaching parents directly through educational advertising. The conversation concludes with clinical advice for younger practitioners considering early treatment. IN THIS EPISODE: (00:00) Intro: Early orthodontic treatment debate(02:28) Meet Dr. Daniel Grob(10:14) Cone beam X-rays changed approach to early treatment(14:47) Parent demand and concerns driving early ortho(16:49) Prevalence of oral habits in early treatment patients(24:42) Partnering with pediatric dentists for referrals(29:51) Evaluating transverse dimension and expansion needs(33:37) Compliance with Invisalign for young children(34:59) Resources to learn more about pediatric orthodontics(37:51) Closing thoughts and call for listener feedbackKEY TAKEAWAYS: Early orthodontic treatment is about more than just straightening teeth. Dr. Grob's focus is on developing facial width and balance, which can lead to better long-term outcomes. Using cone beam imaging has revolutionized how he approaches early treatment by allowing him to assess the transverse dimension more accurately.Oral habits play a significant role in malocclusions. Nearly half of the patients Dr. Grob sees for early treatment have some type of habit like mouth breathing or nail biting that impacts their dental development. Identifying and addressing these habits is crucial for successful early intervention.Partnering with pediatric dentists and educating parents about the benefits of early treatment has been key to Dr. Grob's practice's success. By starting treatment between ages 6-9 when appropriate, we can often help avoid more complex interventions later on and simplify the overall orthodontic process for many patients.RESOURCE LINKSPeople + Practice - Website Leon - EmailAmy - EmailPeople + Practice - EmailThe Pediatric Orthodontist Facebook GroupKEYWORDS: orthodontics, golden age of orthodontics, early orthodontic treatment, pediatric orthodontics, transverse dimension, oral habits, cone beam x-rays, phase one treatment, facial balance, orthodontic practice growth, non-extraction orthodontics, orthodontic marketing, pediatric...
This week, we're joined by award-winning dentist, educator, and KOL Dr. Karla Soto to talk about how digital dentistry is transforming patient care and practice efficiency. She also shares the story behind Key Elements, her platform designed to help dentists embrace digital workflows through education, community, and support. Episode highlights: How digital technology is elevating the standard of care in dentistry The value of comprehensive restorative dentistry for both patients and practices Expanding the role of iTero beyond Invisalign into hygiene, diagnostics, and treatment planning Dr. Soto walks through the step-by-step use of digital tools in a real patient case An inside look at the Key Elements program and how it supports dentists in adopting digital workflows Ready to thrive as a dentist and a mom? Join a supportive community of like-minded professionals at Mommy Dentists in Business. Whether you're looking to grow your practice, find balance, or connect with others who understand your journey, MDIB is here to help. Visit mommydibs.com to learn more and become a part of this empowering network today!
I am thrilled to connect with Dr. Staci Whitman today. She is a leading authority in functional dentistry, on a mission to revolutionize oral healthcare with a unique blend of scientific expertise and compassionate care, dedicated to creating a knowledgeable and cavity-free world. In our discussion, Dr. Staci explains how the oral microbiome functions as a gatekeeper for systemic health, and we examine the impact of chronic mouth breathing and the significance of nitric oxide production. We explore allergies, myofascial symmetry, physical therapy, sleep disorders, and breathing as a continuum, and discuss changes during menopause that impact the oral microbiome, affecting salivary flow, bacterial diversity, risk for gum disease, changes in taste, oral pain, and impaired immune defences. Dr. Staci shares her thoughts on how dentistry needs a reboot, whether fluoride should be in drinking water and toothpaste, and the impact of veneers, braces, and Invisalign. She also offers tips and tools for optimal oral health. This discussion with Dr. Staci Whitman offers powerful insights, and I look forward to having her join us again after her book comes out in 2027. IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN: Why is the oral microbiome so important? Why chronic mouth breathing is not benign The steps middle-aged women can take, from a dental perspective, to help navigate hormonal changes during menopause How oral dysbiosis affects various organ systems How hormone replacement therapy can save the quality of your jawbone and teeth Why women must optimize their diets to support midlife hormonal changes How common dental advice can sometimes be more harmful than beneficial for the long-term health of your microbiome. Ways to optimize your oral microbiome The benefits of tongue scraping and oil pulling Popular dental trends that concern Dr. Staci, as a dental expert Bio: Dr. Staci Whitman, a leading authority in functional dentistry, is on a mission to revolutionize oral healthcare. With a unique blend of scientific expertise and compassionate care, she's dedicated to creating a cavity-free world. Dr. Staci is board-certified in pediatrics, integrative dentistry, and naturopathic dentistry and is one of the only dentists in the world to have her Functional Medicine Certification from the Institute of Functional Medicine. She founded one of the leading Functional Pediatric Dental offices in the country, where she takes a whole-body and holistic approach to her care. She is the co-founder of the Institute for Functional Dentistry, launching in summer 2025, and lectures globally on Functional Dentistry and the Oral Systemic Connection. She is also the co-founder of Feed Your Good Guys (Fygg), a microbiome-friendly oral care. With a passion for optimizing the oral microbiome, hormonal health, nutritional status, and sleep and airway health, she is a sought-after expert and educator with a heavy focus on preventative dentistry, cavity arrest, and remineralization, and the oral-gut-brain axis. Dr. Staci passionately shares her knowledge and insights on creating happy teeth and healthy lives. Connect with Cynthia Thurlow Follow on Twitter Instagram LinkedIn Check out Cynthia's website Submit your questions to support@cynthiathurlow.com Connect with Dr. Staci Whitman On her website Instagram
Let's face it — dental marketing has become a jungle. Between rising costs, Google's ever-changing rules, and patients who click but never convert, it's easy to waste thousands without seeing results. In this episode, I sit down with David Herman from Web Marketing for Dentists. David's helped over 2,000 practices generate $50 million in production — and today, he's breaking down how to stop chasing low-value leads and start filling your schedule with patients who want the treatments you love to do. Here's what you'll learn: ✅ Why throwing money at ads doesn't automatically bring in patients ✅ The hidden dangers of a weak online presence ✅ Why video matters more than ever ✅ How to truly track your ROI from Google Ads ✅ What budget you really need for success ✅ Overwhelmed staff and lost leads Your marketing shouldn't be guesswork. Get strategic. Know your numbers. Focus on the procedures you want more of. And remember: every dollar you spend should bring real patients through your door, not just clicks on a screen. — Key Takeaways 00:41 Introduction and Event Announcement 02:00 Meet David Herman: Expert in Dental Marketing 04:03 Understanding Dental Marketing Challenges 05:35 The Importance of ROI in Marketing 09:22 Building a Strong Online Presence 15:58 Tracking AdWords Results Effectively 19:20 The Science of Google AdWords 22:53 Targeting High-Value Procedures 30:56 Managing Overwhelmed Staff and Leads 34:55 Lightning Round Q&A 38:36 Conclusion and Special Offer — Connect with David Want David and his team to take your marketing to the next level? Head over to WM4D.com — or the full version, WebMarketingForDentists.com.
DON'T MISS the dental event of the year, November 7-8. Nowak Dental Supplies (https://www.nowakdental.com/) is hosing NOLA Lab Fest (https://www.nolalabfest.com/) in New Orleans, Louisiana. Head over to nolalabfest.com to see the line up and to register. A HUGE thanks to Aidite North America (https://www.aidite.com/) for hosting the podcast at their booth. Come find us and be on the podcast! We are once again showcasing some wonderful conversation that we got while in the exocad (https://exocad.com/) booth at IDS 2025. It's funny to travel all the way to Germany to talk to two Americans, one of them even works with Barb! First up is the CEO of the Leixir Dental Group (https://www.leixir.com/), John Krier. John talks about coming to dental from orthopedics and the differences he is noticing. Only 18 months into his new role, John has already visited every lab in the Leixir group and has started to change the culture of over 1000 employees to empower them to take ownership of the work they do. Then we meet fellow podcaster, Dr. Jeff Horowitz. Dr. Horowitz has two practices in South Carolina, GP and Sleep and airway. He talks about the importance of creating the space in the arches for better sleep and how they are even expanding the palate on adults. Dr. Horowitz is also 1/3 of the podcast Dentist IN the Know (https://www.dentistsintheknow.com/) and tells us all about how a couple of dentists got together during the pandemic to chat about what they all love so much. Take it from Jennifer Ferguson from Ivoclar. If you have a PM7 (https://www.ivoclar.com/en_us/products/digital-equipment/programill-pm7) or are thinking about getting a PM7 (Take it from Barb, you should), Ivoclar had launched the "Ivoclar Block Module" that can speed up milling emax (https://www.ivoclar.com/en_us/products/digital-processes/ips-e.max-cad) by 45%!! The best part is that you can try it for FREE for 90 days. All you have to do is send them a message on Instagram at Ivoclar.na (https://www.instagram.com/ivoclar.na/) or send a email to jennifer.ferguson@ivoclar.com. Now go mill emax faster! Special Guests: Dr. Jeff Horowitz and John Krier.
What if one afternoon could fill your Invisalign schedule and turn your practice into a buzzing local hotspot—all without relying on social media algorithms?This episode dives into the blueprint for hosting a high-converting Invisalign Day using battle-tested ground marketing strategies. You'll discover why simply putting up a few flyers or sending out generic emails rarely moves the needle—and how a proactive approach, rooted in real-world connection, creates true urgency and trust among prospective patients. We show the psychology behind exclusive invitations, the artistry of approaching local businesses, and the secrets to transforming event day into a VIP experience that excites your community and your team alike.From scriptwriting that instantly wins over business owners to sensory details that make would-be patients feel valued as soon as they step through your door, every step is crafted for measurable results. Learn how to brief your team for seamless execution, leverage in-person energy for genuine engagement, and follow up with intentionality to turn interest into signed treatment plans. By the end of this episode, you'll be equipped to turn Invisalign Days into a signature tradition that elevates your practice's reputation and fills your books—quarter after quarter.What You'll Learn in This Episode:How to design an Invisalign Day that inspires immediate action, not just window shoppingThe most common marketing pitfalls that lead to empty events—and how to avoid themWhy ground marketing outperforms digital tactics for high-quality patient leadsWhich local businesses are goldmines for high-intent prospective patientsA step-by-step outreach script that creates win-win partnerships with local venuesProven psychological triggers to drive urgency and exclusivity for your eventIn-office strategies to create a memorable, VIP patient experienceThe importance of team rehearsals and specific roles for flawless event deliveryFollow-up frameworks to ensure curiosity turns into actual casesTune in now to transform your next Invisalign Day from a hopeful event to your practice's ultimate patient magnet!Learn More About the Ground Marketing Course Here:Website: thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/the-ground-marketing-course-open-enrollmentFor more helpful tips, strategies, ideas, and marketing advice, join my weekly newsletter here.The Dental Marketer Society Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041
Today on the show, two new books take different routes to humor. First, writer Damon Young is out with an anthology of comedic essays called That's How They Get You. Young says he reached out to people who represent the expansiveness of Black humor and gave them one directive: Be funny. In today's episode, Young talks with NPR's Juana Summers about his essay on his relationship with Invisalign. Then, Dennard Dayle's fixation with the Civil War was the impetus for his satirical novel How to Dodge a Cannonball. The book follows a teenage Union flag twirler as he switches sides, steals uniforms, and claims to be an octoroon. In today's episode, Dayle chats with NPR's Ayesha Rascoe about taking a comedic approach to history.To listen to Book of the Day sponsor-free and support NPR's book coverage, sign up for Book of the Day+ at plus.npr.org/bookofthedayLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Send us a textWelcome back to Proof It's Possible! In this episode, we are diving deep into the world of natural health, wellness trends, and the sometimes messy side of personal growth. We are unpacking our real-life experiences with everything from natural deodorants to parasite cleanses. Tune in to hear:Why switching to natural deodorant is not for the faint of heart.The surprising reason they're adding protein to their morning coffee.Invisalign struggles—because straight teeth come with a price.Vitamin D: underrated wellness staple or just another supplement trend?What wellness trends have you tried recently? We would love to know! Share your thoughts with us—we'd love to hear! DM us on Instagram @dayle_sheehan_designs & @jamiedfrancis! See you next time!This episode is sponsored by our Ultimate Girls Trip! Be sure to go to www.proofitspossible.com for more info.For More Information:• Proof It's Possible Website• The Ultimate Girls Trip Instagram Dayle: • Instagram • Facebook • LinkedIn • Website• Interior Design Jamie:• Instagram • Facebook • LinkedIn• Website
New Patient Group™ (Formally known as the Doctor Diamond Club Podcast)
Send us a textClick here to register you and your team for NPG Iconic. Click here to schedule free consultation with New Patient Group and/or WrightChat Click here to subscribe to The Brian Wright Show Podcast Click here to subscribe The Brian Wright Show YouTube Station Click here to subscribe to the New Patient Group YouTube Station at: Understanding what "customer experience" or "patient experience" truly means might be the most powerful competitive advantage you're overlooking. Despite being a buzzword in businesses worldwide, when asked to define it, most leaders draw a complete blank. This fundamental disconnect prevents organizations from delivering the transformative experiences that turn ordinary customers into passionate advocates.Customer experience isn't just having friendly staff—that's merely one ingredient in a complex recipe. The true psychological definition is "the totality of cognitive, effective, sensory and behavioral responses of a customer during all stages of the consumption process." This encompasses every single touchpoint before and after purchase. While hospitality skills and customer service are components, neither captures the comprehensive journey that shapes how people perceive your brand.The most successful businesses—from five-star hotels to Michelin restaurants—understand this distinction. They don't obsess over financial metrics; they obsess over creating exceptional moments at every interaction point. This mindset shift produces remarkable results: when you focus on crafting extraordinary experiences, sales and referrals naturally follow. The organizations fixated on experiences consistently outperform those fixated on numbers.This same principle applies equally to employee experience. Your team members experience a journey with touchpoints before and after being hired, each one shaping their engagement and performance. The culture you create directly impacts how well they'll deliver exceptional customer experiences when nobody's watching. True leadership means mapping these journeys, identifying every interaction, and finding ways to make each one uniquely valuable.Ready to transform your approach? Map every customer touchpoint, evaluate how each compares to competitors, and remember that regardless of your industry—you're in the people business first. Join us at our upcoming Nashville event to develop the skills needed to implement this experience-focused mindset across your organization.Welcome to the Brian Wright Show, a podcast downloaded in 127 countries. This podcast, formerly known as the New Patient Group Podcast, is dedicated to entrepreneurs, their team members and their families but for anyone wanting to transform their life, career and/or business in the new economy. The Brian Wright Show Podcast is hosted by globally renown motivational speaker, business consultant and life coach, Brian Wright. He is a trusted consultant and speaker for some of the biggest name entrepreneurs and corporations in the world, including AlignTechnology, the makers of Invisalign. He has been featured in Forbes, CNBC and The National Journal. He is currently the Founder & CEO of New Patient Group and also WrightChat. He is married and has two children.New Patient Group - The Employee & Patient Experience Co.A company designed to help orthodontists, dentists and other types of Doctors create a practice that dominates the new economy. Learn Advanced and Cutting Edg
You can download your FREE report on how you can avoid financial mistakes as a dentist using the link just here >>> dentistswhoinvest.com/podcastreport———————————————————————What does it take to build a dental empire in today's competitive landscape? Sandeep Kumar reveals the strategic pivots that transformed his career from a single practitioner to the architect behind a network of 150 dental practices spanning multiple countries.Qualified as a dentist in India, Kumar's journey began with working as a dental nurse in the UK before requalifying in 2000. Within just three years, he purchased his first practice and dramatically expanded it from one surgery to six. But the real transformation came when he made the courageous decision to step away from clinical dentistry entirely in 2017—a move many dentists fear would collapse their income."When you're starting out, there's no such thing called work-life balance," Kumar explains. "You just have to put your hours in and work your ass off. Nobody's going to teach you." This raw honesty about the entrepreneurial journey sets the tone for a conversation filled with practical wisdom rather than sugar-coated theory.The episode explores the evolution of dental marketing from Yellow Pages to digital strategies, the crucial shift from owner-operator to owner-only business models, and the birth of the MySmile Network—now 150 practices strong and expanding internationally. Kumar shares how finding time to analyze patient data led to the insight that transformed his business: customers were specifically asking for Invisalign by name, revealing an opportunity to build practices entirely around this treatment modality.For dentists contemplating business growth in 2025, Kumar offers three practical cornerstones: surround yourself with exceptional people, embrace technology to enhance patient understanding, and build your personal profile as patients increasingly research providers before making appointments. His philosophy of "who not how"—finding the right people rather than trying to do everything yourself—emerges as perhaps the most valuable lesson for scaling dental businesses beyond the limitations of your clinical hours.Whether you're an associate dreaming of practice ownership or an established principal looking to expand, this conversation offers a blueprint for building something extraordinary beyond the dental chair.———————————————————————Disclaimer: All content on this channel is for education purposes only and does not constitute an investment recommendation or individual financial advice. For that, you should speak to a regulated, independent professional. The value of investments and the income from them can go down as well as up, so you may get back less than you invest. The views expressed on this channel may no longer be current. The information provided is not a personal recommendation for any particular investment. Tax treatment depends on individual circumstances and all tax rules may change in the future. If you are unsure about the suitability of an investment, you should speak to a regulated, independent professional. Investment figures quoted refer to simulated past performance and that past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results/performance.Send us a text
Topics covered include: True artists, Kyle meeting David Lynch for the first time on the Universal lot, getting Invisalign for the bit, Benito's world getting rocked by Blue Velvet in high school, saliva overproduction, going blonde, Overcompensating's origin story on the New York standup circuit, finding the laughter and heart in coming out, new perspectives in watching your old work, Kardashian skits with stakes, college as an epicenter of comedy and heartbreak, pledging Beta, Kyle's first job working at a lumber mill in Yakima, dad's loving Pride merch, Tom Hanks' sage auditioning advice, college golfer siblings, being fluent in the "Apple" dance, Kyle's first introduction to Sex and the City's Trey MacDougal, and being all up for the craziness.
RJ Larese is Vice President of Talent and Influencer Marketing for Paramount Global. He works with digital creators and unscripted talent for all the iconic Paramount brands and franchises, finding them opportunities within scripted and unscripted content, brand partnerships, consumer marketing, events, and more. Prior to joining Paramount, he was a talent, casting, and development executive with over a decade of experience at networks, production companies, and publishers, including ABC, ATTN:, Endemol, ITV America, and PopSugar. RJ has also cast and developed shows for Bravo, E!, Lifetime, MTV, NBC, TLC, TruTV, and VH1. He's worked with brands ranging from Abercrombie and Fitch, Banana Republic, Delta, General Mills, H&M, Invisalign, Moose Akedo, Sephora, Target, and Ulta. In 2021, RJ was named an AdWeek Young Influential. In 2022, he was on the Variety Power of Pride list for his contributions empowering the LGBTQUIA+ community in the entertainment space. In 2023, he was named on LA TV Week's 40 Under 40 honoree list, backed by Broadcasting and Cable.
In a world that's chasing the latest AI innovation, how do product leaders stay focused on building tools that truly help people? In this episode, Stewart Gandolf sits down with Shalini Chander, Director of Product Management for Align Technology (parent of Invisalign) to explore how AI is transforming the future of healthcare product management (from clinical workflows to patient experiences) without losing sight of the human problems at the heart of it all.
Steve Noviello is joined by Leeanne Locken, Cary Deuber and Kameron Westcott of the Real Housewives of Dallas for a special week of Last Call. The group talks about dragging brands on Instagram, getting charged a b*tching fee for complaining and Invisalign for ribcages.
OpenAI is coming for the iPhone, but Apple won't be ready. Plus, the great Invisalign vs Braces debate.
Find out why wearing Invisalign got Ashley ghosted on Waiting by the Phone! Kaelin tells us everything we need to know regarding Billy Joel's health concerns. And listen to Fred's Fun Fact about cornhusks!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ashley is confused why her date won't text her back after hitting it off... Find out why she got ghosted!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In today's Part 2 episode, Dr. Mark Costes continues his deep dive with Dr. Kyle Hale, exploring the pivotal moments and decisions that shaped his transition from high-producing clinical dentist to visionary entrepreneur. Kyle opens up about the real reasons behind selling his multi-practice group—including his wife Callie's battle with burnout—and how that led to the creation of Airway Dentist, a practice model with a clear clinical North Star. He shares powerful insights on why selling might be the right choice for some, the importance of having a “dentist as backup plan” mindset, and the value of intentionality in both business and personal life. Dr. Kyle also discusses the explosive growth of Dental Life, his innovative clear aligner support company partnered with Invisalign and Itero, which is transforming how GPs approach aligner cases. This is an inspiring look at how stepping away can lead to purpose-driven success. EPISODE RESOURCES https://theairwaydentists.com https://www.truedentalsuccess.com Dental Success Network Subscribe to The Dentalpreneur Podcast
In this episode of The Social Dentist, Dr. Desiree Yazdan shares her expertise on boosting Invisalign case conversions in dental practices. With her deep knowledge in marketing, branding, and community building, Dr. Yazdan provides you with actionable insights. She stresses the importance of educating both your dental team and your patients about the health benefits of proper dental alignment, which go far beyond just aesthetics. Dr. Yazdan also highlights the significance of effective patient communication. It's all about building trust and ensuring that your patients feel heard and understood. She suggests that by having thorough consultations, you can address any concerns your patients might have and provide them with a clear understanding of the treatment process. Moreover, Dr. Yazdan touches on the growing role of virtual care. In today's digital age, offering virtual consultations can be a game-changer, making it easier for patients to access your services and feel more comfortable with their treatment plans. By focusing on these key areas, you will not only improve patient outcomes but also increase your case acceptance rates. So, if you're looking to enhance your practice and help more patients achieve their dream smiles, this episode is a must-listen! Watch Dr. Yazdan's Make More Money Video - www.dryazdancoaching.com/mdm Book Your Consultation with Dr. Yazdan HERE: www.dryazdancoaching.com/consult Email Dr. Yazdan: DrDYazdan@gmail.com Join Dr. Yazdan's Coaching Waitlist - www.dryazdancoaching.com/waitlist Follow Dr. Yazdan on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/dryazdan/
A straight smile can do wonders for your confidence and oral health. And at Sean Liu Orthodontics (253-838-0765), just a short drive away from central Northeast Tacoma, you can get clear aligners to get it fixed discreetly! Book a consultation at: https://www.liuorthodontics.us/northeasttacoma.html Sean Liu Orthodontics City: Federal Way Address: 118 SW 330th St Ste 200 Website: https://www.liuorthodontics.us
Think you're too old for braces? Think again. Dr. Sean Liu of Sean Liu Orthodontics (253-838-0765) can help you achieve a straighter smile, even as an adult. Visit https://www.liuorthodontics.us/ to schedule your complimentary consultation. Sean Liu Orthodontics City: Federal Way Address: 118 SW 330th St Ste 200 Website: https://www.liuorthodontics.us
Clear aligners like Invisalign and SureSmile offer comfort, convenience, and lifestyle compatibility for adult patients. Sean Liu Orthodontics explains the benefits, and when traditional braces may still be the better option. For more information, visit: https://www.liuorthodontics.us/ Sean Liu Orthodontics City: Federal Way Address: 118 SW 330th St Ste 200 Website: https://www.liuorthodontics.us
What if you could work just three days a week… and still run a thriving dental practice? In this episode of The Thriving Dentist Show, Gary Takacs and co-host Naren Arulrajah explore a powerful idea that's on the minds of many dentists today: how to create more free time without losing income or control of your practice. If you've ever felt burned out or just wish you had more balance in life, this episode is for you. Gary shares how he's helped many dentists make the three-day work week a reality. From smart scheduling to reducing insurance headaches, you'll hear real-world strategies that work. They talk about how two dentists can share the week and still keep the office running five days, or how a solo dentist can stay just as productive by working smarter—not longer. You'll also learn how to build a strong, happy team that loves the schedule as much as you do. Naren jumps in with simple marketing tips to help attract patients for high-value services like implants, Invisalign, or cosmetic dentistry. He explains why great landing pages, real patient stories, and search engine optimization (SEO) can help you get more of the right patients—without spending a lot on ads. These ideas make it easier to grow your income, even with fewer workdays. Whether you're just starting to think about a lighter schedule or you're ready to take action, this episode gives you a clear path forward. Gary and Naren break it all down in a way that's easy to follow and proven to work. It's not just a dream—you really can build a life and practice your love with more time, more freedom, and less stress.
Kern Egan is the founder and CEO of Multiplier, an agency that shapes culture to build brands. Multiplier manages the cultural marketing initiatives for a roster of world-class brands, including Bridgestone, Caterpillar, Chase Sapphire, Invisalign, JP Morgan Payments, On Running, PitchBook, Winnebago, and Wyndham Hotels, among others. Multiplier Ventures is a limited partner in Sapphire Sport Ventures and Elysian Park Golf Ventures and has made direct investments in Leeds United, Overtime, and TMRW Sports, among others. Kern is an advisor for Cal-Berkeley's SkyDeck technology accelerator and is the founder and chairman of Dallas Influencers in Sports and Entertainment (DISE), the area's leading industry nonprofit, granting over $1,000,000 to 46 local youth charities. He is also the former Chairman of the Heart of Dallas Bowl at the historic Cotton Bowl Stadium and served on the North Texas Super Bowl XLV Host Committee. Kern, a graduate of Indiana University, was named a Forty Under 40 honoree by both the SportsBusiness Journal and Dallas Business Journal.
Ready to get that smile makeover you've always wanted? Cosmetic treatments from Alpine Dental Health (303-443-1146) include teeth whitening, Invisalign, veneers, and orthodontics. Visit https://alpinedentalhealth.com/location/boulder-dentists1/ for details. Alpine Dental Health - Boulder City: Boulder Address: 2700 Canyon Blvd Ste 210 Website: https://alpinedentalhealth.com/location/boulder-dentists/
In this episode of The Thriving Dentist Show, Gary Takacs and Naren Arulrajah unpack a powerful question: Are you leaving money on the table? From same-day dentistry to expanded hygiene services and high-value procedures, they share practical, real-world insights on the most profitable services practices often overlook. Gary draws on decades of coaching experience to highlight services that not only boost revenue but also serve patients better. Whether you're looking to add same-day treatment, revive your perio program, or explore Invisalign and cosmetic dentistry, this episode will help you identify simple strategies to increase profitability without adding hours, team, or stress.
In today's enlightening episode of The Healthy Sleep Revolution, Dr. Meghna Dassani sits down with Dr. Nimisha Somaiya, the heart behind Seva Dental in Bellbrook, Ohio. With a unique blend of clinical expertise and a deeply personal journey into sleep-disordered breathing, Dr. Somaiya shares how incorporating sleep medicine into her dental practice has transformed not only her own life and her family's health—but is now changing the lives of her patients as well. This isn't just a conversation about straight teeth—it's about functional dentistry and how something as seemingly cosmetic as Invisalign can have life-changing impacts when used with intention. You'll discover how airway-focused dentistry plays a vital role in supporting proper tongue posture, creating space for better breathing, and ultimately helping to address conditions like obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). In this episode, you'll learn: - Why crowding of the teeth isn't just an aesthetic issue—it's an airway issue - How functional orthodontics like Invisalign can create space for the tongue and improve breathing - The importance of proper tongue posture and ideal oral resting posture - Why snoring, grinding, and bedwetting in kids should never be ignored - The variety of effective treatment options available beyond CPAP therapy - How dental professionals can be key allies in identifying and treating sleep apnea Top 3 Takeaways from Dr. Somaiya: - Parents, pay attention to your child's sleep habits – Snoring, grinding, and hyperactivity are warning signs, not phases they'll “grow out of.” - Don't ignore a sleep apnea diagnosis – If CPAP isn't working for you, there are alternatives like oral appliance therapy that can help you breathe and sleep better. - Be your own advocate – If your doctor isn't taking your symptoms seriously, keep pushing. Find a provider who listens and offers solutions tailored to your needs. About Dr. Nimisha Somaiya Dr. Nimisha Somaiya is an airway-focused dentist and passionate advocate for whole-person, patient-centered care. As the founder of Seva Dental in Bellbrook, Ohio, she is known for her calming presence and commitment to improving her patients' lives through better breathing, sleep, and wellness. “Seva,” meaning “service” in her native language, reflects the compassionate philosophy at the heart of her practice. Originally trained at one of India's top dental schools, Dr. Somaiya moved to the U.S. in 2001, completed advanced training at Southern Illinois University, and earned IV sedation certification during her hospital residency at Miami Valley Hospital. She is a Fellow of the Academy of General Dentistry (FAGD), a distinction held by fewer than 6% of U.S. dentists. Her areas of expertise include: Airway and sleep dentistry Invisalign® and airway-conscious orthodontics IV sedation and full-mouth rehabilitation Dr. Somaiya has pursued extensive training through the Clinical Mastery Series and various airway-focused programs to stay on the leading edge of dental care. A former President of the Dayton Dental Society and a 2015 Dayton Business Journal “40 Under 40” honoree, she remains actively involved in her professional and local communities. Outside the clinic, she enjoys traveling, gardening, hiking, cooking with her family, and practicing mindfulness. Connect with Dr. Nimisha Somaiya Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sevadental/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SevaDental/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@SevaDental Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sevadental NextDoor: https://nextdoor.com/pages/seva-dental-bellbrook-oh/ Linked In: Seva Dental: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sevadental Dr. Nimisha Somaiya: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nimishasomaiya/ About Meghna Dassani Dr. Meghna Dassani is passionate about promoting healthy sleep through dental practices. In following the ADA's 2017 guideline on sleep apnea screening and treatment, she has helped many children and adults improve their sleep, their breathing, and their lives. Her books and seminars help parents and practitioners understand the essential roles of the tongue, palate, and jaw in promoting healthy sleep. Connect with Dr. Meghna Dassani Website: https://www.meghnadassani.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/healthysleeprevolution Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/healthysleeprevolution/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9Lh_n7xmbhQVPGQrSjBIrw Get a copy of Airway is Life: https://www.airwayislife.com
Could jaw surgery be the faster solution for realigning teeth, and what are the risks? How exactly does wearing Invisalign gradually shift your teeth into the desired position? What's the biggest misconception people have about Invisalign compared to traditional braces? How has aggressive direct-to-consumer marketing made Invisalign a household name despite its origins? What role does 3D printing technology play in the production of custom Invisalign aligners? ... we explain like I'm five Thank you to the r/explainlikeimfive community and in particular the following users whose questions and comments formed the basis of this discussion: doggoisniceo, skunkrider, professional_row8960, zahnsaw, gothiclg, zimagotchi, foximus_91, flipmode_squad To the community that has supported us so far, thanks for all your feedback and comments. Join us on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/eli5ThePodcast/ or send us an e-mail: ELI5ThePodcast@gmail.com
AB talks about why she decided to get Invisalign for her teeth.
New Patient Group™ (Formally known as the Doctor Diamond Club Podcast)
Send us a textClick here to Schedule a Free Consultation Click here to Subscribe to The Brian Wright Show YouTube StationClick here to Subscribe to The Brian Wright Show Podcast Click here to Follow The Brian Wright Show on Instagram The Brian Wright Show is dedicated to entrepreneurs, their team and family members and for anyone that wants to transform their life, career and/or business. Welcome to the dawn of a new era! After eight successful seasons as the New Patient Group podcast, we're evolving into The Brian Wright Show—same trusted expertise, broader mission. This isn't just a name change; it's an expansion of our commitment to helping you thrive in today's dynamic marketplace.The modern consumer lives in a world where attention spans have shrunk below that of goldfish (yes, literally—Microsoft proved it), and Gen Z loses active focus after just 1.3 seconds. Bombarded with over 10,000 marketing messages daily, your potential customers are more distracted than ever. So how do you break through?In this compelling premiere episode, I dive deep into what makes this "new economy" different and why conventional business approaches are failing. You'll discover why 91% of consumers choose businesses based primarily on experience rather than product quality, how one minute of video equals 1.8 million words in impact, and why nearly 90% of people willingly pay more for convenience.Whether you run a restaurant, hotel, healthcare practice, or any business struggling to stand out in a commoditized market, these insights apply universally. The skills that have made our orthodontic clients successful—exceptional hospitality, psychology-based communication, and strategic digital presence—work across every industry. I share real examples of businesses transforming through data-driven decisions rather than personal bias, and why proactive change always beats reactive scrambling.Most importantly, you'll learn why action trumps perfection. The businesses winning today aren't waiting for perfect conditions—they're implementing, learning, and refining in real-time. As we expand our mission with this rebrand, our commitment remains: providing you with proven strategies to transform your life, career, and business in an economy that rewards those who adapt fastest.About our Host: Brian Wright is the Founder of& CEO of New Patient Group and WrightChat. @NewPatientGroupWrightChat He is a trusted consultant and speaker for Align Technology, the Makers of Invisalign (3 billion dollar publicly traded company). He is a leadership, sales and hospitality expert that applies those skillsets so that businesses sell more of their product and at a higher price.
Prav sits down with husband-and-wife team Drs Mumta and Amit Jilka, the owners of Abbey House Dental. From humble beginnings working in corner shops to building a successful multi-practice dental business, the Jilkas share their inspiring journey of entrepreneurship, resilience, and growth. They candidly discuss how their business flourished organically before adopting a more strategic approach, including the challenges they faced during a financial crisis in 2024 that nearly led to bankruptcy, and how they turned it around through team solidarity, data-driven decisions, and improved associate mentorship.In This Episode00:01:40 - Backstory00:26:40 - Path to dentistry and how they both ended up at Sheffield University 00:29:35 - How Mumta and Amit met at dental school and their early relationship 00:41:25 - The purchase of their first practice and the beginning of Abbey House Dental00:45:55 - Balancing practice growth with raising children 00:48:35 - How Covid provided a valuable opportunity to reassess their business strategy 00:51:55 - Financial crisis of 2024 and discovering their business model wasn't working 00:57:45 - Difficult conversations with associates about reducing percentages 01:01:35 - The importance of mentoring associates, especially with consultation skills 01:04:55 - Current state of Abbey House and future growth plans 01:10:55 - Reflections on their journey and thriving in crisis mode01:15:55 - Last days and legacy - advice they would leave for their children 01:19:15 - Fantasy dinner party guestsAbout Mumta and Amit JilkaDr. Mumta and Dr. Amit Jilka own Abbey House Dental, a group of four dental practices known for high-quality private dentistry, Invisalign, and implant treatments. Both raised in entrepreneurial families with corner shop businesses, they met at Sheffield University's dental school and married two years after graduation. Their business journey began with purchasing a single-surgery practice that has now expanded to multiple locations, all while raising three children and navigating the ups and downs of dental practice ownership.
Imagine turning casual event interactions into lifelong patient relationships.In this episode of the Ground Marketing Series, we dive into a complete, actionable framework for dentists eager to expand their practices. I unpack the art of pre-event planning, setting intentional goals, and constructing an irresistible activation kit. Drawing on wisdom from marketing legend Seth Godin, we learn that storytelling lies at the heart of effective marketing. We'll cover the essential roles within an event team— the magnet, the messenger, and the connector—each playing a crucial part in generating and nurturing potential patients.We'll discuss hands-on tips for booth presentation and interaction strategy. Learn how captivating signage and engaging team activities can drive your booth traffic through the roof! This episode brings to light the importance of crafting messages that avoid clichés and resonate with potential patients. Discover key metrics to gauge your event's success and develop an adaptable, scalable marketing system that ensures no opportunity slips through the cracks.What You'll Learn in This Episode:Strategic steps for effective pre-event planning for dental practices.The pivotal roles each team member plays in a successful marketing event.Techniques for creating engaging, memorable booth experiences.Essential do's and don'ts to maximize your event's impact.The art of immediate lead follow-up and team evaluation post-event.Insights into metrics and tools for tracking and optimizing marketing efforts.Get ready to transform community events into powerful marketing victories—tune in now!Learn More About the Ground Marketing Course Here:Website: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/the-ground-marketing-course-open-enrollment/Sponsors:CareStack: Modern, Secure, Cloud-Based Dental Software for Growing Your Practice! With state-of-the-art features including Online Appointments, Integrated Payments, Text Reminders and more. Click the link here for a special offer: thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/carestackCallRail: Call tracking + AI that turns calls into campaigns that convert, quality patients, and cost savings. Start a free trial today! Don't forget to mention The Dental Marketer sent you!) callrail.comOryx: All-In-One Cloud-Based Dental Software Created by Dentists for Dentists. Patient engagement, clinical, and practice management software that helps your dental practice grow without compromise. Click or copy and paste the link here for a special offer! thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/oryxOther Mentions and Links:People:Seth GodinGroups:Chamber of CommerceRotary ClubTools:EventbriteGoogle FormsJotformMailchimpActiveCampaignGoogle SheetsAirtableCareStackCallRailOryxBusinesses/Brands:InvisalignIf you want your questions answered on Monday Morning Episodes, ask me on these platforms:My Newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/The Dental Marketer Society Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors) Michael: leveraging community events for maximum impact. This is gonna be the step by step guide to making an unforgettable impression. At local events and converting it into real growth. Now, community events aren't just about handing out freebies. They're a powerful system for relationship building, trust marketing, and establishing your practice as the go-to in the neighborhood.Seth Godin said, marketing is no longer about the stuff you make, but the stories you tell. But here's the kicker. To win at these events, you need more than a table and smiles. You need smart systems, a team with purpose and follow up that drives revenue. I cannot tell you how many times I've gone to events where I'm either just an attendee or I'm a vendor.it's almost like a pet peeve of mine where I see so many things going wrong. It feels like, oh man, this, employee who's hereis the wrong employee. You're doing the wrong things. You're just not feeling it. And you can see the mistakes.You can see almost the opportunities lost in every single minute almost,not just every single interaction, every single minute that they're there. So this episode. Definitely it's gonna be a, game changer for you because you're gonna realize a lot of things that maybe you've been doing wrong or a lot of things that you could be doing better.Now this is real data why this works. 43% of patients only visit the dentist once a year. 27% go twice a year. Events help turn rare visitors into loyal patients, okay? They see you, they talk to you, they engage with you, they interact with you. They're more likely to go with you. 59% of dental practices rely on front desk staff for marketing.Your team needs training to represent you well at community events, so it's not just like, Hey, let's all go out. The whole team has to go out. They need to be trained. 77% of patients prefer online booking, but only of practices offer it. So your event setup should promote real time scheduling.Don't let it get lost in the weeds where maybe you are booking people on the spot, maybe you have a specific software right, and you're booking them on the spot, on the iPad, and then you book them. And then you notice when you get back to the office, it's triple booked double book, and it's not cohesive.Don't lose people like that because I cannot tell you how bad it will be if you have to call that lead back and say, Hey, you know, the time you booked doesn't work. Can I put you in another time? First you gotta get them on the phone, try and find them, try and reach them, right? But you most likely will.And then from that point on, gotta convince them to, to change. So no email marketing, ROI is 44000%, It's huge. Capturing emails at events is high value. If you can capture phone numbers or even text them even better, right? So here's a step-by-step guide, step one. This is crucial pre-event planning.This is the foundation phase, so choose the right events 90 days in advance if possible. Easy breezy. How to do this. You look for events where your ideal patients already gather. You look at PTA meetings you hear word of mouth where they're going, they're doing.Farmer's markets, events in the Chamber of Commerce calendar and the rotary, club calendar, school health fairs. You just ask for events, right? A lot of apartment complexes have events, community center, senior homes. You can even use platforms like Eventbrite Facebook parent groups, Facebook groups in your community.And like I said, chamber of Commerce right now, here's a pro tip. If any of these events, you decide, Hey, I really want to go to them, try to attend first as a guest. Observe the crowd flow, the booth engagement and the vibe before you commit. And then you can go. A lot of the times in the ground marketing course, I teach you how to do this and how to actually get fantastic referrals and partnerships, but new patients without ever participating in an event.Meaning like without ever being a vendor, you're just there. But if you're like, oh my gosh, the booth engagement is fantastic, we gotta be here, we gotta support. Yeah, definitely continue to pursue that. Right now you wanna set clear measurable goals. So example targets. These are examples, right? I want to collect 75 emails or 75 contact information.I wanna book 15 appointments on the spot. On site, and I wanna generate 200 plus impressions in the community. That means 200 plus people know about us, we've handed out. Something specific to them, they know about us. And then now you wanna work backward from your goals. Reverse engineer. If your team can engage 20 people per hour, plan your booth design game, call to action accordingly.Okay? You wanna design it that way? It doesn't just happen that way. For example, let's just say it's a huge event and only one person's available and they're going, they're setting up, they're doing it all. They're at the booth, they're talking. right?You're not gonna get everything that you want. You're not gonna get 200 email contacts or contact information or 200 leads because it's just one person. So you gotta, adjust accordingly. Now, you wanna design portable activation kit. The whole system for this, the actual layout, pictures and everything is in the ground marketing course.Like I'm gonna tell you right now, you don't need flash. You need systems that trigger interaction and capture data. That's it. I've never been too over the top or over fancy with it. I've seen a ton of boots like that, and that's great. That's fantastic. But in this episode, you're gonna hear what's most important and what you need to invest more in on than being off lash right now.What you're gonna want in this portable activation kit is branded tablecloth and banners. With your logo, maybe a game if you like, right? Like a spin to win or a Plinko board. IPads with intake forms, It can have Google forms or jot forms or a signup sheet. I still do the signup sheet, but it's up to you, You can have the iPads with linked to your practice management software. I know Cares Stack and orx do it fantastically. Great booking portals on there. Then obviously lead magnets, right? Pre kids, dental, emergency guides, or all the freebies you want to give out that are in there, hygiene kits, information flyers, things like that.So that's step one. Okay? The pre-event planning Phase A, you're gonna choose the right events 90 days in advance, if possible, or just in advance, right? You don't wanna go on the calendar and say, oh, snap, there's an event tomorrow, let's make it happen. No. Take time to plan ahead. B, set clear and measurable goals crucial.Have to have measurable goals. Never once did I go out and say, let's just see how many people we sign up. No, in the moment, you're gonna be like, oh, you know what? This is not that good, or whatever. You're gonna get in your head and you're gonna just sign up. Five people. You gotta have clear, measurable goals and say, okay, you know what?From here we're gonna do 75, and that means you're gonna put in the work to get those 70 fives while you're there. Right? Be set. Clear measurable goals. See design a portable activation kit, like I told you, cable tablecloth, banners, maybe a chair if you like. spin the wheel, whatever freebies you wanna give out, and something to sign up people on.Okay, step two is the booth strategy. So make it magnetic. This step is all about stopping people in their tracks. Creating a magnetizing presence and turning curiosity into conversations. Most booths are background noise. Yours should be the events gravitational center. So what you wanna have is a solve a local pain point with words that actually work.I'm gonna give you three examples of what not to say anywhere in the booth. Hey, we're accepting new patients. No. That's so long ago. Don't ever use that again. Two, come get a free toothbrush. Nope, throw that out. Three. General and cosmetic dentistry. Throw that out. These are vague, they're overused, and they don't spark emotional or practical urgency.You want to craft micro messages that solve actual local problems. For example, could be a pediatric practice. You can say. Somewhere in the booth, right? Struggling to get your kids to the dentist without a meltdown. Ask about our no tears visits. Why this works. It uses parents' pain point tantrums, and stress.It includes emotional relief. So no tears. And it's specific. It's not generic. Here's a cosmetic example. Want to boost your confidence before your next big event. Ask about our mini smile makeovers. Same pain points that attacks the next one. Busy parent example, no time for dental appointments. Ask how we get families in and out under an hour.Boom, ate and insurance neighborhood example. Confused about your insurance. We simplify it and yes, we take yours. Boom. This one right here, members have used, I got this one from members. Fantastic. I'm gonna say it again, confused about your insurance question mark. We simplify it and yes, we take yours and the exclamation point that one does fantastic.And you can have like a sandwich board in front of your booth and have that on there, right? These examples, these sayings. Now pro tip, print your core message in large text or on your banner, right? And have every team member memorize and repeat it naturally. So have these banners with these messages on there as well.But like, what I like to do is to have a sandwich board, right? Just in case it changes up. I don't have to get a new banner for every little thing. Now that was a right. A, is solve a local pain point with words that actually work. B. Grab attention within three seconds. Why? Well, The average event goer decides in under three seconds whether or not to approach your booth.So you must stack the deck in your favor with visuals. Motion, sound and simplicity. Use a high visibility game, right? Why? ' cause movement plus potential reward equals attention. Examples are spin the wheel, right? Each wedge is a prize. Maybe free whitening, something specific In one of our live ground marketing workshops that we had this past month in March, 2025. We dove deep on incentives. So if you're a member of the ground marketing course, definitely go check that out. But that is gonna be an episode for later on. In the ground marketing series.Now you can discuss the incentives with your team. See what you want to give best Plinko board, right? It's nostalgic, it's fun and easy to brand with dental punts. you can do a mini basketball hoop or ring toss. These are especially effective for family events and kid heavy areas. Now the signage above the game should read the incentive.The incentive only, Not all these instructions, not the name of your practice and everything you do. No, just win free whitening, spin and win. Everyone gets something. Play for a free gift, right? That's it. That's all it should say. Important point here is to display what prizes are available.are drawn to visible rewards. Keep them attractive, but within budget. Whitening, goody bags, water bottles, gift cards, whatever you decide as an incentive, have that out on display. Have standing team members outside of the booth avoid the mistake of sitting behind the table. Always. Instead, place the magnet.A few steps in front of your booth. Now I know what you're thinking. What is the magnet? We're gonna discuss that a little bit further down. On the roles of who they are. But the magnet is someone, it's a person you wanna put them out and about, right? Train them to use eye contact, hand gestures toward the game prizes, and an enthusiastic opener.Something like this. Hey there. Hey, grab whatever you want. It's all free. The one that works the best, the one that I always use hands down, never fails is, Hey, grab whatever you want. It's all free, and that's it. I just stay quiet after that, and then they come and then boom.The further out a person stands without blocking walkways, the more psychological welcome they create. That's a pro tip. You can use t-shirts with a hook as well. These are walking, talking billboards. Don't just put your logo, use a question or statement that invites curiosity. Here are examples that you can use to put on your t-shirts.Ask me how we make kids love the dentist. Ask me about free whitening Fridays. I can get you out of pain fast. Your smile deserves this. Those are examples, right? Or like I said, you can do the Medicaid example one. And yes, we do take yours, right kind of a thing with insurance. So assign different shirt slogans to different roles.There's gonna be three specific roles, and we'll discuss that in a little laterin this episode. Now the three second layering formula to ensure people engage with your booth within three seconds. This is it. There's a visual element, and then I'm gonna discuss the purpose. So the visual element, bold banner, purpose.Communicates core offer or pain point. Visual element. Motion game purpose creates eye catching interaction. Visual element, a friendly greeter. Purpose builds trust, initiates engagement, visual element, branded t-shirts. Purpose reinforces message and makes team approachable. Visual element giveaways displayed purpose creates curiosity and visual incentive.Now, the common mistakes to avoid is too much text on signage. Keep it short. Five to seven words max per message. That's including the sandwich board. Passive team members who wait for people to approach. Oh my goodness. This is, I had a. Dime for every time I saw this, this is a humongous mistake.Passive team members who wait for people to approach do not be that person. Do not have anybody like that on the events. Okay? Third, boring swag. Ditch the basic stuff sometimes unless it's branded and bundle it with a compelling offer, right? But remember, whenever it's at a booth, you want it all.Decompartmentalize. You don't want everything in a baggie. Convenience is not the name of the game When you're at an event, the name of the game is for them to come and chat and sign up, That's what you want them to do. You don't want them to just grab a little baggie and go and say thank you and buy.You want them to be there and shop around, talk, and then finally over cluttered tables with no clear flow. So you don't want it to be over cluttered. You want to have a system in your table. In the ground marketing course, I show you exactly how to do that with just a regular hygiene kit.I don't do anything over the top or too flashy. Now, there's been many, many great examples of this, but I'm gonna give you an example of a member of ours. It was at a local PTA carnival. It was a pediatric dental office, and they use a spin to win, no cavity club prize wheel. T-shirts said, no meltdowns, no tears.Just smiles. And a team member who shouted, You wanna win something your kids will actually love? That's all they said. Hey, win something your kids are actually gonna love. Come on in. Come on in. They collected 112 contact information, so point of contacts, 112, booked 27 appointments immediately, and had a 74% show rate over the next two weeks.All from one. Afternoon. That's just one afternoon. That's amazing. So that's what you wanna do when it comes to be right. Grab attention within three seconds. Now here's the key C rolls and flow. This is the, that you're gonna have for the events. It's your triple threat event team. So instead of calling everyone helpers, give them roles with clear purpose.The first role is The magnet. Where are they gonna be? Right outside of the booth. Right next to the booth. They're just not really standing right behind the booth the whole time. They could once in a while, but they're outside of the booth and their role. Is just to say hi to everyone in the most bubbly way.Attract and invite foot traffic, right? Their script. Get ready for this. If you can write this down, it's, Hey, grab whatever you want. It's all free. And that's it. That is their script. the work that they're gonna have to do honestly is hold themselves back from saying too much. Because that can kill the curiosity of the event goer.All you wanna say is, Hey, and then wave your hand, right? Like If you can see, if you're watching this on YouTube, you can see me wave my hand. Hey, grab whatever you want. It's all free. And then point to everything that's free at the booth that's it. Have them draw closer to be like well, what's all for you?What is all you're not gonna answer? That they're gonna answer that themselves with their eyes and when they go to the booth. So that's it. That is the script. Hey, Grab whatever you want. Come on over here. It's all free. Don't, oh, and the toothbrush is free. And then the floss is, no, don't do any of that.Just say it's all free. And then have them come over. That's it. And you get the next person. The next person. Right Now the next role, the next person. Your team is the messenger. They are inside the booth. Okay. I like to say that instead of behind, but they're inside the booth. Their role is to have these conversations, answer questions.If somebody's in there, like opening their mouth and saying, why do I have sensitivity here? Can you see? And then they're engaging, their role is signing people up. Also, the magnet could be signing people up too. Just in case it gets too busy. That's why I say they're outside of the booth sometimes.But if they see that the booth is popping and it's packed, now the magnet has to go behind the booth and sign people up while the other person is talking to everyone else, right? They're engaging with the person. So the magnet kind of has two roles. They have to have their eyes on that booth.Now the messenger, their role is to educate, answer questions and point visitors to sign up. Hey, yeah. what we're doing this month is we're signing up everyone, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? This month we decided to partner up with this business, and what everybody's doing is they're giving us their name and number, and I personally will give you a call.What's your name? And then you continue to sign them up. That's the messenger's role. They're behind the booth. Honestly, everybody in your team should probably never be sitting down, even, even in a lull, right? they're standing, they're engaging, they're doing things.So that's the messenger. Remember now you have the magnet. They're outside of the booth. The messenger is inside of the booth, and now you have the third team member. The connector, okay. Their role, they are walking around the event to the vendors, to the other vendors. Their role is to build relationship with the vendors, the organizers, the schools, the small business owners, every other booth there.And the people who are in charge of the event. Their role is to get their business information to sign people up on the spot. 'cause remember those people the, at the booth, the vendors at that booth, they're most likely not walking around. You have someone walking around, you have someone signing them up.You have someone collecting their business information, building rapport so that tomorrow you can go to their place of business and get the rest of the employees to sign up, maybe do a lunch and learn, maybe have some type of collaboration or program that you can do just for them. That's your role. Okay.The connector's role is to go out to the vendors and sign up the vendors. 'cause most likely they're not your patients, so they can come on it. And then you're collecting their business information so you can go to their place of business and execute more strategies, ground marketing strategies, and build great partnerships with those businesses.So there's three, right? The magnet just outside of the booth. The messenger, they're inside of the booth and the connector, they're walking around. Creating partnerships with the other vendors and the organizers. Got it. Awesome. So then step three is you're gonna offer a design from freebie to the front door.So your goal is not just to give things away, it's to trigger interest, build reciprocity, and create momentum that gets people to book, show up and become long-term patients. This step turns the booth from a passive branding tool into an active patient convergence system. So a, you want to create a compelling ethical incentive.Forget free cleanings, right? It's overdone, undervalued, and invite slow commitment window shoppers. Instead, craft layer tiered offers that feel exclusive and valuable requires something in return. And reinforce the long-term value of your practice. Now, I'm gonna give you an example. This is for adults.The offer could say, Hey free first Invisalign session and take home whitening kits, Or you can say Free smile consultation. Plus take home whitening kits. Then you can put on the bottom. It includes examine x-rays, custom smile assessment and a whitening kit must attend appointment rate and then continue why it works.Whining is seen as a cosmetic bonus, not a fix. It also positions your practice as cosmetic forward and modern, and it's easy to tie in with Invisalign or SMILE design conversations for kids. Your offer can say, join our no cavity club. The entry into your monthly, quarterly raffle prizes, could be like toys, ice cream, gift cards, electric toothbrushes, right?So that's part of the no cavity club. You always get prizes and then you also get free dental prize bags, right? Branded floss stickers and cool kids swag, all that other stuff. So your enter to win in a raffle all the time if you're part of the No cavity club, to win a huge prize. And then you're also, get, you know, like hygiene kits.But. Rebrand it, call it something different. That way it feels more exclusive and it works because parents love recognition programs for kids. It adds community and reward structure and it gets families emotionally invested, inre care and return visits. A pro tip for this is display a poster at your booth with last month's winner and a real kid photos with permission of course, that always works when you actually have proof, right? Hey, this is the last month's winner. Especially if it's a community event. People will, Hey, I know that kid goes to, he's my best friend, right? Or all these things, they'll feel more inclined or families. You can offer a smile makeover giveaway.One entry per household. One winner gets a full consult with digital smile design and bonus prizes for all entries, right? Small gift bags. Et cetera. Right? And it works because it's aspirational. People love the idea of a transformation. You collected dozens or hundreds of leads and create cross selling into whitening, ortho, and cosmetic options whenever you do a raffle.Real quick, I wanna mention something. Don't ever have just one winner. Everyone should win something, right? So always plan that you want people to come in. Not just give you a bunch of names and numbers and say, oh man, they all wanted to win, but they didn't make everybody a winner. Now with, visuals, the offer type and the suggested sign copy, this is how it should stay on your booth, right?So let's just say you're offering whitening. You should say, Hey, free whitening with your first visit. Ask us how. The no cavity club kids can win big. Join the No cavity Club today, right? Smile makeover. Want a new smile? Enter our makeover giveaway. Make these signs bold, easy to scan in under eight words, right?Don't make it too wordy. You can add scarcity and urgency. Even the best. Offer false flat without psychological triggers, scarcity and urgency. Create fomo, which drives people to act now instead of later. So you can have a whiteboard or a flip chart at the booth nine Invisalign spots remaining.13 whitening kits left today. You can even have a countdown timer on an iPad screen and say, next free whitening session giveaway is in five minutes. Right? People will, wait at your booth until they can be the first one to do it. If you do catch them waiting to be the first one to do it, make them feel like a VIP and say, Hey, you know what?You ain't even gotta wait. I got you in right now. Are you gonna be available Monday? I'll even put you on the schedule immediately. Boom. You'll make them feel special, important, and they're gonna show up no matter what. And you can also have a physical prize board, right? Cross out slots as people win or book, right?Oh, we only have 12, 10, 11, 13. And verbally, you can yell out, you know, we only have 10 whitening kids left, so grab one while they last. The smile makeover drawing closes in two hours and turn out to be included. We only block five Invisalign day specials each month. You want one right. And it works because it makes them feel exclusive. Not everyone gets this. You're one of the few. It's simple. It's super easy. It takes 30 seconds to sign up and scarcity, only a few left. Once they're gone, they're gone. And you got one. This trifecta bypasses analysis paralysis and motivates decision making on the spot, even from skeptical attendees.So that's gonna be fantastic to utilize. Now, here's the key. Mainly one thing post event follow up. This is where the ROI is made. This is one of the final steps, you wanna segment and nurture leads within 48 hours. So sort your context right from hot. Those are the ones that are booked or very interested to warm.They were curious or maybe they weren't committed and then cold. They just entered a raffle. Now tools you can use is,a lot of our members use Cares Stack or orx or their practice management software right, to see the appointment follow up. You can definitely use that. I know Cares Stack and Orxsponsor the podcast. So if you ever needed a couple months for free to utilize them, definitely go in the show notes below. It's not gonna be in the first link in the show notes below, but scroll a little bit down you can click on their deals that they have for you if you are interested in.Cloud practice management software, an all in one cloud practice management software that a lot of our members utilize that they can just put on their iPad and then they can schedule on the spot. So it's pretty fantastic. You can also use MailChimp or, an email system, like Active Campaign or anything like that.You want to use these tools to know, okay these, are booked appointments. Cool. Awesome. And then these were other people that just entered for a raffle and they're cold. Or maybe they're warm and you wanna retarget. So post event recap, right? Maybe you're saying We met 150 plus amazing families this weekend.If we missed you, our event special is still Available. Click below to book. You want to do that? Send it out to your actual cold leads and maybe even send it out to some of the patients you haven't seen in a while that you know, they're in their community because this will make them curious.See what it is, what are they doing? Oh man. What was the special that was happening at the event? Oh, cool. They're participating at the community. So now you're not just targeting, the people who were at the event. You're also targeting people who you haven't seen in a while. So definitely do that, and then you can use the same photos and text or emails so they recognize your team and so forth.Now, for hot leads, call within 48 to 72 hours. I mean, As quick as possible. Offer a warm, friendly touchpoint and a clear call to book if they haven't booked yet. So that means if they signed up, they put their name, number, and you said, I will personally give you a call to get you on the schedule this week.now's the time to call them. Be warm, friendly, and then get to the point. Just give them options. Don't say when are you available? No. Give them options one to two that they can schedule. Now, step five. Here's the big major part you wanna measure and optimize. This is gonna to be everything for you.This is the difference between a random act of marketing and a repeatable system that builds wealth. Community events are only profitable if you can measure exactly what you gain from them. Identify what's working and scale it and eliminate what's not, and save time, energy, and money. track these metrics.Every time without exception, you need to quantify both the top of funnel, that means leads and engagement, and the bottom of funnel appointments and production. Here's what to track. Okay? Leads collected. So total number of new contacts. Who gave you permission to follow up? That means emails, phones, or booked Both Total and source. So if they were booked at the event, track it. If they were warm, they gave you the info, track it. If they were only raffles, track it. Like I said, you can use Cares Stack or Orx their forms that you can use directly on iPads or if you want, you can sync Google Forms to your CRM, right?But tag the event source. So these leads are trackable in future campaigns as well. So that's number one. Leads collected, track it, two appointments booked. Number of appointments scheduled on the day and within the following seven days. So breakdown by onsite bookings, maybe let's just say it was 20 post event bookings via email or text message.And then you wanna track the show rates. Why this matters. This is your true conversion rate. Don't just measure interest. Measure action. Like I tell you before, your practice management software, they may let you segment by source and measure, show rate versus no shows and then revenue generated.Now this is within 60 days total treatment, accepted and paid from patients who came from the event. You don't want to wait six months to evaluate ROI look at hygiene visits, emergency treatment, accepted whitening, or ortho starts, and follow up family bookings. Set up event lead as a referral source in your practice management software, and then run a report after 60 days with that filter.Right now, cost per lead, the formula is total event costs, plus number of quality leads. So example is, let's just say the booth fee was $400. Materials is $300, the total 700, but leads collected was 105. Cost per leads are $6 and 67 cents.Why this matters? It helps you compare this event's efficiency against others. Other things as marketing such as ads, mailers, et cetera. Sometimes you don't have to, majority of the time, I wanna say at least like 80 something percent, you don't have to pay for a boothymaterials, you're gonna get them anyways to hygiene kit in the ground marketing course.I show you exactly how to do all of this just with hygiene kits. Your cost is super low. What I just said right now, the example the booth V $400 materials 300, that's a lot higher. That's a lot higher than I've, ever really done. But we're taking it there because I want you to see the potential.five is return on investment, right? So the formula for the ROI is revenue minus cost. Divided by cost. So the example is revenue generated is $4,000. The cost was $700, like the example we said. So 4,000 minus 700 divided by 700 equals 4.7. So 470% was the ROI. Now this matters because you'll know exactly which events to repeat, which to drop, and which to scale with confidence.Not every event is gonna be a banger. Some events are gonna be like, okay, you know what? We did get a good amount. It's good to, for us to continue that, you know, every quarter and some events are gonna say, oh my gosh, we have to do more. We have to invest more. And that, that we've gotten an incredible amount.Let's back them up. Let's see if we can create our own event with them. And then some events are absolutely fantastic, but they only host 'em once a year, right? Like employee benefits fairs or school events and things like that. But at least you know it's fantastic.The ROI is great and you're locked in for years and years to come. Tool options, right? You can collect these leads with an iPad, Google Forms or Cares Stack, right? Appointment tracking, like I said, you can use. Your practice management software, if you're looking for a new one, like I said, cares Stack and nor sponsors our podcast.So definitely check them out. You get an exclusive discount, and you can check 'em out for free too. Revenue by Source. You want to collect reports right on your practice management software, the metric ROI tracking. You wanna use custom Google Sheets or Airtable or just a way to collect the ROI and then dashboards.You wanna have insights so you can do that with. Your practice management software. I know if you have Cares Stack, I think it's smartview. And then orx is Orx Insights. But you can utilize whatever practice management software you want to utilize,something that will help fantastically with the leads collected appointments booked, the revenue generated.An easy way to track this you can use a software called CallRail. their new sponsor for the podcast. And they're fantastic at what they do. So for example, they have call tracking conversation intelligence. So they transcribe all your calls. And something I think is cool is they convert assist, so they convert leads with AI powered next steps.Coaching and follow up messages. So they'll literally highlight, okay, they were looking for this is a trend we see that all the leads want in the community. Or maybe my tone wasn't the best or what I said, I fumbled here a little bit too much. And that's what caused them to be disengaged in the conversation on the phone or whatever.Right? But primarily they track. lot of great things. So I would definitely use them when you can, not only to figure out how many leads are coming in, where they're coming in from, if they booked appointments, but at the same time see the conversation, see the trends and so forth. And then on top of that, you know, you can track everything else.So if you want, you can check them out for 14 days for free. So what I would do is on your next event that you have coming up, enroll for the 14 days for free. Then after that in your debriefing meeting, okay, let's look at the hot leads, look at all the data generated from Call rail and see where you guys are.if there's any cracks leaking, where you can glue them when it comes to answering the phones converting them, getting them in the practice and so forth. And how many leads came in. I mean, Call role makes it super easy. But definitely I'm gonna put a link in the show notes below if you wanna.Check them out. They help with everything like that, with ROI, tracking, appointment, tracking leads, collection, even improving your front office skills and phones, right? So, Yeah, I do that. Check out CallRail or if you want, you can use Google Sheets or whatever practice management software, system you have, and try to, you know, maneuver it that way.and the key is to debrief after every event. So within 24 to 48 hours of the event, gather your team for a 15 to 30 minute huddle.This is where all the magic happens. This locks in wins, identifies flops and builds your repeatable event engine. Ask these seven questions. What worked extremely well? Not what worked. What worked extremely well? Scripts, offers, games. What got the most attention? Did the magnet, the messenger, the connector shine?Who shined the most? what worked extremely well? Question number two is what flopped or fell flat? Was there a prize that wasn't exciting enough? Did anyone get confused about the offers? Three. Did people understand our messaging immediately or did we need to explain things over and over?Four? Was there any downtime? Track the busy times or slow times, right? For future booth placements, sometimes it's a popping event. Where you decided to set up is not popping. It's not that good. It's in a dead spot of the event. So that's something to keep in mind. Was there any downtime? Five. What questions came up repeatedly from attendees?This reveals content gaps you can fix with signage or handouts. Six. Did any tech or process slow us down? iPad glitches. QR codes didn't load. You know, you wanna fix that immediately. And then seven, how did each team member feel in their role? That's probably one of the most important because they're gonna be your main ones, right?For this whole thing to be successful. So they have to feel super comfortable. And then you wanna build a post event template and you can use a format. Now we do have this format in the ground marketing course. It's for all our members. So if you're remember and you're listening, definitely go check out that format.Download the post event template so you can use it, utilize it all the time. And go from there. If you're not part of the ground marketing course, definitely enroll. I'd love to see you in there. You can go in the show notes below. It's the first link in the show notes below, and you can check out everything that's inside of the course and we continue to add to it all the time.But you wanna continue to do this, track it. Do a post event huddle, repeatable growth engine. That's what this is gonna be. Once you do this three to four times, you'll have a playbook of top performing offers. You'll have a refined booth strategy and a trained team that knows how to execute without micromanagement, and most importantly, you'll have a predictable new patient system.Awesome. So if you have. Any questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out to me on this. But the best way to reach out to me, especially with ground marketing, is being a member of the Ground Marketing course. You can go in the show notes below, click on the first link in the show notes below to check out more, and roll into the course and see everything we have to offer you.And thank you so much for tuning in. I'm excited to see you in the course. And for the next episode. It's ground marketing at schools. What you need to know, we're gonna discuss how to approach schools and offer value to teachers and parents. Alright, thank you so much for tuning in.We'll talk to you in the next episode.
What happens when a general dentist becomes passionate about aligner therapy and sleep medicine? In this inspiring and eye-opening episode, Dr. Meghna Dassani welcomes Dr. Meenal Patel—friend, colleague, and fellow dental sleep advocate—to the Healthy Sleep Revolution Podcast. Dr. Meenal shares her journey from dental school to building a thriving private practice in Cary, North Carolina, with a strong emphasis on total patient wellness. Learn how she's using advanced technology, aligner therapy, and sleep-disordered breathing screenings to uncover the hidden signs of airway issues—and change lives. From investing in an iTero scanner to implementing home sleep tests, Dr. Meenal walks us through how she seamlessly blends aesthetics and function while empowering patients with knowledge. Whether you're a provider or a patient, this conversation will open your eyes to how much your smile and your sleep are connected. In this episode, you'll learn: How Dr. Meenal Patel began integrating Invisalign and sleep apnea treatment into her general dental practice The role of technology (like the iTero scanner and CBCT) in uncovering airway issues How to recognize red flags for sleep-disordered breathing during routine dental exams What the patient journey looks like—from crooked teeth to improved sleep Why education and awareness are game-changers for both adults and children How Dr. Meenal is gently introducing airway conversations into everyday dentistry The importance of connecting the dots between oral health and whole-body health About Dr. Meenal Patel Dr. Meenal Patel graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Science (BS) in Nutritional Sciences at the University of Florida. She went on to earn her Doctor of Dental Medicine (DMD) degree at the University of Florida College of Dentistry. She completed her post-graduate training at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Advanced Education in General Dentistry (AEGD) residency program. Highly regarded as a cosmetic clinician, she has advanced training in cosmetic dentistry, orthodontics, endodontics, prosthodontics, adult and children's sleep apnea, and dental implantology with additional certifications in Invisalign and laser dentistry. She has been awarded the prestigious Fellowship in the Academy of General Dentistry (FAGD) as well as Fellowship in the International Congress of Oral Implantologists (FICOI), the International Congress of Dentists (ICD) and the American Academy of Clear Aligners (AACA). She has also been appointed for the Pierre Fauchard Academy - a very exclusive invitation. Dr. Patel also serves as an adjunct faculty member at UNC Chapel Hill School of Dentistry. She has served as Fourth District President for the North Carolina Dental Society, Raleigh Wake County Dental Society, Vice Chair for the Council on Membership with the American Dental Association, and Study Club Leader for NC with the American Academy of Clear Aligners, for which she also serves on the board. Dr. Patel was named Triangle Business Journal's Top 40 Under 40 just a couple years ago. She has been the owner and founder of her award-winning practice in Cary, NC for nearly a decade. Prior to this, Dr. Patel was an associate dentist for a group practice in Charlotte, NC. Dr. Patel has enjoyed owning and growing her practice, Preston Dental Loft, a premier family and cosmetic practice. She has a particular interest in helping people grow their confidence through their smile; offering Invisalign to her patients has helped her achieve this in a big way. She is one of the only general dentists in the area as a Platinum Plus Invisalign provider! Dr. Patel is committed to enhancing her patients' confidence through personalized care and innovative solutions; she believes that your oral health is directly related to your overall wellness as a human! Connect with Dr. Meenal Patel Website: https://www.prestondentalloft.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/prestondentalloft/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/prestondentalloft About Meghna Dassani Dr. Meghna Dassani is passionate about promoting healthy sleep through dental practices. In following the ADA's 2017 guideline on sleep apnea screening and treatment, she has helped many children and adults improve their sleep, their breathing, and their lives. Her books and seminars help parents and practitioners understand the essential roles of the tongue, palate, and jaw in promoting healthy sleep. Connect with Dr. Meghna Dassani Website: https://www.meghnadassani.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/healthysleeprevolution Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/healthysleeprevolution/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9Lh_n7xmbhQVPGQrSjBIrw Get a copy of Airway is Life: https://www.airwayislife.com
Antitrust: Is there sufficient reason to believe that Invisalign has an illegal monopoly so as to require a jury trial? - Argued: Thu, 10 Apr 2025 15:25:44 EDT
Girl, I know I'm not the only one who'd rather skip the dentist, but trust me, what you eat, your hormones (yes, pregnancy, menopause, and everything in between) and even your stress levels can seriously impact your mouth...and your overall well-being! Dr. Arlene Asante is here to spill the tea on why those dental visits are non-negotiable and how to keep both your smile and your health on point. You definitely don't want to miss this one! LISTEN UP! The Flourish Heights Podcast was made for women, by women. To be empowered in health starts with a true connection with your body. Join Valerie Agyeman, Women's Health Dietitian as she breaks through topics surrounding periods, women's nutrition, body awareness, and self-care. About Dr. Arlene Asante Dr. Arlene Asante is a dentist, motivational speaker, life coach, and mentor passionate about transforming lives inside and outside the dental office. A native of Hyattsville, Maryland, she earned her Doctor of Dental Surgery degree from Howard University College of Dentistry and completed an Advanced Education in General Dentistry (AEGD) program in Bangor, Maine. She specializes in Implantology, Invisalign®, and Cosmetic Dentistry and is a certified Invisalign® provider, with advanced training from institutions like The Phelps Institute for Implantology and The Dawson Academy. Beyond her dental expertise, Dr. Asante is known for her compassionate, patient-centered approach. She is the founder and president of Enhancing Adolescent Girls for an Evolving Resolution (EAGER, Inc.), a nonprofit mentoring program empowering young women in Baltimore City. She also coaches millennial entrepreneurs, helping them launch nonprofits and develop professional skills. Dr. Asante has led workshops at Howard University, Morgan State University, and Coppin State University, focusing on leadership, business etiquette, and entrepreneurship. She's a sought-after keynote speaker and panelist at women's empowerment events. In her free time, Dr. Asante enjoys traveling, skydiving, music, reading novels, and spending time with family and friends. Connect with Dr. Asante: Dr. Asante on Instagram: @drarleneasante Website: https://firstclassmilesbethesda.com/ Watch Dr. Asante's oral health tips on Fox 5 DC: https://www.fox5dc.com/video/1555964 Stay Connected: Is there a topic you'd like covered on the podcast? Submit it to hello@flourishheights.com Subscribe to our quarterly newsletters: Flourish Heights Newsletter Visit our website + nutrition blog: www.flourishheights.com Follow us on social media: Instagram: @flourishheights / Women's Health Hub: @flourishvulva / @valerieagyeman Facebook: @flourishheights Twitter: @flourishheights Want to support this podcast? Leave a rating, write a review and share! Thank you!
What would make patients EXCITED to refer their friends and family to your practice?In this episode of the Ground Marketing Series, we unveil the secrets to crafting a high-performing patient referral program tailored for dental practices. Navigating the maze of compliance might seem daunting, but we're breaking down the barriers, offering you a roadmap to a program that is as effective as it is legal. We dive into a list of innovative strategies and enticing rewards designed to inspire your patients to become enthusiastic promoters of your practice. Learn how to play within the rules while making your referral program the talk of the town with ideas like luxury mini items, mystery gifts, and VIP dental perks.Beyond strategic insights, this episode provides a personal touch with practical examples, real-life scenarios, and ready-to-use scripts for engaging patient conversations. Discover how to transform your referral program from mundane to mesmerizing by tapping into psychological triggers such as urgency and surprise. By the end of this episode, you'll not only have a blueprint for invigorating your patient base to refer, but also learn how to stay within state regulations while doing so. Don't just aim for passive referrals—dare to craft an experience that keeps patients talking.What You'll Learn in This Episode:How to design a referral program aligned with legal and ethical standards.Impactful reward ideas that excite and engage your patients.The role of urgency and surprise in enhancing referral participation.Harnessing luxury mini items and local business perks for maximum appeal.Scripts and scenarios to easily implement these strategies in practice.The power of social proof to amplify your referral efforts.Let's learn how to create a captivating referral program—tune in now!Learn More About the Ground Marketing Course Here:Website: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/the-ground-marketing-course-open-enrollment/Other Mentions and Links:TDM Articles: Legal and Ethical Patient Referral Strategies for Dental PracticesOrganizations/Laws:Anti-Kickback StatuteState Dental BoardsSunshine ActBusinesses/BrandsChanelDiorYSLInvisalignKlatch CoffeeIf you want your questions answered on Monday Morning Episodes, ask me on these platforms:My Newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/The Dental Marketer Society Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors) Michael: The ultimate compliant and irresistible patient referral program. We're gonna be diving into strategies and gifts that actually work. So this episode with ground marketing, we're gonna talk about creating a referral program that works. How to make patients want to refer while staying fully legal and ethical.Now, most referral programs fail. They don't excite patients enough, and let's be real. No one cares about appreciation clubs or educational seminars that much patients want something they actually desire. But we also need to ensure full compliance with the A KS, the anti-kickback statute, and the state Dental Board regulations.This episode's gonna break down highly enticing, fully compliant, and unique referral strategies that make patients want to refer without violating federal or state laws. Now, just a heads up, by the time this episode comes out there is going to be a article, out on the website titled Navigating Referral Marketing for Dentist.It's gonna say compliance and ethical strategies. And in there, I mean, you can kind of see the draft right here if you're watching on YouTube, but you can kind of see, I talk about understanding the Sunshine Act and the a KS for dentists. How can dentists reward referring offices without violating the law?Gives you exactly, Hey, gift cards, are they okay or not? What kind of gives thank you cards? What's legal and ethical? I break that down. How to stay compliant with referral marketing. So much more. And I'm gonna go deeper into the article as well. So that article is gonna be out.I'm gonna put a link to it in the show notes below by the time this episode goes live as well. But going back to this episode with ground marketing, we're gonna talk about right now, the secret to making a referral program work. Now, a successful referral program has three key components. One, the reward must be something they actually want.So if it's boring, they're not gonna refer right? Two, it must be compliant. So that means no cash, no high value gives, or direct financial incentives. And then three, it must feel like an effortless bonus. So effortless, the patient should feel like they're getting a pleasant surprise rather than being bribed.Okay, and I dive deeper into this in the ground marketing course. Now, the goal for this, instead of saying, refer a friend and get $50, we want to create an exciting, ethical, and legal reason for patients to spread the word. Okay? So now that we got that down, the three things that have to be in a referral program, has to be something they want.Nothing boring, must be compliant, and it must feel effortless, like an effortless bonus, right? So that moves on to number two. Now, here's where we can dive deep and let our imagination run a little bit more wild. But at the same time, remember the state that you're in, the law and everything like that.So I'm gonna give you some things that our members have used, I've witnessed, I've used, that is an incredible, fully compliant reward, right? It's highly enticing. So number one. Luxury experienced based gifts. Now, why this works? Patients love unique experiences. It makes them feel special. So instead of cash, offer low cost, but high perceived value gifts.Okay, A compliant experience-based reward. Here's some ideas. Luxury candle or skincare gift set. This can be under $15 coffee subscription, a one month trial, right under $15 as well. Designer Lip balm they have Chanel, Dior, YSL, et cetera. Those are under $15. Artisan Chocolate Box or Gourmet snack Pack, Those can be under $15. Then maybe like a cozy night in package, and that can involve face mask, herbal tea, mini candle, right under 15, $20. A lot of the times it's the way you're gonna word this and package it, I'll give you an example of the wording and how important it is. A lot of the times we may say, Hey, Free consultation on your Invisalign. And we see that everywhere all the time. Everybody's like, Hey, course it's free. Everybody else is offering it free. But if you say, Hey, your first session of Invisalign is free. Now, people who are ready to get it in their mindset. They're more ready than the free consultation person.They're thinking, holy snaps, I get the first session for free. They don't know. The first session is a consultation. They're just in their mind. The first session is free. Let's do this kind of a thing. Boom. So the wording has a lot to do with this. So you can, instead of just saying, Hey, face mask, herbal tea, and mini candle package, you know, you just say, Hey, a cozy night in package right?an example script for this could be, Hey, thank you for referring your friend. As a little appreciation gift. We have a luxury skincare set waiting for you at your next visit. I can guarantee this is gonna ensure. That they will show up for their next appointment. And it works because people associate luxury with high value, even if it's a small cost designer brand.Mini items feel premium, but they stay compliant. So that's number one, right? Luxury experience based gifts. Two monthly surprise gift box. Now, this adds like a fun mystery factor and why this works. Patients love the ex excitement of mystery gifts. The psychological trigger of surprise and delight makes them want to refer more and how this works.Each month have a small mystery referral gift box in your office. Patients who refer get to pick one at their next visit. It's a mystery box and the example items, they're all under $15. Okay. this is what you can have in these mystery boxes. Mini essential oil set. You can have a high end travel toothpaste kit, gourmet popcorn or snack packs, many hand poured soy candles.And now depending on the community you live in, you can purchase some of these things from small businesses in your community and have these in the mystery. Bags or gifts. And then not only are you partnering up with another business and creating rapport, and maybe y'all guys can do even more things together, but boom, this is your foot in the door in order to get into that small business and get the employees to come in.But at the same time, now you're having them participate in something. for example, the mini hand poured soy candle, right? There can be a candle shop somewhere. And then another one is premium hydrating lip balm, right? Like the ones we discussed before. So mini essential oil set, high end travel toothpaste kit, gourmet snack pack, popcorn, anything like that.Candles, mini hand or soy candles, and then premium hydrating lip balm. Anything in this referral gift box, can have that, right? An example script for patients is, Hey, you've earned a pick from our mystery referral box. So go ahead, pick which one will you choose, and you can even record this, put it on social media, make it a big deal.It's fantastic and it works because patients will refer multiple times to try different gifts. The mystery element adds extra appeal, so it's not just a one-time thing. They're gonna try to refer multiple times to get multiple things right. So that's number two. Monthly, surprise gift box. It adds a fun mystery factor.Now, three local business perks. Now this one's huge. This is one we always do all the time with a lot of our members in our offices. Now this works because instead of a cash or gift cards, you partner with local businesses to offer exclusive low cost perks that feel high value. Now, example of local business perks are VIP perk at a coffee shop.Hey, your next drink upgrade is on us, right? Two free ice cream scoop at a local spot. Hey, enjoy sweet treat on us. Three exclusive, $10 boutique store credit so you can get store credit, paid by your practice. You don't have to buy a whole thing. It can just be this is for store credit. Next 10 minute chair massage at a local spa.Same thing, right? Store credit. Another one mini flower bouquet from a local florist, that's it. I mean, Those are example local business perks. And the script you can say for that is, Hey, we partnered with The local business to treat you. Your referral earns you an exclusive free drink upgrade next time you visit.however you want to word that right? Your referral earns you an exclusive $10 boutique store credit at. And it works because patients get real perks at places they already visit. Making the reward way more exciting. So this involves you getting to know, obviously, your target audience, where you want more of your target audience to come from.But at the same time, if you do an EPA, which we talk about that in the course, an existing patient analysis where you sit down. And think, who are my favorite patients that I currently see right now, or that I want to see once my practice is open, write it all down and boom. You're like, okay, where do they go?Where do they shop? What kind of coffee do they like? Where do they work? Where do they live? All these things. Now you're able to tailor make your referral program to that. So let's just say they go to Clutch Coffee, right? And they love Clutch Coffee. They talk about all the time, I know that I've even seen them there.Blah, blah, blah. Boom. VIP perk at a coffee shop once their referral, right? So if they send a referral, be like, Hey, I got you a VIP perk at a coffee shop. Your next drink upgrade is on us. You ain't even gotta worry about it. they're gonna love it. They're gonna see, that's my favorite coffee shop. How'd you know I go there all the time?Oh, much, much bigger impact than, Hey, here's 50 bucks. Here's a reward, right? And then the ethics plays a role in that, and you're not gonna get as much. So trust me, that is huge. The more you pay attention to your patients and where they go and what they like to do and who they are, the easier it is to build a rewards referral program and it will skyrocket your practice.From that point on, you can do a number four, which is a VIP dental perk. So this is non-monetary, but highly valuable. So real quick, a recap. We discussed three things so far on building a Referral rewards program. So number one is luxury experience based gifts.Michael: Two is monthly surprise gift box, which I think is fantastic. Three is local business perks. Another one. Fantastic, right? All these are fantastic, but local business perks creates a community hype. The community gets more involved. You know what I mean? You'll get more referrals from other businesses like that and so forth.Now, number four is a VIP, dental perks non-monetary, but highly valuable. Now, this works because patients value, convenience, and special treatment more than discounts. compliant VIP dental perks idea would be first pick for preferred appointment slots. Priority scheduling for family members, complimentary comfort upgrade.So maybe aromatherapy, neck pillow, something right that you guys do. Massage chairs or a skip the line fast pass for check-in, right? That works once in a while, but you can do something like that, especially if you are a highly, highly busy office. So an example script for patients that you can say is as a thank you for referring a friend, you are now on our VIP priority list for scheduling.And you can mention things like that. And it works because it creates exclusive benefits without violating compliance laws. So those are the four things you can do now, how to make the referral program feel more enticing. This is huge right here because you've created it, you're excited about it. You wanna put it out there.But you want people to start referring and you want them to take advantage of this program that you've created. So if you're just offering it, Hey, we have a rewards program, that's not enough. You need to present it in a way that makes patients excited to participate. So there's a couple things we can do, but I'm gonna mention three.Number one, use fomo. Fear of missing out, how to apply that instead of, Hey, refer a friend and get a gift. Maybe you should use, Hey, there's only 20 mystery referral gifts available this month. Once they're gone, they're gone. And then you continue. This works because people don't wanna miss out.Limited quantities equals higher participation. Two, make it feel personal and unexpected. This is how you're gonna apply it. Instead of telling everyone ahead of time, surprise them after they refer with the small, unexpected reward. So an example script for patients.Would be, wow, you refer to friend. Thank you so much. That's amazing. We have a little something for you next time you visit, And then you have it. Or if you already have it right then and there, that's perfect. You can just give it to them. But it works because you surprise them. And surprise rewards feel more special than expected ones.Now, number three is use social proof, make people see others referring. So feature referral shout outs in your office or social media. An example is like, Hey, thank you so much for this patient's name for referring a friend. We love them. Enjoy your mystery referral gift, right? And then they get the mystery referral gifts.You can make it a whole thing. And this works because patients feel encouraged to participate when they see others doing it.Now, these referral rewards program have reciprocity. People refer when they feel they owe you something. So if someone receives value first, they feel an obligation to return the favor. This is the science of reciprocity, so how you can apply this before asking for a referral. Give patients something first.Offer a small, unexpected gift at the end of an appointment, Branded lip balm, specific gum, or a $5 coffee card. And when they say thank you, mention the referral program. Yeah, you know what we love surprising best patients with small gifts. Here's a little something to say. Thank you. Oh. And if you know anyone looking for a great dentist, we'd love to take care of them too.Do you know anyone? And then that's it. Ask the question. Hey, by any chance, do you know anyone? we'll give the time. Be in silence for as long as you need to be until they come up with a name. And then now it starts working. Now you can start asking for that referral. It works because patients now feel obligated to refer because you gave first.So train your team to mention the referral program every single visit. That's it. That's what's gonna do it all honestly, is the consistency of that. Your front desk and hygienist should mention it at checkout or any moment that they get and create a pre-written script for staff to use. Make it themselves, use their personality with it, but should be something short, sweet, and to the point.So how to create an unstoppable referral program. In summary, you want to offer high perceived value gifts, select luxury mini items, local perks, surprise gifts. Use VIP scheduling perks or priority treatment as incentives if you want. Leverage, mystery and exclusivity to create fomo. Partner with local businesses for exclusive referral only perks, and make patients feel personally appreciated instead of just earning a gift. What you don't want to do is offer cash, gift cards, or high value incentives, That's a violation of the a KS. You don't want to make it feel like a transaction instead of an appreciation, and you don't want to use complicated referral processes.Keep it effortless, even to the point where take out that card. Sometimes we see that, Hey, here's a card if you want. Just give it to someone then write your name on the back. And then when they come into the practice and then they give me that card, I'll see your name and I'll know that you're the one who referred.That's too much it should just be like, Hey, come to my dentist. And that's it. It shouldn't have to be that whole long process where you need to get all that stuff. So the final winning strategy, make the referral gift something patients genuinely want but wouldn't normally buy for themselves.Use this strategy and your referral program will be the most enticing and legally compliant patient growth machine ever. Okay, now let me give you some examples how this works. The situation a dentist struggles to get consistent referrals. So we're gonna call this person Dr. Samantha, the general dentist at a small but loyal patient base, yet very few people were referring friends or family, and she had tried offering $25 discounts and free whitening, but she realized that these incentives weren't compliant and didn't excite patients.The problem patients saw discounts as unexciting. Two, her referral program felt like a transaction, not a reward. And three, the discounts could violate anti-kickback laws. The solution she had to have high perceived value, low cost luxury gifts. So Dr. Samantha switched to a referral gift system based on small but desirable luxury items.So instead of discounts, she offered mini Dior. Chanel or YSL, lip balms, luxury scented candles, organic self-care kits all under $20. Now how it worked, A patient referred a friend and when the referred friend came in, the refer received a luxury mini gift at their next visit. So the friend came in and, yeah, I came in from this person.Okay, cool. Awesome, wonderful. And then they gave a gift. Then patients loved it because it felt premium and personal, not like a discount, and the script was, you deserve a little luxury. You know, When you refer a friend, we'll have an exclusive Dior lip bal, or spa candle or mystery gift waiting for you at your next visit.It's exciting. They come in the results. Are incredible. You'll triple referrals in a short amount of time. Patients actively were asking, do you still have those little gifts available? And it's completely compliant. There's no cash, no high value incentives, just low cost appreciation gifts. Always remember people love branded premium feeling gifts, even if they're small luxury beats discounts every single time.You can also do the mystery box, right? mystery box works well. Patient refers a friend when they came in for their next visit, they got pull a mystery gift from the box, and patients love the excitement of not knowing what they'd get. So when that happened, I mean, referrals skyrocket, right?Some patients referred multiple people just to get another mystery box, and it stayed compliant because the gifts were low cost, but fun and desirable. And remember, people love surprises and games turning referrals into a fun experience makes them want to refer again. if you do decide to do the mystery box, make sure you record it.Post it on social media, make it a whole thing that's exciting, that's fun. And also the local business local community referral rewards program. That too, record that, post that on social media. Make it a big, huge thing. Now, all these successful programs had many things in common.they offered something patients actually wanted, they avoided financial kickbacks and stayed compliant. They made referrals feel special, not transactional, and they created an experience. Patients wanted to repeat. Now, if you want more referrals, do that. Do exactly what you heard in this episode and this whole episode along with the scripts and everything you're watching and seeing along with more scripts will be in the ground marketing course.If you're not a part of the ground marketing course, make sure you go in the show notes below. And enroll. I love to see you in there. We're always growing at making more, in there as well. But at the same time, you'll see the scripts. You'll learn how to get into businesses. You'll learn how to get into corporations everywhere in your community and not just start tracking new patients obviously immediately, but at the same time, you'll start becoming the go-to practice in your community.go in the show notes below. Click on the first link in the show notes below. Check to see. All that's inside of the course. We continue to add to it, but at the same time, you can already see everything that's inside of the course and I'd love to see you in there. So in our next episode, we're gonna be talking about overcoming rejection in ground marketing.So thank you so much for tuning in, and I'll talk to you in the next episode.
Kiera is joined by Dr. Robert DiPilla to talk about his world of dentistry, including the transition from cosmetic to holistic services, how he educated his patients, lessons learned during his multi-practice ownership, and more. About Dr. DiPilla: Dr. Robert DiPilla studied dentistry at the University of Detroit-Mercy, and then went on to attain a Fellowship for Dental Implants at the Harvard Club. He was quickly recruited to Manhattan, where he honed his dentistry techniques, and had the opportunity to work on many high-profile clients. Dr. DiPilla became a partner at the renowned Rosenthal Dental Group on Madison Avenue, and earned the title “the dentist's dentist” by his peers in the industry. Dr. DiPilla has had the privilege of perfecting the smiles of celebrity clientele such as Kathie Lee Gifford, Wayne Gretzky, Steve Duchesne, and Sarah Ferguson among others. While Dr. DiPilla maintains a Manhattan office, he now focuses on the location where his career began in the Detroit Metropolitan area. He contributes regularly to nationally circulated trade publications, and continues to be recognized as a leader and expert resource in aesthetic dentistry. Episode resources: Sign up for Dental A-Team's Virtual Summit 2025! Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript Kiera Dent (00:00.768) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera And today I am so jazzed to have an incredible guest. We have been following this man. We've been wanting him on our podcast. He is incredible. And I feel like what he's doing is changing the way dentists are doing dentistry. I think he's kind of in this new age, new era, adapting with the times. And so was so excited to bring him on and have his knowledge. So welcome to the show, Dr. Robert DiPilla. How are you today? Dr Robert DiPilla (00:25.484) I'm doing well. Thank you very much. I'm excited to be on your show. There are so many great things about you and your show. I I once again, I went back to some of your podcasts and you some great, great guests on. Kiera Dent (00:37.376) Well, thank you. am quite shocked. Dental A Team is about to release their thousandth episode. And I was thinking, I cannot believe I've been on this microphone a thousand times. So I'm super honored that you are a part of that journey. And really everyone who listens to the podcast knows our ultimate goal at Dental A Team is to positively impact the world of dentistry in the greatest way possible. so bringing guests on like yourself, people who are passionate about dentistry, making sure that we keep the passion alive in dentistry, making sure that people realize I believe we're in the best industry we possibly could ever be in. And so I'm super excited because I feel like you're taking a new edge spin to some things in dentistry. So before we get into some of these fun topics, Dr. DiPilla, why don't you take us through kind of your journey? I know you have a pretty interesting route of how you were able to go from where you were and where you started in dentistry to where you are today. So if you kind of want to take us on your journey, that way the audience gets to know you as well. Dr Robert DiPilla (01:31.854) That journey starts 36 years ago. I graduated at the University of Detroit, Mercy in 1989, and I did a residency at Harvard at the Harvard Club for doing implants. And from that, I really was interested in the cosmetic realm. So you got to think about in the early 90s. And it was kind of like touched upon. And I was very fortunate. to take a course with Bill Dickerson and Larry Rosenthal. And this is the first time they were together in doing these particular courses. And my first patient for my aesthetic course was my sister, believe it or not. when I mentioned this, it was an amazing journey. She was very appreciative. It was a great case. And from that, one interesting point. Kiera Dent (02:16.68) Wow, that's brave, an aesthetic course. Dr Robert DiPilla (02:30.828) when I was in the lecture and they were talking about different materials, different processes, the way to do things. I know once again, I just graduated, I did like a little surgical residency and I thought to myself, mean, the auditorium was packed, there's probably like a hundred students. And I'm like looking around and I'm thinking myself, am I the only dumb one here that doesn't know this? I said, this is insane. And they're going over these seven different steps to do bonding and veneers. I'm like, my gosh, did I learn this in school? you Kiera Dent (03:05.28) Did I skip that day? I promise I didn't miss too many, right? That's what you're probably thinking, like I was there. Dr Robert DiPilla (03:10.237) I would promise I was there. But I promised myself since then, it was like a real, not say a low point in my life, but it was a low point in the sense of how come I didn't know this? And I kind of pride myself in understanding things and certain process and procedures. And I said, from that day, this will never happen again. So that journey led into teaching with Bill Dickerson before it was LVI and also aesthetic advantage with Larry Rosenthal. And as you know, there were two separate groups and I had to make a decision on what camp was I going to go into. Was I going to do the LVI camp in Vegas? And mind you, I'm in Michigan. Or do I go to New York route? And my decision was New York was closer. So I went with Larry Rosenthal. So I was an instructor with him for about three or four years. And then I was invited to be a doctor in his office. And I was there for a good 10 years. that journey right there was probably the highest point of my life in that particular aesthetic office. There was a lot of great contacts, a lot of great people that we met. And I always say everything is a blessing for me. I don't hold anything back as far as this was a disappointment. This didn't happen for me because I think everything is a growing experience. So for me, being in Larry's office was really, truly, truly, like I said, a blessing. It was a great thing for my career. And then I knew that when I started having a family and kids, New York for me personally wasn't the place for me. Coming from the Midwest, Midwest values, I wanted to have the family where I grew up because my mom is still here and my extended family is here as well. So once again, from that, I left New York. Kiera Dent (04:51.21) You Dr Robert DiPilla (05:01.806) And then, but I kept a practice in New York as well, because I had a lot of patients to see. And I started my own practice in Birmingham, Michigan. And that was in 2000, probably 2003, 2004. And then from that, you know, we grew to five different practices. So it's been a really challenging once again, but it's been a great journey for us. Kiera Dent (05:15.338) Wow. Kiera Dent (05:25.706) That's incredible. And so I'm curious because when I first started as a dental assistant, one of the doctors that I worked for had a practice in California and Utah. And so every Thursday or Wednesday, I think it was, we would close out in California and he'd catch a flight and he'd go to his practice in Utah. He'd be there Thursday, Friday, fly home, and we do Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. So did you fly back and forth between your two practices? Dr Robert DiPilla (05:45.93) I did the same thing. When I moved back to Michigan, I would work in Michigan Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, would fly out to New York and work Thursday and Friday. And then plus New York's a great city and I stayed for the weekend and I flew back the first flight out 6 a.m. on Monday morning to make it to my practice at 9 a.m. So I did that for seven years. So back and forth. then once again, Kiera Dent (05:56.106) Yeah. Kiera Dent (06:02.806) sure. you Dr Robert DiPilla (06:12.462) It was great. To me, people, how did you do that? Why did you do that? It was just my routine and it worked out really, really well. And then there was some point where I kind of have to slow down and kind of give that up a little bit because I wanted to build more practices in Michigan. Kiera Dent (06:27.414) Sure. No, that makes sense. And I was just curious because when that Dennis would do it, I thought like it was so wild, but it made sense of how he was able to have the two practices. So it's either you fly back and forth for a while or you get associates. Did you end up keeping that practice in New York or did you have an associate running it or did you end up selling it and then focus in Michigan? Dr Robert DiPilla (06:45.186) Yeah, no, I actually, believe it or not, a lot of my New York patients actually will fly to Michigan to have their work done. And then the rest is I gave it to a really good friend of mine, Dr. Michael Krause, that's in the city on 49th and Madison. So, you know, basically a lot of my patients just kind of ended up with him. Kiera Dent (06:52.564) Incredible. Kiera Dent (07:06.728) Amazing. And that's great to know. And I hope dentists heard that of when you are really great at your craft, they will fly, they will come to see you. And I think that that's something that's different in today's world. I think that it's very common for patients to fly other places rather than just going to their dentist down the street. I think people fly for different surgeries to different places. Now I think for your day in day out routine dental care, you'll probably stay closer to home. But also we only go six, like two times a year. So it's really not that much to travel if you want to. Dr Robert DiPilla (07:25.919) percent. Yeah. Yeah. Dr Robert DiPilla (07:34.798) Yeah, there's a lot, know, as you know, there's a lot of patients that will seek out plastic surgeons and they will go to a certain destination if it's New York, LA or Miami. And that's the same thing with dentistry. I mean, I've been very fortunate. I've had a of patients from Miami that will fly up and for me to do their work, their veneers, New York, of course, all the way even from LA. So it's been it's been a wonderful thing. I'm very humbled, you know, to do that. I don't take that take that lightly. Kiera Dent (07:40.214) Mm-hmm. Kiera Dent (08:02.812) No, and I think that there's when you love what you do and you're really great at what you do, people fly. I mean, I am a dental snob. think being in dentistry, it makes me one of the worst patients. And so I'm always nervous. And so I do travel to dentists out of the state. And I think it's something of the world has changed. And so I love your journey. I love the passion you have. I love that you've built multiple practices. I think you bring an interesting perspective. And so I'm super curious because you've kind of gone into a holistic route as well. So I'm curious, how do you go from dental implants, veneers, which feels very cosmetic, into holistic? Like what's kind of the bridge? How have you done that? Because I think people feel like I'm either traditional dentistry or I'm holistic dentistry. And I feel like you're bridging this gap. And I think the world is bridging this gap as well. I don't think it's as polarized as it used to be, but what's kind of your take on that and how did you transition? What got you excited about that? Give some insights. Dr Robert DiPilla (08:53.684) I mean, you You know, for you as you know, being a hygienist, know, to me, for our patients, we want to make sure that they have a healthy foundation. a healthy foundation is the bone and also the gingival tissue. And, you know, it doesn't matter how great of a cosmetic dentist you are, how great of an implantologist you are, the tissue has to be stable. It has to be making sure that, you know, the oral microbiome is sufficient. Kiera Dent (09:05.299) Mm-hmm. Dr Robert DiPilla (09:25.774) You got to make sure that the biofilm is eliminated. And one of the biggest things that, I mentor 22 doctors here in Michigan, from guys who've just, guys or gals who've just been out a year and guys like myself that been out for 36 years. One of the things that I try to impress upon them is that don't be a mechanic of the mouth. And my feelings, is that dental schools right now, and once again, different than my era, is just really, they're really teaching you how to pass the board exams. And then the real age of dentistry is what you get after as far as continued education. And I think it's really important, as you know, even being a hygienist, is that you have a patient that comes back, yet you did scaling and root planning. Kiera Dent (10:01.694) Right. Dr Robert DiPilla (10:17.15) and you see him back in three months and they're saying, yeah, I brush every day, I floss every day, I have the water pick that you recommended, I'm doing the oral care, I'm doing this. And they come back and it's like, my God, are you really flossing? Are you really brushing your teeth? No, no, I am. But why is that? Why are we doing maybe supervised neglect or super profis? The question comes in is that we have to understand why, my biggest thing is the why, why is that happening? You know, we incorporated now we're doing genetic testing, we're doing saliva testing for our patients because as we know, a lot of, you know, reintroduction of refractory periodontitis that happens. So even the same thing with my hygienist, you know, we're very strong in continuing education. We're very strong in not just scaling and root planing teeth, just for the matter of fact of doing it. And one of the things that, you know, my hygienist, they all know, is that if you're doing Scanlan Root Planning, what type of attachment do you want back? So I think you have to have a strong foundation in histology. You have to know the periodontium very, very well. And a lot of times in school, yeah, yeah, that was that class. I had it, but this is what I want to do. So I think for us in dentistry, you have to move away from being that mechanic of the mouth, because I can teach my assistant to prep a tooth, easy. But you have to understand the diagnosis and the Kiera Dent (11:26.774) you Kiera Dent (11:38.368) you Dr Robert DiPilla (11:42.094) And it also goes back to different materials. The whole rage now is zirconia, crowns, and it's a lot stronger. But is it really? Is it lithium disilicate, or is it philospathic porcelain? So I think there has to be an understanding of where to place those materials in the proper patients and proper occlusion. So because a salesperson comes in, oh, this is the latest and greatest, doesn't mean that you should buy it. So I think. Kiera Dent (12:09.824) for sure. Dr Robert DiPilla (12:10.894) For me, it's kind of taking a step back and understanding dental materials, understanding the periodontium, understanding all that. I the classes that we hated in school, believe it not, I've been doing this for 36, are probably the most important now than anything else. Kiera Dent (12:25.67) No, for sure. And I'm so grateful you talked about that because agreed like the healthy foundations, I think it's so easily overlooked. So I'm curious, how did you start to incorporate this with your patients? Because you didn't come out of school having this, you didn't learn all these things right away, you started incorporating it. I think people are oftentimes afraid to add this into their practices due to patient pushback. So how did you, how did you educate your patient base? Dr Robert DiPilla (12:48.702) Well, yeah, I think it's just having a good communication with your patient and being authentic. with our patients, we're there for them in a sense of we don't push anything, we don't sell anything, we just educate our patients. And a lot of times, if I've seen a patient for 10, 15, 20 years and I'm watching them get worse, And, you know, I'll just have that, you know, that radical candor with them saying, hey, listen, you know, where do you want to go with this? What do you, how can I help you? You know, do you, mean, for some reason I'm watching you getting worse and I don't want that. So what can I do to help? And then we kind of castor them in that, in that direction as much as possible. You know, there's, we'll do a lot of like nutritional counseling and we see a lot of patients that, as you know, they come in, you know, they're not, they're not healthy. And I have the, Kiera Dent (13:39.51) All right. Dr Robert DiPilla (13:42.21) I guess the personality to talk to my patients and say, listen, I want you to see this person. I care about you. I've seen you for many, many times. And I just, you know, I see some things that I don't like. So what I want you to do, here's a referral. I want you to see them. And then nine out of 10 times they'll come back and say, my God, thank you so much. I didn't know I had this underlying condition. Kiera Dent (14:07.84) That's incredible. And I agree that education, I think is the new age of communication. I think a lot of patients want to understand more. think we live in this digital era where people are consuming so much more information rapidly and they want to be educated and they want to know what's going on. And I do think social media has, has ramped this up exponentially for people to want more education rather than just blindly following. And so I really love that you took it that way. I want to ask you a couple of questions about growth of practices because I think so many people grow practices or they feel that they need to grow practices or they need to expand their practices. I'm curious after having done that, you've had practices in multiple states, you've grown your, like walk me through, like when do you grow as a dentist? When do you not grow as a dentist? What are some things that you learned through that growth of multi-practice ownership, especially with dentists that are in today's world? I think that there are some that are brand new. There's the DSO on the radar and on the horizon for people. Walk me through some of your thoughts around this practice growth, multi-location, when do I grow, what do I do with DSOs? I'm super curious because you've done it and you've done it for a long time. What are some of your thoughts around that? Dr Robert DiPilla (15:08.718) 100%. Dr Robert DiPilla (15:17.582) I'm going to let's go back when I was like I said, very fortunate to be in Larry Rosenthal's office in New York City. And everyone knows Larry Rosenthal is the premier, know, veneer office to go to. So I was once again, I was very, very fortunate to go there. But well, my dismay, I was the young kid. Kiera Dent (15:37.364) It's incredible, by the way. like, like, let's just stop for a second. Like, that's incredible that you got to work there with him. Dr Robert DiPilla (15:44.622) So think of a patient that's there, know, we had celebrity CEOs, we had every mogul you could imagine we had. And you got this young kid walking in and they're like, well, kid, move away, where's Larry? Where's Larry? So what I had to do, I had to kind of reinvent myself. And, you know, and I had to figure out what type of avatar patient, you know, do I want? And I think that it doesn't matter if I'm in New York, if I'm in Birmingham, Michigan. Kiera Dent (15:44.947) Yeah. Kiera Dent (15:57.715) Yeah. Dr Robert DiPilla (16:11.274) I'm if in Salt Lake City, Atlanta, doesn't matter. You just have to figure out what avatar do you want. And then you kind of go where that avatar is. So an example, this is what I did. So in New York City, I need to get a haircut. So for me, I went to the biggest celebrity hairstylist you can get. And it was Orbe in New York City. And why did I do Kiera Dent (16:37.556) Yeah. Okay. I mean, you do have great hair, by the way. So, I mean, it must have worked out for you. I like it. It looks great. Dr Robert DiPilla (16:41.582) Well, thank you so No way. It's not what it Well, thank you. So I went to Orbe and why did I go to see him? Because Orbe has what a lot of celebrity clientele. And for me, it was building a relationship with Orbe. You come in, your first appointment, who are you? What do you do? Oh my God, yeah, I have a dentist and that, that, that. As you know, when you say you're a dentist or a hygienist, oh, by the way, can you look at this? Kiera Dent (17:10.633) haha Dr Robert DiPilla (17:11.758) So what that does is that it kind of opens up the dialogue as much as possible. So from him, I've been seeing him for two to three years. And once again, it's something that you always have to continue going. If you do it once or twice and it doesn't work, well, that's not going to happen. So they go into the gym, you work out once or twice, you're not going to be in shape. it's of those things that you perpetually just have to do. So I was very fortunate seeing him for years. And from that, Kiera Dent (17:32.083) Right. Dr Robert DiPilla (17:39.49) I had my own celebrity clientele that came into Larry's office. It was great. All right, how about another one? So I was fortunate they had the LA Reebok Club where I used to live on the Upper West Side. And then joined a gym, of course. And I wanted to find out who was the best trainer who trained all the celebrities. And then once again, the same thing. So I think it's important. Kiera Dent (17:44.308) Mm-hmm. Dr Robert DiPilla (18:06.818) you know, to find out because I'm going tell you a lot of the celebrities and a lot of moguls, they're not calling to make the appointment. They have someone as an assistant to make their appointments for them. So I'll give you an example. I was working out in East Hampton for a little bit because I bought a house in in Amiganza. And as I was doing this renovation, I never really worked on Fridays, but in East Hampton, I worked some Fridays and I was fortunate that I had a logistics manager for the Rolling Stones that came in. Built a relationship with her. And then from that, because she's a logistics manager, she does everything for the Stones. So I was very fortunate. She called me up, hey, Mick has a concert tonight at Madison Square Garden. He wants his teeth cleaned. He wants them checked out. Can you do it? Sure. What time? Nine o'clock at night. What? Kiera Dent (18:39.082) Well. Kiera Dent (19:01.735) I'm Dr Robert DiPilla (19:03.342) So those are the things that you have to do. If you want that type of avatar, you want that type of clientele, then you kind have to do whatever it takes to go above and beyond to make sure that that happens. So don't think that if you want that type of practice, there's going to be some sacrifices that you're going to have to do. So for me, my personal story, for me being in New York, I was so driven, driven, driven. That's all I did. That's all I did. And I was married at the... at the time. you know, looking back in retrospect, it affected my marriage. So, you know, my ex-wife, we're great, we're still great friends, but it affected because I just, for me, I was driven. This is what I wanted to do. I was out. I was going to opening of galleries. I was opening up to restaurants and because I wanted to be successful. But with that, there are some consequences that come with it. So you have to kind of be prepared. You they always say, you know, the balance of life, you know, what to do as far as your career and work. I mean, there is, but you're going to sacrifice, you know, somewhere. You can't have it all, as they say. So you're going to have to kind of give up some. Kiera Dent (20:12.853) Great. Do you, looking back, are you grateful that you've made the decisions you've made or do you wish you would have done things differently? Like knowing what you know now. Walk me through because I think people people often wonder this. Dr Robert DiPilla (20:26.466) Yeah, there's no, for me, there's no regrets because even if there was a regret, I always look at it as something that will make me better down the road. mean, listen, we're all gonna have failures. Things are gonna happen, but you have to learn from that. I mean, for someone to say, this has never happened to me and da, da, da, either they're lying or they have not, they've just graduated yesterday. I didn't tell my associates the same thing and that they had a bad day. Kiera Dent (20:49.724) Yeah. Dr Robert DiPilla (20:56.046) patient was complaining or something, I said, listen, it's going to happen. As long as you know in your heart you did the right thing, that's all you can do. Kiera Dent (21:05.593) I that. And I appreciate that because I think so many times people feel like I should have known this right from the get go. But I think a lot of learning is experiencing too. And so going through it and making different decisions. And like you said, what's the type of life? What's the type of avatar do I want? And then crafting your practice around that. I really love that you highlight. I feel like you crafted your practice and your craft around the avatar, patient and life that you wanted. I think at the beginning you probably hustled a lot more than you thought you would need to, but I think that that's the beginning of practice ownership. I think that's the beginning of any career. And then you're able to then start to curate it into what you wanted it to be. And I think so many dentists don't realize that that is a possibility for you if you want it to craft it for what you want. Dr Robert DiPilla (21:50.486) No, listen, mean, there's many different practices, as you know. There's the elite practices that are doing, know, veneers and an example who took over Larry Rosenthal's office is Mike Appa. Mike Appa is a great dentist. When I was leaving Larry's office, he was coming in and he took it to the next level. And I missed, from my era, we didn't really have Facebook or Instagram or anything like that. So I'm kind of like the, know, the lagger in that particular point. But he took that and made it to a different level as far as his career going to Dubai. And now he has multiple, multiple practices. But once again, there is some sacrifices. I'm sure it has not come easy to him. He has put in a lot of work, a lot of time, a lot of dedication to craft that for him. I look at it as, man, that's amazing. Good for him. Other people can get jealous of that. but they don't understand the hard work what it takes to get there. It's like the basketball player, like, my God, he's making all this, how did he get that? But he forgot all the thousands and thousands of hours being in the gym and also practicing. Sometimes we forget that. Kiera Dent (22:58.037) Yeah. Kiera Dent (23:03.55) Right. Right. I think that it's been so just I love I love your passion. I love the life that you've lived. I love the I love that you were so committed to never being that person and then look at how that that drive and that determination took you from where you were to where you are today. I'm curious speaking to dentists who are maybe I don't know two three four years out. What advice would you give them from all your years of practicing of the things you've been able to do, the clientele you've had, the team you had? What would be advice you'd give to that population of dentists right now? Knowing everything you know, knowing the climate, knowing the, like I said, DSOs are on the horizon. Do I become a private practice owner? Do I work corporate? Do I own multi-practices? What would you give? Again, we're talking four or five years out. I feel like this is right where they're starting to get that itch. They've got their, they figured a lot of things out. Well, what advice would you have for that dentist? Dr Robert DiPilla (23:57.454) So it's funny that you say that because three of my associates, I have been out four to five years. And we get together, which is great, which I love is we get together once a month at my house over here and we kind of go over some kids' education things and just kind of talking to them as far as what their successes are, what their stresses are, and also what they're stuck. We call that three S's. And I always tell them, listen, I don't want you to be me. Kiera Dent (24:03.528) Mm-hmm. Dr Robert DiPilla (24:27.5) I want you to be you. If you're interested in Invisalign, then go for it. And I think that a lot of younger dentists feel that, my God, I have to do that endo. I have to do that extraction. I have to do that filling. I have to do this because there's so much money and debt from dental school and you can't do everything because something's gonna, you're gonna get hurt on one perspective. My advice, I've been doing this, like I said, for 36 years, find out what you really, really love to do and then do that. Is it gonna pan off the next day? No, it's gonna take time. And I think we live in a world that it's instant gratification and everyone wants everything done yesterday. It's just the law of averages. You're just gonna have to do it, do it, do it, do it and keep it until you get there. For me, like I said, I was going for the implant route. Kiera Dent (25:16.519) Right. Dr Robert DiPilla (25:26.474) I loved surgery. And then I found that niche that I wanted to do was the aesthetic world. And then, okay, I'm doing some aesthetics. We're at Larry's office. We're doing 10 veneers on the bottom, 10 veneers on the top and the bottom. And I'm thinking to myself, yeah, the bite doesn't look that great. I said, well, there's something more to this. And then I went down to Rabbit Hole. I did Pete Dawson's chorus. Kiera Dent (25:47.568) I'm Dr Robert DiPilla (25:55.746) I remember at Panky. So I went another route as far as now doing full mouth rehabilitation. Going back to, you know, Facebook, Centric Relation, doing everything that needs to be done. How am supposed to get back to that? Right? And then, you know, getting there. So, you know, for me, that is my niche now. And from, you know, I'm building a bigger office in Birmingham. I think I'm crazy what I'm doing right now. Kiera Dent (26:08.108) The baseball, that's a throwback. Dr Robert DiPilla (26:25.016) but I still have passion for what I do. feel like, you when someone said, you've been out for 36 years, I feel like I've only been out for five years. I still love this profession. I love what it's given me, the opportunity, but sometimes I don't like the direction where it's going in. And that kind of goes back to what you mentioned about the DSOs. Don't get me wrong, I'm not popo-ing DSOs. I mean, I think there's a place for everyone. Kiera Dent (26:33.611) Yeah. Kiera Dent (26:47.198) Yeah, I'm curious on your take. You've been in this for a long time. Dr Robert DiPilla (26:55.24) I mean, know dentists are in Medicaid offices, great. We know that patients are in PPO offices, great. Fee for service, better. And then also group practices that, you know, my associates are in. And then there's DSOs. Once again, I'm fortunate to be part of Dicama's group, and it's one of the premier law firms that have put all the DSOs together. Kiera Dent (27:06.698) Yeah. Kiera Dent (27:18.805) Mm-hmm. Dr Robert DiPilla (27:25.358) And some are great, some are amazing, but some have failed. And I think one of the problems I feel that corporate has is that if you do the CEO, you're looking at what? You're looking at the numbers, you're looking at the metrics, right? You're looking at the KPIs. But if you're in the trenches, you can't treat every office as the same. It's different. The hygienist has a different personality. dentist has a personality. You have different patients, demographic of patients. Kiera Dent (27:31.04) Right. Dr Robert DiPilla (27:54.648) So I think for dentists, we're just a different animal as far as the field that we're in. It's very, very personal that we have as far as our offices. And like I said, I have five offices. All five are completely different. If I try to implement every single detail thing in Birmingham to do it in Detroit, no. Same thing in Detroit to do at Sinclair Shores, no. It has to be customized to that particular practice. Kiera Dent (28:22.782) Yeah, no, and I think that's such wise wisdom because working with hundreds of offices, I don't have an A to Z cookbook. I don't tell them like implement this. I know systems that will work, but we customize it to your area because the patient base, like you said in New York compared to Birmingham, Michigan, they're going to be very different patients. They're going to have different needs, different like all of it is different. The pace of it is going to be different. Your attrition rates will probably look differently. And so I agree with you completely that Dr Robert DiPilla (28:36.046) That's great. Kiera Dent (28:52.52) Everything is not apples to apples. I'm curious, how do you lead all five of those practices? Do you have, like, what does your team structure look like? Because so many people do get stressed out with multi-practice ownership. What have you done to reduce that stress level for yourself and make sure that they're all successful? Dr Robert DiPilla (29:06.262) Yeah. No, it's, we just had our all company meeting. I call it the summit meeting. And, you know, it's amazing that, you know, 10 years ago, I had one office and maybe four employees. Now I Kiera Dent (29:13.672) Thank you. Kiera Dent (29:20.928) Did you hear that everyone? 10 years ago. So this is something that in his 36 years of dentistry, he did 26 years. I also think people need to realize they sometimes feel like they're too old to open up multiple practices. They feel they're too far in their career. They needed to do this earlier. So I hope people are hearing your timeline of 26 years solo practice and now 10 years making five practices, but also there is a timeline around that. So continue please. But I just want to highlight, this was not an overnight thing for you either. Dr Robert DiPilla (29:23.5) Years ago, Yeah. Single practice. Dr Robert DiPilla (29:51.054) It's not. I'll go back and I'll tell you the reason why for that. And for me, like I said, going to New York, I wanted to be the best. I wanted to be that celebrity dentist. And when I came back to Michigan, I centered everything around me. People came, they flew in from out of state to see me. And one of the things, I can't scale me. And one of the things that I have to open up Kiera Dent (30:12.63) Yeah. Dr Robert DiPilla (30:20.174) the offices and kind of passed the baton to my other associates. So, you for me, that was like the biggest thing is the key is letting go. And like I said, we had a summit meeting two weeks ago. And like I said, I had five employees in one practice. Now I have five practices with close to 70 employees. You may say, my God, how do you do that? I hire smart people smarter than me. Kiera Dent (30:43.082) Yeah Dr Robert DiPilla (30:49.79) to do that. I have a great CFO. I have a great regional manager and I have great office managers. And one of the biggest things that we, we constant, constant role play a lot of the things that we do in the office. And why is that important? One of the things that we did when COVID happened, before we opened up, we had a month where we did Zoom calls. like this, and we did a role play because when patients come back, they're gonna have questions. And what are we doing to protect them and ourselves? And it was really important for the front desk, it was really important for our managers, hygienists and assistants to make sure we're getting our message across. One of the things that I never wanna hear on the phone is if a patient asked a question, and our front desk, our personal, I don't know. I don't know what we're doing. So, you to me, it's just having those questions answered. And what we did is I call it the kind of the soft opening, like what a restaurant would do before they opened up fully, they would kind of, you know, bring in some of their guests or their family members to have a soft opening. So that's what we usually do from that. But the main thing, you for me, Kiera Dent (31:51.997) That's Dr Robert DiPilla (32:15.112) is I just hire great people that are around me that will integrate the vision that I have. So there's a great book and I highly, highly recommend for dentists. And I know Gina Whitman very well, it's called Traction. I don't know if you've heard the book or. And it's amazing. And then the follow-up book is Rocket Fuel. Kiera Dent (32:33.75) We are diehard traction people. We help offices with it. It is incredible. Yes. Kiera Dent (32:41.903) Amen. When you were talking about integrator, was like, he's a visionary needs the integrator. Did you, did you hire? Dr Robert DiPilla (32:45.198) I'm the 100%. I mean, for me, I'm definitely the visionary. know what I want to see. And then my CFL is the integrator. I have so bad ADD, I'm like, don't squirrel. Okay, what happened over here? No, no, no, no, get on track. We gotta do this. So for me, like. Kiera Dent (32:57.848) you Kiera Dent (33:03.382) How did you find your CFO integrator? you go through one of Traction's hiring things? Did you find them through? How did you find that integrator? Because I think that's such a key piece in growth. How did you find yours? Dr Robert DiPilla (33:14.572) Well, luckily she was with us and within the company and we just hired up for her. She just went from low level to higher hiring and she got it. She understood the whole process. mean, when she read the book, she, I mean, my God, this is the missing piece for us. And I love that, that passion that she has for that and then just kind of put everything together. So I was very fortunate in that respect. But when we do our hiring, Kiera Dent (33:21.462) amazing. Kiera Dent (33:32.118) Yeah. Dr Robert DiPilla (33:43.746) We hire within our culture and who we are. And sometimes it's difficult to do that. We did that right after COVID because some people didn't feel like they wanted to come back or didn't feel safe to come back as far as some employees, which is fine. And there was a shortage of dental assistants and hygienists wasn't an issue for us. It was more assistance. And I hate to say that we hired people that weren't the right fit. Kiera Dent (34:08.97) Mm-hmm. Dr Robert DiPilla (34:13.71) And I'm going to tell you that was a big mistake because it's going to take you longer to find another person. So I'd have no one. do it myself compared to not have the same, the right person that would fit in our culture. Kiera Dent (34:29.974) I agree. That's wise wisdom. And I think so many people get desperate. And I mean, I've done it. I think we've all done it, right? We've all made those hires and we're like, agreed with you. We'd rather wait it out till the right person comes through rather than doing those desperate hires. And I think it's Dr Robert DiPilla (34:41.966) Yeah, it works out. And really works out. I'm a true believer that, I mean, there is a plan and you just kind of have to wait it out and it comes in because the same thing in our downtown Detroit office, we were waiting for someone and we thought someone, oh my God, she's going to be great. Oh my God, she's moving from Boston. She's going to come here. She's ran a periodontal office. Oh my God, we love her. And then got ghosted. Like what the hell happened? And then the next day, Kiera Dent (35:07.38) Mm-hmm. Dr Robert DiPilla (35:10.85) We got another resume. Lauren, I mean, amazing. I mean, just that blessing that comes through. So I think the best thing to do is just wait it out, hire within your culture. And if they don't fit, they're not the right team member for you. Kiera Dent (35:28.916) I love that. Dr. DiPilla, something I have found so fascinating with our podcast today, just so appreciative. I feel you have wisdom. And I think wisdom oftentimes lacks. And I think it comes from experience. I think you've learned from the things that you've done. I'm not saying you're old. I'm saying that I hear wisdom from you. And I think you had this wisdom even when you first started your career. I think you learned things. But I feel you lived your own. Dr Robert DiPilla (35:42.114) You're saying I'm Kiera Dent (35:56.438) I feel like you grew because you wanted to grow, not because you felt like you needed to. I feel like you waited when I'm sure a lot of your other colleagues were building multi-practices and you're like, this is what I'm enjoying doing. And what I've heard is as you've shifted and morphed throughout your career and the way you've presented it, it sounds like you've done it based on intrigue and curiosity and things that still keep the passion within you. And I feel like... You're a great example of someone who can be practicing dentistry for 36 years and still have passion, fire and fuel behind it, rather than the what I see a lot of right now of burnout. And I was trying to put the pieces together as we were chatting and I'm like, I think honest to goodness, you've done everything because it was a passion and a curiosity and it fueled you rather than drained you. And I also really love that you believe that there's a higher path for you. Like you said, it's just because one door is closing, it means the other door is opening, but that door is not quite ready yet. So be okay with this door closing. But that would how I would summarize you. Obviously, please fill in any gaps I may have missed. But I think that that's so refreshing to hear that I think a lot of us can take stock in and learn from you as well. Dr Robert DiPilla (36:49.806) 100%. Dr Robert DiPilla (37:05.474) Wow, well, thank you for that. That's, thank you. But for me, right now, I think it's important to, like I said, pass the baton to my other dentist and kind of elevate them as much as possible. And I think if you're in a group practice or if you're in a single practice, sometimes we live on our own little island and you don't know where to do. would... Kiera Dent (37:10.197) You're welcome. Dr Robert DiPilla (37:31.66) get a couple of your friends, colleagues, whatever, just go out to a restaurant, hang out and kind of talk your story. Because we're all in it and we all go through the same things. And maybe I'm blessed with mental resiliency, I don't know. I mean, there's a lot of things that are kind of thrown at you. But for me, for my upbringing, mean, things bother me, don't get me wrong, I am human. But I know that my purpose is stronger than the noise that hear that's behind me. And for me, where am I going to go from here? What's the next 10 years look like? And For me, my legacy and what I want to hear is that when I'm long gone and a patient goes to another dentist and says, hey, who's your other dentist? And I say, well, I went to DiPilla All I want to hear is that, you know what? Yes, I heard great people. That's all I want to hear. You went to one of the best. That's it. That's all I want to hear. I mean, I that's my legacy is that make sure that we as a group, as a team or organization, we've done the right thing by you and also by the the patients and also our team too. We got to take care of our the team that supports us very, Kiera Dent (38:54.25) That's beautiful. And I think as you said that I think maybe a takeaway from today would be figure out the legacy that you want to leave. think that that legacy, just did a mastermind group with some people in person and I had them write when they were, you know, I didn't give them an age. I just said, when you're sitting back looking at your life, what do want to feel? What do you want to experience? And what do you want it to be said about you? And it was crazy because people started making different decisions in that moment because the legacy of who they want to be and what they want to leave behind radically shifts what you're doing today. And I think that that's a beautiful takeaway from today. I have loved our conversation. I thoroughly enjoy you as a human. I think you're just doing a beautiful work, an example of keeping the passion alive in dentistry and doing great things no matter what's going on. any last thoughts you have, how can people connect with you? Dr Robert DiPilla (39:34.926) Thank you. Dr Robert DiPilla (39:44.238) I think for anyone guys who have been graduating, this is like the best time to be a dentist. I mean, I'm so excited. mean, the technology is amazing. Things that we used to do before and we can do now, digital workflow, 3D printing, AI, it's amazing. So, for me, I go into work every day. I'm very passionate what we need to do. But for me, It's time for me to kind of like maybe work maybe in the chair once or twice a week and then work on the business. And that's where I'm more passionate about as well. And then kind of like I said, elevating everybody else. But once again, this has been a real, real pleasure and I can see your passion as well and much, success for yourself. Kiera Dent (40:28.682) Likewise, thank you so much for joining today, Dr. Tafilla. I hope everybody who's listened takes away a few golden nuggets and gems because I really do believe there was so much value and wisdom in this podcast today. I think that there's so much beauty. love podcasting with people like yourself that are just so optimistic of the future. So thank you for joining us and for all of you listening. Yes. Dr Robert DiPilla (40:49.816) My pleasure. Kiera Dent (40:53.78) All of you listening, thank you for joining us. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.
Today on Wedding Secrets Unveiled!, we're exploring a brand-new topic—dentistry! Looking and feeling your best on your wedding day is a top priority, but for many, their smile can be a source of insecurity. That's why we're joined by the expert Dr. Naomi Goldman of Levy Goldman Dentistry in Peabody, MA. Dr. Goldman shares her top tips—and crucial mistakes to avoid—when preparing your teeth to shine on your big day. Whether you're considering professional or at-home whitening, veneers, or Invisalign, this episode is packed with valuable insights to help you make the best choice for your wedding smile! Please rate, review and subscribe to this podcast wherever you're listening so you never miss an episode. Even better share it with a friend! It's a great way to show your support and let us know what you think. Thank you for listening. To get the full show notes, head to https://sarazarrella.com/2025/03/bridal-dental-care-dos-and-donts/ For more information check out our website at www.sarazarrella.com/podcast Join our Monthly Newsletter for tips, tricks and Freebies! https://sarazarrella.com/newsletter Would love to be friends on the gram at https://www.instagram.com/sarazarrellaphotography/
In this episode of the Thriving Dentist Show, we explore one of the most important—and often overlooked—topics in practice growth: how to increase case acceptance for high-value dentistry. Many dentists are holding back on presenting ideal care due to the fear of rejection or assumptions about what patients can afford. Gary Takacs and Naren Arulrajah break down the psychology behind why dentists hesitate to present ideal treatment and how to create a patient experience that naturally increases acceptance—without feeling like you're “selling.” From photos and websites to new patient calls and follow-up systems, this episode offers practical strategies to grow high-value care while building trust and long-term relationships with your patients. Whether you want to grow your Invisalign, implants, or cosmetic services, this episode will help you take confident steps forward. Listen Now!
What does it take to build local partnerships that matter and become the go-to dental practice in your community?In this episode of the Ground Marketing Series, we unpack the game-changing strategies practices can use to build meaningful local partnerships that yield lasting results. Rather than pouring resources into passive marketing channels, we explore how becoming an integral part of your community can lead to sustained patient acquisition. From partnerships with schools, gyms, and community centers, we delve into how connecting with organizations that matter to your target audience can establish you as the trusted local dental provider. Schools, with their network of families, present a multitude of opportunities, whether through PTA involvement, educational workshops, or sports team collaborations. Gyms and community centers are also massively valuable, where offering services like free oral health screenings can cultivate trust and lead to steady referrals.You'll hear a captivating case study of a dentist from the Ground Marketing Course who leveraged these strategies with exceptional success, achieving remarkable patient growth and slashing marketing costs. By emphasizing social proof, consistent partner engagement, and maintaining strong relationships, this approach not only brings in new patients but also fortifies your practice's reputation as a community asset.What You'll Learn in This Episode:Techniques for creating impactful partnerships in your community.How schools can serve as a hub for patient acquisition.The importance of value-first strategies in gym partnerships.Ways to leverage community centers for trust and exposure.Tactics for building a robust referral system.Insights from a successful case study in ground marketing.The role of social proof in enhancing reputation.Methods for sustaining long-term partnerships for ongoing growth.Press play to learn how local partnerships can revolutionize your practice and boost patient growth!Learn More About the Ground Marketing Course Here:Website: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/the-ground-marketing-course-open-enrollment/Other Mentions and Links:Businesses/Brands:PlexCrossFitDymatize ProteinMuscle MilkBig Brother Big Sisters of AmericaSoftware/Tools:ExcelIf you want your questions answered on Monday Morning Episodes, ask me on these platforms:My Newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/The Dental Marketer Society Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)Michael: All right, we're going to be talking about building local partnerships that matter. So that's the key word here is that matter. Sometimes it's easy to build local partnerships with, other potential businesses or locations that aren't as important as. It should be to you or they really just don't matter.we'll see what I mean by that the episode goes along, but why partnerships? So most dentists rely on passive marketing ads. SEO, social media, but local partnerships allow you to integrate into the daily lives of your target audience. So instead of spending thousands on marketing, you become the community's trusted dental provider by leveraging existing relationships.This isn't just about getting your name out. It's about becoming the go to dentist in your town. That's the goal here, the go to dentist. So we're going to be discussing that throughout this time and how to do that. But like I always mentioned, if you want the scripts, you want the videos, you want the in depth, more of all of this, the templates.And if you want more one on one time with myself and my team. Any questions or concerns with the crowd marketing, then please feel free to join the ground marketing course, we continue to add to that course. It's an amazing course. It's going to be, in the show notes below.There's a link there. It's the first link in the show notes below. So definitely go check it out and just go check out everything you can see inside of the course and check out what everybody else is getting and the results that they're seeing and how it's improving their, practice their community.Let's dive into this, understanding the psychology of local partnerships. Now to truly embed, and that's the key here. You need to understand how and why local decision makers agreed to partnerships. And that's the key. You want to embed yourself into the community, but let's understand how and why local decision makers agree to partnerships. There's three ways. Number one is, people don't promote businesses, they promote relationships.A gym owner won't push your services unless they genuinely like and trust you. A school principal won't let you do a talk unless they see value for their students and parents. And a community director won't recommend you unless you make their job easier. Promote relationships, okay? Remember this principle, the principle of reciprocity.Give before you ask before asking for referrals, offer something of high value, make it feel like a favor. So for example, a gym owner is more likely to refer patients. If you offer something for free to their athletes, first, Or you want to give something where that benefits them first and it doesn't have to be, Hey, we're offering free whining.Would you like free whining? No. It can be, Hey, do you have any business cards? I'd love to give it to our patients. We're doing a health and wellness thing this month and we'd love to have your information in our hygiene kits. That's perfect. They're like, yes, more clients, more business.Yeah. I love to do that. You're offering first and then three positioning, right? Embed, don't sell. Okay. That's how you want to position. Instead of saying, can I promote my practice here, which from this point on, I never want you to do that, right? Can I promote my practice here?No. You want to notice the pain points, right? Hey, I noticed many gym members struggle with teeth grinding, right? I have a lot of patients who come to this gym and they, suffer from teeth grinding and I'd love to help your athletes with some free night guards. Or maybe there's kids in your school that are high risk for cavities and you say, quite a bit of kids come to my practice in this school and they're high in cavities and I'd love to do a, you fun presentation about oral health and nutrition.Or you can say many of your community members may be unaware of oral cancer if you're at a senior home, right? Can I do free screenings at your next health event? Would that be okay? You're making people's job easier. You're showing that you care. There's a principle of reciprocity and you're promoting relationships.So the goal is to position yourself as a valuable asset. Not an advertiser. I want you to get out of the mindset of, Oh my God, I got to promote my practice, I guess, get all these new patients. I got to meet production, get collection, get paid profits. And I want you to position yourself as a valuable asset.Okay. I am an asset to the community, which means my practice is a humongous asset to this community. Let me show them position yourself. And so how are you going to do that as we're going to kind of, scratch the surface on three main things, schools, gyms, and fitness centers, and then community centers.Okay. And then we're going to discuss how to make these partnerships self sustaining. And I'm going to give you a case study, an example of how this worked for a practice member. So. number two right, school is the most powerful and overlooked partnership. Schools are an ultimate hub of families.They have parents, kids, and teachers all in one place, and this is a gold mine for patient acquisition. Many times we go after the kids and we forget about the parents, or we go after the kids and the parents and then we forget about the teachers. We go after the kids, parents, and teachers, and we forget about the staff besides the teachers.I mean, There's a lot of people there, unless you're a pediatric practice, right? But there's a lot of people there who are not your patients who can become your patients. Definitely keep that in mind. Schools already have a health and wellness mandate. If you align with their mission, they will welcome you.Just figure it out. And I'm going to discuss how you can do that right now. And then three, schools have high trust in medical professionals, meaning your practice gains instant credibility. You want to be the go to practice for emergencies. But also the go to practice for whatever comes to top of mind when it's oral or dental related for these teachers, staff, and so forth, the schools.Schools are the ultimate hub of families, understand that. Now, understanding key decision makers in schools. There's a couple. There's the PTA president, they control parents, engagement programs. There's the school nurse, handle student health and make, good referrals. Three, principal, obviously, right?They approve in school partnerships. Four is the athletic director. They manage sports programs. It's perfect for those mouth guard campaigns. And then five, after school program coordinator, right? They organize extracurricular activities. So these are like the five ones. Now, if you want to go above and beyond, contact The school district in your town. to be honest with you. That's what I go for right from the back is I contact the school district. I even go inside the school district facility, where it's just the district pocket up with the people there because they oversee not just one school, right?They oversee multiple schools in the whole district. So, If you get cool with them, you're going to be able to get cool with those other schools, right? school nurse, principal, athletic director, afterschool program coordinator, their boss is. if you're able to contact the school district, get an amazing partnership with them, get them to come to your practice, the people in the district, then everything else pretty much becomes easy peasy from that point on.And in the ground marketing course, I show you how I do that contact the school district. And I give you the script and everything like that, but I also give you the script for you know, the principals and the school nurses, wellness directors, and things like that, because you can do that as well.Cause sometimes the district will tell you, we'll contact the principal and then. They will let you know. But like I said, in the course, there's so much more detail with all of this. I'm kind of just scratching the surface for everything. Cause I want you to get just a bit right now. So those are the people you can contact.They're the key decision makers. Anybody else besides that? You're just talking to someone who thinks they a decision maker, but they're not. And you may get a no from someone who that no doesn't even matter. And so what I mean by that is maybe they may say, no, you cannot come in here. And that was like the administration office.It don't even matter what they say, if the principal says yes, then, all you did was just contact the wrong person and got the wrong answer, which happens so often. So I need you to understand that you have to contact decision makers, not anybody else, not the front office, not the person answering the phones.Reach out to these people. PTA president, school nurse, principal, athletic director, afterschool program coordinator, the district, right? Reach out to them because they will most likely give you a yes. And if they do perfect, but if it's anybody else, they may give you a no, cause they don't know the answer.And now you're just not attempting to go anymore because you talked to the wrong person who doesn't even know what they're doing. So I would hate for that to happen to you. So understand the key decision makers. That's huge. Then the next step is tactics for breaking into schools or like getting into schools.So the PTA approach, the parent network hack, right? You want to attend PTA meetings, introduce yourself as a resource, not a salesperson. Offer a 10 minute talk, right? With free giveaways for kids. Propose a parent education night, examples, you can do a cavities and nutrition, what every parent needs to know, what I like to do is offer something, where every attendee can come to my practice, So offer free whitening coupon, offer something specific where you know they will come into your practice. You can also do the next approach, which is the school nurse connection. This is a referral pipeline. So offer to train the school nurse on dental emergencies. You also want to provide free dental first aid kits that can be like gauze, floss, mouth rinse, referral sheet to your office.Provide these to the schools. I cannot tell you how crucial this is, to getting new patients. Hey, instead of hygiene kits, which you can just break apart a hygiene kit, And then make it into a free dental first aid kit for the school nurses. Hey, here's free dental first aid kits. We'd like to give it to our schools.We want to make sure you guys are stocked and ready to go for this season. Let me know if you need more at any moment. I will come by maybe like in a month or so. you need any more, but also here's the signup sheet to refer, here's also our number and we always can come by like every, month or so to pick up the signup sheet to see if there's any names or numbers or anything like that that gives you like more opportunity to show your face in front of them, but at the same time, more opportunity to drop off free dental first aid kits for the children.And at the same time, it gives you more, of an opportunity to drop off more referral sheets or maybe pick up the referral signup sheet and see the names and numbers. Great. But most likely they will call you and refer you that way, but that's huge. dental first aid kits huge, huge, huge. If you can start doing that today, if you haven't do that with the schools, you want to offer VIP fast pass for urgent student cases, right?Whenever the nurse sees a dental issue, they call your office directly and you can get a same day appointment. So make that a huge thing. Okay. Like, Hey, if you ever have an emergency, here's the same day appointment pass. Okay. Like, Just let us know it's from you. You can also sponsor school events. That's visibility on steroids.I mean, Sports teams, they offer free custom mouth guards. You can do that. Career days, give a talk on what it's like to be a dentist, instant credibility with parents right there. Teacher appreciation provided teacher smile program, maybe discounted whitening or priority scheduling. They always have teacher appreciation.See how you can participate in that. Don't just let that slide make those teachers come to your practice. Be a part of the teacher appreciation program and then offer something specific just for the teachers. That's a humongous gift. And then you can have like library and reading incentives. This happens a lot.I a sponsor of for smiles, challenge kids who read 10 books, get specific goody bag, right? Like a dental hygiene kit just for them with fun stuff in it. And also information about your practice, things like that and so forth. And then you can also do summer camp and afterschool programs.You want to offer a free dental checkup day at summer camps possible. And then you can have school fundraising and referral loops. So you can offer a free dental day where a percentage of proceeds goes to school programs. Create a referral contest where the class with the most referrals wins a pizza party.Make it fun, when you're getting these referrals and you want to have them be a part of it. You can also donate a portion of every referred new patients. First visit fee back to the school as well. That's a huge way to support the school and they're going to continue to refer and so forth.So this is for school. Schools are huge. Gyms and fitness centers. That's the secret to high value patients. Gyms are huge. This is something I started. This was one of my first ever locations I went to ground market to and have yet to stop. It's incredible. They're health conscious people. That value wellness.Many gym goers suffer from teeth grinding or dry mouth and acid erosion from fitness drinks. And then trainers and gym owners are influencers. If they trust you, they will refer their entire client base. So how can you establish that? The gym owner angle, the business partnership play, You want to approach the gym owner, not as a dentist, but as a business owner.Always. They're on the lookout to get clients. You're on the lookout to get patients. So offer a value exchange, right? Go in there, offer free oral health screening days for gym members, discounted whitening for trainers, things like that. What I like to do, honestly, is keep it simple. I just, hey, can I have some of your information?I love to put it in my hygiene kits. And then say, why, maybe you're off, you're doing something that month or you want to partner up with them, They'll be ecstatic. And then at the same time, Hey, by any chance, can I give you guys some of our information as well? Yeah, cool. Awesome. And then drop off a signup sheet for the employees and the trainers there.Hey, this month, we wanted to give you guys just the employees here, this boom. And then from that point on, you're able to do more. Now, like I said, in the course, we dive way deeper in gym. So you can go ahead and check that out and become a member of the ground marketing course there. And then you want to do campaign for athletes.If this is like a specific location, like Plex, that's a gym in Texas. I remember it was just for athletes or any other type of gym. That's just for athletes, like weightlifters and CrossFit athletes. You can provide night guards, yoga practitioners. You can do something where mindfulness and oral health connection, cyclists and runners, hydration and oral health education.This one was huge bodybuilders. acidic protein shakes and enamel damage prevention. Now something we did this is what I think personally will be incredible that you should do on social media. There's a hundred and one protein shakes, a hundred and one, pre workouts, post workouts, intro workouts, all these things.How bad is each of them or how good is each of them for your oral health, How do we take this? Do we take it just with water? Some people just take it straight. I've taken it just straight and then pour water Later on how should this be taken and then rate each of them like make a video for each today, we're checking out.I don't know Diametized protein see how bad it is good it is for your teeth depending on the ingredients and then you're tasting it and then boom Okay, this is not that bad one out of ten. It's gonna be like a four and then you do muscle milk Oh, man, this has arsenic. It has lead has cadmium. Not only is it bad for your oral health, but it's also bad for this.This is a, definitely a one I do not recommend, right? Kind of A thing like that. Make videos like that. Trust me, Nobody's done it yet, So if I were you, if you are into that, this is something I'd attack and I would say, okay, we're going to do this campaign.We're going to do a hundred videos, different proteins. Right. doesn't have to be all in one day. It can be, you know, within year's worth if you want, but. Make sure you, become known as that. And then not only are you niching down on a specific target audience, which is bodybuilders who are people who care about their physique, they care about how they look and things like that.They care about their health, but at the same time, you're helping them prevent an enamel damage. So that's something to think about. And then you can also do sponsorships like at local CrossFit competitions hydration stations at 5k races or marathons, and then exclusive gym membership. You can have the trainer referral incentive.I know this is something we did. Any gym trainer that refers five patients, it's something specific. In our practice, sometimes they wanted a percentage off where they wanted, Invisalign or they even wanted just rewinding. As much as they could, right? And so we would offer that depending on how many they refer.And then eventually they just continue to refer without, getting any type of incentive, which is fantastic. So you can definitely do that. And then you can always participate in their events as well, which they have a lot of events all the time, gyms and fitness centers. So huge, huge, huge. And then, finally would be community centers the trust builder.Now this is just an example, right? There's many locations you can go to gyms corporations, salons, all these things. But. For this episode, I'm just going to be covering, like I said, schools, gyms, and community centers, and then I'm going to give you a case study of someone who attacked these three and the results that they got.finally this community centers and community centers are crucial. They serve families, seniors, low income individuals. I mean, There's a huge patient segment and community centers already have structured health programs, so you can seamlessly integrate. They have established trust. People trust community based recommendations over ads.Michael: Now, the best community partnerships, best hands down is senior centers and retirement homes. I mean, They offer a ton of stuff and there's somebody specifically there who's called the activities coordinator or director who's looking for you to do things for their seniors, for their residents.You can offer free oral cancer screenings. You can host dentures and implant Q& A sessions. You can provide a senior smile program, which is a dental discount for seniors. Your membership program, you can offer a ton of stuff. Best thing to do though, is just do a Q& A session. Once one or two of them start asking questions, the whole room is going to ask questions.And it's just up to you to coordinate it to guide the questions and answer them. And you'll notice a theme of the questions, and then you can create a program tailored just for them. If you would like, so that's something best community partnerships, senior homes, and we have a whole unit on senior centers, independent living facilities, retirement homes.You can even see me in real life doing the strategy, setting up at events, signing up people and so forth, beautiful location. love senior homes. I love working with them. It's fantastic. But like I said, strategies, scripts, templates. Live examples. You can see that in the ground marketing course, doing it there.So that's number one, Senior centers and retirement homes. The next one would be youth centers and afterschool programs, right? Partner with big brother, big sisters. You can offer free checkups, sponsor sports leagues. If you'd like create a smile scholarship for underprivileged kids. So like X dollar amount per new patient goes into a dental fund for them, right?Specific things like that. And so that's going to be it right there, right? Kind of On how you can do that with community centers. So how to make these partnerships self sustaining You want to leverage social proof and community testimonials? So always capture video testimonials from gym owners pta leaders and community members and features success stories on social media And newsletters automate and scale your outreach So use a CRM to track partnerships and follow up quarterly.In the course created for you the ground marketing worksheet. And in there, it's just literally a template. You just download it on Excel and that's it. And you can see exactly how to follow up quarterly or often what you need to write down so forth, because you can lose track if you are not organized.So you want to automate and scale your outreach, track your partnerships, follow up, create a dedicated community liaison role. So assign a team member to manage partnerships. This is what business development is. You're going to see a lot of larger corporations, larger businesses. They have a business development, partner, a business development person in their organization, in their, job who's just dedicated to developing business partnerships. So sign that, and this can be the ground market. in your team and then recurring checkpoints with partners. You want to schedule quarterly check ins with school nurses, gym owners, and community leaders.And then you want to offer new partnership ideas to keep the collaboration fresh, and this comes naturally. So don't overthink it. This is going to come naturally. Every time he's like, Hey, I ran out of hygiene kits or, Hey, I ran out of first aid, dental health kits, or, Hey, I need some more of your business cards.Quarterly check ins happen naturally if it's the right partnership. Okay. So the best marketing doesn't feel like market. When you build partnerships, patients don't need to be sold on your services. They already trust you before they walk through the door. That's what partnerships do. .Now we're going to go into the case study. Now this doctor is a member in the course and she lives in a midsize suburban town and she struggled with slow new patient growth, despite a strong online presence.Instead of pouring more money into ads, she embedded her practice into the community using a strategic partnership approach. It took her a year. Within 12 months, she increased new patient flow, reduced marketing costs, but she built a self sustaining referral system with schools, gyms, and community centers.Here's exactly how she did it. Step one, schools, the long term growth machine. The plan is instead of cold emailing schools, she identified key decision makers and provided value up front. She attended PTA meetings and introduced herself as a community resource, not a business. She connected with school nurses and provided emergency dental first aid kits.She offered a free workshop for teachers about oral health's impact on kids focus. And attendance and the teacher saw that was incredibly valuable. So they wanted the parents to come and then eventually the parents came as well to see that. So that was a workshop that was offered and shown more than once.So that was tactic number one, PTA and school nurse relationship building. Number two was monthly school visits and parent education. She scheduled quarterly classroom visits. She brought fun tooth fairy kits for kindergarteners. She hosted a smile superhero contest for older kids could maintain the best brushing habits.And then she set up a free online dental Q and a for parents hosted on the school's Facebook page. Tactic number three, referral partnerships with school sports teams. She provided custom mouth guards for the local youth soccer and football teams branded with her office's logo. And then she created a VIP referral system.Every student referred by a school nurse or coach got priority scheduling and a free treat, a specific to what they needed. And the results were incredible. Over 400 new patient referrals in the first year, teachers and school staff became loyal patients after she provided an exclusive teacher discount.And the school sports partnerships created a word of mouth effect. Parents saw her logo on their kid's mouth guard cases and so forth. And kids knew who they were. was just amazing how the word of mouth effect happened here. So that was schools.Step two was gym partnerships. Which was a hidden gold mine. The plan was she identified three high end gyms and CrossFit boxes in her area and offered value first tactic. One gym trainer and member benefits. She offered free night guard fittings for trainers who suffer from teeth grinding. She gave each trainer five VIP dental passes worth a hundred dollars each to give to clients experiencing TMJ issues and Want to put a little asterisk here.besides free nightguard fittings. She offered for you teeth whitening So it was one or the other on that for the personal trainers and the gym members. She provided an exclusive fit smile package, teeth whitening, free fluoride treatment, discounted nightguards for heavy grinders, or an asterisk here too.She also offered a discount on cleanings. So that was the fitness smile package it wasn't like a whole type of, Hey, we're doing this as long as you remember, no, it was just, Hey, we're doing this for this summer only kind of a thing. So urgency was created. Tactic 2, gym event sponsorship, so she sponsored a gym hydration challenge, she tied hydration to oral health, she set up a free dental checkup day at the gym, and then she cross promoted her practices blog on the gym's website and social media.So the results were over 50 high value patients from gym trainers and referrals nightguards became a profitable service for her. And Jim started organically promoting her practice because she helped their members.So that was two, and then three was community centers. Instant trust and mass exposure. So she partnered with local senior centers, afterschool programs to gain instant community trust. So tactic one, the senior centers, the hidden patient base, she hosted free oral cancer screening events. She created a senior dental membership plan, right?So she discounted specific services. She became a guest speaker at community wellness talks, covering topics like how oral health affects brain function in seniors and much more. This was fantastic. She continues to do this. Tactic two, low income community dental support. She partnered with a local nonprofit organization to offer low cost cleanings.She created a dental scholarship fund where 10 from every new patient fee went toward helping undeserved kids, and then she hosted a free smile day. So every quarter for families who couldn't afford to care. And this established an incredible powerful reputation. As a dentist who gives back, she was able to obtain over 200 new patients from senior centers and community programs.And she was even featured in local newspapers and community newsletters for her charitable efforts. So that was free publicity. So it was fantastic. So scaling partnership into a self sustaining referral machine. she leveraged all of this through social proof and community testimonials. She filmed short video testimonials, school nurses about her educational talks.Jim trainers about how she helped their clients, senior center directors, praising her community involvement. And she posted these testimonials on social media and her website to reinforce credibility. I mean, You're doing all this work. Might as well go for the ask. Say, Hey, can you record a short 30 second video for me, please?You can even say 15 second video. Can you record a short 15 second video? boom. And then just record a short 15 second video on your phone. Little do you know that 15 second video will be up them talking about you for five minutes. Or three minutes, right? But that's it. That's all you got to say. So leverage it to create a community referral program.So any partner, right? School gym, community center that referred five plus patients got a special sponsorship for their events. So create something like that community centers and schools started reaching out to her instead of the other way around. So instead of her having to reach out to them.They started reaching out to her and three schedule, quarterly check ins with partners. Maintain these personal relationships with school staff, gym owners, and community leaders. Always ask, Hey, what would be most helpful to you right now? How can I help you or how can I help your members or how can I do this?How can I help your residents this quarter? Be specific like that. How can I help you guys this quarter? What are you guys doing? How can I help you? And then see how you can fulfill that need. And then offer new partnership ideas to keep engagement high. This will come naturally all the time.The new partnership ideas. So key takeaways for this is stop relying on hold ads and start embedding your practice into trusted community. Networks who is school gyms and community centers provide built in credibility and trust. If you offer value first three, once partnerships are established, referrals become self sustaining, establish these partnerships for social proof, testimonial from school nurses, gym owners, and community leaders, compounds growth five, less reliance on expensive marketing, more on relationships.will equal long term success. So I hope you understand, right? I'm not saying you need to do these three specific things. if you're a member in the ground marketing course, then you already know that you've done probably gyms. I know for sure you've done senior centers and then at the same time, schools, so you can attack it like that, And then continue to nurture these locations. But this is where her target patients were. And she wanted it. So we kind of extracted that and said, okay, let's look at the three strategies she mainly did and bada bing, bada boom. It's fantastic. So leveraging partnerships is key. The easiest way to grow a dental practice isn't by spending more on marketing.It's by becoming the dentist everyone in the community already trusts before they ever meet you. Always remember that creating these partnerships are huge, and in the ground marketing course, I teach you exactly how to do this. I teach you how to create these pipelines. So referrals are coming to you consistently, okay, for years, not just once in a while, but they're coming consistently and they're compounding.So then you just depend on, I need to nurture this relationship, or I just need to continue what I'm doing and the way I'm working and being fantastic. Because now they're referring to me, my referrals are referring other people. And that happens all the time. So you want to continue to build local partnerships that matter. And if you want more information on this, not just information, but strategies, you want to learn exactly how to do this, get the exact results or better. And at the same time, build partnerships with all your schools and your community, partnerships with all the gyms and fitness centers, partnerships with all the senior centers.You want to be a part of their events. You want to be a part of their. Specific health fairs, things like that. You want to create incredible referral systems and partnerships. I teach you all that in the ground marketing course. I give you the scripts, I give you the templates, I give you the examples, the lives, everything.And at the same time, you're able to talk with me more one on one. In the ground marketing course. So that's going to be in the show notes below. It's the first link in the show notes below. I welcome you to join. Please join especially if you want to see these results. And at the same time, I'm excited for you.I'm excited to see you in the ground marketing course. So go ahead and do that. It's going to be the first link in the show notes below in the next episode, we're going to be discussing mastering your ground marketing pitch. So this is how you make sure you get your foot in the door securely and effectively. So thank you so much for tuning in. I'll talk to you in the next episode.
Jason's getting Invisalign. Andrea's diving into writing. Our daughter just got a new horse named… Namaste. Yep. It's a lot.
Are you reaching the right audience or casting your patient net too wide?In this episode of the Ground Marketing Series, we unravel the secrets behind targeting the perfect patient audience to boost the success of your marketing strategies. We dive deep into the art of identifying and defining your ideal patient personas by analyzing demographic and behavioral data. By honing in on specific patient groups, you'll uncover the psychological and behavioral dynamics that drive patient decisions, enabling you to make smarter, data-driven marketing moves.We'll walk you through practical methods to analyze your existing patient base and research local demographics, crafting marketing strategies that meet your patients where they are. Learn how to naturally engage your target audience in places they frequent, utilizing pre-visit strategies, impactful initial interactions, and persistent follow-ups. To cap it all off, discover the power of forming local partnerships and nurturing community relationships for long-term success. Embarking on this detailed guide, you'll be equipped to create a strategic ground marketing plan that resonates with your ideal patients, laying the groundwork for sustainable growth.What You'll Learn in This Episode:Crafting a detailed profile of your ideal patient persona.Utilizing demographic and behavioral data for marketing plans.Targeting patient groups using psychological and behavioral insights.Analyzing current patient data and local demographic trends.Engaging with patients in their natural gathering spots.Developing a systematic and structured approach to ground marketing.Building robust local partnerships within the community.Tune in to discover how to transform your practice's marketing strategy with precision and insight!Learn More About the Ground Marketing Course Here:Website: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/the-ground-marketing-course-open-enrollment/You can reach out to Michael here:Email: michael@thedentalmarketer.siteOther Mentions and Links:Podcast Episodes:313: Dr. Tyler Brady | How to Use "Influencer Marketing" to Attract New Patients & Grow Your Practice FAST! – The Dental Marketer PodcastBusinesses/Brands: Invisalign Amazon CrossFit24 Hour Fitness LA Fitness HyattMarriottPeople: Dr. Tyler Brady Groups:Rotary Club U.S. Chamber of CommerceData Collection:U.S. Census DataFacebook GroupsIf you want your questions answered on Monday Morning Episodes, ask me on these platforms:My Newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/The Dental Marketer Society Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)Michael: Alright, we're going to be discussing identifying your target. Now, this is huge how to pinpoint and approach your ideal patients through ground marketing. So right now, if you're thinking, man, I hear this all the time, I need to find my target audience. I need to know my ideal patients. Maybe sometimes you're thinking like, I just want any patient, but no, you gotta get specific here. Niche down. And you do have an ideal patient in your mind, right? Maybe you're an existing practice in your favorite patients. Those are your ideal patients. If you don't have a practice yet and you're in the opening startup phase Who you've worked with in the past as an associate and your favorite patients, whoever they were, those are ideal patients, right? Obviously it's going to evolve within time. You're going to get more niched down and more specific, which is going to be perfect. Because you're going to be able to target that audience. So why targeting matters in ground marketing. So ground marketing is not about reaching the most people. It's about reaching the right people without precise targeting. Efforts are wasted on audiences who are unlikely to convert into loyal patients. So identifying your ideal patients ensures. That your marketing is efficient, high converting and relationship driven. That's, what's going to be most important, right? You want it to be efficient. Obviously you want it to convert as high as possible, but relationship driven these offers or these other things, they can be easily broken, right? you can cut ties quickly. But once that relationship thickens and thickens more, it's harder to cut because it's a relationship. And that's what you want. You want these ideal patients, all of them to be relationship driven, unlike digital marketing, where you can segment audiences with online analytics, ground marketing relies on behavioral. Demographic and psychological factors to pinpoint ideal patient groups. And in previous episode, we discuss the psychology behind it. Brown marketing. Now the science behind patient behavior and decision making, if we understand how people make healthcare decisions, it's going to help us tailor our approach. So I want to give you some key psychological factors that drive patient choices. And these are things you need to keep in mind whenever you're out ground marketing, or just in general, whenever you're doing any type of marketing. Okay. It's four things, And number one, this is a huge one, proximity and convenience. People providers within a 10 to 15 minute radius from home or work. So a solution for this. Is you want to focus on high foot traffic areas near your practice, grocery stores, schools, gyms, coffee shops, anything in that area, in that radius, you want to focus on and there's a, module in the ground marketing course under the existing patient analysis. The EPA module or the EPA unit, we discussed this in depth. We dive a lot deeper on the exact radius you should be looking at for your practice. that's number one, proximity and convenience is trust and social proof. So patients choose providers recommended by friends, family, or familiar community figures, right? The solution for this would be leveraged word of mouth referrals and local partnerships to build credibility. So your favorite patients right now, the ones who talk you up, make sure they are consistently talking you up, but you want to turn them into ambassadors who can turn other potential patients into ambassadors. You want to keep this going. That's going to be social proof and you want to build trust as well. That builds a lot of trust. As we know, that's the strongest form of marketing, which is referrals, word of mouth. So that's what you want to do. You want to leverage word of mouth referrals and local partnerships to build your credibility. That's two trust and social proof. Three is immediate need versus preventative mindset. Now, some patients seek urgent solutions maybe they have tooth pain, emergencies right, things like that. Then others prioritize long term dental health, so Invisalign, cosmetic work, etc. Your solution for this is segment patients based on need and customize your approach accordingly. If you're going for emergency patients, That's what we're going to start targeting. Emergency locations, clinics, urgent cares, specific locations. If you're looking for long term, preventative, think of cosmetic, right? Or full mouth reconstruction or something else. Misalign, implants. That's where you want to start targeting. Start thinking of where that demographic probably would be. That coupled with trust and social proof and then proximity and convenience. Now we're targeting, right? We're niching down. And finally is financial concerns and insurance acceptance. So many patients choose a practice based on insurance coverage or affordability. This is not new to you. You know this. You get a call maybe a couple times a day saying, Does my insurance cover this? many patients choose a practice based on that. So the solution is Highlight flexible payment options and insurance acceptance in your marketing, and we're going to dive deeper into this. And in the ground marketing course, there's a whole section on this, on how to verbalize or enhance your vocabulary. So. You know how to respond when people ask questions like, do you accept my insurance or how much does this cost? And so forth. So identify which psychological driver fits each audience and tailor your messaging accordingly. Okay. So little do you know right now, your marketing message is tailored to a specific target audience. Is it the target audience that you want? Based on these four things, number one, remember proximity and convenience to trust and social proof three immediate need versus preventative mindset and for financial concerns and insurance and acceptance based on those four things, who do you think your marketing messaging is targeting right now? so we're going to niche down if it's the right people, perfect. We're going to continue to do that. If it's not, we need to adjust. And make sure you want to niche down to your ideal patients, who you want to continue to see forever, if you could. So now that we got that down, number one, the science behind patient behavior and decision making. We understand how the patients are going to be making decisions. Now we want to define your ideal patient persona. So a patient persona is a detailed profile of your target patient. You want to consider the demographics, behaviors, and pain points. So the steps to create an ideal patient persona, and here's where you probably want to take out your pen and paper write this down, right? And start analyzing and start defining your ideal patient persona. So step one, analyze your current patient base. Who are your most loyal and high value patients? Write that down. What age group, income level, and insurance plans do they have? Write that down. Group them. What common concerns bring them to your practice? Write that down. Okay. That's going to be huge. This is probably the biggest thing ever, because let's just say you have lot of patients, right? And you're writing it down, you're like, your most loyal and high value patients is let's say Bob and Barbara. I love them. What age group are they? Oh, they're ones in the thirties, ones in their fifties. Okay, income level. Oh, I see the income level is common. It's in the 100k to And they do have insurance too. They have PPOs. Okay, cool. Awesome. What common concerns bring them to your practice? Well, They both had initially, you know, pain or maybe they moved and then they wanted to see a new dentist. Or something, or they just had, concerns or they wanted cosmetic work done. Now you're starting to niche down, okay, where do they work? What income level? Where is their HOA? Or where do they live? And what type of apartments at the same time, wherever their hobbies are, what are they doing? Things like that, right? You're starting to live around their life. That's how you're analyzing your current patient base. Once you live around their life, they go to these grocery stores, they go here, they go here. Now we're starting to niche down. Let's focus on those locations to ground market too. So step one, most important step, analyze your current patient base. Step two, you want to research your local demographics. You can use your U. S. census data, city planning sites, or my favorite is local Facebook groups to gather insights. Just go to the Facebook group in your community. There's probably five or more. And then they even niche down on that. There's mom groups, there's athletic ones, there's ones who love recipes and stuff like that. And just in your community, niche down on that and be a part of those Facebook groups, and you're able to gain some insights on that. What are people talking about? Even if you just type in the search bar, dentist. You're able to gain a lot of insight on that. What's their concerns? What are they looking for? And things like that. And then you want to identify major age groups, household incomes, education levels, and common employment types. Always do that. Every single one of your patients, you should be able to know where they work at what type of obviously insurance they provide, but at the same time, what I recommend and in the course, we recommend this all the time. And we teach you, we give you the scripts on exactly what you should say and how to do this. So that you can get into these patients who let's just say, Oh my God, you work at the Amazon fulfillment center. It's a corporation of 000 employees or a hundred employees. And you would love to have them as your patients because their insurance is great. Yeah, we give you the script on how to ask that patient who's already a patient of yours, how you can dive deeper into their place of employment, who do you need to contact, things like that in order to go inside of the corporation become one of their main providers. So you definitely want to be asking these questions to all your existing patients already, but at the same time, this is something you want to sit down and start identifying yourself, the age groups, household incomes of your ideal patients, the education levels, common employment types, things like that. So that's step two, research local demographics. And the way you can do that is by going to Facebook groups, but us census data and city planning sites are good to Facebook groups, you're able to get a little bit more insight, casual conversations, which is what's on their mind at that time. And identify a lot of the insights that you're trying to get. So step three would be identify their pain points and decision making triggers. And this is where the Facebook groups come in pretty handy. You can see the insights. You can see what people are saying, but do they struggle with dental anxiety, busy schedules, cost concerns? Are they parents seeking pediatric care? Are they young professionals considering Invisalign? Look into this. Okay. So you want to do three things on step number two, which is number one, analyze your current patient base, who are your most loyal and high value patients, age group, income level. Step two, research local demographics. U. S. Census data, local Facebook groups, right? Three, identify their pain points and decision making triggers. Remember, we discussed what four decision making triggers are. So identify them. Identify their pain points. What are they? And then we niche down. An example of this is right here. And if you're listening to this on the podcast, great, wonderful. But when you can, look at the video version of it because this is where I'm showing you right now the examples of the patient persona. So let's just say persona number one, the busy parent, which is ideal for pediatric and family dentistry. Their ages is 30 to 45. Their lifestyle is full time working parent and their kids are aged from four to 12 pain points would be lack of time and concerned about their children's health, their dental health. So your marketing approach is this. You want to offer a convenient evening or weekend appointments partner with local daycares and schools for easy referrals. And provide family discounts, if you would like, or bundled appointments. Okay. That would be how that would look if you're dealing with a busy parent. Persona number two, the aesthetic driven young professional. They would be ideal for a cosmetic or ortho services. This is a young professional. there between the ages of 25 to 40, their lifestyle, their career oriented, active on social media, and willing to invest in appearance, their pain points. Is they want straight white teeth, but they fear high costs. So your marketing approach would be you offer interest free financing and small makeovers. Just offer the interest free rate financing, offer something bundled up. That's beautiful. A lot of the times we like to show them the big ticket price and say, Hey, this is all the discounts we're giving you. You don't need to do all that. You can just say, you're going to get this at the monthly rate. That's it. you're being efficient with your time, short, sweet, to the point brevity. And at the same time, it's appreciated by them. They're like, Oh man, I can do that. That's as much as like a gym membership or a CrossFit membership. You want to partner with gyms, salons, or coffee shops where they frequent. And you want to provide a before and after transformation and influencer collaborations. And in the course we discuss on how you can do that and influencer collaborations. And in the podcast, we discussed that if you want to type in the search bar on our website the dental marketer. org, you can type in Tyler Brady, he discusses quite a bit on how to do influencer marketing and collaborations. But that's what you want to do. You want to provide before and after transformations big time. one thing I recommend is you want to create two to three personas and align your outreach strategies accordingly. So your ideal patient doesn't mean it has to be one specific persona and one specific ideal patient and that's it. You can have multiple. and I challenge you to have three ideal patients. So one could be the busy parent, the other one can be the aesthetic driven young professional, and then the other one can be like The retired senior who is living it up in the community center, right? And you can go from there. So that's going to be step number two. So to recap, step number one is the science behind patient behavior and decision making. Two is defining your ideal patient persona, which we just did. Three is now locating and approaching your ideal patients. once you've identified your ideal audience, the next step is finding where they gather and crafting their perfect approach. You want to craft your perfect approach. So where to find different patient groups in your community. Now you can make a list and put top left patient type in the middle, where to find them and then on the right best approach. if you want, you can look at my, screen and I have that right here. So the patient type is parent with young kids. You can find them in schools, daycares, pediatrician offices, kids, sports events, ice cream shops specific gyms, just for children, like jamboree and things like that, et cetera. And your best approach could be, you can offer a free comprehensive exam. You can offer something as like a free consultation. You can have signup sheets for parents. You can offer, Hey, come in your first visit a tour for free, right? You can create an event just for the parents to tour everything, do something amazing for the children. That would be your best approach. Patient type. Young professionals, where to find them, gyms, coworking spaces, networking events, coffee shops. You want to go to specific events. If you're looking at the chamber of commerce on the calendar, you can see specific events that people are a part of your community throws specific things for them. A lot of apartment complexes, humongous apartment complexes, throw events every single month for people like a wine and cheese type of thing or anything like that. You can be a part of that. And honestly, your best approach is promoting teeth whitening. That has been incredible. Promoting teeth whitening, or if you want Invisalign specials as well. Patient type, seniors and retirees. You want to go to community centers, senior health centers things like that. And you want to offer specific things, right? Mainly what we've seen is they have a lot of questions specifically. About not just insurance, but what's covered, what's not, they will have insurance questions. And so we will dive much deeper, maybe multiple episodes on seniors it's an incredible patient base we forget sometimes that, they're the ones who are learning the quickest, the internet, and they're using it the most. And at the same time, they are excited to receive emails and so much more. So if you're at senior events, senior centers, and things like that, independent living facilities, all you really have to do at those. When you're speaking to them, if you're doing like a booth and a luncheon or anything like that, it's just answer questions and they will sign up and they will be a part of it and they will get their families to go to, so you can do free oral health workshops at these facilities. You can do implant consultations and things like that. But I'd go with, just wanting to answer questions and then you can. Understand the feel of the group and be like, okay, this is what they want. We're going to offer that, or maybe they don't want anything. They just need work done. And then you want someone to finally answer their questions. So anyways, we're going to dive deeper on seniors and later episode, emergency patients, right? You want to go to urgent cares, clinics, pain management centers. That's where you can find them and then provide specific emergency things, right? You want to partner with pharmacists, let them know, talk to them, partner with urgent cares, partner with hospitals, small clinics, things like that. Give them specific flyers if you want on the services and how you're available, what you can do, things like that. And then patient type corporate employees. You want to do HR departments, lunch and learn sessions, offices, offer insurance maximization workshops. You want to dumb it down to them, literally to where you can explain it to a third grader. That's how you want to look at it. And then you want them to be able to explain it to an actual third grader. That way, you know, that they understand the more you can educate them like that, the better, especially with corporate employees, because they have a ton of work. They're doing a lot and they just want, Hey, did I maximize it? Did I do everything I could? At the same time, I know a lot of members in the course, they do have onsite dental screenings, or they actually will go to these corporations and work on them. They have these mobile units that they can just go and do cleanings there. That is huge and helps them out a lot. And the companies absolutely love that because more time there is better for the corporation than, you know, less time out and about. Scheduling and then having be out, So if you can offer that, that's awesome. like I said, we dive deeper into that as well in the course. Now, you want to strategically choose locations where patients already gather rather than trying to bring them to you. Okay? So if they're already there, strategically choose that location. I'll give you an example. There's a pretty big hotel. Let's just give a name, right? Let us say the Hyatt or Marriott or something like that. Right. And they have quite a bit of employees and instead of you trying to go after, Oh, Hey, me go just for the front office. Hey, let me go for the maintenance, signatures, housekeeping. They actually have team meetings early in the morning, monthly team meetings. And believe it or not, they will allow you to come in, set up your booth and have speaking time. that meeting with everyone watching you. And so that's your time, And that is a good example of you're choosing a location that offers insurance, that offers good benefits to their employees and things like that. And. You're choosing locations where patients are already gathered, rather than you're trying to bring them to you individually and just handing out your flyers, you're being strategic, right? And then one of the last is number four, creating a targeted ground marketing approach plan. So now that you know who you're targeting and where to find them, let's just say it's the mother, right? With the kids or it's the young professional. Now you know where to find them. You need a systematized approach. Okay. So there is a pre visit strategy. You want to establish credibility first, right? You can either do that by connecting on LinkedIn or local business networks before showing up. That's why sometimes I do recommend joining the chamber of commerce or the rotary club, but it's not necessary in the course. We teach you how to, be a part of the chamber of commerce and other events without actually joining the chamber of commerce. So you don't have to pay that fee, it does help. if you are. Because you're able to be a part of specific networking events. Now that's one thing you can do. You can also send an email or letter of introduction of your practice before visiting businesses. This works sometimes. I have yet to do this, but I added this in here in this episode because I know some of the members do it. For specific corporations and it's helped out tremendously. So go ahead and do that if you like. I know it's specific corporations. we actually in the course we give you the template. We give you the whole script on what to say in the email and then boom, you can just put your name and send it. But like I said can do that or can find a common contact who can introduce you, right? Mutual connections. That is the best thing. That is what I normally do find a common contact, mutual connections, and that equals trust, right? You call the location. Hey, one of your patients just came into our practice and, you know, I had a couple of questions and. They are like Cause you're calling the HR department. Is everything okay? What, What happened with that person? Oh, no, they're just saying how much they love it there. They love you. And we love them as a patient as well. And I was just wondering, is there any way we can kind of, offer more specific benefits and special offers for the employees there? mean, We love you guys. We love employees that you have. And boom, you're able to get in there, right? And offer more. But that is because you have a common contact who can introduce you. Technically, the person didn't even introduce you. You just have a common contact. And that's what I utilize. I'm just like, hey, you work at this location? Perfect. Is it okay if I call the HR department or, you know what I mean? And let them know. And nine times out of ten, the patient who's already an existing patient will tell you sure, you can go ahead. I mean, I have nothing to do with it. And then just go ahead and call. And then you're able to get in. So perfect. That's a pre visit strategy, right? And then the perfect first interaction you want to approach without being salesy. So that's A. A is the pre visit strategy. B is the perfect first interaction. You want to keep it casual and conversational, not sales pitchy. I can't express to you how important this is. Keeping it casual, Almost like you're talking to a friend. Not overly casual, but casual in the sense of you're now walking in there with everything in your hand and you're not on the phone call. like you're reading something from a script, although you might be reading something from a script. You just want to keep it casual, offer something of value up front, And then use social proof. You know, We worked with other businesses and we've helped their employees and patients. We would love to support your team too. You can use social proof in the sense of, you know what, every month we partner with a fitness facility. And this month we would love to partner with you guys. We saw incredible results for our patients the employees or the clients or the members in. 24 hour fitness. And we really wanted to partner up with LA fitness now, because that's just been a request and you have something every month that we can be a part of? boom, they're going to say, yeah, we do. We have something that you can be a part of. Wonderful. How does this work? And then you can continue with them. Never start with. And this is a humongous pro tip and you hear this all the time and you've probably done this, I've done this So never start with, Hey, we'd love it if you send referrals our way. So you're going in, dropping off flyers to the perfect location that you want your ideal patient to come from. And you're like, hi, I'm the new dentist down the street. We'd love it if you send referrals our way. That does nothing. Maybe one in a million times it might get you a referral here and there, but that's it, just know as you're the person who's asking for something. So start by offering something first. And then see follow up system. I cannot tell you how important following up is. And I discussed this in the previous episode. I mentioned this is probably where you either gain or lose the most potential patients, new potential patients. Most people won't book immediately. They need reminders and touch points. So you want to immediately follow up same day, send a personalized message, thanking them for their time. Everybody you meet at an event, you just dropped off something, you introduced yourself in the sense of you're going to go be a part of their event. You dropped off a signup sheet. just follow up immediately that same day. more than likely the person you spoke with is not one of your patients already and they can become your patient. Step two, you want to do a three day follow up, right? Provide a quick reminder about the offer, the benefits. And then you also want to follow up again with that. If they haven't booked, want to offer a limited incentive. month our free whining is ending, and I noticed there's only five more days left, or we have five free whining sessions left. We'd love to save one for you, things like that. Right. And we're going to dive so much deeper, multiple episodes on how to follow up specifically. But in the ground marketing course, I give you the breakdown, I give you the scripts. I give you templates, everything on exactly how to follow up, how many days you should wait, how many months, if so. And what to do and what to say in each of them, but remember 80 percent of conversions happen after five to seven touch points. So keep nurturing leads, always keep nurturing leads. So a final thoughts you want to have a targeted strategic ground marketing plan, That is the key to success. So a step by step summary for success. And in this episode is number one, you want to understand patient behavior, identify what drives decision making and we discussed that right. Convenience, cost trust, create clear patient personas, define who you want to attract, and then define their pain points. Get those two crystal clear. Three, locate the right places. Be where your target audience naturally gathers, but be there consistently. Don't just be there one time and that's it. Be there as much as you can for as long as you can. Locate the right places. Four, use a systematic approach. Have a pre visit strategy, an engaging first interaction. And a structured follow up. So when ground marketing is done strategically, it builds sustainable, high value patient pipelines without relying on expensive ads. Identifying your audience is the most critical step to making your efforts pay off. So that's what you want to do. First and foremost. Okay. So thank you so much for tuning into this episode. I hope it helps. I'm excited to see you continue to skyrocket on your ground marketing journey. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out You can email me, you can find me at Michael at the dental marketer dot site. That's the email. Or you can just go on the website, the dental marketer. org and fill out. One of those follow up forms, but the best way to reach out to me is if you are part of the ground marketing course, which I'm going to put a link to it in the show notes below, it's going to be the first link in the show notes below. I mean, We have live office hours like this. You're able to engage with me, talk with me. It's like a mastermind session. At the same time in there, you're able to see all the strategies, all the scripts, all the templates, all the workshops. You even see real life examples of me. I hide the camera or I'm on the phone. Doing these strategies and you're able to see it work in real time, exactly how it's supposed to be. so definitely join the ground marketing course. I'd love to see you in there. I'd love for you to be a part of it so you can start attracting new patients, but at the same time, become the go to practice in your community and build these incredible local partnerships And that's what we're going to be discussing in the next episode, building local partnerships that matter. So thank you so much. And I'll talk to you soon.
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.eyewitnessbeauty.comFirst: an enthralling discussion on Nick's Invisalign journey. Then: we hear from the #LEAVEGLOSSIERALONE movement as the precious brand gears up to launch a new fragrance. [link: Glossier's New Exit Strategy via Puck News]Also:MAC creative director Drew Elliott (@drewpsie; formerly of Paper Magazine, “America's Next Top Model”) leaves Lauder to go to A…
Cat and Pat are in D.C. during their East Coast Activation this week administering treatment to listeners who both work in the government and do not! Patients include an older sister who wants to connect with her younger sister, a dentist who's into his Invisalign patient, and a young woman who needs some texts from a man interpreted. Cat and Pat also discuss bad food they've had on tour and do a classic Seek Treatment reenactment stage play! Watch the full episode on our YouTube and follow below!Show Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seektreatmentpodShow Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@seektreatmentpodCat: https://www.instagram.com/catccohenPat: https://www.instagram.com/patreegsSeek Treatment is a production of Headgum Studios. Our associate producer is Allie Kahan. Our producer is Tavi Kaunitz. Our executive producer is Emma Foley. The show is edited, mixed, and mastered by Richelle Chen. The show art was created by Carly Jean Andrews. Like the show? Rate Seek Treatment on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and leave a review.Advertise on Seek Treatment via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.