Podcast appearances and mentions of sandy pardue

What happens when a termination feels clear to leadership—but not to the employee? In this episode of Dental Drill Bits, Dana Pardue Salisbury and Sandy Pardue unpack a surprisingly common scenario: an employee is told they're being let go, only to return to work days later like nothing happened. Through real dental office experiences and a famous Larry David story that inspired a Seinfeld episode, they explore the psychology behind denial, shame, and stress—and why documentation and written follow-through aren't HR formalities, but essential leadership tools. You'll learn how unclear communication creates risk, why verbal conversations fail under stress, and how systems, separation notices, and documentation protect the practice, the team, and the patients watching it all unfold. Special thanks to our sponsors:

Episode Summary Tracking statistics does not have to feel like micromanagement or extra work. In this episode of Dental Drill Bits, Sandy Pardue and Dana Pardue Salisbury break down why teams push back on numbers and how leaders can shift compliance into cooperation. You will learn how the right statistics eliminate micromanaging, create clarity, and help teams feel confident in their roles. Sandy shares real world examples from decades in dentistry, practical ways to assign metrics by position, and where practices should start if statistics have never been consistently tracked. What You'll Learn • Why teams resist statistics when they feel like pressure or blame • How tracking numbers reduces micromanagement • Why statistics should align with what each role can control • The danger of waiting until year end to evaluate performance • Where to start if your practice feels overwhelmed by numbers • How statistics support patient care and reduce chaos • How monthly reviews turn numbers into leadership tools Episode Sponsors This episode is sponsored by: Identity Dental Marketing Helping dental practices grow through clear messaging, branding, and marketing systems designed specifically for dentistry. Plan Forward Providing in house membership plans that improve collections, patient loyalty, and financial predictability. Upcoming Event Front Desk Pro In-Person Seminar May 8, 2026 in New Orleans, Louisiana www.classicpractice.com Promo code for $100 off tuition: Secret Sauce Subscribe and Share If this episode resonated, share it with a colleague or manager who is struggling with team buy-in around statistics. Subscribe to Dental Drill Bits so you never miss an episode.

Episode Summary Most dental practices don't actually have a referral problem — they have a system problem. In this episode of Dental Drill Bits, Sandy Pardue and Dana Salisbury break down why referrals don't happen by chance, how inconsistent service and communication quietly sabotage growth, and what simple systems practices can put in place to earn consistent, high-quality referrals. Through real-world service examples, team accountability strategies, and practical chairside scripts, this conversation shows why referrals are a byproduct of confidence, consistency, and gratitude — not hope. What You'll Learn in This Episode • Why referrals are built through systems, not luck • How phone experiences and follow-up impact word-of-mouth • When and how team members should confidently ask for referrals • The most natural moments in the patient journey to introduce referrals • Why referred patients accept treatment and stay loyal longer • Referral incentive considerations and state regulations to know • A realistic referral benchmark every practice should aim for • How gratitude systems drive repeat referral behavior • Simple ways to track and celebrate referrals with your team Key Takeaways • Referred patients are more loyal and more likely to accept treatment • Team confidence directly influences referral outcomes • If team members aren't referring their own friends and family, that's a red flag • Asking for referrals is not pushy when it's genuine and well-timed • Gratitude and follow-up multiply referral behavior • Internal marketing delivers some of the highest ROI in a practice Thank You to Our Show Sponsors Identity Dental Marketing Looking to stand out in a crowded market? Identity Dental Marketing builds brands that convert.

Episode Summary: In this episode of Dental Drill Bits, Sandy Pardue and Dana Salisbury explore the often-overlooked power of a well-crafted job description. They explain why generic or outdated descriptions can set your practice up for failure—creating confusion, legal risk, and missed hiring opportunities. You'll learn what must be included, how to stay compliant, and why being transparent about your expectations (including physical demands and performance metrics) is key to attracting the right candidates. If you're serious about improving your hiring process and retaining top talent, this conversation is a must-listen. Takeaways: Job descriptions should reflect the specific needs of your practice. Outdated job descriptions create misalignment and confusion. Every job description serves as a legal agreement between employer and employee. Transparency in compensation, expectations, and requirements is essential. Include physical job requirements and measurable performance goals. Store and organize job descriptions properly for easy access and compliance.

  Episode Summary: In this episode of Dental Drill Bits, Sandy Pardue and Dana Pardue tackle one of the most underestimated tools in the hiring process—your job ad. They explain why hiring should be treated like a marketing campaign and how your job postings either attract or repel the very people you are trying to hire. From crafting compelling headlines and utilizing creative job titles to understanding hiring psychology, Sandy and Dana share strategies to elevate your job ads and recruit with intention. They also explore the power of nontraditional hiring sources and the importance of keeping your energy positive throughout the hiring process. Whether you are actively hiring or just building your team, this conversation is packed with must-use tips to help you find and retain great talent. Takeaways: If you are having trouble hiring, check your job ads first Always accept resumes even when you are not actively hiring Make sure job ads reflect your practice's values and culture Use creative job titles to capture attention and stand out Women apply when they meet 80 percent of requirements; men at 20 percent Treat hiring like a marketing campaign, not just an HR task Track where your applicants come from to measure effectiveness Consider nontraditional candidates from service-oriented industries Stay positive throughout the process—your mindset matters Great employees are often already employed—go find them

Episode Title: Wasted Time, Open Time, and Maximizing Your Schedule Episode Description: Welcome to another exciting episode of Dental Drill Bits! This week, Sandy Pardue is joined by a very special guest—Dana Pardue, the original co-host and HR business professional. Together, they kick off the new season with a deep dive into one of the most critical topics for dental practices: managing open time in your schedule. Discover actionable tips to identify, track, and eliminate wasted time in your practice. Whether you're dealing with broken appointments, patient no-shows, or underutilized slots, this episode equips you with practical strategies to improve productivity, enhance patient care, and boost your bottom line. Plus, hear Dana's unique perspective on the patient experience and why over-communicating about appointment changes can backfire. Stay tuned until the end for a game-changing resource that could revolutionize how you handle in-house membership plans! What You'll Learn in This Episode: Dana Salisbury's journey back to Dental Drill Bits and her insights on training and development for dental practices. The real cost of open time and why tracking it is crucial. How to calculate daily, hourly, and per-unit production goals. Strategies to reduce cancellations, no-shows, and last-minute reschedules. The importance of maintaining a reliable call list and leveraging patient interactions. Patient perspective: Why excessive appointment changes can harm patient satisfaction. The role of team meetings in addressing missed opportunities. An introduction to Plan Forward—a custom dental membership platform offering tools for automated billing, patient communication, and more. Sponsors: Identity Dental Marketing Looking to stand out in a crowded market? Identity Dental Marketing builds brands that convert.

In this eye-opening episode of Dental Drill Bits, Dana and Sandy Pardue tackle a topic few talk about openly — why some dentists genuinely love their profession while others can't wait to get out. Drawing from Sandy's experience consulting with over 600 dental practices, they reveal the defining difference: the dentists who thrive understand business and leadership, not just clinical care. Together, they unpack why mastering people skills, systems, and practice management can transform dentistry from stressful to deeply fulfilling. From learning how to manage money and motivate your team to leading with gratitude and balance, this episode is packed with mindset shifts to help you fall back in love with dentistry. If you've ever thought, "I hate being a dentist," this episode will remind you—it's not the dentistry, it's the missing business tools. You can learn those. You can take control. And you can love your work again. Key Takeaways Business knowledge is the bridge between burnout and balance. Leadership and communication skills create calm, confident teams. Systems bring structure, and structure brings freedom. Appreciation and consistency are stronger than pay raises. Detachment and compassion prevent emotional exhaustion. A strong leader defines vision, sets expectations, and celebrates wins. You can't buy culture—you build it through trust and gratitude. Reignite your love for dentistry by investing in your people and yourself.

Episode Summary: In this episode, Dana Pardue Salisbury and Sandy Pardue unpack one of the most complex topics in dentistry: hiring an associate dentist. From knowing when your practice is truly ready to bring on another provider, to understanding why most associateships only last one to two years, this conversation blends humor, real-world stories, and practical numbers. You'll hear how culture, contracts, and communication can make or break the associate relationship—and how to avoid costly mistakes that so many practice owners make when expanding their teams.

In this episode of Dental Drill Bits, Sandy Pardue and Dana Salisbury continue their step-by-step Hiring Series with one of the most sensitive and risky steps: the job offer. Too many dental practices skip this or handle it haphazardly, leaving themselves open to misunderstandings, legal trouble, and even losing great candidates. Sandy and Dana walk you through why offer letters matter, what must be included, and how to avoid turning them into binding contracts. From conditional vs. unconditional offers, to pay pitfalls (why you should never state an annual salary), to the benefits and reporting structure every candidate deserves in writing—this episode is a playbook for clarity, compliance, and culture. You'll also hear real stories from the field, red flags to watch for, and the right way to pair a congratulatory phone call with a solid written offer. If you want to protect your practice, set clear expectations, and welcome new team members the right way, this episode is a must-listen. Takeaways: Every job offer should be conditional on something, background checks, license verification, or I-9 documentation. Avoid stating annual salaries; use hourly, weekly, or monthly to stay compliant. Offer letters should spell out pay, benefits, start date, reporting structure, and expectations—clearly and concisely. Always include at-will employment language (where applicable by state). Never promise future raises or bonuses in writing—leave those for separate agreements. Give candidates a clear deadline to accept, so you don't lose momentum with your second choice.

In this episode of Dental Drill Bits, Sandy Pardue and Dana Salisbury continue their step-by-step Hiring Series with a focus on reference checks. Too many dental practices skip this step because it feels awkward or unnecessary, but failing to do so can cost you money, morale, and even legal trouble. Sandy and Dana share true stories from the field (including embezzlement cases that could have been avoided), compliance tips that keep you safe, and the exact questions that reveal whether your next hire is reliable or risky. From separating personal vs. professional references to knowing what you can ask—and what you should only confirm—you'll leave this episode with a clear system for protecting your practice from a bad hire. Plus, they tackle a listener question about how to manage new hires who want to “change everything,” and why systems are the antidote to chaos. If you want to safeguard your hiring process and build a stronger team, this episode is a must-listen. Takeaways: Skipping reference checks exposes your practice to unnecessary risk. Always separate personal references from professional ones. Confirm dates, pay, and rehire eligibility when giving a reference; ask open-ended questions when checking references. New hires with “big ideas” need structure—systems first, suggestions second. Reference checks = protection for your million-dollar business.

In this episode of Dental Drill Bits, Sandy Pardue and Dana Salisbury tackle one of the most dreaded times in the dental calendar: “Sucktember.” As kids go back to school and cancellations rise, many practices see their production slump, but it doesn't have to be that way. Sandy shares why mindset matters more than market trends, how to uncover hundreds of patients hiding in your own software, and why reactivation projects can both fill your schedule and boost team morale. From calling patients who haven't been in for years to creating fun staff incentives, you'll discover proven strategies that transform September into Success-tember (and set you up for Rocktober). If you're ready to stop the slump and finish the year strong, this is an episode you won't want to miss. Takeaways: Your mindset shapes your results: stop expecting September to “suck.” Patient reactivation projects reveal hundreds of opportunities already in your database. Most patients who haven't been in still believe you're their dentist — reach out. Consistency in outreach creates predictable schedules. Boost team morale by gamifying reactivation with small rewards. Increased outflow (calls, texts, emails, mailers) is the key to saving your September.

In this episode of Dental Drill Bits, Dana Salisbury and Sandy Pardue discuss the challenges of hiring and retaining new employees in dental practices. They explore the reasons behind high turnover rates, the importance of effective onboarding, and creating a welcoming workplace culture. The conversation emphasizes the need for structured training plans and the impact of workplace bullying on employee retention. The hosts also highlight the financial costs associated with poor hiring practices and the significance of enhancing the candidate experience. Key Takeaways Stop blaming the applicant and look at your own processes Onboarding is crucial for employee retention A welcoming culture can significantly impact new hires The cost of hiring mistakes can be substantial Workplace bullying can drive new employees away Structured training plans are essential for new hires Communication during the hiring process is key Involve existing staff in the hiring process Always welcome potential candidates regardless of openings Evaluate your practices to improve employee satisfaction   Event Spotlight: Front Desk Pro – Las Vegas, NV – November 7 Join Sandy in Las Vegas for Front Desk Pro, a high energy, high impact training event designed to level up your front desk systems and skills. Special Listener Discount: Save $100 with code Secret Sauce (two words, both capitalized). Beautiful CAD CAM facility, just off the Strip with nearby affordable hotels. Episode Sponsors A big thank you to our show sponsors for helping bring Dental Drill Bits to you each week: Plan Forward – The membership plan experts helping practices boost revenue and patient loyalty. https://www.planforward.io/ Mango Voice – The smart, all in one business phone system designed for dental practices. https://mangovoice.com/ Identity Dental Marketing – Stand out, get noticed, and attract your ideal patients with custom marketing strategies. https://identitydental.com/

In this episode of Dental Drill Bits, hosts Dana Salisbury and Sandy Pardue go beyond the surface of the interview process to reveal the deeper intentions that should guide your hiring conversations. Whether you are fresh out of dental school or a seasoned practice owner, this conversation will help you build a more intentional, compliant, and effective approach to interviewing. Sandy and Dana share real world examples, cautionary tales, and the subtle cues they watch for that a resume will never reveal. They cover how to avoid common pitfalls like skipping the interview entirely, how to keep interviews consistent and bias-free, and why you should think twice about hiring family or close friends without a proper process. You will learn how to set the right tone from the very first question, uncover hidden red flags, and balance gut instinct with consistent standards. And yes — the broccoli salad that Dana could not stop raving about makes an appearance. As promised, you can grab Sandy's go to Broccoli Salad Recipe here: https://www.spendwithpennies.com/broccoli-salad/. It is healthy, easy, and a hit with the whole family, even the kids.

Episode Description: In this episode of Dental Drill Bits, Dana Salisbury and Sandy Pardue continue the Hiring Series with a proven time-saving strategy: the group interview. Sandy shares her step-by-step process for getting every qualified applicant in front of you at once, identifying the best candidates quickly, and avoiding the weeks-long cycle of one-on-one interviews. From creating the right environment, using a “plant” in the room, and testing retention skills, to gracefully dismissing non-hires, this episode is packed with actionable tips to streamline your hiring process and build a stronger team—fast. What You'll Learn in This Episode: Why group interviews can save you hours and improve hiring decisions How to structure the perfect group interview from start to finish How to test candidates' listening and retention skills on the spot The importance of graciously handling declined candidates How to narrow down your applicant pool in just 90 minutes

Exploring Dental Membership Plans: A Smarter Alternative to Insurance Summary: In this episode of Dental Drill Bits, Dana Salisbury and Sandy Pardue are joined by Meg Lohman from Plan Forward to unpack why in-house membership plans are becoming a go-to solution for dental practices looking to grow and better serve their patients. They discuss how these plans help identify patients who are overpaying for insurance, simplify preventive care, and strengthen patient loyalty. The trio also explores the power of proactive marketing and the importance of educating patients ahead of open enrollment season. Whether you're new to membership plans or looking to refine your strategy, this episode offers a practical roadmap to create a win-win for both your patients and your practice.

Episode Summary: In this episode of Dental Drill Bits, Sandy Pardue and Dana Salisbury tackle one of the most underestimated tools in the hiring process—your job ad. They explain why hiring should be treated like a marketing campaign and how your job postings either attract or repel the very people you are trying to hire. From crafting compelling headlines and utilizing creative job titles to understanding hiring psychology, Sandy and Dana share strategies to elevate your job ads and recruit with intention. They also explore the power of nontraditional hiring sources and the importance of keeping your energy positive throughout the hiring process. Whether you are actively hiring or just building your team, this conversation is packed with must-use tips to help you find and retain great talent. Takeaways: If you are having trouble hiring, check your job ads first Always accept resumes even when you are not actively hiring Make sure job ads reflect your practice's values and culture Use creative job titles to capture attention and stand out Women apply when they meet 80 percent of requirements; men at 20 percent Treat hiring like a marketing campaign, not just an HR task Track where your applicants come from to measure effectiveness Consider nontraditional candidates from service-oriented industries Stay positive throughout the process—your mindset matters Great employees are often already employed—go find them

Episode Summary: In this episode of Dental Drill Bits, Sandy Pardue and Dana Salisbury explore the often-overlooked power of a well-crafted job description. They explain why generic or outdated descriptions can set your practice up for failure—creating confusion, legal risk, and missed hiring opportunities. You'll learn what must be included, how to stay compliant, and why being transparent about your expectations (including physical demands and performance metrics) is key to attracting the right candidates. If you're serious about improving your hiring process and retaining top talent, this conversation is a must-listen. Takeaways: Job descriptions should reflect the specific needs of your practice. Outdated job descriptions create misalignment and confusion. Every job description acts as a legal agreement between employer and employee. Transparency in compensation, expectations, and requirements is essential. Include physical job requirements and measurable performance goals. Store and organize job descriptions properly for easy access and compliance.

In this episode, Sandy Pardue kicks off a powerful conversation about the most overlooked step in fixing front desk chaos: assessing your team's current morale, mindset, and motivation. Before you implement new systems or pile on training, you've got to address the emotional temperature of your practice. Is your team ready for change? Or are they quietly resisting it? Sandy lays out practical ways to reframe, re-energize, and reset expectations—ensuring your next move is a lasting one. If you want real ROI from your front desk, start here. What You'll Learn: Why morale must be addressed before systems What warning signs signal a disengaged front desk How to rally your team around performance without creating pressure The conversation you should be having in your next team meeting A mindset shift that changes everything about your approach to training Thank You to Our Sponsors:

We're diving into a topic that separates struggling practices from high-performing ones—your front desk metrics. Dana and Sandy break down the most important KPIs your admin team should be tracking daily, weekly, and monthly. Spoiler alert: if you're not measuring it, you can't manage it! Whether you're brand new to tracking stats or need a refresh to re-energize your team, this episode gives you simple, actionable ways to bring structure and accountability to your schedule, collections, and patient flow. You'll learn how to: ✅ Track leading and lagging indicators ✅ Set realistic goals that don't overwhelm your team ✅ Empower employees to “own” their numbers ✅ Reduce cancellations and no-shows ✅ Create a consistent system for growth—without expensive software

Gossip at Work: The Hidden Cost of Chatter Dental Drill Bits with Sandy Pardue and Dana Salisbury Gossip at Work: The Hidden Cost of Chatter 0:00 Episode Description Gossip may seem like harmless chatter, but it has the power to erode trust, damage morale, and derail productivity in your dental practice. In this episode, Sandy and Dana tackle the tough topic of workplace gossip—what it sounds like, why it spreads, and how to stop it before it takes a toll on your culture and your team. From NLRB rules to real-life consulting stories, they share practical ways to address negativity, encourage accountability, and build a team that thrives on trust. Plus, Dana delivers scripted verbal skills you can use right away to shut gossip down respectfully and effectively. Whether you're a practice owner, manager, or team member, this episode will help you foster a workplace where professionalism wins and gossip has no place. In This Episode You'll Learn: Why “friendly chatter” sometimes crosses the line into legal risk What the National Labor Relations Board says about banning gossip How negativity spreads—and how to stop it at the source Why some team members resist consulting and how to handle it How to create a safe, gossip-free workspace with open doors and clear roles The real reason broken appointments and low morale go hand in hand Why clearly defined job descriptions reduce friction and confusion How to use team agreements and core values to unify your staff A leadership lesson from the book The Energy Bus by Jon Gordon Verbal skills to shut gossip down with professionalism Why patients are paying attention to more than just your dentistry Bonus Resource: Want a team-building moment at your next staff meeting? Look up the poem “Nobody's Friend” and read it aloud. You might be surprised by the conversations it sparks. Upcoming Event: Front Desk Pro – Philadelphia May 9, 2025 Use promo code SECRETSAUCE (capital S in Secret and Sauce) to save $100 per person Seats are limited and these events always sell out! Thank You to Our Sponsors: Plan Forward Plan Forward makes membership plans easy. Their revolutionary platform helps you grow your dental practice, improve patient loyalty, and create predictable recurring revenue. Learn more at planforward.io. Mango Voice Mango Voice is a cloud-based phone system built for dental offices. It's packed with smart features that help your front desk perform at its best—from call recording and routing to texting and integrations. See it in action at mangovoice.com. Identity Dental Marketing Your marketing firm should tell you who's landing on your website and what they're doing there. Identity Dental Marketing does that—and more. From website strategy to SEO and patient attraction systems, they help you grow smart and stay visible. Explore at identitydental.com. Subscribe & Share: Love what you're hearing? Don't forget to subscribe, leave us a review, and share this episode with a dental friend who's ready to build a drama-free, high-performing team.

Want to retain great employees and build a team that runs like a dream? It all starts with one-on-one conversations that count. In this episode of Dental Drill Bits, Sandy Pardue and Dana Salisbury share how regular one-on-one meetings can transform your culture, boost accountability, and keep your team growing in the right direction. They break down the timing, tools, and tone of a successful one-on-one—plus how to turn them into growth opportunities, not gripe sessions. If you want more engagement and less drama in your dental office, start here. What You'll Learn: How to set up meaningful one-on-ones with your team Why these meetings are more powerful than traditional reviews How to use self-evaluation tools to start real conversations What to document and track before each meeting How one-on-ones can reduce turnover and improve morale The role of emotional deposits and team development in retention Real Results in Action: Sandy and Dana discuss what happens when one-on-ones are done right—from better communication to uncovering training gaps before they become performance issues. Learn why most team breakdowns stem from a lack of connection, not capability.

Is your hygiene schedule disappearing before your eyes? You're not imagining it! No-shows, last-minute cancellations, and poor confirmation strategies can leave your hygiene team scrambling and your bottom line suffering. In this episode of Dental Drill Bits, Sandy Pardue and Dana Pardue Salisbury break down why hygiene schedules fall apart—and how to fix it for good! From smarter pre-scheduling to foolproof confirmation techniques, they're sharing real-world solutions to keep your chairs full and your patients accountable. What You'll Learn: ✅ The #1 reason why hygiene schedules collapse before your eyes  ✅ How pre-scheduling the wrong patients is hurting your practice  ✅ A foolproof confirmation system that actually works  ✅ The perfect balance of texts, calls, emails & postcards for max confirmations  ✅ Why new patient time slots should be set in stone (and how to protect them!)  ✅ The morning huddle strategy that prevents no-shows before they happen  Real Results in Action:

Episode Description Unexpected call-outs can throw your dental practice into chaos—but they don't have to! In this episode of Dental Drill Bits, Sandy Pardue and Dana Pardue Salisbury break down how to create an attendance culture that keeps your team accountable without being rigid. They'll share real-world strategies for managing sick calls, setting clear attendance policies, and keeping your team engaged. What You'll Learn: ✅ How to prevent a culture of absenteeism from spreading in your practice

Hiring is one thing—but the interview process is where you make or break your chances of getting the right person. In this episode of Dental Drill Bits, Sandy Pardue and Dana Salisbury share expert strategies to help you conduct interviews with confidence, ask the right questions, and avoid costly hiring mistakes. What you'll learn: ✅ The difference between situational vs. behavioral interview questions—and why both matter

Finding the Right Candidate Hiring the right person for your dental practice can feel like searching for a unicorn—but it doesn't have to be! In this episode of Dental Drill Bits, Sandy Pardue and Dana Salisbury dive deep into how to attract and hire top talent for your dental practice without the frustration. What you'll learn: ✅ Why a strong job ad is your first (and biggest) hiring tool ✍️ ✅ How to attract working professionals instead of job hoppers

Running a stress-free, efficient dental practice starts with the right systems. In this episode, Dr. Eric Block talks with Sandy Pardue about the power of SOPs, clear team communication, and structured policies to reduce stress and improve productivity. They discuss handling common staff issues, finding and hiring top-tier employees, and creating predictable success through proven systems. Tune in for actionable strategies to build a thriving practice!

Episode Title: Wasted Time, Open Time, and Maximizing Your Schedule Episode Description: Welcome to another exciting episode of Dental Drill Bits! This week, Sandy Pardue is joined by a very special guest—Dana Pardue Salisbury, the original co-host and HR business professional. Together, they kick off the new season with a deep dive into one of the most critical topics for dental practices: managing open time in your schedule. Discover actionable tips to identify, track, and eliminate wasted time in your practice. Whether you're dealing with broken appointments, patient no-shows, or underutilized slots, this episode equips you with practical strategies to improve productivity, enhance patient care, and boost your bottom line. Plus, hear Dana's unique perspective on the patient experience and why over-communicating about appointment changes can backfire. Stay tuned until the end for a game-changing resource that could revolutionize how you handle in-house membership plans! What You'll Learn in This Episode: Dana Salisbury's journey back to Dental Drill Bits and her insights on training and development for dental practices. The real cost of open time and why tracking it is crucial. How to calculate daily, hourly, and per-unit production goals. Strategies to reduce cancellations, no-shows, and last-minute reschedules. The importance of maintaining a reliable call list and leveraging patient interactions. Patient perspective: Why excessive appointment changes can harm patient satisfaction. The role of team meetings in addressing missed opportunities. An introduction to Plan Forward—a custom dental membership platform offering tools for automated billing, patient communication, and more. Sponsors: Don't just look ahead. Plan Forward. Discover the dental membership plan partner that empowers your entire office. Created by a team in your shoes. Find out more here, and be sure to mention Dental Drill Bits for a special offer! https://www.planforward.io/ Take Action Today: Start tracking your open time and production goals now! Print out your schedules, analyze past weeks, and involve your team in finding solutions. Remember, every day is an opportunity to optimize your schedule and serve your patients better. Subscribe & Leave a Review: Enjoyed this episode? Don't forget to subscribe to Dental Drill Bits and leave a review. Your feedback helps us continue to deliver valuable content!

This is a question Sandy Pardue gets quite often in her events, so we decided to cover it here! Here are a couple things you want to do: You need a time clock software. (Sandy recommends a software) Don't give everyone access to change their time clock. Create a policy, and be super specific in this policy. (Sandy gives us great examples). What to say if someone still violates the policy? (Sandy provides us with what to do, a script, and how many times should we allow it). How to present the overtime policy at a team meeting.

Is your dental practice losing revenue despite your best efforts? If so…you might be missing out on several opportunities within your dental practice.  Want to learn how to capitalize on them? This episode is for you. My guest is Sandy Pardue from Classic Practice Resources. Sandy is a renowned keynote speaker, author, and consultant specializing in dental practice management. With over 500 practices served under her belt since 1993, Sandy has earned a reputation as the "systems guru" for her expertise in developing and implementing effective dental office systems. Dentistry Today Magazine has recognized Sandy as a leader in dental consulting speaking every year since 2003 thanks to her entertaining yet practical style, which has inspired countless dental teams to enhance productivity and profitability. She's joining me today to talk about the 3 R's of Practice Management — retention, reactivation, and recall — and explain how simple adjustments can lead to significant improvements on your bottom line. Sandy shares her insights on missed opportunities in scheduling patients, the importance of proper phone etiquette, how to balance automation with a personal touch to boost patient retention, and much more. Tune in for practice advice that every dental practice can start implementing today! PS. Interested in getting $100 OFF on Sandy's Front Desk Pro or Office Management Pro Training Events? Visit Classic Practice Resources and use promo code “Secret Sauce”.  — Key Takeaways: Introduction (00:00) Meet Sandy Pardue & her consulting company, Classic Practice Resources (01:36) Missed opportunities when scheduling patients (04:04) The Rs of practice management (16:28) KPIs to monitor for dental practice efficiency (24:43) Sandy's offerings through Classic Practice Resources (27:16) Lightning round Q&A with Sandy (30:01) — Connect with Sandy at Classic Practice Resources:  Facebook  Instagram — Learn about the upcoming Supercharge Your Dental Practice 2-day event in September here.  Use code RAVING to save $100 on registration. — Learn proven dental marketing strategies and online reputation management techniques here. This podcast is sponsored by Dental Intelligence. This podcast is sponsored by The Doc Sites, the leading provider of websites and online marketing for dentists.  Raving Patients Podcast is your go-to place for the latest and best dental marketing strategies that will help you skyrocket your practice. Follow us for more!

Clint and Russ bring back Sandy Pardue to talk about her upcoming classes and pick her brain about managing dental offices.  Sandy talks about her two seminars Front Desk Pro where she covers scheduling and her new course called Office Management Pro where she covers how to run an office.  We talk about a variety of business topics from scheduling to collecting money to training employees.   If you want to learn more about Sandy's upcoming courses and her consulting company, it is called Classic Practice Resources.  She also does a regular podcast called Dental Drill Bits as well.  Finally her Facebook group is Dental Gumbo.

Hey there, Michael Arias here, and on this week's Monday Morning Marketing episode, we're continuing the essential topic - patient retention. This episode is brought to you by the one and only Sandy Pardue, of Classic Practice, and our podcast Dental Drill Bits. Did you know that up to 50% of patients leave practices over the course of five years? That's a staggering number, but there are steps you can take to combat it. One of the simplest is to ask your patients how their last visit was and really listen to their answers. It's important to never give up on retaining patients, even if they've been inactive for years. With around 170,000 dentists in the US, it's crucial to stand apart by showing how much you appreciate your patients being there. Most importantly, don't forget to always keep an eye on your attrition numbers! It's hard to fix what we don't track, so these metrics are especially important for the health of your practice.Dive into my conversation with Sandy Pardue to learn more on patient retention!‍You can reach out to Sandy Pardue here:Classic Practice WebsiteDental Gumbo Facebook Group‍Other Mentions and Links:Dental Drill Bits PodcastADA - American Dental Association4 Seasons Hotels and ResortsThe Ritz-Carlton‍‍‍If you want your questions answered on Monday Morning Marketing, ask me on these platforms:My Newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/The Dental Marketer Society Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041‍Our Sponsors & Their Exclusive Deals:‍Dandy | The Fully Digital, US-based Dental Lab‍For a completely FREE 3Shape Trios 3 scanner & $250 in lab credit click here: meetdandy.com/affiliate/tdm !‍Thank you for supporting the podcast by checking out our sponsors!‍Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)‍Michael: Hey, what's up Sandy? Sandy: Michael? Hey, I, I was just, uh, looking at our reviews on iTunes. Michael: Nice. Yeah. Guys, don't forget, if you can press pause right now. Go leave us a review on iTunes. Let us know how we're. And then come back and listen in. Cuz in this episode we're gonna be talking about something super important.I'm sure you're looking at the title Why Patients Lead. Sandy: Yep, yep, yep. This is a deep topic, . Okay. This the deep topic and for the listeners, and they've heard us talk about patient retention, which is gross. You know, we've talked about that. And, and for the new listeners, I mean, they'll, you just have to know this number if you say like, okay.Like 170,000 dentists. You hear these different reports, 166,000, 170,000. But we all know, cause you've worked in these practices that get at least 10 new patients a month. Right? Some of them are getting 20, 30, 40, 50, a hundred new patients a month. So I'm gonna say we know that at least 1.6 million people are changing dentists every single month in the United States of America Now.That being said, I saw another interesting statistic then from the American Dental Association that said that 25% to 50% of patients in any given practice are lost over a five year period. Whoa. That's crazy. Okay. I believe that, actually believe that could be worse now than it than ever. Because of so much of their automation, we have less personal contact.Mm-hmm. with people now because we're all living so fast and we count on text and that kind of thing. You need those personal, the personal contact for sure. But you know, when you look at people in general, and we already know that they don't love coming to the dentist. But why do they leave? And, and here's the thing.Most practices are not tracking this, and that's scary to me. Mm-hmm. , so they don't have any idea how many people are not coming back. And then the whole recall process is terrible in most practices. So what you need to do, I like to keep an attrition monitor. An attrition monitor. Now this could be as simple as having an Excel.Where your front office, every time they learn that somebody is left the practice, they put the name in and uh, their family members and why they're leaving. If they say they changed dentists because of insurance or they changed dentists and you don't know why, or maybe they moved out of town, maybe they died.So you've got all this information, okay, about that patient, and you can start to see who's leading. And I think that's very interesting to track. But the fact is that most practices don't do that. They don't really look close into their recall process to see that, okay, maybe in the beginning of October they had 300 people that needed a cleaning.They never go back in November and pull that same report and see that they still have 180 people that are due to come. In October, they did not come in. That's a huge problem, but why? Okay, why? Why is this happening? Number one, no one's watching. Number two, no one's following up. That is huge. And number three, nobody's actually tracking it, so, Those are the things that the practices need to implement versus, here's the thing, and I was explaining this to a friend of ours yesterday who was looking for a local dentist and he's been going to somebody and he is not having a success with some work that he, major work that he was having done and this particular practice he's been going to, I see a lot of TV ads and things and I'm, so that tells me, and I happen to know they're getting about 150 new patients a month and they've been getting 150 new patients a month for 10.So where are the people going? They haven't had to hire more hygienist, right? This is telling me that people are coming in and they're not staying. So practices that are listening, you need to be paying attention to this. But one thing you can do, this'll help you get some of them back and find out while they're leaving.Now you guys, you've heard me talk a lot about the reactivation program that I, I love, and that's like sending. Postcards with return service address on there. So you get back the, to see who moved without ever having to call them. You, they call you, you get back about 20% without a phone call. It's a great project to do, but uh, you could also do a fall insurance letter.That's a great thing to do right now. These are all activities to get people, but you've gotta communicate and you've gotta find. Why they're leaving. Okay. When you do this type of activity that I'm about to describe, you'll learn a lot about your practice. So what you wanna do is. Somebody that's a good communicator in your practice.If it's been around and they know some of these patients, that's even better. You wanna get them on the phone, they start calling and you let 'em know we're updating our patient records and we notice you haven't been in for a while. And then zip it up, let them talk now. And uh, they see what they say.Well, yeah, I know I need to get in. Or they say, well, I've changed Dennis, or I'm never coming back there. And that's when you. That pointed question. If I asked you a question, how was your last visit here? And then listen and see what you can learn. See what you can learn. Now, if somebody immediately says, put me in your inactive files, okay, , and sometimes they do that and sometimes they might just hang up, but you can't be scared of them.You just keep doing, and that's where your scheduler is gonna try to discover any problems, because here's the. Patients can act crazy, but most of them are not gonna be crazy. And then sometimes when we meet these practices that are constantly firing patients, they are firing people less than, right? Well, I promise you that many people aren't crazy when you've got the practice two doors down, that never fires anybody.That tells you that the people inside the practice are the ones running them off. Does that make sense? Mm-hmm. Michael: Yeah, that does, that makes a lot of sense. And I like that. So we're asking them almost like as a post-op kind of thing, right. Once they're home or something, we ask them, how was your last visit here?Or once they're in the practice, we're like, Hey, the visit before this, how was that? Yeah. Sandy: Or, or say it like, can I ask you a question? I'll always like to say that first. Mm-hmm. and, and with a high pitch at the end. Can I ask you a question? And wait, how was your last visit here? That just opens up a conversation and that's when they come out with all kinds of things.Like they left me in that chair and nobody tam to check on me. I was so thirsty. I was . You know, people get upset about things, right? They get quoted the wrong fees, the fee changes. Nobody told them in advance. Thought they were gonna see Susan, but uh, April was the hygienist. You know, they get, there's all these reasons because people are really sensitive about their mouths.Okay. I'm just gonna tell you, people are super sensitive about their mouths. They are. And so, and people are just, they expect good customer service, especially people. West High expectations, more successful people. You know, they're used to going to the Four Seasons or the Ritz Carlton, and you want these kind of patients.You know why they have money and they have rich friends, and so you wanna cater to these people. You don't wanna make them mad, and so you've gotta make sure we talk a lot about the tone of the office. Well, you've gotta make sure that your team is supporting you and your view. And they're happy to be there and they're wearing smiles cuz all of these things contribute to patients leaving.They have a lot to do with your attrition. So you've got your team supporting you and complimenting you. A practice should be growing, not shrinking. So every year you should be growing and need, you need to hire more people. It's because you're retaining and growing these people that say they're never coming back.You need to let them know the person that's calling, well, I'm sorry. We're not gonna be seeing you here again. We sure did enjoy having you as a patient. You know, a lot of times people when they hear something like that, they may be in between of leaving the practice. Maybe they were going to leave and then they got this phone call and they heard something like, And they, they never found that other dentist, so they will go ahead and appoint.You can, you should never give up on your patients. I had somebody I saw in Dentaltown recently where he said he was gonna inactivate everybody that hadn't been in 18 months. Well, my gut got real tight. Okay. I'm just like, ugh. Because I know how hard it is to get those new patients and 18 months goes by really fast.Mm-hmm. , I went 15 months without getting my teeth cleaned. Last time I did Sandy Cardew, I did , and so it just made everything. I'm glad my dentist didn't inactivate me. That's insane. Of course, I know how to take care of my. And, you know, I have a little scaler at home, so I believe me, I'm, I'm okay. But you, you know, people leave most of the time cause of the service they received or they felt like it wasn't fair or they didn't like they were treat the way they were treated.That's what they always remember how they were treated. So that one phone call to follow up on these people that hadn't been. Instead of saying, hi, this is Sandy from Dr. Gutes, I was calling to set up an appointment. You know you're gonna be more personable with them. Letting them know, with missed seeing you, doctor asked me to call.And you do it in such a kind voice. You don't, it's not just, I'm following them, schedule an appointment to you or send a text like I got yesterday. It's time for your cleaning. I didn't even say what dental office it was from . I was like, who is. Was it from my husband or me? I didn't, you know, and then I saw the text, and by now I've gotten about 25, 30 other texts and I forgot all about it until I was just talking about it here, , Michael: until right now.I was just talking about, yeah, exactly. So then the, the three points keep, no one's watching, no one's following up, no one's tracking. No one's watching is we have to keep an attrition monitor. Right? Yeah. And that. What is that in our practice management Sandy: software or No, you need to create your own Excel document, Michael: and that is you're literally looking at who needs to be reactivated.You're following up with the Sandy: calls and stuff. The attrition monitor are the people that have left the practice. Those are the people. You're gonna only enter the people that are not coming back, so, You have pulled a report from your dental software, you see who hasn't been in for a long time. Go back three years, go back five years, you have a smaller practice, go back five years.Then what happens is as you're making these calls, then you find out someone's not coming back. They're entered on that sheet. So it could be that they moved out of town. They changed dentists. They changed dentists because of insurance. I wanna put that in a separate category. So let's see, what did I say?Change dentists, say Joseph of insurance and moved out of town and deceased. So, and then I like to send a letter to every one of them. If they're deceased, they get a sympathy, the family gets a sympathy. So some type of communication goes to them. Even if they changed Dennis, it's because of insurance. I want them to know that they're welcome to come back to the practice.And so I'm calling these people, it's like I'm, I'm calling all these people that haven't been in, and I'm not calling them for a cleaning. I'm calling them because doctor asked me to call. Cuz we miss seeing them in the practice and I'm continuing this conversation letting them know how much we've enjoyed seeing them on a regular basis.You know, ideally we're gonna reactivate them. If they say, oh, well you know what, I'm not coming back. Or, you know, my grandson is a dentist. Now, you know, or you are gonna tell you all these things. Or if you don't really know the reason why, it's okay to say, well, in order to complete our clinical records, may I ask why you wish to become inactive for the reason, and then they'll tell.And then you make sure that you put that in, in the computer file. And if it's like a, it's, it's an upset. You know, a lot of times when you're talk to these people, you realize they're upset about something, some misunderstanding or, or bad communication somewhere. You've gotta get that handled. You've gotta report it to the doctor and get it handled cuz they're gonna go around and tell everybody.Michael: Mm-hmm. . Okay. Okay. And then that's how you keep it, the monitoring, right? The attrition you have to follow up with. every Sandy: week. To me it should be going ongoing. Like every day she's making a few calls and she's putting on the list, and then doctor as or the manager says, oh, can I see our attrition list? How are we doing?Oh my goodness, look at this. We learned out of those calls that she made in a week that we lost 25 patients. It's just data. Okay? Running a business, you've gotta have data. Stats are everything. I love them. They, they give you a picture of everything going on, and so that. If you have a lot of people leaving the practice, you need to know.And if you're not keeping up with it, you don't really know it, or you just know a number and you don't know who it was. So I like to communicate to the people that leave because they do come back. I've seen that first in, and they'll come back. Michael: Gotcha. So then what do we do in this scenario when they're like, oh, you know what?Yeah, I didn't like that. Uh, I didn't like that this person did that. Or did something happen? That's why I left. I, I'm finding another person. Right. Is. Are we trying to win them back or is it more like, oh my Sandy: goodness, always, because if you don't, they're going to go talk around town for the next 10 years about you.It's always better to have friends. It's always better to have really good relationships in life. Um, you know, it's never good to have somebody that's not happy with your service. And, you know, people, like, if you think about, you know, why, like, why would I stay at my dental office? Well, you know, I kinda like 'em.I like how I feel when I go in there. Everybody's really friendly and I feel comfortable because I'd been there for a long time. And I feel like that work has lasted, that, that dental work. I mean, it, that's what people say, things like that. Right? Or, you know, they love it when they get like, oh, you know, I get my birthday cards from my dentist.He's the first one that sends me a birthday card every single month. And people like that, they like it. Or, or you can hear 'em talking like, oh, my dentist, this is, this is what my husband's friend told me yesterday. I like this, Dennis. He's got a lot of good UpToDate technology. Hmm. He said, but I, I just don't like what he's doing with my den.And I'm like, okay. So this is a guy that my husband has known for about 50 years that he worked with about 50 years ago. And every year they have a phone conversation. And that was yesterday. And I overheard some of this conversation. So he has an upper denture and he w, he was in an accident years ago and he lost some of his teeth.So he is trying to, he want some implants, he's trying to do some work with to his mouth and he doesn't like what's happening. So he calls us and starts telling us about all this You. And that's what they do. He said, you know what, one thing I do like too is they gave me his, an emergency number after I had my surgery there.And so that was the thing that impressed him. So he was impressed that the technology, he was impressed that he got that doctor said, look, if you have any problems, give me, um, you know, give me a call at this number. And so you're giving them kind of like you're impressing them and they have like a reason to, to stay.And they're, they're looking if they found your practice and they're gonna stay. If you have, number one, a good care system, number two, you are communicating with them for that recall process, right? You're reaching out, you're in the calling, you're texting, you're sending cards, whatever it is you're doing, you're not being idle.And I'm telling. The way they feel when they come in there, in that atmosphere and the technology and how easy it is to get an appointment. Those are the things that they are gonna like. Oh, and, and look, we had a friend that told us this at dinner one night. It's like every time I go to the dentist, I'm telling you, I, it's like he's mad and he's just assistant, he's like throwing the instruments down and I don't know what's going on.Look, those are the little things that make a difference in the practice. Okay? So you can't, you can't do that. You cannot do that. And, and the way the team are interacting with each other. Yeah. They also, the things that's gonna have them stay to your practice is because, you know, if you come across. That you're rushed being impatient or you know, you seem like you're mad at your employees, they're mad at them, or you're not telling them what's going on with their mouth.The last hygienist I saw was so good and she, she knew I was in the dental industry, but I think she probably does this with all the patients. So she was like telling me constantly, you know, what she was gonna be doing and um, yeah. And if they feel like. Overcharging or focusing on money, that'll be a turnoff for sure.I think that if the practice is giving them more reasons to stay, you're, they're gonna be fine. Being aware of who's coming, leaving. Okay. Who's staying? You've gotta, you gotta take care of your patients. . Michael: Yeah, I like that. Like it's, as long as we don't see it, like you said, idly by. Right. Like, give them more reasons to stay than to leave.Right. I mean, maybe mistakes will happen. The more can compensate for that, right? Yeah. Um, and then monitor them. Any final words for this Sandy: episode? The only other thing I wanna add, Michael, is I would like for everybody to start watching that attrition number and know how many patients they're retaining.That is the most important statistic that you can keep. You're always looking for new patients. Let's close the back door. Let's keep some of those patients as you currently have. Michael: Gotcha. Awesome. So guys, if you want to talk about this episode, come on the podcast or submit any questions. Then you can do so by joining the Facebook group Dental Gumbo.And at the same time, don't forget to leave us a review on iTunes. It helps us out a ton. So please go ahead and do that. And thank you guys so much for tuning in, and we'll talk to you in the next Sandy: episode. Yeah, Rebe, have fun. Reactivating those patients.‍

Join this podcast's Facebook Group: The Dental Marketer SocietyJoin my newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/[Click here to leave a review on iTunes]‍‍Guest: David RiceBusiness Name: Ignite DDSCheck out David's Media:‍Instagram: @igniteDDSIgnite DDS Facebook GroupEmail: david.rice@ignitedds.com‍Other Mentions and Links:The Psychology of MoneyDavid on Episode 159The Making Of Facebook GroupSandy Pardue (Classic Practice)PattersonJon Miller (Patterson)Henry ScheinBencoBank of America‍‍Host: Michael Arias‍Website: The Dental Marketer Join my newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/‍Join this podcast's Facebook Group: The Dental Marketer Society‍‍My Key Takeaways:Lending banks do not want to see that you have no debt, they want to see that you can SAVE money. Keep some savings in the bank when securing a loan!Many dentists start off with more than they need. Try running lean an mean at the beginning and add more ops later.Always consider the logical answer before making quick business decisions based on emotion.Podcasts and books are great learning resources starting off, but plan to have 3-5 good mentors to put things into action!Look at the dentist demographics in your area as well as the patient demographics. If there are hungry dentists saturating the market, another location may be better for your startup!Planning to reassess and improve your professional relationships every 90 days is imperative to growth.‍Please don't forget to share with us on Instagram when you are listening to the podcast AND if you are really wanting to show us love, then please leave a 5 star review on iTunes! [Click here to leave a review on iTunes]‍p.s. Some links are affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase, I will earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you. Please understand that we have experience with these products/ company, and I recommend them because they are helpful and useful, not because of the small commissions we make if you decide to buy something. Please do not spend any money unless you feel you need them or that they will help you with your goals.‍Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)Michael: David, how's it going, man? That's great. How you doing today? I'm doing pretty good, man. Thanks for asking. If you don't mind me asking, where are you located right now? David: St. Petersburg, Florida. Is Michael: that where you're, are you speaking right now or is that where your David: hometown Yeah, so that, so St.Petersburg is home for me, although I do dentistry in, uh, east Amherst, New York, which is Buffalo. So I've got a. Michael: Yeah. How far is that? David: You know, it's about a two hour plane flight, door to door. But I, I, I chunk my time, so I'm in St. Pete for, you know, a month, month and a half, and then I go back there for a week or two and so on and so forth, Michael: man.So he racking up the, the miles man, David: Yeah. Yeah. Delta and I are besties. Michael: I know. awesome man. So we appreci. Everything, man. I, I know a lot of the listeners here are from the startup group, dental Marketer Society, Facebook group too as well. A lot of other groups. You drop a lot of, knowledge, expertise, especially for startups.Do you have, your own startup practice, or was it an acquisition or. David: So I, you know, I kind of ran the full gamut, which I think is important for your listeners to understand. Mm-hmm. , you know, as they listen to people, as you know, advice from folks who've done things lots of different ways matters. So I was an associate, I did three acquisitions and a startup.I've sold it all. I'm back to being an associate again by design. And, that, that matters when you're listening to folks. You know, one startup is great, 10 startup. Means something, you know, one acquisition is great, 10 acquisitions mean something. Mm-hmm. wanna be careful who you're listening to. Michael: Yeah, that's true. Mm-hmm. , when you went to three acquisitions, was that your, out of the three acquisitions in the startup, which one was the first where you dove into? David: First one, uh, was, was an acquisition. there are reasons to do one versus another based on your goals, demographics. opportunity, things like that.But first one was an acquisition. Michael: Gotcha. And then you continued to acquire more and more and then decided to do your startup like that? I, David: I did. And you know, part of the reason I did a startup, part of the reason I acquired other practices as well as did the startup is, , people like to put you in a box and say, well, of course you're sober, successful, you're in East Amherst, New York, not Buffalo or de pew or Lancaster or wherever.Mm-hmm. . And, um, so I just decided, well, I'm just gonna keep going and prove, you know, there are processes that work, they're universal, and then Yep, there are some things that shift based on geography. So that was, that was my why, honestly. And it was fun. And we got to put some young docs in really great positions early on to, you know, become owners and, and to take over.Gotcha. What Michael: were the processes when it came to the acquisitions where you're like, this is universal man, it's, it's whatever acquisition you jump into, it's gonna happen like this. And then what are some things we gotta look out for where it's unique? David: Yeah. So I'll tell you some of the things that are important from a process standpoint are, um, how you sequence them.So the first thing you need to do if you wanna buy a practice or start one, is like, get with a lender and get pre. Step number one, 100% of the time. then things differ. But, so acquisition, once we had the lending in place, then we started saying from a vision standpoint, like, who do I want to be?What kind of practice do I want to have, kind of dentistry? Do I want to do what? ZIP codes, location, location, location, support that rather than trying. really high-end cosmetic dentistry in a demographic that couldn't support it or go into a neighborhood and wanna do bread and butter dentistry in a neighborhood that didn't understand that's not what they wanted.So, you know, get the lending down, figure out what kind of practice you want to build from a vision standpoint. Then build your kind of your core team. and, and build out your, your business plan to deliver just like 10 steps. I love, but just a couple Michael: there. . . So you said get the lending down. Let's, let's jump into it with you, right?Sure. How did you get the lending down and then how did you figure out what kind of practice you wanted? David: Man, great question. So here's, here's the first thing. I got the lending down the wrong. , so don't do what I did. Mm-hmm. , you know, I love to teach from the mistakes I made. most of you who are young dentists are being told by maybe parents or faculty or maybe even folks that you see online that you should be like, knocking off your debt, knocking off your debt, knocking off your debt.Not true. Absolutely. 100% false. You should be going income-based repayment, making your minimum payment possible. Dashing cash. and then the moment you've either acquired your practice or if you start up, started up a practice, then crush your debt. I did it backwards. I, I went to a lender with zero debt.I owned a home with also zero debt and I was a bad lender cuz banks don't want to take away your home or your dental practice if something goes sideways. They wanna look at an account and say, Hey, here's 150, $200,000. And if, God forbid, you're the half of a. , we've got a way to make ourselves whole again, don't do it the way I did it.bank Cash, that's the first lesson. Michael: Okay. So was it hard for you to get a loan cuz of that, or who'd you go with? Yeah. Who'd you end up having to David: go with? So I went with Bank of America, I did. Three of my, my loans through them over the years. They're, they're, they're awesome. They've been great. They have a dental division.They're the largest dental lender out there for a reason. and there's some lessons there too. Part of it is rate, but it's not all about rate. But I went with them and yeah, my first loan was, was tough. I had to have a co-signer, like, oh, think about all that, man. I was 27, I had zero debt. I was firing on all cylinders, and I needed someone to co-sign my.because I did it wrong. So don't do Michael: it wrong, . Okay. So like depth is good in this situation, right? Like you want to have that, cash in the bank. David: So yeah. Cash flow is king. Mm-hmm. . And if you have, ballparks say 50 to 80 grand and a bank. and you show a bank that you can, save money, not light it on fire, cuz you're all excited, you finally get a paycheck. They're not actually gonna take a dime of your money. They just need to see that you're capable of saving money. And then there's other things they need to see too. But I didn't have that right. Even though I thought I did all these things right. What they saw was like a zero net balance. And that wasn't, that wasn't good for me as a young dentist who wanted to be an.Okay, Michael: so then you got the lending down. Yeah. What are the, here's, here's the process where you're like, okay, I'm just gonna get an acquire this practice right here, or how'd you figure out Yeah. The steps for that, like the practice that you David: wanted? Yeah. So I knew for me, I wanted to do complete care. I wanted to do, I wanted patients who wanted like to invest in the.and you, you guys know the dentistry that's out there. It's, you know, call it full mouth rehab, total health, whatever you wanna label it as. But they weren't, I didn't want patients who came in on an emergency only. I didn't want patients I had to fight. So whether we like that or not, that requires a dental iq.Doesn't mean you have to be smart or, in, in life in general, but you have to have a high dental iq. You have to, you have to inherently value that kind of dentist. Or it's an uphill battle to build, 2,500, 3000 patients who get to that value. That's something we can build over time. But if you're gonna buy a practice, you wanna buy in an area where people sort of instinctively get that.So we targeted zip codes and said, Hey, they had to have a certain household income, their family structure had to look a certain. , we wanted a family structure, not 10 kids, but maybe one or two kids. Mm-hmm. and people who, who lived in, in certain areas and he shopped in certain places and they, they liked and bought certain goods and services cuz we knew if they valued those things, they would value the dentistry we wanted.So that narrowed it down for me, like three zip codes in, in Western New York, which is where I want it to be. So do that wherever it is you want to. And, narrow your search. And then from there, you know, there's some really good companies out there that can tell you should you be in a strip mall? Should you be in a standalone?Should you be, a, at a complex that houses 10, 20, 30 businesses And you can study all that stuff and put yourself in an optimum position. Michael: Gotcha. Did you go with any of those companies? Those really, really good. . David: at the time a lot of them didn't exist. So who I did go with and who I still rely on to this day is I called my friends at Care Credit and said, Hey, you guys know, don't just know dentistry, you know, like healthcare.Mm-hmm. . So tell me in these zip codes what neighborhood I should be in. Am I in a corner? Um, what kind of building I should be in? And they had all that data, which was super. Michael: Gotcha. Okay. So you figured out like the, the patient base that you wanted, right? Like the exact type of patients then you went from there.Yeah. When you've acquired these practices, cuz this has happened a lot in the past where numbers look inflated, right. whether it's production collection, new patients and they get in there and they're like, this is not at all what I thought it was gonna be. Yep. David: Did that. No, thankfully I had great people on my team who knew how to look at not just the top end number, but why those numbers got there.And they also knew who, how to dissect the practice based on the team that was present and say, Hey, this is the team you can count on moving forward. So these numbers should hold true or. , you know, this team member's been there 35 years, they're probably gonna retire. Or this team member, these team members only been there six months, so they're turning people over.So that's gonna be something you need to consider on building a new team. So they dissected the numbers themselves, they dissected the processes. Um, we looked at existing team and culture. We looked at insurances. Participated versus accepted versus network. We looked at all those factors and then we looked at goodwill.So if you're buying something, if you're thinking about buying a practice, ultimately that's what you're buying. You're buying me the seller anointing, you the buyer, as the greatest dentist on the planet and the person I've been searching for my entire career. And when you have all those things put together, you will not lose.more than 10% of the patient base, and you should lose less than 5%. And anyone who tells you you're gonna expect to lose 20 or 30, they don't know how to do what they should know how to do. Don't listen to that advice. Michael: Gotcha. Okay. That's really, really good advice. So then, mm-hmm. , you built three acquisitions.So what was the, why not do a fourth one? Why'd you do a startup instead? David: prove, I could prove I could take a startup to a million dollars in under 18 months, so that, that was. . Michael: Oh man. So break that process down to us, like how did that happen? David: Yeah. So, okay, so similar process. Go get a lender, get your pre-approval.interesting enough. , your easiest lend is your first one, friends. So do that one, right? Every time you go back to a bank, yes, you, you have history, but you need to have really strong history. So in my sense, it worked out really great cause I had strong history, but in general, your first lend is easiest.So start a practice. We looked at the same thing. What kind of dentistry do we want to. , what zip code codes will support that kind of dentistry? what kind of marketing plan are we gonna need? Because now they're not butts and seats from day one. We've gotta build butts and seats. And, and then how do we build the right lean team to open the doors with?And how do we build the right le um, have the right lean, build? . So we didn't build a space that was too big. and we're paying for things that we don't really need. There's, there's lots of myths out there. Like, oh, build it for like six ops. No, do not do that. build lean and mean. You can move, you can expand.worry about being locked in a space that's too small. That will be the best problem you'll ever have. so simple things that work and are repeatable Gotcha. Michael: Halene and mean. David: We did four ops. we plumbed all four, but we had only three outfitted. One as a main restorative op, one as a hygiene op, and one is sort of an overflow that you could use either way now.I'm gonna caveat this. So imagine that I'm in a community that knows me already, so I had an advantage over you. Somebody who's doing a startup and no one knows you. Mm-hmm. . If I'm doing a startup and no one knows you, do not. Don't plan on having a hygienist for like six to eight months. Like go in as dentist, have an assistant who can also answer phones.And then as soon as you can warrant adding somebody, add someone at the front desk. So you have front desk assistant dentist, and last, and not least add hygiene, but, I went and lean with, a trio. I'm gonna say most of you'll go and lean with the trio and, unplug hygiene. Michael: Hmm. Okay.That's really, really good. And then mm-hmm. , what was your marketing David: plan? marketing for us, we had an advantage. One of my really great friends owns an ad agency that deals with outside of dental industry, so n f l, like big time folks. Hmm. But they took us on, out of friendship and then we targeted procedures and demographics of people that we knew would mix.So we went urban with the. We knew we were gonna target essentially millennials as our patient. So what are procedures that we knew they wanted and what are factors we knew they wanted? So convenience was number one. Technology was gonna be number two, services like, know, Invisalign and things that people in a demographic whitening would want would be number three.And then we just built everything from that core sort of found. Michael: roughly monthly. How many new patients were you getting? 40. 40. Wow. Okay. So then today, where do you see it go wrong? Where do you see, like, where people are like, I'm trying to do all these Facebook. I don't know. You know what I mean? Like a bunch of stuff.Where do you see it go wrong? David: Oh, lots of places. So people don't, um, it goes wrong when you don't do your home. it goes wrong when you emotionally attach yourself to a location, and say, boy, I really want to be here, but you haven't studied to see, can that support you? One, are there enough patients per capita Two, are they the right patients for the style of practice you want to build?that's one piece. Another piece is, investing in, in lease space or ownership. I would tell you if you're doing a startup, Nine out of 10 times you should lease not own. you wanna lower your, cashflow out. Cuz again, this, this is a cashflow game too. So the faster you can get the positive net, the better.So most often that's leasing a space. Hire someone to negotiate for you. Uh, you would be shocked at the um, negotiation leverage you have when you get somebody in the game who understands how to beat a landlord. if you're thinking of doing a startup in the next year, the a n u, this could possibly be the best time to do a startup in the last 15 years.so Awesome. So, you know, side then size of space, don't overbuild. I think a lot of people overbuild and then I think a lot of people over dentally, tech out get foundational pieces of technology that really, really matter. outfit your primary room to do all the things you want it to do, and then everything else is kind of nice to have.If it fits in your budget, I would rather you spend way more money on your marketing, than outfit three rooms, Mac, daddy them. You can always come back and invest in, uh, more equipment. So I think those are the big ones. Okay. If it's me and what I'm seeing out there, Michael: is a good, like, rule of thumb when it comes to, cuz it, you know, you hear that a lot, like, invest as much as you can in your marketing.What's a good, like percentage wise when you're, when you're looking at David: that man, it, it's, it's, honestly, it's hard to say. I'm gonna say the average startup today is 700 grand. So if you said you're spend. Oh God, 10% of that, 15% of that on marketing. That's, that's, that's probably a healthy budget.I think it's easy for people to go, it's easy for people to underspend and then wonder, why am I only getting a couple patients? Cause there's, you know, you know, from what you do, there's like a critical mass number and you have to, you have to hit that threshold in order to cross over the other side. So I would say minimum 10, 15% of that load you.Michael: Okay. It's interesting. I feel like, do you think some people look at the unicorn who like, oh, I opened up where I wanted to, did what I wanted to, did all this. And then they're like, I throw money at you, like, tell me how to do it. You know what I mean? Kind of thing. Do you think that's kind of like, I guess like common instead of, all right, we should sit down and do our due diligence here and this is not gonna work out.David: Yeah, I think that's, um, unfortunately. , it's, uh, you know, social media. There's a blessing and a curse to it. The blessing is we meet people and we, we can learn some best practices. The curse, the downside to it is we're really like tiptoeing in somebody else's water and everybody's circumstances are different.So I think, yes, unfortunately probably eight out of 10 people look at the unicorn and say, well, I'm just gonna do it that way, and that way might not be the way at all there. There needs to be process. this should be a zero emotion and a 100% logic driven process for everybody who's gonna do it.Cause the feel good goes away the moment the bills start coming in and the revenue doesn't. Michael: Yeah. Yeah. Cuz I feel like I get, I hear that a lot, David, where it's like, oh man, I just needed my own place to do a startup. This is my own brand. Finally I can do what I want. You know what I mean? And there's a lot of emotion and I guess emotion kind of sells, but like, is that, is that wrong?David: I'm just gonna say that I, and I'm you, anyone who's watching me, like, I'm not an absolute guy. I'm like, life's gray in the middle. But if you're making your choice on emotion yes. That is in, in that situation, it's 100% not the right way to do it. There are instances where you're gonna wanna start up and then there are instances you're absolutely not gonna wanna start up.You're better off buying a practice. And then there are instances you might be better off staying an associate a little while longer to bank more cash and wait for the right opportunity to open up. it's e it's easy as a young dentist to think, man, I'm not moving fast enough cuz I'm watching all these people sprint.I think what, what we don't see is all the behind the scenes stuff. Like it's easy to take a snapshot of my life today and be like, wow, that looks really great. But I'm here to tell you, like for every good thing that's happened, there's been like a hundred bad things, . that's just not what we talk about on social media all the time.We don't talk about the work and the stress and the days. I would close the door and be like, you know what? I'm not paying myself today. I'm gonna pay my bills. I'm gonna pay my team, and then I'm gonna try to figure out how I'm going to. and like I had those times just like everybody else had those times.So, you know, if you're thinking about this process, like really sit back, get with the small, and I mean small, like three to five people, mentors, stops and start listening deeply to their lessons and not this wide swath of people. Cuz you're gonna get a hundred different answers from a hundred different people.Yeah. Michael: So then what would be. Where you're, somebody's telling you, let's just say like, all these people are. I, I think I've heard it somewhere where they're like, undercover mentor, right? Where you don't know that, David, you're my mentor, but I've been listening to your stuff, watching your po, you know what I mean?Kind of thing. So it's like, all right, I'm listening to David. And now what would you say to be like, Yeah, you do need a startup. You do need to do a startup. Yeah. What, what would be the, okay. , the David: okay for it is, the first thing I would do is I would look in an area and I would say, okay, where do I want to be?So here's where I want to be. Then I would say, what are the li where are the realistic opportunities in like those three zip codes? Can I acquire a practice in those three zip codes for a reason, like a fair value? yes. Or. yes. I'm here to tell you buy the practice, don't start one. unless you're looking at a group of dentists who've been there, who are already, really enjoying life.So if you went into where I, my first practice where I started and you talked to my partner, my former partner, mark and Laura, and, and you wanted to compete, you could do a startup in their neighborhood. because they're already getting 60 new patients a month like clockwork. Everything's good. They don't have to worry about it.So if you want to come in and do some marketing, like they're like, ah, come in my neighborhood and do some marketing. Now, if you wanted to do a startup in a neighborhood where there's six people who are just like you and everybody's hungry and everybody's trying to build, and maybe it's people that are, uh, two, three years ahead of you, so they have some systems in place, that is not the place to start up.You're gonna get buried. , no matter how good you think you are. Mm-hmm. . so I think always look at not just the patient demographics, but the dentist demographics. And if the dentist demographics are people who are on autopilot and you wanna do a startup, go for it. If they're really, really new and they're not doing a lot of things, well go for it.But boy, if they're in the middle and they're hungry and they do a lot of things right, that's not the place to do a startup. Don't do it. Michael: Okay. Any like specific place? Like are you thinking of like Frisco or California? Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Okay. Doesn't matter. David: Yeah, just any place where there's a population.Population of people. so it doesn't, I mean, Buffalo, New York, I can, if you wanted to be in Buffalo or some suburb, I could tell you do not go to East Amherst. , do not go to Orchard Park. You wanna be in Buffalo proper, you wanna be in Lancaster to Pew, you wanna be um, in Lockport. All those places are opportunity.But if you go to one of the three places where all the Beth dentists who are really hungry are, it's gonna be a tough haul uphill. Michael: Yeah. So then that's like the strategy. But when it comes to like, I guess cuz you said to ignore the emotion, right? To, so yeah. Let's ignore the part where it's like, oh, I just want to do my own startup.Yeah. When would it be okay then, or how do you know if it's like, I'm just being impatient, I need to find a better associate, uh, ship, or I need to find an acquisition. You know what I mean? Like when is it the okay to be, like, is it just when you're doing research and you're like, I feel like owning a business or, or how does that work?Yeah. David: I think when you are ready, like when you wake up in the morning, you think I'm ready to be a practice owner, then you should Go for it as a practice owner. But I think then you need to look at what's the best path for ownership for me. Mm-hmm. . and you should be patient enough to know that, like getting in the right relationship in life, like you might find Mr.Miss, him, her wonderful when you're not looking. So it might not be today, it might be three months, six months, or a year from today. So it own that. You wanna own, that's amazing. But don't take a bad opportunity in a rush if it takes you eight months, 10 months, a year to get exactly what you want. It's worth the weight.Michael: Gotcha. Okay. And then why is this the best time in past 15 years to do it? David: So there's gonna be this little thing called the recession hitting the world. not if it's when, and it's how intensely. The great news is dentistry, like it is pandemic proof, it's recession proof. We've already been through multiple recessions.Dentistry does really, really well. So here's the win. , you're going to be successful because you're still going to do dentistry, despite the economy. The wins are, you're gonna be able to negotiate with landlords much better because that's, uh, a business world that doesn't do well in recession. People stop paying rents.Mm-hmm. . So now you, you're a really good tenant, or if you wanna buy a piece of property, property values are gonna dip 10, 15, 20%. So you're gonna buy for less. Equipment. Now you're not gonna go to, any major equipment company and get like a 30% off deal, but you are gonna get a deal and you're gonna get a lot of perks.You're also gonna be able to get your equipment a whole lot faster. So maybe it took me eight, nine months to get my equipment and it takes you six, which gives you time. To get to your startup factor, like you've made the decision, you're doing it, you've done all your homework. Now your goal is to get the doors open as quickly as possible.Cuz then time is money. So, real estate's gonna be a better buy. Equipment's gonna be a better buy. Supplies will be a better buy. And you're gonna do the same level of dentistry you would've done, uh, economy booming or economy just doing okay. So you're in that buy low sell high kind of place and, and realistically, you know, just two years.you already have an asset that's probably worth, you know, 1.5 to two times x. And that's doesn't happen very often in that chart of a span kind. That's Michael: good. I like that. So then if we were one a little bit, your three acquisitions in one startup, you let that go when? David: life and timing. Seven months pre covid.Michael: Okay. So pre covid life and ti. , David: it was part of an eight year plan. so yeah, I'm a, I'm a planning nut, so I had an eight year plan, where I, I love doing dentistry. I continue to do dentistry, but what I knew is Ignite was gonna take me to a different kind of business. And, it allows me to reach and work with young dentist.all the time, which I love even more than doing dentistry full-time. And the other part for me, from like a life and a vision standpoint, it is, it gave me total mobility. So my wife and I wanted to live someplace where the sun shined every day. My dental practice was in a place where it's fine, like 20 days a year.So , you know, ignite allowed us to move and take our, like our next life. earlier than it would've otherwise had I stayed a dentist full-time. So our practice needs its leaders there full-time. I get to go back and do all the things I do clinically and um, tech-wise, I get to build content there, which is amazing.And then, um, I get to go, you know, be with my wife in Florida the rest of the time, which is, you know, that's our sort of perfect life design. Mm-hmm. , Michael: that's how you created it, right? Yeah. Towards the. Man. So you planned that out like that. Interesting. Okay, man. Mm-hmm. . So then I wanted to ask you, um, throughout your process of your acquisitions, also your, your startup and everything like that.Sure. And what you've been seeing lately, what have been some of the best companies to work with, and then some of the worst ones. David: So I'll caveat this with I'm different than many dentists where I believe that loyalty really. So I'm a Patterson guy. Mm-hmm. , and I've been for 29 years now.That doesn't mean if you went to work with Shine or Benko or somebody else, that that's bad. That's not bad. Um, but my relationship started with Patterson years and years ago. They've been amazing to me. We've worked together with every single thing I've ever done, and it's been a craziest success. So if you don't know who to go to, I highly recommend that.If you say, man, I work with Scheiner Benko and they're doing right by me. , stay with them, be super loyal to them. that's been, uh, I think a life premise. I do that with flights and hotels and everything, like loyalty pays big time. So I like Patterson. if I'm you guys and I'm talking like startups or first practice, one of my favorite people in dentistry, his name is Jonathan. I love Jonathan. He's, he's integrity through the roof. He's got a banker's background, but he literally has devoted his whole life to, your first practice, whether it's an acquisition or a startup. And I love, love, love that cuz he has no vested interest in which one you choose. It just needs to be the right one for you.That's like solid objective information. . he's tremendous. I'm a B of a guy. I also like provide, I think they're, they're also a very good lender. So I, I work with, uh, young docs on both of those lens all the time. I don't have no skin in the game. I just know that they both can deliver. sometimes one's better than the other just based on timing and, and offers they have. And sometimes it's just likability. Like, here's a couple good people. Pick who you wanna work with. Mm-hmm. , What spaces are you looking for Michael: in, I guess gimme like from the processes of your startup, right? Where you're like, okay, we built it, but now after like one, two years, three years after it's up and running because like, let's just say for example, there's a.So that, that leads to another question like, cuz you mentioned loyalty, right? When would it be okay to let that loyalty go? To be like, man, you screwed up way too many times. Like, these claims are, I can get 'em better done by somebody or I don't know. You know what I mean? yeah. And it's different now too, cuz of social media.Like, you see everybody's saying they're the best, they're the, you know, contact this person and all these things. So Sure. Kinda like in that area. David: Yeah, so that's, and that's a really good point. What I would recommend to all of you is you reassess every relationship you have every 90 days. So I'm not looking to make a move, but I am looking to make sure people are performing.And that's on part of, that's on them, on on, on the other side of the relationship. But part of that's on me too, as an. You know, as the quote, c e o of my company and as a leader, is to define my expectations to all the people we work with and show them what a win is for you. Tell them, and, you know, when we work together, these are the things that matter most to me.And then if you, every 90 days are circling up with them, they're either checking all those boxes or they're not. So for me, I, at 90 days, if somebody wasn't doing their job, I would say, Hey, remember when we promised? that these three or five things were really important, you were gonna do those things.They'll say yes. You'll say, okay, so help me understand how we missed. I don't know, two out of the five. What are we gonna do about it? How do we fix that in between now and the next time we get together? And then if they fix it and it stays fixed, amazing. If they don't, then you know that's, you've given your best to the relationship.They clearly look at it differently than you and. Then it's time to move on. Um, but I think like all relationships, when we communicate really, really well, here's what we need from you. And they say, here's what we need from you, and then we, we both work at delivering what we need. Then you'll find you'll have 10 year, 15 year, 20, 30 year relationships with people, and your life will go much more smoothly as a business owner in addition to costing you a lot less money.Michael: I like that. So today still, David, do you re reassess it every 90 days or after like 10 years? You're like, we got it. We got, we're, we're David: pretty cool. Mm-hmm. , we still do, we do it with every insurance. not with dental insurances, but like male practice, disability, life. Uh, we do it with our financial planners, in the office for the 401k and our profit sharing outside of the office.For what we do alone, I do it with my C P A, we do it with our attorneys. and um, you know, it's, it was really cool when I was with the practice all the time and, and Mark and I were just partners together. We did it together. We brought everybody in and we round tabled it. We're like, okay, you're all on our team.Cuz what's really interesting is sit down with the CPA and they're gonna give you, this advice, you know, over, you know, over in one cap. And then you sit down the financial planner and they might be in a totally different camp. No, no, no, no. That's a bad idea. Do this. But when we bring our cpay and our financial planner together, And it's not a, one versus the other.It's more the goal is to win. So share why you c p a see it this way. Financial planners share why you see it this way? It's so cool to see people interact and say, you know what? Wow, I never really looked at that way. I get why you want to do that. So what if we did a little bit of this and then we did a little bit of that, and then we assessed what works best and then we'll do more of what works and less of what doesn't work.Don't be afraid to take your external team and unite them in a room or a virtual room on a regular basis and have everybody talking to everybody. It's gonna make them feel really good because you're in this with them. It's not a transaction and you'll get really crazy better results when everybody communicates with everybody and people aren't butting heads all the time, you know, over turf.Michael: So you do that every like quarter or every 90 days. Mm-hmm. you, you get everybody together and. David: Yeah, that, and we, yeah. And I'll tell you pro-tip, when you're building out a space, do the same thing. We got our architect, our general contractor, Patterson as our distributor, who's gonna supply the equipment, all the subs, electric, plumbing, the whole nine yards.We got 'em all together at, at a table, handed out a little information sheet, said, this is who y'all are. This is all your. . So we are gonna build this place together. And when you feel like somebody's holding you up, then let that person know along with us and we can hold everybody accountable in this process.And our buildouts went much better that way than when we tried to do them not doing it that way. Michael: I like that man. So you let the, you let them know, Hey, if you hold us up, everybody else is accountable kind of thing. . David: Mm-hmm. . And you know, cuz you know, it's, it's, he said, she, she said, so if you're building a space out and, and you're, you're running behind, which happens too commonly in Buildouts.Mm-hmm. , someone's gonna say, oh man, I couldn't come in and do my job cuz so and so didn't do theirs. Well, once you put everybody in a room and you hold them accountable to each other, then they, I can't blame if I'm a plumber. I can't blame the electrician cuz boy, we, we all know each other now. So if you had a problem with the electrician plumber, it was your. So let that person know and let us know there was a problem. So we knew what to expect. Michael: Okay. I like that man. Okay. So we wanna reassess every relationship every 90 days, right? All together. Yeah, everybody. And then make sure we talk to everyone, let them know their roles, communicate and so forth. Okay.Interesting. So, David, I know you, you do a lot now, I dunno if you're more busier now than you were when you had all the acquisition. So real quick, what's your area of e. . David: I'm gonna say I'm a leadership and culture builder. That is, that is my, there are, there are things that I'm pretty darn good at, but that's what I'm pretty darn good at, that I really, really love and I'm a huge fan of.So I work with young folks all the time on how to build that in their practice. And sometimes it's a personal thing. Most of the time it's a practice thing. when you really get it, you realize it's all the same. Mm-hmm. . So yeah, that's how I personally help people. And outside of that, I'm gonna say my superpower is just connecting you for the right people.Big ocean out there. My job is just take the ocean, turn it into a pond, and then you as a, a young dock side, who in that pond you should play with. But at least we've weeded. , all the other fluff. Yeah, Michael: everything else is unnecessary. So then what can a dentist do today to improve their, their marketing or their business?David: First thing I would do is I would look at my internal systems. I'm a big fan of external marketing as well. I'm here to share with you if your internal systems aren't buttoned up. , um, you can reign in, you know, a hundred phone calls a day and you're not gonna convert mm-hmm. . So why spend the time, the energy and the dollars on that unless you have your internal systems buttoned up?So I would work on that. I would work on my, my diagnostic skills, my treatment planning skills, and especially my communication skills from first phone call to passing the baton from one team member to the. To treatment plan and case acceptance to follow up. And if you master that process that you do all day every day as a team, you, you can't help but grow at least 20% in less than six months.I mean, it's, it's hard not to grow that fast. Michael: Yeah. So then look at, if, if you were to give us like a couple bullet points, like besides phones, right? Because like obviously if phones aren't converting, then we. You know, marketing is just being always what's, what are some internal systems that you've seen where people continue to miss it after year, two, year three, year four, and, and you have to go in there again and be like, keep an eye on this system or create a system for this.What are some of those? Sure. David: I'm gonna say low hanging fruit. people don't have assistant to. Patients for referrals. that's an easy one. you know who your best patients are, you probably want more of them and not just more of like the random person. So having a system for asking for referrals is a big one.Having a system to, be up the case acceptance model from hygienist to dentist. Is another really, really easy one. So as a dentist, you should walk in a room and that patient should be primed. They should already have a, a firm grasp of everything you're gonna say. You and your hygienist should have a really nice system to communicate with each other before you walk in.And then adding to that system how you share what you share over a patient's shelter. There's tons of data to show that your patients listen more to what they overhear than what they. . Um, and then the third one is system for accountability. And that is everybody does what they promised to do and I've seen so many dental practices fall off the ledge cuz everybody gets excited about something and then three months later, six months later, three years later, they're doing it.Same darnt thing that they did in the beginning. So accountability is everything. Gotcha. Michael: Okay. Interesting. Now these next couple questions are just to get into the head of someone who. Ran practices and startups, right. Acquisitions. But right now, what would you like to see more from a practice owner? David: I would like to see more leadership.this is gonna be a hard truth for some of you, but people don't leave jobs. They leave you. So if your team is walking out the door, they're leaving you. And I know you think it's about a dollar an hour or two bucks an hour, it's. . It's a good thing that we point to in today's world, but since the dawn of time, strong leaders build strong teams and strong teams stay cuz they're a part of something bigger.Do you Michael: ever feel like somebody ever comes to you and like, David, I'm trying to lead this, and then you're, you look at them, you talk to them, they're trying, but you're just like, you're just not a leader man. Like you're not meant for this role. Has that ever. David: It, it happens a lot. And I, you know, I don't blame anyone when that happens because unless you have invested more time and energy in learning to be a leader, it's, you know, it's inherent in some people.Some people are natural born leaders, but most people learn leadership as a skillset, just like they learn everything else. So I think what happens is, whether it's social media or parents or you read a book, you, you think you're taking these great lessons and bringing them to the table. somebody's hearing a totally different message than what you are verbalizing or even better what you're showing them, right?Mm-hmm. , who you are is different than who you're speaking to them, so the connection is getting lost. So if you feel like this isn't going perfectly well, you know, spend some time to learn to be a leader. It's just like wrapping a tooth. You have to be taught. Michael: Anything you recommend? Like, cuz you mentioned that and I'm like, oh dang.I do that sometimes. Like I'll read a bucket and I'm like, we're doing this and then a year from now I'm like, what happened to that? We, we should have done that Right. Kind of thing. So what would you recommend where we go to get taught? David: Yeah. So first I'm gonna say read all the books. That's, that's always a good thing.Listen to all the podcasts, that's always a good thing. But look at that as like very 1 0 1 information. Mm-hmm. And then I'm gonna say, take a deep dive in leadership with somebody. So, Sandy Paru, great example. Like somebody who knows how to teach leadership. something I do a lot, I teach leadership a ton, um, to young d dentists.there's probably 10 people I could name that, you know, if, if you guys wanna follow up with me, I'll give you all 10. Like, I doesn't matter to me. There's, there's like so much work out there for all of us. It's not a thing. So I'm happy to share all the people that I think are really, really good.But find somebody. that you, you really trust what they say. Check on them, right? Check to see who else thinks they're really darn good at what they do, and then go all in and stop dabbling and stop listening to people in a Facebook group, including our Facebook group, right? Listen only to that person.That's how you're gonna succeed. Mixed messages. It's just noise and it's a diversion from us succeeding quickly. Michael: Yeah, a hundred percent, man. I agree. So then right now, What do you hate about dentistry or dislike ? David: the blessing and the curse of social media. I hate social media and, and I, and I share that with all of you telling you that I built Ignite TDS on social media, right?right? Mm-hmm. , we reach a million people a month. We built our entire company on social media, but I still, the problem is most of social media today is affirmation and it is not information. Mm-hmm. , it's people going to comm. and, um, it's not all groups, but certain groups who've got some significant popularity.listen, they're Dan Kennedy marketing trained. They're har, they're honing in on three pain points that they know you have. And if you just pay attention, there might be 20 posts a day, seven days a week. But over the course of six months, they all say three things. They all harp on the fact that student loan debt is.and shame on dental schools, they harp on insurance companies are awful. Shame on insurance companies for paying you less. there's a few others out there, but, um, I don't like that. I don't like people who, who position themselves to generate business out of fear. It works. I get it. But I, that's my biggest dislike in dentistry today.Michael: Ah, when you were mentioning that, I, I started thinking of because, you know, we're all part of a lot of Facebook groups. Interesting. Yeah. No, no. I, I agree a hundred percent. Like, so then what would you, I guess, what would you like to see change from that? Just completely stop that or, David: in, in a perfect world, like, yeah, I'd like people to just stop, but that's not gonna happen.So what, so what I would like, honestly, a realistic world is each of us. As a, uh, social media user go in with both eyes wide open, and even in those groups where there are things like that, that I dislike, there's really good information, so don't throw it all out. Just go in and realize when somebody says this, they're saying it for a reason.They're pushing you to an end. if that end game is your perfect end game, listen, if that is not your perfect end game and it's challenging your beliefs and where you wanna go and making you feel like um, you can't get there, then you need to minimize your exposure to it. Cause it repetition will get you and eventually wear you down and make you feel like you can't.And, and I'm here to tell you, dentistry is still today one of the greatest professions where everything is possible. So you want to go be a fee for service dentist. I can teach you how to do that and make a lot of money. You want to be a P P O dentist. Um, better people than me can teach you how to do that and make a lot of money.You wanna be a Medicaid dentist. Different people than me can teach you how to do that and make a lot of money. My job is to just help you in the lane if you're in my lane, and then get you to somebody who's in a different lane if you wanna be in a different lane. Michael: Yeah, man. And I like that man affirmation and that information.You're right, there's a lot of. , we used to be information overload. Now it's just opinion overload. Totally. Like everybody has an opinion for everything and states it as a fact. You know what I mean? Yeah. Everybody's David: an expert. Like, and that, that's what I mean. If, if I literally, if I owned one, and in fact even if I owned my four practices and I didn't study practice models and work in like 50 practices a year, times the last 25 years. my information would be purely opinion and would mean nothing to you. So when somebody says, do these 10 things, how many times have they done it? How many different ways have they done it? If it's under 20, stop listening. It's irrelevant. Michael: Yeah. If it's not applicable. Do you think it's more like, cuz like, oh, we're in the same boat.I have like that common ground, like we're both just started up kind of thing, right? Yeah. David: So they. Yeah, I, and, and there's value in that. So there's value in knowing that we're all in this together and that we're not alone. w Edwards Deming, who's probably the greatest economist America has ever seen, but certainly a top three, if you don't know him, study him.94% of our successes in our systems, I can't build a good system. One shot. I have to have multiple shots over time. I can't have

‍We have a special episode this week asking doctors, practice owners, and dental industry professionals for their answers on these three big questions!‍1. "Give us the 3 best words that describe this past year."‍2. "What 2 things do you wish you would've said 'NO' to?" (this could be anything such as personal life or in your business/ practice).‍‍3. "What advice would you like to give to yourself as you begin the New Year?"‍Listen in on this week's episode to learn what has been driving our featured guests in 2022 and what to look forward to in 2023!‍You can learn more about The Featured Guests here (In order of speaking):‍Dr. Addison KilleenDr. Ashley DawsonDr. Kathryn AldermanDr. Nathan CoughlinDr. Paul EtchisonSandy PardueDr. Tyler BradyDr. Chad Duplantis‍If you want your questions answered on Monday Morning Marketing, ask me on these platforms:My Newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/The Dental Marketer Society Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041‍Our Sponsors & Their Exclusive Deals:CARESTACK | Cloud-Based Dental SoftwareSCHEDULE A FREE DEMO TODAY!Click the link below and get 1 MONTH FOR FREE + 10% OFF your Annual Subscription + 50% OFF Your Set-up Fee!Check out CARESTACK now: https://lp.carestack.org/thedentalmarketer‍‍‍Dandy | The Fully Digital, US-based Dental Lab‍For a completely FREE 3Shape Trios 3 scanner & $250 in lab credit click here: meetdandy.com/tdm !‍‍Mango Voice | The best VoIP phones for small business with top software integrations & in-house customer support.Click here for Mango Voice's completely FREE startup package!ORClick here to get 2 FREE MONTHS with Mango Voice‍Thank you for supporting the podcast by checking out our sponsors!‍‍

Sometimes new practice owners want to outsource insurance verification, billing, phones, and more… but is it really necessary? In this episode Sandy Pardue lets us know the exact math and patients you must have in order to officially outsource or become more efficient in your practice. First, every single practice owner needs to know their overhead and understand that your “team” overhead is your largest percentage. Most practices get in trouble when they overpay their people/ team. This could happen due to outsourcing inappropriately.  We discuss the only absolute times you MUST outsource, what would be ridiculous to outsource, and what needs to always stay in-house and how to make it all happen.

If you're not feeling the effects of inflation now, you will be in a couple of months! Save this episode because it will teach you how to “inflation proof” your practice! Sandy Pardue lets us know about 10 specific steps we need to take in order to get lean and mean and control our practice through anything. The first step is: KNOW WHERE YOU ARE. You need to be hungry for your overhead percentage numbers at the beginning of the month, don't just leave them to your accountant/ bookkeeper. Knowing your numbers are statistics in your practice, and statistics are meant for you to know where to make adjustments. Listen in to hear the next steps and how to immediately implement them into your practice.

Does this sound familiar: “We've had a lot of cancellations and I don't want to pay my hygienist during down time” Some of you may lean towards doing this. In fact, the hygienist may HATE this so your hygienist has to look or act busy so you won't deduct their pay. Do NOT do this anymore! Your hygienist AND you (the practice owner) deserve a full schedule always.  In this episode Sandy Pardue tells us exactly how to do this. Remember, hygienists want to see patients and they want a full schedule! It's the practice that doesn't put enough pressure, enough urgency, on the front office to fill that schedule.

This week Clint and Russell interview Sandy Pardue of Classic Practice Resources.  Sandy works as a consultant helping dentists establish systems in their offices.  We discuss everything from hiring processes to questionable business practices to her interesting first experience as a dental consultant in the Northeast.  

If you're not even aware of your treatment closing percentages... then that's the first thing you need to know TODAY! Sandy Pardue breaks down the whole process on how we can get more "YES" from our patients. She gives us real life examples, steps, scripts, who is responsible for this on our team, and even deep quotes! We also discuss what to do if someone says "NO".

Do you feel like your best efforts are being undermined?  Do yu have someone in your team who is always going to you and complaining about others, pushing back on changes, procrastinating or coming up with excuses of why things are not done... but they are super nice about it all in front of you? Sandy Pardue gives us 5 signs that show you have a "Sweet Saboteur" in your practice, someone who is almost toxic to your team, and she lets us know how to either change their behavior or get them out ASAP! We also discuss how to clean up a toxic work environment and how often should we evaluate our team to make sure everyone is content and happy.

Staff meetings should be an orderly, productive, and uplifting meeting. One of the ultimate goals with every meeting is to have unity. Sandy Pardue breaks down exactly how our staff meetings should go in order for them to not only be productive, but to get us closer to our goals (better unity in your team, more collections, more profit).  We discuss how long team meetings should be, the difference between morning huddles and these meetings, how often you should hold them, and what exactly needs to be covered and said.

No one loves being a micromanager. In this episode Sandy Pardue breaks down exactly why someone starts micromanaging, 4 action steps you must take today to stop the micromanaging process, and how to improve you trust in the work your employees are doing. We also talk to the team members who want to let their boss know that they feel micromanaged. Sandy lets the team members know exactly how to bring this up to your boss and communicate to them so that it can stop.

If you are asking yourself if "morning huddles" are worth it, then you're probably doing them all wrong. Sandy Pardue breaks down exactly how a "morning huddle" should run. We discuss how long it should be, who needs to start it, what the doctor needs to do, who should be involved, what exactly needs to be discussed, what to do if someone is late to the huddle, and more! Remember, morning huddles are necessary to keep you in control and on track with your goals.

There is a benefit to being transparent with your team. When you share with your team then they feel more engaged and they also feel more trusted, but how far should you go with transparency of the business? Sandy Pardue fills us in on what we should share with our teams, what should specific team members know and focus on, and what we should ALWAYS keep private. We also discuss how to set good supply numbers, production/ collection numbers, payroll percentages, and what each position/ team member should be tracking.

Have you ever wondered what your team really thinks of you as a leader? If not, you should. Sandy Pardue talks to us exactly how we can become a better leader for our employees. She also lets us know how we can become friends with our team members but still keep that high level of respect that you need. We also discuss what should we do if you are short staffed and you decide to delegate even MORE responsibilities to a team member, how you should delegate this and what you can do for the team member so that they don't burn out.

Not every single re-care appointment will show up exactly when they are supposed to. This sucks because it also leads you to try and market more for new patients. So step back a bit and build a system to improve your reactivation process. In this episode Sandy Pardue gives us a proven system that will drastically improve your reactivation process. Two things you want to do: 1. Look right now at your analytics/ software and see how many existing patients in your practice need a cleaning... today! 2. Listen to the podcast to hear what number 2 is (; This is a proven system that will bring back 9-19% of existing patients who need a cleaning or more!

HR issues are probably the thing Sandy Pardue hears the most about when consulting with practices. Therefore in this episode she breaks down the top 10 HR mistakes she has seen, heard, and witnessed. She also gives us the solution for each mistake. Listen closely, more than likely you have either experienced one of these mistakes, will be making one of these mistakes (not anymore after you hear this episode), or know someone who is making the mistake. 

Sandy Pardue gives us a list of 5 things we need to review ASAP to make sure we are getting the absolute most out of our hygiene department. 1. Learn what procedures are not being performed. 2. Set goals JUST for your hygienist 3. Learn how to pay your hygienist  4. Do a "Hygiene Bonus" 5. Have Impactful Communication Listen in as Sandy explains each one with great detail and instructions on how to implement them.

Join the discussion on Facebook!Full Transcript:Jonathan:Welcome to the Tooth and Coin podcast where we talk about your adventure of being a dental practice owner. In these episodes we're going to be talking about problems that you will likely face as a practice owner, as well as give an idea about actionable solutions that you can take so you can get past this problem in your practice. Some of these concepts are really big ones, some of them are very specific but we hope that these episodes help you along with your journey.Jonathan:Now a very important piece for you to understand is that this is not paid financial advise. This is not paid task or legal advice. We are not your financial advisors, we are not your CPA's, this is two CPA's talking about informational and educational content to help you along with your journey. It's a very important piece for you to understand. Another thing that you need to know is that if you enjoyed today's content, join us on the Facebook group. We've got a Facebook group that is active with dentists that is going to have content talking about what we're talking about today to continue the discussion. Agree with us, don't agree with us, have a story to tell, have something to share, join us on the Facebook group. If you go to Facebook and you search for Tooth and Coin podcast, click on it to join it and be able to join us there.Jonathan:Finally, if you need some more help, we're developing a list of resources that are going to be centering around our topics of discussion to be able to help you a little bit more than what the content is doing. If you'd like access to that whenever it becomes ready, all you have to do is text the word Tooth and Coin, T-O-O-T-H-A-N-D-C-O-I-N to 33444. Again, that's Tooth and Coin, all one word, no spaces to 33444, reply with your email address and we'll email you instructions on how to get into the Facebook group as well as add you to the list to be able to send you those resources when they're available. If they're available, we'll go ahead and send them to you as well.Jonathan:Onto today's episode, hope you enjoy it. Hey there ambitious dentists, today on the Tooth and Coin podcast we're going to be talking about the number one most exciting thing in dentistry which is fraud. Everyone's afraid of it, everyone hates it, everyone hears this happening and thinks that it may happen to them. I've seen numbers from really smart people say that something like one out of every three, to one out of every two dentists will at some point in their career, be embezzled upon. It's a staggeringly high number of dentists may actually be effected by this in their practice. I get a lot of questions and a lot of confusion about, "Why does this happen? How does it happen? Is a CPA firm going to help me with this problem in my life?" And things like that.Jonathan:The answer is not... it's a nuanced answer like so many things are, it's not a one size fits all. Today's discussion we're going to be talking about the problem that is embezzlement in dental practices and I've already kind of highlighted what the problem is, people they can steal your money. To highlight that problem I'm going to be asking Joseph, Joseph has actually lectured on this topic before and then we're going to turn the tables around and Joseph's going to talk to me about in terms of the CPA firm helps with this problem inside of our clients and what our perspective is and how we view our service for our clients when it comes to this really nasty thing inside of not just dental practices, but all small businesses.Jonathan:Again, the main problem is that a lot of people are going to be embezzled upon, dental practices for some reason tend to be targeted a lot for embezzlement. Joseph, why don't you tell us why does fraud occur in small business, especially to dentists.Joseph:That number that you just spit out, that's nuts. I don't know that I've heard that. Somewhere between 30 to 50% of dentists get embezzled upon during their career. I guess if you look at the average dentist, we're talking about 30 plus years, we're talking most of them are going to own their own shop or at least the ones that are listening to our podcast are going to own their own shop at some point. I guess when you put it out that long, I guess that increases the odds. The Small Business Administration talks about the percentage of businesses that fail. Maybe dentists are so high because they're such a great business to be in and they've got such longevity with them, I don't know.Joseph:Man, that's a crazy stat for sure.Jonathan:It really is. I think the reason that is is because there's a lot of different forms of embezzlement, there's literally someone stealing tons and tons of money, and then there's people that are stealing supplies. Embezzlement has... or stealing hours even, just putting too many hours down compared to what they worked for. You may be one of those 50% but it may be that somebody padded hours for three months before you fired them. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're getting hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars stolen.Jonathan:Yeah, it's a big number and something you've got to be aware of. You've got to be on top of.Joseph:That'll wake you up in the morning. If you're listening to our podcast bright early in the morning, that should wake you up and get your attention.Jonathan:Oh yeah.Joseph:Jonathon, as CPA's we are specifically trained to think a certain way and you may think that this is right, you may think that this is wrong, but one of the things that they've just kind of ingrained in our brain is that everyone's going to steal from you given the right set of circumstances. That's kind of the way we're trained to think is, "How do we think about it in terms of those specific pieces?" Kind of the tried and true piece that we always point to in the CPA world is what's referred to as the fraud triangle. Do you remember the fraud triangle? Have you talked about the fraud triangle since you took the CPA exam?Joseph:Did you wake up in the morning, you're like, "Hey April, what's going on babe? Let's talk about the fraud triangle."Jonathan:The triangle that I usually refer to is the cheat, fast and quality, is that triangle. I don't usually talk about this triangle, the fraud triangle. Talk to me about the fraud triangle.Joseph:There's three sides to the fraud triangle, right? That's why we use a triangle, three sides. We've got three different pieces to fraud. The first part of the fraud triangle, and it doesn't really go in any specific order, but one of them is incentive. "Do I have an incentive to commit fraud?" I'm going to use your example. If I go and I pad my hours, in other words if I go out and I say, "I didn't work eight hours today, I worked eight and a half," but I actually only worked like seven in a half. That's padding my hours and I'm going to have a direct incentive from that.Joseph:Kind of the higher levels of financial management there is the incentive that if our PNL numbers look better, I'm going to get a higher bonus. If my overhead percentage stays under a point, then I'm going to get some sort of financial incentive. Incentive's the first piece of the fraud triangle, anything else that you might think of in the dental world that would be part of an incentive for fraud? Do we have any... I would imagine some of them. Go ahead.Jonathan:Yeah, there are tons of incentives for fraud in this world. There's tons of incentives for people to... really the main incentive that people have inside the dental world is usually just money. That's the incentive for people to try and take it. They want more money. Whether it's money that they deserve or not, that's what they are typically wanting.Joseph:Got it. Maybe you have a new patient bonus to where if you have X amount of new patients that are out there, and if you get those new patients numbers, that may be the incentive that somebody goes and then creates a new patient inside of the software, or something silly like that. Incentives the first piece of the fraud triangle.Joseph:The second piece of the fraud triangle is opportunity. Opportunity is probably the one that is easiest to understand so if I am working the front desk and somebody pays in cash and they give me $80 worth of cash. I have the opportunity to stick that cash right inside my pocket. I was just looking at some financials for one of our clients that has multiple employees that have the corporate credit card. If you're walking around with the corporate credit card in your wallet as an employee or team member of a dental practice, then you are presented every single day with the opportunity to whip that card out at wherever you want to and do that. Opportunity's the second piece.Joseph:The third piece that is I think the more psychological piece that's out there, is what's called rational. The rational basically is a way for our mind to justify that what I'm doing is okay. It may go something like this, "Well Mr and Mrs dentist is just doing so well, they're making all this money. I see all of these deposits come through. They pay me a pittance, I'm making minimum wage or not nearly enough." I've just rationalized in my head that it's okay to take money, to pad hours, to swipe the corporate credit card, to take any form of all these different pieces that are out there.Joseph:That's the three pieces of the fraud triangle that we were trained upon way back when inside of CPA land. Opportunity, incentive and then rational. What one kind of sticks out for you Jonathon?Jonathan:It's almost always opportunity to me is what it seems like to me in terms of why this happens. When it happens in this industry, I guess is a better way for me to say it. Usually it seems to be opportunity. Someone perceives a weakness in, this is CPA talk, internal controls which for everyone that's listening, internal controls are effectively like, "Hey, nobody's looking over my shoulder when I'm doing this, and I can just take that money if I want to. If you've ever seen Office Space, it's whenever they do the thing, they have this computer program that rounds it to the next penny and they're like, "No ones looking at this. All we have to do is round this fraction of a penny up and then put it into a different bank account and literally no one will ever figure it out because it's literally we're talking about hundreds of thousands of transactions. We're talking about a hundredth of a penny per transaction. That transaction will never be looked at or flagged so that money will just be in this bank account."Jonathan:It's opportunity is what typically happens in dental practices, is they think that, "Hey, I'm the only one who writes the checks. I'm the one who receives the inventory. I'm the one who pays the bill. I'm the one who signs the check. I'm the one who receives the patients money. I'm the one who enters it into the practice management software. I'm the one who takes it to the bank." There's no one really looking over their shoulder. Opportunity, usually to me I think is the first path towards... into the dental space of it, is they realize, "Hey, there's a little bit of an opportunity there."Jonathan:I'm fully, fully, fully, fully not going to downplay the fact that there's some type of motivation typically that makes them look for those types of things, but in dental practices, those opportunities seem to arise a lot. I think that's just due to the nature of it being in a smaller business. In your time as a CFO, did you ever have any moments there was the opportunity for fraud at your old place that you could... obviously if it's something that you're not allowed to talk about, don't talk about it but is there anything that you can think of that you've ran into in your career when it comes to fraud?Joseph:I think there are certainly things that as a CFO controller, as a business owner, there are certain steps that you take to try to prevent fraud. One of the things that you were just mentioning there was the same person that's opening the mail is making the deposits and entering stuff into the patient management software. One of the things that we talk about is an accounting term is segregation of duties. You don't want to have the same person that's doing all of those things.Joseph:One of the things that we had to always make sure was that every time a patient came in the door, it was a documented patient encounter that went into the patient management software. What that's going to do is that's going to generate the opportunity to create the coding for that specific encounter. What was the procedure that was done? What was the product that was delivered? Once that whole thing starts, then that really is a good catch about a bunch of different things.Joseph:If somebody came in for a pair of compression hose that were $80, that gets entered into the patient management software, that's then going to give them... they're going to have to pay the $80 because it wasn't covered by insurance. When you think about it in terms of that it's like, okay, if this $80 invoice gets generated, if the patient pays cash and the person that's taking the payment, the front desk person or the clinician or whoever it is, takes that $80 and puts it in their pocket rather than in the company deposit, what's going to happen is because it's in the patient management software, an invoice is going to get generated. Then the patient is going to go ahead and get a bill the next month. If you got a bill for something you already paid for Jonathon, what would be your first thought and what would you do next?Jonathan:If I got a bill for something I already paid for I'd say, "Hey, they've not processed your payment, we need to call the vendor and see what's going on."Joseph:Yeah. Not that that happened regularly, but that was just one specific piece that we had in place. I think the other stuff, I think that probably every CFO's big nightmare or controllers big nightmare is these company credit cards that are out there. Credit card companies make it really, really easy for you once you have a business credit card to order additional card holders and additional probably. I was always real hesitant to have somebody get added to the company credit card because it just creates this opportunity and if you take the opportunity and you take the rational, it may be one of those things where somebody's got the corporate credit card and it's time for them to go out to the lake and go fishing this weekend, and they just whip the company credit card out and fill their bass boat up with fuel on the company.Joseph:That's going to look like a charge to Exxon or Shell or Conoco, whoever it is, it's not going to be one of those things. Obviously if you've got somebody that's looking at all that stuff, they say, "Well typically the gas charge is $25, and all the sudden here's an $85 charge on Friday afternoon to Conoco," that may raise a red flag. I think that kind of goes back into the other piece of it is that if you do have a company credit card and you do have people that have those, you need to be reviewing those charges every single month. I don't want you to get carried away and review it daily and think that everybody's stealing from you but you definitely need to give it the old eyeball test.Joseph:Jonathon, I don't know if you're familiar with the formal term of eyeball test, but I was talking to a client about this the other day, I was like, "Man, you need to give it the eyeball test." He's like, "What's that?" I said, "Well, you just kind of take a look at it and see if things look out of whack." What I just mentioned is if typically your gas is $25, $30, $32 and then you have an $85 charge, that doesn't pass the eyeball test. That's something that you need to look into.Joseph:The other thing is that you've got... the IRS requires that you have documentation for every single thing that you're claiming as a business expense. If you've got these credit cards that are out running around, you've got to have some sort of system to collect the receipts and to document that and to say why it was an ordinary necessary business expense. If it comes under scrutiny, that's what the IRS is going to say. I was told by an IRS agent that whenever they presented proof that this was an ordinary necessary business expense, they pulled out the credit card statement and said, "Well, see right here it says Exxon Mobil $24," and they said, "A charge on a credit card statement is not enough documentation to prove that it's an ordinary necessary business expense.Joseph:Those are a couple of things that jump out. Having multiple people having dual controls and segregation of duties, those are big things. Making sure that every patient encounter is entered into your patient management software. One thing I was talking to a client about the other day was one of the things, if I'm sitting back in my CPA brain and I'm trying to invent ways to create fraud, is to review your adjustments report. Let's say, go back to this $80 compression hose, let's say that that patient comes in and they pay $80 and the person that's working the front gets really, really smart and they say, "Oh, we'll just put a patient credit adjust for $80," which means that that patient won't receive a bill and it'll show up as they had actually paid but the cash didn't make it to the company bank account.Joseph:That's something else that's out there. You need to be reviewing your adjustment reports. What would you think on adjustment reports? Is that something that we recommend that they do daily or weekly or monthly? What are your thoughts on those adjustment reports? We made our software so easy to just write balances off, I think somebody with some authority needs to be looking at those. What are your thoughts on that?Jonathan:There's a few. I don't know if it would be called an adjustment in whatever practice management software our clients are using, whether it be [inaudible 00:17:55] or [inaudible 00:17:56] dental, or soften, or whatever it is that they use. They all have the ability to do those types of things. One of the big dangers that a lot of these practice management softwares have 10 ways to do the same thing and really only one of them may be the right way. It will work on the surface but if you were to dig back the reason for doing it in a certain way, usually there's a reason you do it one of those 10 ways for whatever it was you were doing, and a lot of practices use practice management software incorrectly.Jonathan:One of the reasons we typically recommend having an office manager consultant person be able to come in and teach you how to do those the right way so that you are making sure everything goes in their correctly. In terms of the adjustment piece, yeah absolutely. One of the things that I tell people in regards to one of the best ways they can help prevent fraud, is to have a very solid end of day process in their practice. What I tell them is when I was in high school and college, I worked for what doesn't exist anymore, but a video rental store...[crosstalk 00:19:05]Joseph:You're dating yourself there.Jonathan:At the end of every night we had a countdown... yeah. At the end of every night we had to count down the registers which meant that you open the register, you printed out a report from the little software that was done in MS-DOS or some type of shell station. You print out this report, it comes out in that really big wide paper, it said, "This register had this much in cash. This much in checks, and these much in credit card payments go through this register." We had four registers and you had to countdown each register and make sure that every dollar was accounted for that went through that system.Jonathan:Then you had to, if it was cash you had to tie it up or put a rubber band around the cash and you had to put the checks, you had to have a ten key register printed out of that. You had all the credit card receipts, it's done together as well and you had to have it attached to that piece of paper that got printed out from that report and it had to go into the managers box every night.Jonathan:That was the first time I ever encountered something like this where you'd have two managers and they'd enter in an adjustment in a different way. Eventually one of those managers got in trouble because they weren't doing it the way that it needed to be done in order for the register at the end of the night to be accurately counting everything whenever it did the month end. It was one of those things where it worked for the day, but eventually it messed something up in the calculations down the road that that person didn't see until the manager was trying to do the month end closes and things like that.Jonathan:I tell people, one of the best things you can have in your small practice, because let's face it, a lot of people can't do segregation of duties. There's two people working in the front office and one of those might be the dentist in some of our practices. There's not much that they can do so what they do is it all gets housed under one persons hat. End of day process is really important and one of the things we tell the dentist they need to do everyday, or that we've heard from practice management consultants that are office people, have said that, "Have the dentist look at their day report everyday. Their day sheet and look at literally everything that came through the practice just to make sure that it makes sense."Jonathan:One of the things they said is to make sure that there's no adjustments to any patient accounts. There shouldn't be adjustments or deletions from patient accounts because if they're doing that then they've likely done something incorrectly. The way that it was explained to me, and again it depends on how your practice management softwares set up or whatever it is, is that there should be credits to accounts or there should be charges to accounts and then there should be write offs to accounts. There really shouldn't be adjustments to services after they've already been done unless there's a very valid reason. For example, "We accidentally billed this person for porcelain crown when it was a gold crown, so we had to take the porcelain crown off and add the gold crown charge in."Jonathan:There has to be a very specific reason, there should be an indication by each of those things done in that day sheet that you get that is a part of this. This is one of the things I also heard that you do whenever you're in a larger practice as well, if you're an associate for a larger practice you should be looking at your day sheet to make sure that you got credit for everything that you did that day. You didn't get put to the wrong provider, or you didn't... if you did something it actually got put onto the fee schedule so you actually got paid for it, so that the charge went to the patient account.Jonathan:That's something that I was told needs to be done on a daily basis as a part of that day end close process. That's one thing is the day sheet. The other thing is from the end of the day close, you should have what I mentioned for the video store rental place, you should have something from the practice management software saying, "We had this much in cash come in today, we had this much in checks come in today, we had this much in credit cards come in today." That should be tied together and there should be source documents there. There should be things showing you that those numbers are actually what happened.Jonathan:It gets a little bit complex in dental because you have all these insurance payments come in through electronic transactions. We get a letter in saying, "Hey, we're going to deposit this money into your account on the 24th of the month," and then it does get deposited on the 24th but it doesn't hit your bank account until the 25th. It's kind of hard to see how that happens because you enter it, you get that letter in a week in advance so the person in the front might be entering that notice into the system the week of when they get the letter, rather than the day it went into the account or even the day that it registered in the account.Jonathan:There's some complexities that can happen right there. Another really, really good reason to have a really good office manager type consultant, a person that we recommend a lot is Sandy Pardue, she's out of Louisiana. She's really, really great. There's also other programs out there that can help you with this if you're not familiar with how to do this. There are people that can help with this type of process and get this really set up strong for your office. Really important to have that. Really important to have that. That is not something that our office does. We are not practice management consultants.Jonathan:If you tell us what is happening in terms of the flow of the accounting dollars and cents that are coming into your office everyday, we can give you just a general understanding if we think that that's... where your areas of risk might be but that's really more of an informal feedback discussion between us than being a part of the service that we get paid for from our role as a CPA.Joseph:Interestingly enough, I'm sure that you get this all the time on sales calls but CPA's, we generally don't catch fraud. It's not something that's really a part of what it is that we do. I think the number one way that fraud is caught is by accident and not by something else. What are your thoughts Jonathon? As you get a chance to explain to clients what our role as CPA's is and fraud, what's a message that you're telling them as you kind of get that question, "Oh you guys are going to audit my books and catch fraud, right?" What's your message and what's your thoughts on the CPA's role in fraud?Jonathan:It's a really common misconception and I know that there are people out there that probably propagate that misconception in terms of CPA's that will say, "Oh yeah, we're going to catch that." The AICPA, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants which for the dentists listening, that is like the American Dental Association for you guys. AICPA is the ADA for CPA's basically. The AICPA is very, very specific in how we as CPA's are to view ourselves in terms of audit, or in terms of fraud. That is basically to say that we're not here to catch fraud, that's not really our job. There are people that are CPA's that try to catch fraud, or to even be slightly more specific, they help track down how fraud was occurred after it's been discovered. Those are called forensic accountants.Jonathan:In general, fraudulent activity, there are very few services that CPA's offer that are actually designed to catch fraud. The most in depth service that CPA's offer small business, it's called an audit. There's actually a prescribed engagement called an audit under the AICPA guidelines and that audit even in that, it states in the engagement letter, or in the opinion letter that our services, even if we're doing an audit which is the most in depth thing, they're going to go top to bottom on your internal controls, and your processes and things like that. That audit will even say, "This is not meant to catch fraud." It's really just more to view how strong your internal controls are that could potentially lead to fraud.Jonathan:If they're very weak or if they're very strong, and as well as to give you an overall understanding of how your business operations are running from a business standpoint. That's the purpose of an audit. Even in the most in depth engagement, under the AICPA guidelines, it's still not designed to catch fraud. A CPA that's engaged with you to help with your tax compliance, tax planning, tax rejections, accounting services, management reports, things like that, those services are far, far, far, far less in depth than an audit would be. They are definitely not designed to catch fraud as well.Jonathan:The way that I tell people is that, "Has our firm caught fraud before? Yes, we have." We've seen credit card payments go into vendors that didn't exist. Someone had not in the office, gotten credit card information, was paying for stuff. We've seen... you and I were talking about this before, we had a client just this last weekend had a check that was written from their... this office was in California and the check was cashed in Florida with a different check number, different everything, it just happened to have their routing and account number on it. It's a $20,000 check that got cashed all the way across the country, it was just somebody had fraudulently found their information and put it down and made a fake check, and cashed this check for $20,000.Jonathan:That would be an example of something that our services are not designed to catch a fraud. One of the things that we do, is we ask our clients if we see a transaction that we don't know who the vendor is or who the payee is say, "Hey, what is this $20,000 for?" That would be an example of something that we would... I can't say that we would catch that as being fraud because what could have happened is we could ask the client, "Hey, who is Shelly Franklin and why did you write her a $20,000 check?" If for whatever reason the client had a mental lapse and just never replied to the email or said, "That was for equipment," maybe they paid Henry Shrine $20,000 and they just didn't connect the dots of being two different vendor names, then we would never know. That wouldn't change.Jonathan:That's a big example. $20,000 is a big number amount. What if it had been a $50 check? What if it had been an $80 check or something, a much smaller amount? The way our service is designed, if we don't know who the vendor is and there's no memo, there's nothing in the memo saying what it was for, then even on a smaller item like that we would ask the client who the vendor was and what the purpose was, but I know there's a lot of CPA firms out there that would just be like, "We'll just put that to contract labor. We'll put it to patient refunds," or something like that and just be done with it.Jonathan:Ours is specifically designed to ask that question the way that we do our stuff, but it's not designed to catch fraud, it's designed for us to ask questions about things that we aren't aware of. None of our services are designed to catch fraud, but it doesn't hurt to have somebody that is really familiar with the dental industry to know who the vendors are, to know, "Hey, Align Technology is a lab and A-L-I-G-N-E is not that same company." We need to make sure if a check gets written to A-L-I-G-N-E that we're going to ask, "Who is this person? Who is this vendor?" So you have that second set of eyes just kind of looking over those types of things.Jonathan:We do help. I interviewed multiple years back, and I've had dinner with him, really nice guy David Harris, he owns a company called Prosperident, it's the number one company in probably the world in finding embezzlement inside of dental practices. They help catch hundreds of people a year that have embezzled in dental practices, they're really, really good. He's a CPA, he's a CFE, he's all these things. He has way more letters behind his name then I'd ever care to have. I asked him I was like, "Hey, how can..." this was whenever we were starting the company I was like, "How can we help with this process of combating embezzlement in our practices?"Jonathan:He said, "Jonathon, we help out hundreds of practices a year catch embezzlement or to put these people behind bars if we can, or make them pay. Maybe one percent of the people that we find, the CPA ever even caught a sniffle of what they were doing." He said, "It's just because the services are not designed that way." It's a big misconception out there guys, but I want you to be certain to understand that just because you have a dental CPA does not mean you're fraud proof or you are embezzlement proof. It could mean that you have a little bit of help in someone else kind of keeping an eye on things for you, but at the end of the day, like Joseph had illustrated saying, "Hey, they used the company credit card for gas in the boat rather than gas in the car," if we asked the employee, "Usually it's a $30 gas charge, this time it was a $60 gas charge." And they say, "It was because I usually fill up when I'm at a half tank and this time I filled up... gas was expensive this week." Or, "Yeah, I ended up buying some stuff in the store," or something like that.Jonathan:We're not going to be able to tell if they're lying or not. We weren't' there. We're not going to go and put a dipstick into their gas tank and make sure that they're telling the truth about how much gas they got. You wouldn't want us to do that type of thing either because it would take us so much time you'd be paying us so much money to do that type of work that it would be a negative value consequence to you. It'd be a negative return on your dollars for doing that.Jonathan:To kind of recap that, we try to keep the episodes to 30 minutes length, the problem is a lot of dentists will get embezzlement done in some way. It occurs because of the triangle of fraud which was opportunity... tell me what they were. Opportunity...Joseph:Opportunity's one, incentive is one, like I'm incentivized to create fraudulent transactions, and then rational. "Poor little old me, I don't make enough money. I'm trying to feed my babies, I've got whatever reason, I'm trying to feed my cats. I don't have enough money because this penny pinching dentist doesn't pay me enough money." So the rational. Opportunity, incentive, and rational. The fraud triangle.Jonathan:Yeah, exactly. Those are the things you have to be watching out for. Your CPA can be helpful in this but they're not designed to be the person protecting you bar none from embezzlement. The only person who's going to be able to do that at the end of the day is going to be your internal controls in your practice, and yourself as the business owner. You're going to have to keep an open eye on what's happening. I don't want anybody out there to all the sudden start thinking that the girl in the front is this international person of mystery that's a spy that's going to be stealing all of your money. The way that you have to go about this is you need to have a lot of trust in the people that you hire, or else you hopefully wouldn't have hired them in the first place. You've got to have verification. You've got to have some tests that you'll put into place over time. Make sure that you have a super solid office set up to where you have a solid close. Make sure that you have a way that you're processing your payments to your vendors in a smart way.Jonathan:Don't give the person who's writing the checks a stamp to write your checks with. Don't...[crosstalk 00:34:58]Joseph:Signature stamps.Jonathan:Yeah. Exactly.Joseph:No, don't do that.Jonathan:Don't do that. Make sure that the person who's receiving the inventory is tying those inventories to... or having whatever's coming in also be verified so that you're getting what you're supposed to be getting, you're getting what you paid for. Make sure that your day sheets don't have too many adjustments on them. If they do have adjustments make sure they're totally verified. Make sure that you have a solid deposit set up going. There's a lot of things that you've got to have, make sure they're solid and strong and then the most important thing probably I would say to do at the end of all that is to randomly test those systems.Jonathan:Test them once a quarter will probably be fine, just pick five transactions to randomly test once a quarter, and you will probably be fine. Then outside of that look for weird behaviors from your employees. One of the more common ones that people talk about is there's that office manager that just they do everything, without them the system would fall over. Even the dentist doesn't know what she does. She's always the first one there and she's always the last one to leave, she never takes a vacation. If she does, she's really, really anxious about who's doing what in the office. That's kind of the tell tale sign of someone who has opportunity because they're the only person who knows what's going on. Doesn't mean that they're going to do it, but that is kind of the tell tale sign.Jonathan:Also, look at spending patterns, if you're paying your office manager $40, 50, 60,000 a year, and they always have a new vehicle and maybe they don't have a spouse or something like that, keep your eyes open on that. And keep an eye on your numbers, make sure that your ratios make sense. If they don't sometimes that can lead to it. This has been the episode on fraud, opportunities, how the CPA helps you and the misconceptions surrounding that, and a whole lot of information in the 36 minutes.Jonathan:Joseph, is there anything else that you wanted to state in terms of this topic?Joseph:Don't let your deposits have cash back on them. That's another one. That's a pretty simple step that you can take at the bank, that's one of the things I tell brand new practice owners. If you're not going to be the one taking the deposit to the bank, don't allow it to have cash back. "Oh, $10,000 deposits worth of checks and I get $8,000 back in cash." That's one thing I meant to mention earlier that I didn't. No cash back on deposits, set your accounts up that way.Jonathan:That's a good one. Yeah, that's a good one. Just as a quick story time in this one, I had an attorney call me and he was like, "Hey, we have a client that..." their controller was writing hot checks or something like that, the person that was inside of the business and they were doing something similar to that. They were like, "The CPA didn't catch it. The business owner took them 12 months to figure it out and the person who was doing it was sending the money overseas." The person ended up leaving the country before they realized what had happened.Jonathan:That's a really good example of after doing all the recording and stuff, there's also that step of getting it to the bank. That's definitely a real thing. Anyway, all right guys, we will see you next time on the Tooth and Coin podcast. This has been one about fraud, if you have any stories about fraud or any types of interesting situations that have happened with that, make sure to share it inside of the Facebook group and to share it with the community. We'd love to be able to hear more about it. We will see you guys next time.Joseph:Bye guys.Jonathan:That's it for today guys, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Tooth and Coin podcast. If you are going to be a practice owner or a new practice owner and you're interested in CPA services, head on over to toothandcoin.com where you can check out more about our CPA services. We help out around 250 offices around the country and we'd love to be able to have the discussion about how we can help your new practice. We do specialize in new practice owners, so people who are about to be an owner of a practice they're acquiring, about to be an owner of a practice they are starting up, or has become an owner in the past five years. That is our specialty.Jonathan:I would love to be able to talk to you about how we could help you in your services with your tax and accounting services. And if you enjoyed today's episode, again go to the Facebook group. Talk to us about what we've talked about, join in on the discussion, and let's create an environment where we can talk about some of these things so we can all help each other get through these things together so that this adventure of business ownership is more fun, more productive, and better in the long term.Jonathan:Lastly, if you want access to those resources that we are currently building, just text the word toothandcoin to 33444. That's toothandcoin, no spaces. T-O-O-T-H-A-N-D-C-O-I-N to 33444, reply with your email address, we'll send you instructions to the Facebook group, we'll send you the resources when they're available, and we will see you next week.