Kiera reflects on some of her most memorable episodes and experiences across 1,000 episodes (!!!) of the Dental A-Team podcast!

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Kiera Dent (00:00)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and today feels like a ridiculously special, amazing, incredible day. We are at 1,000 Dental A Team podcasts. Like, can you honestly believe this? I can't believe it. I can't believe that we have hit record on this podcast a thousand times. And honestly, I wanna say thank you to you as listeners, to all of you who have made this podcast a reality. If you're new to the show, welcome. I'm Kiera Dent. I love dentistry. I love making people happy. I love.

 

truly enjoying life. And this podcast came to me while Jason, my husband and I were hiking Yosemite. And I said, Hey, I've noticed that there's this area where they're unserved, where doctors and teams are not communicating on the same way. And like, there's really got to be a better way to help practices scale, to grow, to evolve. And being a team member myself and a business owner, I thought let's combine both of those perspectives. So truly it's an honor. ⁓

 

I honestly cannot believe that we are here. So if you've been here since episode one, please send me an email. [email protected]. I will send you a personalized thank you to you. I am just so honored. If you've been here for at least like 900 of them, let me know. But truly it's such an honor to be able to have this podcast where we're able to give back, to serve, to share, to laugh, to grow. This podcast has been such a healing space for me. And so today I thought it'd be really fun.

 

for us to actually go through some of our most powerful success networks that's helped hundreds of doctors. It helps you. And I've called it the yes model. ⁓ that's focusing, wow, that's focusing in on you being able to say you, earnings and systems and team development. So focusing on you as a person, helping make sure that you're profitable as a practice, and then having systems and team development in place ⁓ to make sure that you can really, truly say yes to everything in life that you want. Because I truly, truly, truly believe.

 

that running a practice, having a successful team, having a team of people that are accountable does not have to be hard. And so really that's been the whole purpose of this is to make it tactical, practical. And I thought like, Hey, this is going to be something really fun. We're actually going to pull from our framework. But what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to pull from past episodes, some of our hottest episodes, some of those fun episodes to kind of help you see how we can focus on you as a person, how we can focus on your earnings and profitability of the practice and helping with your systems and team development.

 

Now, something that is fun is that there actually were several episodes that were our top downloaded episodes over the years. And so this is just something fun if you enjoyed it, amazing, but truly we looked back and these ones stood out. And so our episodes were episode 469, 10 Practices in 2 Years with Lewis Chen. So such a fun one to inspire, to ignite, to help all of us like really just get, I remember that practice and I was like, my gosh, I thought I like.

 

rampaged up and in like two years we had three, but to do 10 practices in two years. Our other top downloaded episode is episode 501, What Office Managers Need to Know and really helping those office managers highlight, elevate. Being an office manager in dentistry, I feel is such a tricky zone because there's really no rule book for it. And that's what we tried to create at Dental A Team is what is an office manager supposed to do and giving support to office managers and doctors so you can truly have these incredible leaders in your practice.

 

And then our next most downloaded episode was episode 607, A Day to Remember. And that was actually released on Thanksgiving. So shout out to you guys for having these as the most popular downloaded episodes. But like I said, I want to give you guys that framework for being able to say yes to everything with some podcast tools. Don't worry. You want to go back and listen to them if you don't want to. But trying to chunk that so you can really look at your life and your practice.

 

Kiera Dent (03:41)

So breaking into the you section, this is about you as a person. This is about you being that visionary, that owner, that fulfilled human, because honestly, if you're not fulfilled and you're not happy with what you're doing, honestly, your practice can't be there. And when we build the yes model, we purposely put it in a specific order of you first, and we focus on you as a person. Then we focus on earnings and profitability. And then we focus on systems and team, because what I found is if we put them in this order,

 

You as a person first, kind like take the oxygen mask off of you, put it on you. Like you've to take care of yourself first before you can help other people. If we put that oxygen mask on yourself, then what we do from there is we can give and serve to other people. Then we focus on profit. Cause honestly, so much of stress comes from cashflow. Like honestly, the bulk of offices who sign up with us and not all, but a lot of them are struggling with cashflow. They're struggling with profitability. They're struggling to learn to read their numbers. And then we do systems and team development.

 

And a lot of times we think like, let's put the systems in place, cause that's gonna fix everything else. But what that does is it doesn't make sure that you are fulfilled and we know where you're headed as a person. So focusing on you as a doctor, scaling honestly starts with you, but that doesn't mean we're doing more. It means that you are the leader that your practice needs. You know where you're headed. You know what the direction of the practice is. And that's where this can all come together. So some of the episodes that we pulled out for you guys from all these thousands of episodes, like literally we have a thousand. ⁓

 

would be number 17. Like let's go way back in the archives. If you have not gone, you guys can always head on over to TheDentalATeam.com, click on podcasts. You can search any topic and you can go find all thousand episodes. But going back clear to episode 17, I love this one, is Goals are lost without Accountability. So when we're having those, like if you don't have accountability in your practice, if you don't have things to help keep your team accountable,

 

Honestly, doctors, you can have all the goals that you want, but you've got to have the accountability with it. And so I really love to help doctors and teams come together within Dental A Team and our consulting ⁓ to make sure that your goals are hit because we have accountability and that means your personal goals. So where you want to be and your professional goals. And we have a client that really like was struggling with some of their goals, but they knew where they wanted to go. They wanted to get a beach house. They wanted to be able to take care of their children in college.

 

⁓ And what was really lovely about that is because we knew where they were going to go, we were able to help hold them accountable to it. And then we were able to the E portion that we'll get to, we were able to help create the profitability within the practice using production and metrics to be able to help them get there. But really looking at goals are lost if you don't have accountability. Like truly, if no one's holding people accountable, you doctor have to do it all. But even a lot of times things just get lost. And so making sure

 

that we really are working through these different pieces to make sure that your goals are not just a wish and a hope, but they're actually being measured and we're tracking them. We're making sure you're living the dream life that you want to be living. that would be an episode. Another episode in here would be 551 Leaders, You Need to Decide and helping you as a leader know that your team can't read your mind. You've got to make decisions. More is lost through indecision than a wrong decision. I have a quote over here by Theodore Roosevelt that

 

any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The next best thing is the wrong thing. And the worst thing you can do is nothing. And so making sure that on there, you guys are making a decision. Doctors like you have to decide. You have to be clear. You have to know where you're going. And I think deciding the life you want to live. ⁓ I have a quote that we say often, your practice should serve you, not you serving your practice.

 

making sure it's really giving you that dream life. Otherwise, go be an associate, like honestly, but there shouldn't be the stress and the heartache. And I know that there's stress with running a business. That's not something that we can ever take away, but really making sure we're fulfilling your bucket, your cup, making sure you're taken care of is a big portion. ⁓ Episode 940 was another popular one, What Leaders Should Not Do.

 

I thought this is a really good one to help doctors like realizing your role has to change. You have to become this incredible person. We have to know where you're going. We have to know this vision. But honestly, like leaders, you should not be doing everything. You should not be fixing everything. Otherwise you're enabling. And I remember another great ⁓ thought is when we empower our teams without accountability, we actually create ⁓ entitlement. And so what are we doing and are we fixing everything and helping?

 

Like we think we're helping, but we're not actually having our team rise to the table. so really looking at like, these are the things not to do. These are things that won't help you become the leader and the person that your practice needs and really relies on you to be. So another great episode of what things should you not be doing. think that that sometimes helps again, because as the visionary, as the leader of the practice, as you, as a person, ⁓ making sure that you're not running yourself ragged, trying to make everybody else and pleasing everybody else. But that way you're truly working as a team.

 

You need to show up as a CEO. You need to show up as the dentist. But you also need to have good working hours and good life ⁓ balance and life happiness and making sure that you're fulfilled and that your cup is being full. Otherwise, you're going to burn out and really making sure we take care of you as a person. Last episode to highlight in the you section is 948, The CEO Visionary and The OM Implementer and pulling from EOS and traction where

 

We literally have like CEOs, you're the visionary and how to have your office manager really be a yin to your yang to help support, to help make the visions come to life, to help bring all these pieces to the table ⁓ really, really truly can help. How do these two roles operate and who should be doing what and getting and gaining that clarity because again, when we focus on you and we know where you want to go and we know the pieces.

 

Then you're able to settle into your role as CEO of the practice too. And you're able to settle into all these different pieces, but really looking at you as a person, like not doing more, you as a leader, you as the CEO, you as a spouse or a partner or a parent or a sibling or a child, whatever it is, but you showing up as the best version of you. so yes, these are.

 

four episodes a lot on leadership for you. But really in that section within the Yes Model, I want you to really look at your life and I want you to see, are you truly living your best life? Are you truly fulfilled? Are you delegating to your team? Are you leading your team? Are you ⁓ working hard? ⁓ Or are you doing things smarter and actually working?

 

happier and more enjoyable. When I ask you about your personal relationships and I ask you about your personal life, do you have an identity outside of work or is it just work? ⁓ Do you find joy in the little things or have you lost that joy and sparkle because you're so consumed with the business? Those would be some things and if we're not taking care of you, it might be time to give a little TLC. I remember there was a great ⁓ podcast guest.

 

And he said a comment, he said, we should take care of our billion dollar asset, AKA our body. And I've thought about that a lot of do we take care of us, our body, our mind, our psyche, our happiness, to make sure that we can show up as those leaders that our practice and our patients and our community needs. ⁓ And so this section, I really hope that you highlight, yes, being that leader who needs to evolve and rise, ⁓ but really making sure that you're the human that you wanna be.

 

we've got the North Star dotting to where you ultimately want to go and really just spending and highlighting that. Okay, so the question to that is what do you need to stop doing in your life right now? Practice or professional or personal or both. So that way your team can start owning more and also so you can start having more fun in life. What do you need to stop doing? Like literally I'm sitting there with you pretend I got my pen and paper and you're like, okay, Kiera.

 

This is what I need to do to feel more fulfilled, more happy, more like me. What do you need to stop doing? Notice I didn't say start because you want to go like, no, I need to start journaling. No, what do you need to stop? Cause I'm trying to help you see that a lot of times less is more and you actually can create more by doing less. All right, next up is earnings. Making sure that you have profit with purpose. Collections don't equal profits. And so...

 

What I've noticed is like in larger practices, oftentimes they do protect their margins and they measure what matters. And so really making sure that when we're looking at the numbers, so we're looking at our earnings, this is moving into the second portion of the yes model. ⁓ Are you paying attention? Are you using your numbers to guide every single decision in your practice? And what I've seen is when practices come to us in chaos and move into clarity and more into control and more into ease, they know their numbers forward and backward.

 

Like they truly know, they use their numbers to make decisions on who to hire. They know their top line numbers. And what I love about this, like with our clients, we work hard on getting them an overhead scorecard. ⁓ So they know what their overhead is. We look at their monthly costs slash their BAM, their bare ACE minimum. We're looking at projections in the practice of what do we need? How do we hire? We're looking at other pieces for that I really just love are looking at their overhead as well to make sure. we've got our overhead, we've got our monthly costs.

 

We've got our profit margins to make sure we're looking at debt services to make sure that with the debt services, we're still profitable and we have cashflow in the practice and that these practices are thriving. And then we use KPI scorecards to make sure that the metrics within the practice are leading to the profit for a profitable business to make sure that doctors have a cashflow. And also in there, we include to pay doctors, like doctors you've got to be paid, otherwise it's really hard. And so again, just because we're producing, producing and collecting drive me wild.

 

I don't care what you're producing on a gross level, I care what you're producing on a net level that we can actually collect. Gross is gonna feed the ego, net's gonna feed the family. So make sure we have those numbers dialed in. So when we're looking at this, I want you to make sure that what I'm producing is actually collectible and also that we're producing enough and collecting, but that we also have our expenses in line. So we try within our clients to have them at a 50 % overhead, 30 % doctor pay, 20 % profit.

 

Now, obviously those things can be impacted by other things, rising costs, different pieces, but really a quick benchmark for you. And a couple different ⁓ awesome podcasts to kind of tie into this to just go back through the archives would be episode 618, How to Make Your Practice Profitable. So a lot of times we think it's production. We think that we've got to like produce more and create more, but really sometimes you don't have to produce. can't produce our problems. So looking at our P &L, looking at our costs, getting our whole team on board, having KPIs, having accountability within our team.

 

really can drive more profit. ⁓ I remember in Traction, was like at the very end, I'm probably gonna slaughter this section of the book, but I remember them saying that a lot of times the profit margins don't get bigger, the bigger your business goes. So like the problem, like your problems just get bigger with the more you produce. So an example, like they said, like a $1 million business with a profit margin oftentimes has the same profit margin as a $10 million business, but the headaches are more. Now, of course, ⁓

 

10 % profit margin on a $1 business compared to a 10 % profit margin on a $10 million business, there's obviously going to be more dollars. But it's the question of could I have more profit in a smaller practice? I don't know, that's questions for you to answer versus maybe always growing and chasing the next thing. So really looking to see how can we make it more profitable? How can we squeeze more juice out of it? And this is actually really fun because when we interview consultants to come into our company, we actually look to see can they find...

 

how to make a practice more profitable with a basic scenario. Because at the end of the day, if we can make you more profitable doctors and you can use your business more efficiently and with less stress and like better utilization of team members, you actually are way less stressed because you have cashflow and monies aren't as big of a deal. And what I found is the bulk of stress comes from cashflow issues. So really doing that, another great episode from this would be episode 871, Increase Profitability with Your AR.

 

So looking at cashflow leaks that kill growth. So AR is a huge zone and a lot of practices are like, we don't have any money. And I'm like, you have 160,000 sitting in AR, you've already done the work, we just need to collect the money. So making sure that we are actually helping you and your team get that money that should be paid to you. I had an office on a coaching call and they're like, well, Kara, our front office feels bad for calling patients to collect bills. And I was like, they feel bad.

 

No, they're doing these patients a service. Like we did a great job. Now these patients should be so happy to pay for us. And the reality is we should never be chasing money. We should just be collecting at a time of service. So really helping that profitability with AR because collections you can produce all day long, but if we're not collecting your profit margin is going to really, really struggle. So a lot of times it's not even a production issue. It's just a collection issue. That's a very simple system, which will come next in the S model. But when we see the numbers and we see where the leaks are,

 

then we know which systems we need to put into place. So this is how like you as a person know where you're going. Then we look at your profit, the numbers will tell us where we actually have true broken problems within our practice. And then we build the systems to fix those problems. And then it just chips up the line and you're able to say yes to more in your life. Another great episode was 884 Use Hygiene to Increase Profitability. So making sure that your hygiene department is about 20 to 35%.

 

Wow, excuse me, 25 to 30 % of your revenue ⁓ in your practice, depending upon what it is, that's usually for a GP practice. Hygiene's obviously, ⁓ in a pediatric practice, it will be different. Same thing within surgery practices and also some big GP practices that are doing a lot of surgery, hygiene might not be able to keep up with it. Or if I've got a doctor that's maybe slowing down, hygiene's actually out producing the doctor. Well, that's a concern that shows me that that doctor's not diagnosing and there's something going on.

 

But really utilizing your hygiene department, making sure our hygiene department's very thorough. This again, if it's not, and we don't have enough ⁓ perio within our practice, if our hygiene department's not ⁓ calibrated, we're not aligned, that then is a system that we'd wanna put into place to make sure we're able to help that. So really just another great episode. then 890 was, episode 890 was Hacks for Increasing Profitability. So ⁓ just some different pieces of like, what do we do? How can we increase that profitability?

 

certain things that we look for are one, like what are we producing and collecting? So let's look there first. Two, we wanna look at our BAM, our barriers, minimum and our costs and making sure that it's realistic for there. ⁓ And then also looking to see, could we renegotiate some of our pieces? Could we look at our lease? Could we look at our rent? Could we look at ⁓ our marketing spend? Could we look at our payroll? And again, I'm not here to cut team members. Don't worry team members.

 

I just want to make sure that each team member is being maximized and utilized based on the profitability because we know that most businesses should be able to run on a 30 % allocation to payroll. And so looking to see, we utilizing and maximizing our resources like we should? So really just looking for some of those hacks for profitability. But I love that so many people are obsessed with production and I'm obsessed with profit because profits, what's going to feed you profits, what's going to help you profit is going to be the piece.

 

that's going to actually make you thrive rather than just survive. Production, if we're not collecting and we're not profitable, it does not matter. And I go to a lot of business conferences and I love, they're like, yeah, my business did 10 million last year. My business is 100 million. And I'm always like, I don't care. What's your profit margin? And a lot of them come back. I remember there was this guy and we were chatting and he has a $30 million business and yet his profit margin was 5%. And he's like, Carrie, you're honestly probably taking home more than I am.

 

on a smaller business. And so again, I don't care about your production and top line number. It does play a role, but what I care more about is are you profitable and are you obsessed with being as profitable as possible? Are you reviewing your PNL every single quarter? Are you looking at small cashflow leaks? Are we making sure that we're collecting the money of what we produce? Are we making sure that our write-offs and our insurance is correct? Are we making sure our hygiene department is... ⁓

 

appropriate and are we using like KPIs to track this and to measure this to make sure that we're actually doing it. So that's kind of within the earning section for little highlighted episodes for you. And so then some thoughts to wrap that up would be if you're producing more but taking home less, what number are you not watching in your practice? So really look at that and see, gosh, like I'm producing this, but I'm not taking home as much. What number or numbers are you not watching that maybe you should start watching Food for Thought and

 

put it into play, you'll be much happier when you're profitable. And then last but not least, this is one that everybody obsessed with, systems. We want systems care. Please, please give me systems. I just want my practice to run on autopilot. And like the answer is like, yes, we should put systems in. And I think about like McDonald's and Chick-fil-A and they're able to give a very incredible experience with systems. And Walt Disney said like, he's able to create predictable magic with the systems behind the scenes. And so for you and your practice, how can you create predictable experiences?

 

predictable revenue, predictable production through the systems. So a couple of great episodes that we had with systems, systemization I think is like sexy and not sexy, like cool, that's great. But like really, if you focus on you first, then you focus on the numbers, you then know which systems to put into place. So you don't have to actually do all the systems. People are like, here, I just need a whole systems like repertoire. And I'm like, no, you don't. You need the systems that are actually gonna get you the results. I believe that we should focus on results, not on busy work.

 

So a couple episodes that kind of just highlight some systems for you are episode 381 Systemization: Where to Start? It's a really good episode for you of like how to like you don't just build 100 SOPs just like we were talking about. You literally start with the systems that are going to impact your revenue and profitability first. And those are the ones we're going to build right away. So a good one to help you prioritize that because a lot of times it can feel very daunting. Like I'm trying to eat an elephant. So where do I start? ⁓ Episode 872 Are Your Systems Outdated? And so with that one, just because it worked in the past,

 

You gotta also update the systems. Do we have a new software? Do we have a new process? A lot of times these systems get like written and we're so excited we made our ops manual, but they get put on a shelf and cool, we never even touched them again. So making sure that you keep your systems up to date, that they're current, that everybody's using them and if you actually are using them, they don't get outdated. So having a set cadence and process for that. Episode 881, Priority Scheduling: Ideal Week and Ideal Schedules

 

So figuring out like, does our ideal week look like? What are our ideal schedules look like? And so with that, we can figure out how to schedule and do block scheduling to actually build, like that's a great system to put into place to help us get our profitability, to help us get our production, to then help us get the life that we want. So do you see how like the yes model at like, we start at the top with you, go to earnings, go to systems, and then we work on systems to impact the profit and production to impact you and your life. So really I'm obsessed with block scheduling. I obsessed with?

 

I deal weeks, I'm obsessed with being a master of time rather than time mastering you and really helping offices realize what needs to happen and prioritize. think prioritization is a really tricky thing for a lot of people and having a consultant or an outside view help you out, I think is something really magical. And then last but not least, episode 959, Build a Practice That Can Run Without You. This is what people ask for all the time. And so I love on this. You'll never have true freedom.

 

if the business only runs when you're there. And so looking at that of, like I said, Disney, Walt's not there and it's still able to run. Chick-fil-A, I don't even know who the owner is, you guys know, but like it's able to run without the owner being there. And so the owner I feel creates the vision and the magic. That's like what your secret sauce is. But the systems are so people can run and operate without you there. And for office managers, same thing with you. I hate the like, if you got hit by a bus, I'm like, I don't ever want to be hit by a bus.

 

So instead I'm like, if you were at home with a broken leg and then had two office managers literally be out with broken legs. So, ⁓ but I think it's a great example. So watch out, don't break your legs. But I said, if you were out, could the practice run and could you know that the practice isn't running, AKA with your KPI scorecard and being able to look at your numbers, would you know what system needs to be implemented and if systems were being followed or not when you're at home? And so oftentimes that helps you figure out, again, we look at our numbers to see which systems do we need to put into place.

 

But then beyond that, we're also going to look and say, all right, so these are the numbers that are telling us we have a broken system. But then when you're not there, does the practice still run without you? And does it still operate? And if you were to come in as a fly on a wall on a vacation, so pretend you're out on vacation, I surely have done this to my team. I'm out on vacation. I pop in a day earlier than they think I'm supposed to be back. Is the practice running the way that it should? That's how you know you have great systems and great leadership.

 

I don't believe that just good systems will create a great practice. You also need great leadership to ensure that they're staying accountable, that they're following systems, but also making sure that less is more. ⁓ The KISS model, keep it simple, silly. I prefer silly over stupid. But really look to see where are maybe the systems that we need to do. And I love in Dental A Team, we do our 12 systems. And that's something I really love to just kind of give an outline of which ones per month.

 

would help out. So just a quick overview of Dental A Team's systems for success. We say that January is office management, mastery and leadership. And if you guys want to go back in the archives, Tip and I actually did like, I think it was from November through December a few years ago, we went through every single one of these systems. We broke it down. We gave tactical tips for you on those. So January is office management, mastery and leadership. February is doctor optimization, making sure we're utilizing and maximizing everything within the office. March is billing with ease.

 

April is five-star patient experience, May is smooth scaling scheduling, June is maximized case acceptance, July is dynamite dental assistance, August is elevated hygiene, September is competent marketing, October is complete operations manual, November is practice profitability, and December is A-Team hiring and onboarding. And so utilizing these systems for you to look to see, and again, there's, that's kind of like a category overview, but looking to see where maybe some systems broken within that category.

 

that ultimately could impact our profit and production that ultimately impact us as individuals. And doctors, I know I highlighted you a lot about you as a person, but also your team members as human beings too. How can we make it easier? How can we make it more fun? How can we make it to where we have more fun at work, more enjoyable rather than more stress? I think is something super, super important. And so when you look at this, I think to wrap up our system section, what systems or system category in your practice

 

still depends on you and is it keeping you stuck in your practice or preventing the growth? Are you the bottleneck in an area? And to maybe just ask yourself, what is that and what's holding me back? So really, truly just some fun, like, my gosh, you guys, after a thousand episodes, ⁓ I think I can confidently come on here and say that the formula for growth hasn't changed. I think we've gotten smarter. We figured out what's the priority. How do we prioritize it for you?

 

the $5 million practices, the $2 million, the $1 million, the 500,000, the startup practice, they say yes to leadership clarity, profit strategy, and systems that scale. So that's you, right? Leadership clarity, you as a person being happy, earnings, profit strategy, and as systems for success that scale. Now again, systems that scale, so you're able to grow and you have options. This is truly what I think is so valuable, and I thought.

 

on a thousandth episode, we've got to have something very powerful, very impactful, giving you just kind of a recap of all the time together. Talk about how magical it is to be able to be here together, to be able to share. And what I will say is, ⁓ I'm obsessed with helping offices be able to say yes to more of their life, to be able to say yes to more of what they want, and to be able to get back their time, their team, their life. And that's something that I'm just obsessed with. So if you're looking for help with that, if you...

 

I want more yes in your life and less stress and more happiness. Truly I do believe and I've seen it work with hundreds of offices and something just so powerful to be able to share, to give to you. And I just wanna say thank you. Thank you for making the Dental A Team podcast real. Thank you for being listeners. Thank you for sharing this podcast with so many of your friends. Thank you for commenting. Thank you for tagging us while you're driving to work. Thank you for being dedicated listeners. Thank you for being clients that work with us.

 

Thank you for truly wanting to change and impact the world of dentistry in the greatest way possible. It is truly an honor. I just feel so honored and I'm so freaking excited for the next thousand. So let's do it, let's rock. And at the end of the day, all of you, I want you truly remembering that dentistry is the greatest profession we could ever be a part of. I want you saying yes to more. If we can help you in any way, reach out [email protected]. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team podcast.

 

Kiera is joined by Mark Rasmussen, CEO of Moolah, to talk about the landscape of credit card fees and how to reduce them, membership discount plans, and other bonus features offered by the dental payment tech company.

(Pssst, Mark was last on episode 866, It’s Time to Modernize Payment Processing!)

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Transcript

Kiera Dent (00:00)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera. And today I am super jazzed because I have a guest here who's going to help us with cashflow leaks, modernizing your practice, figuring out those membership plans, all the things that you need and want. We're going to talk about some case studies. This is one of my absolute favorite guests, Mark Rasmussen, CEO, owner, founder, Moolah. How are you today, Mark? Welcome to the show.

 

Mark Rasmussen (00:22)

Hey, Kara, I'm doing fantastic. I'm doing awesome. So, so, so it's connected with you and your listeners and excited to get into all this juicy good stuff about revenue and payments and modernizing things. Let's do it. I love it.

 

Kiera Dent (00:31)

Yeah.

 

Let's

 

do it. So I have a slight crush on Moolah. Like truly you guys like just make credit card processing easy. And so what I want to start off, if you guys don't listen, Mark and I have done other podcasts in the past together. ⁓ But I don't know, Mark, what you guys say on your email subject lines, like on your little, what is it your signature, but I feel like it should be like your new favorite credit card processing company. Like that's what I feel like Moolah's tagline should be because I wanted to do a couple case studies with you since we last chatted.

 

Mark Rasmussen (00:40)

Hahaha

 

Kiera Dent (01:05)

⁓ Mark knows, like, I do have a crush on Moolah. I try to get them to come and be our processor too.

 

Mark Rasmussen (01:10)

I need to like soundbite clip that,

 

like I have a crush on Moolah just like everywhere in social. I love that.

 

Kiera Dent (01:15)

I

 

do. do because I like companies that make things easy, but also are like the cheapest on the market and credit card fees are one of my biggest beefs. Like really truly I get annoyed when I look to see how much credit card fees are charging. And when you guys, ⁓ deadly team listeners, just so you know, I'm going to throw it out there. Like anybody who goes through our link literally saves 10 basis points. ⁓

 

on it, which is huge to get anywhere in the credit card industry. So you're getting below that 2.99. So you're getting 2.89 on cards not present and 2.39. And I hope that Mark, I'm allowed to say that because I'm just going to be bold and brazen. And if not, we'll cut that out. So don't stress about that.

 

Mark Rasmussen (01:52)

No, no, no, for sure. And

 

not only that, it's like, that's not just a like teaser rate, like they look, your practices will get that preferred rate forever, right, which is awesome. And, and it's like you and I were talking a little bit earlier, too, of like, a bit of shock and awe of like, I and myself as well, I've been seeing like some statements from potential practices. And I'm like, ⁓ my God, I'm like, I'm seeing like,

 

Kiera Dent (02:03)

which is so big and you don't add extra heat.

 

Mark Rasmussen (02:19)

six, seven, eight percent, like net effective rates. I know you were saying you have been seeing even higher. It's crazy. Yeah, that's crazy. It's almost criminal.

 

Kiera Dent (02:25)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, so it

 

does feel criminal because like here's the thing like you might get a cheaper rate somewhere else but when you look and dig into the details and this is where it feels annoying and obnoxious to me and doesn't happen right away it happens like when you've stopped looking at it you're like I've checked my credit card company for years they don't do anything and then all of a sudden it starts creeping up and being eerie and that's where I just get annoyed and that's why like I have a crush on Moolah because you guys don't do it and you guys stay consistent for it so

 

I felt Mark and I, you didn't listen to our last podcast, we'll definitely link it in the show notes for you. But Mark, I felt we should kick today off with some case studies because I have some clients that I've recommended over to Moolah. And I think my favorite one is we were looking and I had a practice and our overhead was high. So like this practice, they don't love to like look at numbers. They have an amazing CPA. Like I will say we do look at numbers, but they're kind of like, yeah, carry it. We'll just like out produce our problems a little bit. And that's fine. Like anybody can have that. But I said, Hey,

 

Mark Rasmussen (03:17)

Alright.

 

Kiera Dent (03:21)

Your credit card fees are really high. think that they were honestly like 10%. And I'm like, is that really true? Like that just seems outlandish. And they said, well, Kiera, we're in a contract. Mark, do you want to throw up with contracts? Tell me about credit card contracts.

 

Mark Rasmussen (03:33)

Oh, I hate contracts. I hate contracts

 

like really in anything in my life. I don't know. So yeah, but that's, it's just crazy. The industry for the longest time has like felt the need to like lock these business owners and not just Dennis, but business owners in like these typically it's like three year contracts. And then, you know, they'll have like termination fees. And so they take advantage of that. And like you were saying, I talked to so many practices are like, Oh, I'm paying X and you know, they were paying X the first month that they signed up.

 

And then they didn't look at it, like you said, and then six months later, eight months later, the processor started like nudging it up, nudging it up, nudging it up. And to the point where when you look at what their rates are, you know, two years from when they signed up, it's like almost 180 degrees difference. So yeah, please you guys out there, please make sure you stay on your credit card processing. Look at those month end statements. Look at, you know, what is being nudged up because

 

Kiera Dent (04:19)

Yeah.

 

Mark Rasmussen (04:28)

You know, they'll just slip it in a little statement message. They're not forthcoming about it. I promise you they're not like, shooting you multiple emails or calling you and be like, hey, we're going to increase your rate. No, no, no, no, no. They're going to slip it under the table and hope that you never pay attention to it, which is really what happens because you guys are all busy. You guys are all doing amazing care on patients and you're not paying attention to that. That's the reality.

 

Kiera Dent (04:49)

And it's creepy to me because it's also done on things that don't make sense. Like I feel like reading a credit card statement with what they're charging is like reading very highly processed foods. And I'm like, I have no clue what 90 % of these words are. And I feel like it's the same thing when you come to a credit card statement. And so back to this practice, what we did, there's two case studies I wanted to bring to the table today that are my own personal clients that I've referred over to Moolah that I signed up with Moolah. So this practice, again, overhead, let's out produce our problems.

 

Mark Rasmussen (05:00)

That's a good comparison, I like that.

 

Kiera Dent (05:18)

And it was wild because the first month they switched to Moolah, their CPA sent a letter to all of us and said like, hey, what'd you do? Did you switch credit card companies? Your fees are so much lower. Like that fast first month drop down. So we went from about a 10 % fee on what they're producing and collecting to then dropping it down to this 2.89 to 2.39, depending upon if card was present or not, which is super awesome also because then you can get cards.

 

Mark Rasmussen (05:28)

guys.

 

Kiera Dent (05:44)

on auto renew, like on just processing internally and you don't have to, like you can have cards present or not present within the practice, which is so awesome. ⁓ But I was shocked like that fast. And then another practice that we brought to Moolah, they were locked in with another credit card company. And so I didn't know you couldn't do this, Mark. So this was like rookie mistake on me. Like I was, I'm scrappy and I thought, well, okay, fine. You guys are in a contract. So.

 

just stop processing through that processor, switch everything over to Moolah. Well, you know this Mark and I was rookie so you know what happens. Do you know what happens with those companies?

 

Mark Rasmussen (06:21)

No,

 

listen, I said that a lot too because technically, really, if the practice is in a contract, and I've said that before, you probably have these miscellaneous junk fees, these monthly minimums that are gonna hit maybe 20, $30 a month. But even if you're paying that minimum and you saved thousands over here, who cares? Pay that minimum, just write that contract out. What happened here in this scenario? Okay.

 

Kiera Dent (06:44)

That was exactly what I said too. So

 

that's what, cause I was like, why not? I thought the exact same thing. I'm like, okay, if we're looking at, you're able to save 3%, 4 % like higher amounts and we're processing, even if you're processing a hundred thousand or 200,000, like that extra two, 3 % do the math. Like that's surely going to offset the cost. Well, what happened is we actually did that. So a client signed up with you guys. They did that. And we got a letter from the other processor saying,

 

Mark Rasmussen (06:54)

Yeah.

 

Kiera Dent (07:11)

that, we have a minimum and if we don't hit it, it was going to be substantial and to get out of contract, it was going to cost us a thousand dollars. So we literally said, fine, take the thousand dollars because we'd already saved that much through Moolah's savings to be able to like, we're just like, like it's a done deal. Like they were trying to threaten them with this thousand dollar fee, but we were like, that's so minimal to get us out of this contract based on how much we were saving. Now this practice was processing a decent chunk.

 

Mark Rasmussen (07:32)

Right. Right.

 

Kiera Dent (07:38)

But I think even if you're processing like 70,000, 80,000, that one, 2 % stacks up. Like it's insane how much we pay in credit card fees. So those are like the two that I wanted to bring to the, like I said, this is why I have a crush because I hate credit card fees so much. And that's going to lead into our next topic. But Mark, anything you want to add? Cause these were two cases that I've watched since we last met.

 

Mark Rasmussen (07:45)

yeah.

 

I love that.

 

Kiera Dent (08:00)

⁓ I'm constantly on the prowl for cheaper people. I love that you guys don't charge for the terminals. You have it set up the next day. There's no contracts. Like that's where I said, like it's your new favorite, like credit card processing. You don't increase the fees. You give our clients reduced rates. If you have multi locations, you guys also take care of those practices. Like it's amazing what you guys do. So that's my like pitch for Moolah, but if you want to add anything else.

 

Mark Rasmussen (08:22)

I love that. wanted to, because you just

 

like rang a memory. So what you were referring to in that practice, right, where like, okay, you can't just skate by and just pay the minimum, right? Or they were gonna hit him with his fee. Well, another thing I'm gonna tell your listeners out there is, listen, if you don't go with Moolah, great, do your homework. But one thing to look out that I've seen in contracts, which is crazy, is that sometimes you'll see a contract, all right, if you cancel early, it's like a 350 termination fee. Okay, fine.

 

but I've seen others out there where the processor says they try to enforce liquidated damages. So the processor will say, oh, we've been making, you're in a three year contract, on average we're making like, whatever, $500 a month on your processing. If you leave us now, it's not early termination fee, we're gonna calculate that $500 for the remaining 16, 17 months and they hit you with this liquidated damages thing, crazy. So just be on the lookout for that. If you're doing anywhere that's a contract,

 

Kiera Dent (08:57)

No.

 

Mark Rasmussen (09:20)

Look out for liquidated damages, that's no bueno, but better yet, find somebody that's just not gonna put you in a contract. Much easier.

 

Kiera Dent (09:26)

Yeah. And

 

also like, okay, Mark, help me understand. And maybe you don't know because you guys don't do this and that's okay. But to me, it feels really funny that I signed a contract with them and there's got to be something in the fine print because I'm like, how did they go from what they told me to being able to add all these extra surcharges later on and increase it when we're in a contract?

 

Mark Rasmussen (09:43)

for sure it's in the fine print.

 

yeah. It says that any, it basically says that any time at our discretion with 30 days notice, we can make an adjustment to any of your pre-schedule. And so they'll just do that. And then they'll just put a little message, you know, really small font in whatever kind of notification. And you know, in their minds, right? All right, well, we checked off the box. It's super shady. It sucks, but it's, you know, it's out there. Yeah.

 

Kiera Dent (10:05)

Yeah, it is what it is. And I would say

 

they'll like look at it because two clients that were in contract, we were able to send over every person that I've sent to you guys have just loved who you are, that it's easy, that it's fast, that it's the cheapest processing. And there's a few other features that I think we should talk about. I feel like I'm on like a Moolah sales pitch right now. Like I'm truly not. I just get giddy. Like if you guys hear me talk about Swell,

 

Mark Rasmussen (10:27)

Ha

 

Kiera Dent (10:30)

was Zeke and Google reviews. I have a crush on Swell. They just do Google reviews better than anyone else. And right now, Moolah for sure, you guys are taking the cake on being able to do credit card processing better than any other company that I've come across, which I think is amazing. And so something else that I think is ratcheting fees on practices when we're looking for some of these cashflow leaks is on membership plans. Now, I'm a huge proponent of membership plans. I also think with the economy, with where insurance is reimbursing, ⁓ people are starting to look at like

 

should we be going out of network? And my big proposal is, hey, yeah, of course, if you want to do that rock on, membership plans really can help with that. But ⁓ there are some membership companies that actually charge pretty outlandish fees. I never wanted to pay for that. I was scrappy in a practice. So what I did is I just charged the patient an annual fee. Well, that was like eight years ago that I was charging an annual fee. And I think you look at today's world, no one wants an annual fee anymore. They just want like a monthly fee and they want it to be low.

 

Mark Rasmussen (11:02)

for

 

Right. Right.

 

Kiera Dent (11:28)

But managing that is nonsense on my own paying for it. And Moolah, like I've heard through the grapevine, you guys are doing something with membership fees. Can we talk about the membership plans? Talk about how you guys do this. Is it easier? Is it something we can do? Because I think membership plans have to come into play with the insurance situation that offices are in. And also possibly a cash leak if you're paying for heavy management fees on your membership plans.

 

Mark Rasmussen (11:37)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

 

Yeah. So listen, membership discount plans. I've since I've been, I've only been in the industry, you know, dental industry for about four years now. And every year I feel like it's getting traction. More practices are asking about us. I have practices that are doing demos with us and they're like, Hey, I'm doing this demo is driving it because I heard you guys do, you know, membership, discount plan management. And so yes, the answer is we do. ⁓

 

And as you were looking to, there's a lot of great vendors in this space that just do that, right? And I'm not going to name any names, but there's a lot of great vendors, but they're not inexpensive. Like, you know, there's some decent SAS fees and then you pay per patient enrollment. ⁓ And so when it's, you know, when you look at the net net and you're like, okay, is this really making sense? So what's nice is that we have complete membership discount plan management built into the platform. You can create all your plans. ⁓ You can easily onboard the patient into the system.

 

Kiera Dent (12:21)

Mm-hmm.

 

Yeah.

 

Mark Rasmussen (12:48)

whether the patient wants to go monthly or annual, like you said, you were doing annual and a lot of the practices that I run into have historically been doing it annually, right? Because to think about billing it on a monthly basis has you like pulling your hair out. But the reality is that the patients and the consumers in the world that we live in, ⁓ everybody looks at whatever they're gonna bring into their life, whether it's a Netflix subscription or it's a car payment or it's anything else, everybody kind of looks at at a monthly basis.

 

Kiera Dent (13:02)

Too hard.

 

Mark Rasmussen (13:17)

And so that is what you want to be delivering. And so with the Moolah platform, you can absolutely manage an in-house membership discount plan and offer both annual and monthly options and truly set it and forget it. Not have to think about it. The system's going to run. The system's going to automatically post that payment into the ledger. In open dental, we even go a step further where when you enroll the patient into the membership, not only are we handling the billing element of it,

 

But we're also going into the PMS and we're associating that patient to that membership discount plan and keeping track. You know, that's what's really doing all the heavy lifting of keeping track of whatever the one free cleaning of the 10 % off services. And we keep that in lockstep. So if there was like a billing issue, we automatically disassociate the patient from the plan to really just kind of make it pain free. you know, membership discount plans are phenomenal. It's a win win for patients and practice. First of all, it brings some really great reoccurring

 

Kiera Dent (13:51)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Mark Rasmussen (14:14)

like trackable revenue into the practice, right? Number two, it's bringing patients like butts in seats ⁓ as well. ⁓ Because the patient looks like, I'm paying $40 a month. I should use it. I should be in there. ⁓ And it's bringing value to the patient. So it's literally just a win-win all around. I really love that for, you know, when you're looking at out of network patients ⁓ and the absolutely, you know, the platform has it built in. So you guys, please, if you're looking at discount plans, memberships,

 

I encourage you to look at some of the other great vendors out there and then come take a look at us last and see like the value that you get that's included.

 

Kiera Dent (14:49)

That's awesome. Yeah. And again, like there are so many great people out there that are doing it. I just feel, ⁓ when I heard that you guys were doing membership plans, I was like, well, it kind of makes sense because you're already processing credit cards. Like you're already doing the processing. So now something else that is doing a processing is in my processor, into my software, which I just, that was so incredibly clever. And, ⁓ like again, I had another client who, who scoped you against other companies and they were like, gosh, like there's no fees.

 

Mark Rasmussen (15:03)

Great.

 

Kiera Dent (15:17)

compared to other companies with moolah. So that was something I was really excited about. I'm big on just, it's like my insurance. I've been with State Farm forever. And Jason and I giggled, we're like, we need to go and actually like assess and make sure that we're truly getting the best plans. And so I just think like it's good to periodically go and assess and make sure our credit card fees, what they were when we set up.

 

our membership plans making sense? Is it time to look to possibly renegotiate some certain things? And again, I'm not here to propose one company over another. Like Mark said, do your homework, figure out what's best because there's so many great companies out there. I just really love when it's simple and easy. And that's something I love about you guys, Mark, you guys have the fact that we can send patient statements and like have payments online and they can pay it all times of the day. Like just that alone boosts offices, collections with Moulin. So Mark, I want to go into a dicey topic with you though.

 

because this one's hot. We had it in our in-person ⁓ doctor and leadership mastermind when we were in Arizona and I loved it. It was like a hot, hot topic and heads up like this might be awkward for you. I don't think it will because of who you are, but there's the question of, and it was hot, like the room was split of people who were pro and con. So the question is with credit card fees being as much as they were, we talked about at the beginning, like ways that we can reduce it.

 

Mark Rasmussen (16:10)

Let's do it.

 

I know, I wanna hear what the feedback was, because I know where you're going.

 

Kiera Dent (16:40)

Then we talked about reducing membership plans. Now there's a question of, should we actually charge patients the credit card fees? Like this is becoming really popular and I don't blame businesses because inflation's high, labor is higher. So now we're trying to figure out like where could we cut? And so people are like, well, sweet, we're just gonna pass on the credit card fees to our patients. And the room was spicy. There was like people that were so pro and people that like literally people were bristly and it was a...

 

Mark Rasmussen (17:05)

Yeah.

 

Kiera Dent (17:06)

It was quite interesting. So your credit card company, which is where I feel like it's a little awkward to ask you this question, but I want to know, we pro, are we con? Should we charge the patients from your perspective? We're in 2025. So many companies do this. Should people be charging patients the credit card fee? Should they just raise their fees and bake it in? Like, what are your thoughts on this? Because my room was 50 50 split. And I will tell you some of the feedback if you want to hear it, cause it was quite interesting.

 

Mark Rasmussen (17:13)

Yeah.

 

Okay, okay.

 

I do. Okay, so the first

 

thing I want to point out is I expect you to say that the room is split, right? Like half of them are like, yeah, absolutely. You know, I'm not paying for my patients' reward points. And I think the other half of the room was like, yeah, but I'm worried about the optics. Does it look like we're trying to be cheesy or nickel and diming our patients, right? Those are the two ends that are battling each other. The interesting thing is that this hot topic, ⁓ if you would have asked that just three years ago,

 

Kiera Dent (17:38)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mm-hmm. No.

 

Mark Rasmussen (18:01)

it wouldn't have been 50 50. It

 

would have been like 80 90 % saying no way and 10 % made me do it. So the trend is is like it is going right and two or three years from now I have a feeling it's going to be like 80 % are doing it and 20 % are not doing it. So the cat is out of the bag. Let's just get that you know right out there in the open. What do I think about it? I'm to be super Switzerland about this and I'm going to say that I think

 

Kiera Dent (18:06)

Agreed. 100 % agree.

 

I would agree with you.

 

Remember he's

 

a credit card processing company.

 

Mark Rasmussen (18:31)

Well,

 

no, I'm going to say that I think that as a vendor who delivers credit card processing service, I think that I should enable our practices to make that choice for themselves. I think whatever you think you should do for your practice, I want to support it. So if you don't want to do surcharging, great, we love that. If you do want to do surcharging, great, I love that. I just want to give the tools to the practice so they can make that decision. Now, aside what I think about it,

 

It's a very interesting topic to talk about. Well, what is the net result? I like, all right, how does it work? What does it save? Let's get into it if I may. Okay, so there's a couple ways. There is absolutely there. There is, and there's a couple flavors to this. There's a couple flavors to this. ⁓ there, the, the, what that we do, let me talk about that first. So what we do is what's referred to as compliance surcharging and with compliance surcharging, what is, what you're doing is that

 

Kiera Dent (19:06)

I agree. Cause like, are there rules around it? Like, you actually have to do anything? Okay. I have no idea. Okay.

 

Mark Rasmussen (19:28)

When a customer's paying you with a credit card, the system, system, I'll just speak to our system, most others are similar, but when a patient is paying you, whether it's in practice on the device or whether you sent a text to pay or it's an online payment, our system automatically, real time, looks at the number that the patient put in or used on the terminal. And within a half a second, we're looking back at the credit card network before we even charge it, and we say, is this a credit or is this a debit? If the patient is paying with a credit card,

 

We then pop on the screen, either on their mobile device or on the terminal, we say, hey, we see you're using a credit card. We're going to add 2.99 % as a fee to you for using a credit card. If you want to use a debit card, you will avoid that fee. So in Compliance Surcharging, what I really like about that is that you're not charging us fee across debit and credit, right? You're still giving your patient the convenience of being able to pay with plastic.

 

Kiera Dent (20:19)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

 

Mark Rasmussen (20:25)

and still use a debit card because the reality is if you have a credit card in your wallet, there's probably 99 % chance you've got a Visa debit card in your wallet as well. And so you're not pulling away that convenience of them being able to pay plastic and just saying, hey, if you want to avoid that fee, pay cash or check. That's kind of archaic. So with compliance surcharging, you are going to offload your credit card fees to the patient, only the credit card fees. When they pay with a debit card, you will still pay for that, okay?

 

Kiera Dent (20:43)

I agree.

 

Mark Rasmussen (20:55)

With doing that with Moolah, if you're going to pay the debit fee and not pay the credit card fee, we see that the overall net effective rate for the practice ends up being below 1%. It ends up being like, I'm going to throw out a weird term that people are going, what the heck is that? It's usually going to be around 75 or 80 basis points. About three quarters of 1 % is going to be your net overall cost, which is huge savings, right? Huge savings.

 

Kiera Dent (21:07)

No.

 

Crazy, like insane. Just do

 

some math. If you did a million dollars and you were able to basically save, gosh, so much.

 

Mark Rasmussen (21:28)

No, let's just say,

 

the reality is you're probably saving one and a half percent. So on a million dollar practice, that practice is gonna put about $15,000 back to their bottom line. Like, and that's it, and it was painless. And you're still not really, yeah, exactly.

 

Kiera Dent (21:37)

Exactly.

 

And that's also for payments you're already collecting. Like this is already

 

money we're collecting, we just get to keep more of it rather than having the credit card processing fee.

 

Mark Rasmussen (21:47)

Yes.

 

And it doesn't need to like, you know, break brain cells for you to try and figure it out. Like the system is going to automatically calculate it. We're going to organize it. ⁓ It's just, it's painless. We're handling it in the PMS correctly. listen, the savings cannot be ignored. Like we talked about the cats out of the bag. You're going to see more businesses across more different verticals. ⁓ And the reality is

 

We've all been around it for a long, long time, right? Who's been doing it forever? Gas stations, right? We've seen it on there. Cash credit, right? That's been there forever. And we're all used to it. And you also typically see a lot when you're dealing with like state or federal agencies, you ever gone on and make an online tax payment, they usually charge a fee there. So it's just now getting more, you know, ⁓ rolling out. Yeah.

 

Kiera Dent (22:40)

Nail salons for the girls out there. We all know the

 

nail salons. They'll say like, it's a 3 % charge if you use credit card. I'm like, here's your cash. Like it's clever. They push us to what they want.

 

Mark Rasmussen (22:49)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

 

So it is listen. So I, I believe in delivering the technology to our clients, I don't have an opinion one way or the other, whatever you feel is good. I will tell you though that I think a lot of practices, especially on the on the one half of the room that are like against it. I think what we're finding is that people are not pushing back as much as

 

you think they are because consumers are just getting used to it. And again, the fact that at least with our practices, you're still giving your patient the ability to have that convenience and pay with a debit card and not have the fee. If they were doing like the model where they call it, know, cash discount, where you're going to hit the debit card and you're going to hit the credit card, I think you get more pushback on that, but you're still giving that convenience. So yeah, I'm a fan of it. We get, like I said, more and more requests of it. ⁓

 

It's not going anywhere. yeah, we're here to support your practice. If you guys want to try it out, try it out and listen, here's the thing.

 

Kiera Dent (23:50)

Yeah.

 

How does it work in practice

 

though? Like, so someone's standing in front of me at a terminal, I'm collecting money in person. How does this work? Because it's not gonna pop up on my like treatment plan that I just gave them or on my ledger. So how do I do that?

 

Mark Rasmussen (24:00)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

 

It'll pop up on the terminal.

 

so first thing we do, we give the practices, ⁓ you know, some template messaging and they'll just want to put up something by the front desk. And it says something to the effect of that, you know, this office adds a surcharge when using a credit card, ⁓ not beyond, you know, what our costs are, right? This is not a money, additional money revenue is trying to like, you know, make arbitrage between costs and no, I'm only going to pass off. And so.

 

Kiera Dent (24:32)

Great.

 

Mark Rasmussen (24:35)

the patient is aware of it, they've seen it, and then when they go to use it on the terminal, if they're in practice, when they go to run the credit card, it will pop up on the screen and your team can just show it to the patient, they'll see it, that it's adding it because they're using the credit card. And it'll give them an option if they want to accept it or if they want to back out of it and try again with a debit card and avoid the fee, really easy.

 

Kiera Dent (24:58)

Okay, that's actually really helpful. And now I have a question because I don't know this. How does this work? Because technically the practice is collecting more money, right? Like we are taking the fee plus the credit card fee. ⁓

 

Mark Rasmussen (25:10)

Let's say it's $100 and let's just say we're

 

adding that surcharge so now it's $103. Okay? Yeah. Yeah.

 

Kiera Dent (25:14)

Right, so that's $3 more per $100 transaction. But

 

does that impact them in tax? I would think no, because credit card companies still charging us the 3%. Like, how does this work? Are you following what I'm saying? how does this impact you?

 

Mark Rasmussen (25:26)

Yeah, I do. So you

 

don't have anything else to like, you know, break your brain on that. Our system, first of all, will break out the surcharge in the reporting. Okay. So it's really clean. Furthermore, the addition, the $103, right, like the customer got charged, the patient got charged $103. But our system automatically calculates it, that you have a fee of 3 % and that you surcharge the patient 3%. So the practice is still just going to get the full $100.

 

Kiera Dent (25:36)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Mark Rasmussen (25:56)

It's as if they took a cash payment. So it's easy for them. They're not getting 10.99 at the $103, so to speak. It's just still truly only taking $100, which is great.

 

Kiera Dent (25:57)

Gotcha. Okay.

 

Mm-hmm. ⁓

 

Yeah, because that's what

 

I was curious like, and like some things have sales tax. So didn't know like surcharges, do they get taxed differently or is it just like accepting cash, same thing for a practice? Okay. Now, so that's really helpful. And that helps me see on the ledger. So are you guys synced into the PMS for it to say, because like if my ledger says a hundred dollars, but I'm now doing 3 % surcharge on it.

 

Mark Rasmussen (26:18)

Exactly, total amount, total amount, yeah.

 

Yes.

 

Kiera Dent (26:35)

I'm going to be posting $103. How do I make sure that all of my ledgers match up?

 

Mark Rasmussen (26:40)

So

 

we'll post $100 in the ledger, okay? And then we'll have a procedure code for the surcharge. And then we'll also have an offsetting so that it doesn't mess up your balance. So you can easily run reports based on the procedure code. I can see what my surcharge is, but it's not messing up and showing that, I took in $103 on this $100 transaction. So your ledger is gonna stay nice and clean.

 

and not be a nightmare, 100%.

 

Kiera Dent (27:10)

Okay,

 

because that's I was like, Oh, great. Because there was another office that I heard about. And Mark, I'm just curious about your opinion on this. And then we're gonna get back to this like spicy and thanks for walking through this. There was another practice, I've literally never heard of this before. So I'm curious if you have or if you recommend or don't this practice. So let's say a patient, the total is $100, they pay the $100, the practice literally posted on the ledger.

 

Mark Rasmussen (27:28)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kiera Dent (27:38)

instead of being $100 because now they lost $3, they posted $97 on the ledger and they were taking out the surcharge. Have you ever heard of that? Because I had never heard it. I was, do you recommend that? Because I've never recommended that, right? And I think as a patient, I'd feel really angry though. no, I gave you 100 bucks, but you gave me 97. Like I would just.

 

Mark Rasmussen (27:48)

I haven't.

 

That seems wonky. Yeah.

 

Right. Or

 

continue that on. How about now all of a sudden a week later you go to refund it and we're we're refunding you 97. You're like, no, no, no, I paid you 100. It's gonna be messed up in so many levels.

 

Kiera Dent (28:09)

Right. I was just curious.

 

I was like, I mean, maybe I'm archaic on how I do this. I used to just do it that way and then accept that that would just be a cost on my PNL. But now there's a way for you to actually offset it with the process. So my question is going back to that, that's actually helpful. Thank you. So if you're doing that, definitely recommend not doing that anymore. ⁓ But I was like, Hey, I've never heard of this. Maybe that is the right way to do the accounting on it. But it felt very messy to me. Now,

 

Do we as the practice need to put in the surcharge as that procedure code when we're charging that out or does Moolah automatically sync it in and put the surcharge of the procedure code?

 

Mark Rasmussen (28:48)

We have, yeah,

 

automatically done. There's nothing for you to do. Yeah. So during onboarding, we will set up, we will work with the practice, obviously. We'll make sure that we have a procedure code set up for them. And so during the onboarding, we'll have that so that when you do run a surcharge transaction like that, there's nothing you need to do. It'll all be handled in the ledger correctly.

 

Kiera Dent (28:51)

Amazing. I love it. This is why I said I have a preference on you.

 

and you're in all softwares. What softwares does Moolah sink into?

 

Mark Rasmussen (29:10)

Yes, so ⁓ Open Dental, ⁓ Dentrix, G7, and ⁓ newer server-based, not Ascend. And we're actually going to be ⁓ releasing, finally, this has been a long time coming, we're finally going live with Eagle Soft ⁓ Beta at end of next week. So Open Dental, Dentrix, and Eagle Soft. Yeah.

 

Kiera Dent (29:28)

Awesome.

 

That's awesome. Okay, very cool. And

 

then if you're not in one of those and you can just obviously add this in, it wouldn't be automatically synced. And I think like of those ones though, huge win this way. Okay, now we'll go back to the spicy. I will tell you guys how the room was divided. The room was divided, I'll be right. The do it, don't do it. And then the like, there's a middle ground, which I thought the middle ground was kind of convenient. ⁓ There wasn't, but I did see people like it. I did feel like it was like,

 

Mark Rasmussen (29:45)

Yes.

 

Was there any physical fighting going on? Okay.

 

Kiera Dent (30:00)

like politics and religion status. Like it was like very cut through the room. I do agree with you. And that's what I said. I was like, you guys, this 2025, this is going to take place in the future and it will be very common. just, think our early adopters going to stay or not. It's your choice. Um, I've always been of the opinion like, no, just bake it into your fee. And now I'm like, well, everybody's starting to charge for it. Like, why not? Um, so it was don't charge for it now. Another was like, no, put it in. People are doing it anyway. And the middle ground, which I thought was

 

Mark Rasmussen (30:02)

Right. Right, right, right.

 

Kiera Dent (30:30)

of a good way to do it is in person. They didn't charge a fee, but any of their online statements, they did charge a fee because they said most people who pay online know there's usually a service fee associated with it. So I thought that was kind of a, an easy way. If you guys are looking for a navigation through it. ⁓ but I think like, honestly, it's just like anything else, train your patients if you want to, but don't feel like you have to, I think it'd just be something to consider. So, but again,

 

Like get the reduction, like if nothing else, like switch to a processor that's going to be reduced fees anyway. So even if you want to continue offering it, you're still saving on that. Mark, I have one last thing that I wanted to dive into. I'm hearing from a lot of like integrated softwares. So like dental Intel and Flex and some of these other ones that literally make practice lives easier. They're having processors in there that are just integrated right into that. They're using it all the time.

 

Mark Rasmussen (31:20)

Yeah.

 

Kiera Dent (31:25)

How does Moolah play in those worlds? Like, do you get the same pricing? Do we not get the same pricing? Are some of those better because they're already bundled in? Again, I'm putting you on like really awkward topics, but I just want to know. I want to know how does this work.

 

Mark Rasmussen (31:35)

No, no, not at all. So listen, you mentioned Flex. We

 

love Flex, okay? I love Flex, not just because, yes, they're a partner of ours, right? And yes, your Mool account works beautifully and integrated with Flex. But I love Flex just because I think they're like cut from the same cloth that we are. Like we just, at the end of the day, we want to over-deliver, right? We want to over-deliver, whether it's technology, whether it's value, and they have that mindset. And so I love the Flex team. Full disclosure.

 

⁓ And so we've been an integrated partner with Flex for, gosh now, I think three years. So yeah, I think they deliver a ton of value to any open dental practice. So anybody out there for sure should check out Flex. They are amazing. Dental Intel. So we used to be, ⁓ not to bore the audience, but like we used to have an integration with Modento and then Dental Intel acquired Modento.

 

Kiera Dent (32:33)

Yep.

 

Mark Rasmussen (32:33)

and

 

then Dental Intel wanted to roll up their own integrated credit card processing. And so they have now. so, listen, ⁓ we wish Dental Intel the best, wish them well, but yeah, we're no longer integrated with Dental Intel, but yeah, Flex, we love Flex.

 

Kiera Dent (32:49)

Okay, because I was just curious. Now, I feel if it's bundled, is this a time where offices should just be strategic? I'm not saying anyone's doing it. I haven't looked at it. So I'm not here to like cast judge or I just want to make sure offices are being smart. I would think when they're bundled or they're integrated, offices should still check even using MULA. They should still be watching their credit card statements every single month, right? Like no matter what, just to always make sure things are staying clean and also before we sign up with anybody.

 

Mark Rasmussen (33:08)

Mm-hmm.

 

100%.

 

Kiera Dent (33:19)

Like literally read the fine print and look for it. Yes. No. I from like, let's just go all the way back.

 

Mark Rasmussen (33:23)

Yeah.

 

And I would always say that, you know, let's just take the Flex example. Flex has, you and I won't name anything, I'll let you guys out there, you go check it out to yourself, but there are three options. I encourage you, especially when we're talking about a vendor that you're looking at, and especially when this vendor that you're looking at revolves around your cashflow, right? Like it's a pretty integral part of a vendor that you're bringing into your ecosystem. call them, talk to them.

 

Kiera Dent (33:46)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mark Rasmussen (33:54)

Call in the middle of the day. Do they pick up the phone? Do they answer? Can you talk to somebody very easily? Like really pop the hood and take a look at who you're going to get in and do business with, especially when it's, you know, that vendor is like controlling your cash flow on a daily basis. So yes, please you guys out there, do your homework, look at the agreements, ask questions, and see what's right for you. Yeah.

 

Kiera Dent (34:10)

Yeah.

 

That's awesome. just, again,

 

I wanted to like go into it because these are things I'm hearing. I'm hearing people say like, this seamlessly integrates. I know you seamlessly integrate. I know you guys are constantly working to refine, to get into more and more practice management softwares to make it easier. Just Mark, as we wrap up, like this has been fun. I love the like, thanks for going into some of the spices with me. ⁓ But just as a quick rundown, like what are some of the features that Moola does? We talked about the membership plans. We did talk about that Dental A Team clients get 10 % basis points less for card present or card not present.

 

Mark Rasmussen (34:33)

Always is.

 

Yep.

 

Kiera Dent (34:47)

Which to me that alone, I would just look into it and see, like I said, two clients literally saved money by like dumping their contracts and moving over, which I think to me, like before I can have a crush on a company, I test them pretty heavily. So to see the proof in the pudding, I was so just elated and it made me even like you guys more. But what else does Moola do? Because I know you guys do a lot of other things that just make life easy.

 

Mark Rasmussen (35:05)

I love that. yeah, yeah. So

 

at the end of the day, we do a lot, but it's all payment related and will always be payment related, right? So we're focused on being like, we try to be like the end all be all payment solution for dentists. And so when you look at like, what does a dental office need from a payment perspective, ⁓ it's in practice payments, right? So we provide you guys the physical devices. So

 

No more having to buy rent or lease those terminals. We're going to include them. you know, not only, yeah, they're wireless. Yeah, they're really cool. Aesthetically, they look really good. Yeah. And, and here's the other great part too, that I think it's kind of underrated ⁓ is of course, not only did we include them. the practice didn't need to buy them, but like normally, you know, with our peers, you have to buy these devices and then you buy them and then it's like one year warranty, right? And then like Murphy's law always kicks in.

 

Kiera Dent (35:37)

They're awesome too. They're portable. They can go back to the hygiene operatories. It's amazing. So your hygienist can take it. Like they're awesome. It's so great.

 

Mark Rasmussen (36:01)

like it loves to do. like, okay, month 14, the device just, you know, went out on you. And then you're gonna sorry, you got to buy another five $600 device with mula you guys will literally never have hardware expense ever because we give them to you on the front end. And we will warranty them forever. As long as you're with us. I don't care four or five, six years. If there's new devices that come out and your guys age out, we're going to replace them. Even if you drop it off the counter and crack the screen.

 

We don't care, we're gonna replace it for you. There's no fear or premium. So, in practice payments, we have you covered there from a technology standpoint as well as a hardware standpoint. Moving on, there's also, have the ability to, like you were talking about earlier, store patient cards securely tokenized. Nothing's ever touching the practices servers. It's all on our servers, but it's giving you the convenience of having those stored cards for the patient. You can have as many stored cards as you want. You can even send a request to the patient.

 

before their appointment and the patient from easily from home from their mobile device could add their credit card. And so when they come in, it's already stored and it's available to use. So stored cards, yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

Kiera Dent (37:07)

With that, can I ask, do you guys have

 

the compliance paperwork? Is there anything you have to do to get a patient to have a stored credit card that we can run for future payments? once insurance pays, because I know that's a big thing of storing cards on file, do you have anything with that? Because I know that this is a zone.

 

Mark Rasmussen (37:23)

Yep. What I...

 

Yeah, no. So it's very obvious as far as the process of the patient adding the card. Like when you send the message, it says, hey, would you like to securely store your card on file? Right? Beyond that, what I've seen some practices do is just they'll just include it in their overall like new patient intake forms and kind of include it in their terms of service of that. Hey, listen, if you want to store a card on file with us, you can. And you allow, once you store a card, you're giving us the authorization to utilize that card.

 

Kiera Dent (37:35)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mark Rasmussen (37:51)

for other future balances. As simple as that, that's all you need to do.

 

Kiera Dent (37:54)

which is so smart you

 

guys think about it. This is where so many other industries do this. They have a card on file. I mean, I go to the spa, my cards on file, they run that card when I'm gone, like I authorize it to happen. So they never out of money. They're never chasing money down. Like it just to me makes so much more sense of a way to process.

 

Mark Rasmussen (38:12)

Can you imagine if

 

Netflix or all the other subscriptions, if they had to wait for a payment every month and wait, come on, no. Subscription is the way, 100%. So, okay, so store card on file they get. The other thing they get is the ability to create and manage in-house payment plans. And of course, automatically post those payments to the ledger. We have some great things where if the payment fails, right? They're into the plan for three months and all of sudden the July payment fails.

 

Kiera Dent (38:18)

No. No.

 

Yeah.

 

Mark Rasmussen (38:41)

our system will automatically notify the practice, notify the patient, and what's cool is that the software will allow the patient to self-administer and fix it. So the software is not telling the patient, your card failed, call the front desk. No, we're gonna save a phone call there. The software will allow the patient to tell the software, okay, either A, try to charge that card again, or B, they can actually upload a new card on file.

 

So the cool stat on that is that in failed transactions in our payment plans, we see patients solving it between themselves and software within the first 24 hours at a rate of over 80%, which is huge. So payment plans, and then we talked about earlier, you also get the ability to manage any of your in-house membership or discount plans. ⁓ We have the collecting on a balance when the patient is out of practice, ⁓ sending a payment request either

 

Kiera Dent (39:20)

Holy cow, it's amazing.

 

Mark Rasmussen (39:37)

allocated or unallocated payment request can attach a statement. ⁓ We also have the ability to host a payment page on their website. So if you want to put a little navigation, click here to make an online after hours payment, we'll host that page for the practice. ⁓ So yeah, we really kind of just looked at it a full circle of like, where are all the payment touch points that our practice is dealing with, and just trying to deliver these really amazing tools. And again, as you know, our model.

 

⁓ There's never any monthly fees. There's never any set up fees. There's never any annual fees ⁓ All there are these two simple flat rates and again, you can cancel it anytime you want never locked in anything

 

Kiera Dent (40:18)

That's awesome. Mark, I appreciate this so much. How do people, like know they just connect with you, schedule a demo. You guys will look at their credit card processing, see how you guys can fix it. How do they connect with you specifically if they're interested? And specifically The Dental A Team, The Dental A Team, perks.

 

Mark Rasmussen (40:33)

I would recommend and maybe we can list this in the podcast, but there will be a specific Moolah URL. It's like forward slash The Dental A Team They should go there and then they can schedule a demo. And then if they go there, then we're going to know it came from you guys. That way we can get them that 10 basis point savings forever. So just schedule a demo with us and no pressure. We're like the most like

 

the least salesy organization I think that you guys will ever run into. All we wanna do is inform you. We wanna show you what we have. We're not for everybody. ⁓ But assuming that you guys love what you see, we encourage you to try us out and check us out and see if we're gonna be a great fit for your practice.

 

Kiera Dent (41:13)

Yeah, for sure. You guys, honestly, I love Moolah They're incredible. So on our website, we will link it. So the way you get to Moolah, it's on our website, TheDentalATeam.com. And then you can click on the About Partnerships Mulas right there. ⁓ And the actual, like if you guys want our direct link here, it would be TheDentalATeam.com slash partnerships slash Moolah. And that should take you right to Moolah's page. It's also mula.cc slash partners.

 

So that helps you guys will also link that in the show notes mark. I appreciate you guys so much Things are being on the podcast things are going through the spicy with me. I appreciate you so much

 

Mark Rasmussen (41:52)

Any time, love you guys, you guys are the best and ⁓ have a great rest of day.

 

Kiera Dent (41:58)

Hey, you too, for all of you listening. Thanks for listening and we'll catch you next time on The Dental A Team Podcast.

 

Tiff and Kristy discuss how to best support patients during limited exams, including centering your own team’s frame of mind, creating proper triage protocol, building trust through communication, and more.

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Transcript

Tiffanie (00:00)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. We are back today with some really, really exciting things. We speak to the doctors, we speak to the team side, and we really want that to come together in today's podcast. We've got a lot of information for you doctors, but then we've also got a lot of information for you to pass off and train your team members on or pass off this podcast, and we will help train your team members on this space just here within this podcast even.

 

Jam-packed with a ton of information. It's for everyone. Team members, if you're here listening and your doctor's not a listener, vice versa, send it on over because I do think this is going to be some great information for everyone to start implementing right away. So you guys, I have Kristy here with me today. You know her, you love her. I know her, I love her. There's just no one on this earth that will meet her and not love her. So Kristy, you are just an amazing human being. are an excellent coach.

 

and consultant. You've been doing this for many years and I am just constantly impressed by you and how you really work so well with doctors and especially team members. I've seen you really diffuse a lot of situations, handle with care, and you constantly make people feel seen and feel heard. So thank you for being here with me today, Kristy. And really before we pop into this, I'm going to

 

I like to surprise you and Dana. Dana will tell you I do this a lot. So something pops into my head and I'm like, actually, that's gonna be really great. I think before we even get started on this, you guys, so that you know, we're gonna be really, we're gonna be talking about how to really, really maximize a limited or an emergency exam and how to enlist the team to support and getting the most out of it for yourself and for your patients. So before we get started, Kristy I would love for you to share with everyone here today and myself.

 

on a couple of ideas or maybe even tools, I don't know, but how do you do so well at presenting yourself for other people to be able to feel so comfortable and the ability to allow people to be able to feel vulnerable in your space to be able to learn and to be able to make changes and impart changes with practices? Like, how is that?

 

I know it's a natural tendency of yours, but if there's anything you can help doctors and team members really learn on how to show up so that they can do that too, I guess is what I'm asking.

 

Kristy (02:35)

I suppose you're right. I think it does come natural to me. I'm a pretty great listener yet. Also, I think it's very important to validate people where they're at and never make them feel small. You know, Tiff, I do not like being in the limelight, but I get a lot of thrill out of watching other people's growth or really watching them and seeing their brilliance within them and making that shine, bringing it out.

 

I suppose I look again, it's meeting them where they're at, showing them maybe something different than they even thought possible for themselves and just touching on their brilliance. It's okay if we don't know everything right now, but dang, together we're gonna grow and we're gonna do this. So really just partnering with them and making them feel safe in that space, know, treating them like I would have wanted to be treated too. So, yeah.

 

Tiffanie (03:30)

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. And it sounds like

 

for implement implementation tools, it's really seeing people and acknowledging.

 

what it is that they're doing. if you've got a front office team member and you're like, gosh, like we've got 99 % of our patients confirmed for tomorrow, acknowledging that like, how did you do that? And really, like you said, partnering, I love that you use that word use it often, really partnering with that person and celebrating some of the things that they're doing really well. But also acknowledging there may be space for growth, we might have 99 % confirmations, but maybe we have

 

three, four, five hygiene openings on the same day. So acknowledging spaces that are going really well, but also that there is growth in everyone to be found and how do we layer on top of what we're doing really well already to create change in all of the areas to get the results we're after. Yeah? Yeah, yeah. So I love that theory and idea and I love how you do handle that. I think it's key and

 

Kristy (04:28)

You nailed it.

 

Tiffanie (04:36)

imparting any kind of change or any kind of just updates even, right? Like handbook updates, like all of those pieces that are scary to go back to your team and say, hey, we're going to change this, we're going to do it differently, because human nature says, no, keep doing it the same. Even if it's not working, this is comfortable. So I want to stay here with what I already know. So really being able to have that candor and be able to have those conversations and utilize communication really well to be able to impart the

 

the changes is going to be key. And then acknowledging once that change has happened, that it's working or not. So making sure we're tracking the results, but then also acknowledging the work that's being put in. think, Kristy, that's something you do really well is going back and saying, gosh, this is what we did. Look at how amazing these results are. This is what you guys put in. This is why it's working. And going back and re-acknowledging the steps that it's taking to do that.

 

Huge massive kudos to you, Kristy. I know you don't love the spotlight, but we're on a podcast, so your spotlight is always with me. I do think that really flows right into being able to maximize the limited exam.

 

Kristy (05:43)

Yeah.

 

Tiffanie (05:52)

There's so many spaces, there's so many spaces of growth, there's so much space of support for the team to give to the patient and to the doctor. And then also, I think everything you just said, Kristy, for team members, for doctors and team members to utilize, this works hand in hand with our patient base as well. With anyone, you guys take this home to your family and just be shocked at how amazing your kids' rooms will look if you utilize those communication tools and really acknowledge them for.

 

picking up that one stuffed animal when there's 15 more, like great, like let's get these other ones. So let's figure this out. Like really take these tools to any space of life, but it goes hand in hand with our patient communication as well. And the emergency slash limited exam space can be really tense for both of you. And it's a vulnerable space. Dentistry is a vulnerable space for patients anyways, but then knowing that gosh.

 

100 % something is wrong. Like, I'm stressed. I don't I'm stressed about cost. I'm stressed about what this is going to be. Is my tooth savable? Is it going to hurt? maybe it hurts now. There's so much emotion wrapped around these appointments that we've really got to handle them with care, love, candor, all of those spaces. Like Kristy like how is Kristy, put that in your head, what will Kristy do? How Kristy handle this this communication?

 

And how can your team support you in getting the best results and outcome for your patients? And Kristy, you and I were just chatting right before this and really talking about like the triage, incoming call, because we always say everything, right? Everything starts with the call. But how can that, in your opinion, Kristy, how can the front office team member taking that phone call, how can they support?

 

the back office dental assistant's hygienist doctor in that appointment. What's that first step look like for them to truly support this patient in getting the best care possible?

 

Kristy (07:47)

I love how you talked about the limited exam in the very beginning and opportunity. think number one, that's where we need to go. And also you mentioned about supporting them. They need us. And many times, I mean, you've been in the practice just like I have. You've been an assistant too when that limited exam has messed up your day and it just, you know.

 

Again, it maybe didn't make for a real positive day, but truly I think taking a step back and looking at it a little bit differently, really we all got into dentistry at the heart of it for some reason to care for other people. And yes, while it may mess up our day, those people truly are the ones that need us, probably the most, right? And so taking that step back and putting that frame of mind,

 

when that phone call comes in. And like you said, also triaging it, right? Sometimes it truly isn't the emergency that the patient thinks it is. So having a set protocol or questions that we can ask on the front, you know, I'll share with you. I love the, a scale of one to 10, how bad is it hurting today? And on that same scale of one to 10, you know, have you taken anything for it and where does it land when you take something on that same scale?

 

Because if they're at a nine for pain, but they take something and it subsides to a five, I may have a little bit of time to get them in and not necessarily mess up my schedule, right? But if it's a nine and nothing's helping, know, yeah, we got to find the best, worst, worst, best time, however you say that, to put them in. But really, it's an opportunity to make a difference for them and truly do what we-

 

Tiffanie (09:34)

I'm sorry.

 

Kristy (09:44)

What we love to do is care for people, right? And hopefully make a different outcome for them. So on the first call, we can make a difference. We can triage it to also help the best, but also take great care of the patient.

 

Tiffanie (09:58)

Absolutely. Yeah, I agree. And that triage you guys I would I would create I mean, I have them we can send them to you [email protected] just ask us for them. I would create an intake card, an intake form. And what I used to do actually, when I was in the in the front office at my dental practice, I had it on like a sticky note or a card, it was laminated and it was up by my computer so that I would ask those questions and what I would do and what I encourage team members to do.

 

is to throw it into the notes section of the appointment. So how long has it hurt? Like Kristy said, on a scale of one to 10, what would you rate your pain today? Are you taking anything for it over the counter or otherwise? Have you ever had this looked at before? Is this the first time that this has occurred? And really, and what is it? What area of the mouth? What is happening? What are your symptoms?

 

And then now we can, that's a triage to be able to say, okay, where does this appointment go? I do have to say there are so many practices, so many dentists that reach out and they're like, Tiff, Kristy, Kiera, Dana, Britt, like on my schedule is nuts. And I can think of a doctor in specific that one of our first calls, he's like, Tiff, I have like 10 limited appointments a day.

 

And my if you called me today to schedule my limited availability is two weeks out. And I was like, what? That's wild. Like there's I have so many questions right now. Like, why are patients not getting treatment done? Are these new patients? It's so many questions like that is wild to me. And that's the extreme but I definitely have doctors who are like, hey, I've got I've got limited emergency exams air quotes there if you're listening in the car that are coming in and it's like, well, I had a filling done a week ago and it's still high. Okay.

 

we didn't triage then to figure out what the actual quote unquote emergency is. That's an office visit y'all. Like that's a, you know what, great, let's get you in where we can to get that adjusted. But I'm saving this spot here for someone who's in pain because they have a toothache, right? And I get you, I hear you team members, a high filling is going to cause pain.

 

Yes, get them in. Don't make them wait a week. Don't make them wait two weeks. Get them in. But the patient who calls if their face is swollen or their tooth has fractured or they just got into an accident.

 

I had a kid that fell at baseball practice and knocked his tooth out or broken. These, guys, how are we getting these patients in? So being able to triage that and asking the right questions ahead of time is gonna help you to manipulate the schedule accurately and really, like Kristy said, get those patients in where they need to be seen. And I have oftentimes myself taken phone calls that a patient is like...

 

You don't understand, I gotta get in and I'm like, okay, great. Like, let's talk through this. Let's let's talk about what you've got going on. And I'm like, okay, like it's 355. And you're all you're gonna survive. Let's get you in at 8am. Let's get you in at 9am with the doctor, we're going to be ready for you. We're going to be able to do treatment, we're going be able to do something to get you out of pain tomorrow.

 

let's get you in in the morning, right? Because it's like, okay, on the scale of I know dental emergencies, the person calling me doesn't have that same scale. And so to them, what they are experiencing is massive. But when the grand scheme of things to ask a team to stay late, probably not, and you can survive until tomorrow morning, right? So you get to triage these things and make the best schedule for you all.

 

and then also prep the team, you guys. I mentioned at the beginning that I'm putting all of those things in the appointment notes because I then want my dental assistant to be able to say, my gosh, Kristy.

 

Kristy (13:37)

Thank

 

Tiffanie (13:49)

Come on back, like let's get you taken care of. And then on the walk even, used to, as a dental assistant, I'd be like, Kristy, gosh, how are you feeling it? From the notes here, it looks like that upper right tooth is really bothering you. How are you doing? And I'm sitting Kristy down and I'm putting her bib on and I'm like, tell me more about it. It looks like you're taking ibuprofen and it's kind of reducing it. Have you tried anything else? Like now we're in conversation and Kristy, how does it feel on the other side to be like, my gosh, great.

 

They already, they took the information yesterday and now we're actually, we're in conversation about it. And Kristy, from your point of view, how does that conversation utilizing the information, which caveat you guys, if your front office team is putting the information in there and you're not using it, they're gonna stop putting it in there. And then you're gonna be upset that it's not in there. So make sure you're using it. But Kristy, from the patient standpoint and from your point of view, your perspective, how do you feel that conversation?

 

lands for the patient in respect to going back to what we talked about earlier with the communication. How does that help that open that space in those lines?

 

Kristy (14:54)

Yeah, I love that you bring that up because it is a true opportunity to make a huge difference and it really does elevate the patient's level of trust and we have to remember that those patients coming in on emergency are probably even a little higher level of anxiety than just the normal dental patient, right? Almost every person coming to the dental office, even if they don't mind it, have some level of anxiety.

 

And your limited exams or your limited emergency patients definitely probably are ratcheted up another level. being heard is huge in, you know, diminishing that anxiety and, or at least lessening it, right? And then just elevating that level of trust so that when you guys do diagnose something, figure out what's going on.

 

they're more likely to say yes to the treatment because you validated them, you heard them. How many times do we call the doctor's office, because we have to get in for a sore throat, and you go through every person and you think, why did I just tell the last five people? Because nobody listened to me. Everybody walked in and said the same thing. So I agree with you, Tiff, that is so huge. And I'm gonna even like maybe plant another seed of opportunity that if ever,

 

We talk about handoffs all the time with our clients, right? If ever you can have a new patient limited come in and the admin team walks them back and hands it off and gives them that information, wow, knock it out of the park. They're already like, whoa, this is very different than I've ever experienced. And they listened from the first phone call, right?

 

Tiffanie (16:41)

Yeah, yeah, I love that that elevated experience is what we're always after. And it's that concierge style. I know. I just got back from vacation. So it's super fresh for me and everybody. My boyfriend works for a company that is an incredible company and they have these trips that you can earn. And he he earns them. He's an incredible worker. And these trips are just incredible. And there I was sitting with someone and he said, gosh, it's so cool.

 

companies don't do this. Companies don't do things like this. Like he's like, my company got me the Calm app for a year. And I was like, well, bro, I love the Calm app and that $80. Like I hear, I hear why that would be great. But side note to that, you're right. Companies don't do this as like a bonus structure as an incentive, right. But what actually sticks out to me is not just the trip, right, because we can get myself

 

Kristy (17:15)

Just what?

 

Tiffanie (17:32)

to London somehow, some way I can get myself to London. What I can't and won't do is go the extra mile to have a tour agency right there scheduling everything. At my beck and call, I had someone that would tell me what the schedule was. The concierge members would schedule dinners for us. The show that I wanted to see, I could tell them to schedule it. That's the level.

 

of difference for me, because we can get ourselves anywhere, but going on a vacation like that, that the company set up so many spaces that you don't have to think about anything, is what makes these trips exciting to me, right? Yes, I acknowledge they're really cool, but what's cool about them is the level of service that we get at every step of the way.

 

Dental offices are on every corner, sometimes two or three in the same parking lot, you guys. Your concierge, your level of service that you're providing to the patients is what makes it stick. That's what you're here for and that's what's gonna make you feel the best. So I totally agree. What can we do for these patients to level it up that much more? And really to maximize those appointments, I know from...

 

me saying it from Kristy saying like do these things it sounds like more but it actually decreases the amount of time spent because you've you've quickly and easily created a relationship with a human and they're ready to then move forward to the next step they trust you the relationship is there they're hearing you because they felt heard and they're ready to push forward so even that concierge style on that first phone call and maybe even saying like gosh you know what

 

We've got this space to look at. I have an idea. What if we bring you in and we look at everything with a high focus on this area because my gut says if this is happening there, this isn't the only spot that's going to be troublesome. And I would rather give us the opportunity to catch it ahead and be proactive than wait for another call like this where you're in pain. So let's get you scheduled and let's get you scheduled for

 

a full exam and x-rays with a high focus on this area. I've just converted a limited exam into a comp exam. That's maximizing an emergency appointment. If I didn't convert it over the phone, dental assistant, hygienist, whoever's getting this limited exam, we're doing the same thing. Hey, I have an idea. Let's maximize your time here.

 

Let's be proactive and let's make sure there's nothing else in there that's going to pop up like this because I don't think you want to be in pain like this again, I venture to say. Let's make sure that everything else is taken care of as well with a high focus on this today. So making sure we're maximizing your time, the patient's time and your time and creating more value out of a very seemingly simple appointment. But it takes knowing what the patient is coming in for.

 

passing that information off, passing that information off to the doctor correctly, and making sure that everything that we're getting from the patient, all that information is being used. That's how you make those appointments maximized and how you efficiently and effectively use your time wisely. You guys know, if you've listened to anything at all, Kara always says, efficiency is my jam. It will be on my headstone, on my grave. That is locked in stone.

 

Kristy (21:00)

you

 

Tiffanie (21:04)

Listen to me when I save. This is how I personally have saved time and built stronger relationships very quickly with my patients in office and watched and trained practices to do it forever. So build that protocol and you guys, doctors, that protocol of information, the triage that we're gathering, it's based on the information that you want.

 

when you're gonna sit down and talk to that patient. What are the questions you are going to ask that patient that they can gather, your support team can gather the information ahead of time and give it to you, saving you that time and you can jump into relationship and diagnosis. What are those things that you want to know? Allow them to build that intake form, that triage form.

 

team members, support the doctor in utilizing that form, and support the whole team in scheduling properly based off that triage, and that's gonna be huge for you. And if you schedule optimally, you know what you're scheduling for, you guys, can probably even pop in some same day treatment very frequently, very often because you're already prepped. As a dental assistant, Kristy, there were so many times where I'd see an emergency, and I'm like, or I'd see an emergency of a patient that had been in and had a...

 

filling or a crown or whatever diagnosed on that tooth already. So I already had a pack ready to go so that when Doc confirmed what that treatment was, even a new patient saying this is my pain, like as a dental assistant, I'm like, okay, these are probably the two, three things that he's potentially diagnosing. Let me have these things prepped and ready for quick grab in case we can move forward with treatment today. And then I'm talking to my patient about that. Like, gosh, you know what?

 

Typically when I see this, I already know, I know what the options are, right? Typically when we see this, I usually see doctors say things like this.

 

I'm preheating and prepping that patient for what the doctor may come in and say. Again, doctors building that relationship. That's that co-diagnosis space. And dental assistants, do not do yourselves the disservice of thinking that you can't do that. It is not just for hygiene. Hygienists cannot diagnose. You cannot diagnose. But both of your positions can co-diagnose and support the patient and the doctor in moving forward with treatment.

 

So triage, make sure you've got something really easy for them to utilize. Implement it, get your hand off straight, you guys. Probably practice them, I love role playing those. And work to maximize your time by utilizing these systems, but also by saying, hey, let's get your whole mouth taken a look at today. We don't have to do everything, I don't even have to show you everything. I just need to know what's going on there and get a treatment plan so that we can move forward. I digress.

 

And I think, Kristy, I really feel like all of those spaces go straight back to the first conversation we had today of really opening up that communication and making those changes for the team, but also for the patients. And one thing I want to highlight before we finish, something I loved doing as a dental assistant for my, especially for my emergency patients, but any patients, something I loved doing, you guys, was really saying like, gosh, I know that this is rough for you, or know you've got, you know, this is

 

this might be overwhelming for you. But I want to highlight some things that are going really well. Two, one, you're here. You walked through my front doors. And my patients with the highest anxiety would cry when I would say that. I would say you're here, you're here with me. I'm not going to let you down. And I'm going to be here for the long haul. So number one, you're here. Number two, you're ready to take a proactive step. And again, I'm here for you. So just

 

Again, that relationship, being in relationship and Kristy, that goes back to like acknowledging. That's hard for a lot of patients walking through that door. It's hard. And when they're scared, gosh, I've had patients that they're like, no, I haven't been to the dentist since I was 12 and they're 42. I'm like, well, congratulations, here we are. And you've still got a lot of teeth in your mouth after 30 years. Like that's huge. So let's take a look. But Kristy.

 

I think we've given them a ton of information on how to maximize a limited exam appointment. What do you feel like if they could take one step today? Doctor might be listening to this, maybe it's Saturday or Tuesday night. What's one thing that our doctors listening today can do to get this process started for their practice?

 

Kristy (25:37)

Yeah, again, going back to what you said, really dialing into those questions and also, know, doctors remembering back when they very first started, they welcomed a lot of a limited exams, right? Like we wanted them. We used to cheer when we'd have them because we knew it was putting something in the chair and more than likely they had other things going on. So challenging them to kind of reframe it and look at it in that direction.

 

The other thing with doctors too, for limited, maybe when they come to morning huddle, they scan the schedule and see if I had to have an emergency today, where's the best time to put it? Because that's the other thing too, Tiff, when people call in and front office doesn't know where to put it and then they put them on hold forever because they gotta find somebody, identify those times, go through your questions that you would ask. And honestly, I also say doctors,

 

I know this is hard for you because you walk in the room and you kind of take charge, but be the guest in the room. Acknowledge the patient is sitting there. It'd be weird if you didn't, but then quickly turn to your assistant and let them hand off to you. Give them that space to do that. And like you said, it truly will save time because patient doesn't have to repeat themselves. And for the team members, you don't have to be afraid of leaving anything out. All you have to say is, hey,

 

May I share with Dr. Smith everything that we talked about, right? And then turn to the patient. Was there anything that I forgot or anything you want to add? Then you don't ever have to be afraid. You can feel confident. And if they speak more, so be it. You know what I mean? But those would be my tips there.

 

Tiffanie (27:23)

Yeah, I love it. And I think we wrap on that. So go do those things. Go create the best process possible for your patients and for your team. If it's working for your team, it works for your patients and your flow is great. And guess what? We hit goals and patients are happy and satisfied and teams happy. So go do all the things you guys. Thank you so much for listening. Kristy, thank you so much for being here and letting me surprise you and put you in the spotlight for so many things. So thank you for that. And you guys.

 

As always, drop us a five star review, let us know if this was great information, how much you loved it, and allow others to find it as well. Share with your friends, your coworkers, your doctors, if your team member's here, and doctors with your team members if you're a doctor here. So share with everyone, we wanna make sure that these protocols really get put into place, and if you need help with any of it, [email protected]. We are always here to help, and just so you know, when those do come in, I said it before, they do come to us consultants, so you are getting actual information, reliable.

 

And we are here to help. So thank you everyone and go have a great rest of your day.

 

Fred Heppner of Arizona Transitions is back for part 2 of his chat with Kiera! Life comes at you fast, and sometimes, it comes in the form of a surprise. Kiera and Fred talk about creating an exit strategy today for your departure from dentistry, as well as what the economics look like for moving on from a practice.

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Transcript

Kiera Dent (00:01)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and I am so excited for you to have part two of me and Fred Heppner going through associates, DSOs, how to really grow this. You guys, we had such an incredible first half of this episode. It was so long and so much information that I wanted to break it into two parts. So here's part two. I hope you enjoy. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team podcast.

 

Kiera Dent (00:24)

should people be talking

 

when they're in their 20s 30s or is it something we're like start to think about it I know Ryan and I from Dentist advisors we we talk shop about this quite often of like there I mean there are studies that show that when you retire you actually start to atrophy in life and ⁓ there isn't as much of a purpose and so we talk often of like how can we continue that

 

mental stamina, the things that are going to fulfill us, whether it's working or something else of philanthropy, like whatever is going to keep you going as a human, whether you're working in the chair or you're not, I think is important. So that's I was curious of like, really probably connecting with you three to five years before we think we might retire, but with the caveat of, hey, if something were to happen to me, what would kind of be my exit strategy? your like death list like I do, like if I die, this is what's going to happen. It's creepy, but it's awesome.

 

Fred Heppner (01:15)

No, it's, it's creepy and it is awesome. And at the same time, it's a really good conversation to have because if we're three to five years out, then one of the first things to do is say, okay, so what's going to happen if you're not here? And that carries on to the discussion we had earlier. So once the discussion about, what do want to do when you, when you retire or you stop practicing dentistry, then the questions start coming up. What about the economics?

 

Kiera Dent (01:27)

Mm-hmm.

 

Fred Heppner (01:44)

So in any... Yep, absolutely.

 

Kiera Dent (01:44)

I was just going to say, like, is it sell? Is it DSO? it? And also, I mean, this

 

to me also, I think might exponentially accelerate some people's plans because the DSOs are hot and it's like 10x EBITDA. That might accelerate your retirement or your sell because you're on a wave right now that who knows if in the next 20, 30, 40 years we'll be there. Fred, I'm super curious, like, how is this whole DSO model maybe shifting it for transitions? Or is it? I'm curious.

 

Fred Heppner (02:13)

It is, it's shifted quite a bit, but what it's shifted is a real desire for dentists to be able to sell their businesses and release the management responsibility and to have somebody else take that over. 15, 20. Yeah. I just want to do, I just want to do dentistry. I don't want to manage a business. I don't want to manage people. Um, I don't want to run the company. I want to be able to practice my trade. Well,

 

Kiera Dent (02:22)

you

 

The dream for every business owner. ⁓

 

Exactly.

 

Fred Heppner (02:43)

I can tell you that in the last 15, 20 years, it's certainly exploded in dentistry and not in a bad way. And here's why. Dentists graduating from dental school today need a place to work. The banks that loan money to dentists to buy dental practices are looking for dentists that have a couple years experience in dentistry. They have a production track record. The banks can see what it is that the dentist can do. Chair aside.

 

a good credit score and some liquidity, usually 8 to 10 % of the purchase price of the business that they're looking at in cash. So one of the things to consider is graduating dentists should be able to make the minimum payments on their debt, on their student loans, on what debt they have, and begin to put money away as quickly as possible to gain some liquidity. So as we look at the equation of

 

what DSOs are doing, they're providing them with a place to work. Because as dentists come out, I mean, the majority of dental practices that I work with, maybe you can echo this or discuss it, are just single dentist practices. Right, they don't have a, somebody called it a plus one at some point time, and I thought, okay, that's decent. So you have the dentistry, but there's the ability to bring somebody on maybe one or two days a week. Well, that doesn't,

 

Kiera Dent (03:44)

Mm-hmm.

 

Totally same.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Fred Heppner (04:09)

That doesn't feed a hungry young dentist coming out of dental school who really has a lot of debt and wants to begin to work and develop a way to reduce that debt. They're looking for four days a week, five. They might have a quality of life thing where they just want to work three tens and be off Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. That's okay. But the point is, is that most private practices don't have the capacity to be able to bring on a full-time dentist and feed them right away and keep them very busy. The DSOs, corporate dentistry,

 

Kiera Dent (04:19)

Right.

 

Fred Heppner (04:39)

have offices that can provide that place. So essentially, if a dentist comes out of school and begins to work, they may very well work for one of the corporate DSOs, which gives them experience. It gives them the ability to work five days a week. It gives them the ability to practice in what I call civilian dentistry out of dental school. And it gives them the opportunity to be able to see what it's really like. I can tell you, Kiera, that 15, I think 15 years ago,

 

Kiera Dent (04:57)

Mm-hmm.

 

Fred Heppner (05:08)

the most popular phone call I would get on my phone line was, hey, we just got 50 million from a private equity firm. We're starting a DSO, but we're different. And we want to buy practices from you because we heard you're good. And I just tell them, great, thanks very much. Get in line, register on my website. And when an opportunity comes up, I will email to you like I do everybody else the opportunity. Because most of my clients call and say, I...

 

Kiera Dent (05:17)

you

 

Fred Heppner (05:34)

Hard no to a DSO. I'm a private practitioner. I've got a legacy practice and I want to sell to another private dentist Okay, so that was the most popular second most popular call was I'm sick of working for a company find me a practice to buy Now it's shifted More so do I hear I'm sick of working for somebody else find me a private practice to buy I'm ready to go The the DSO calls have filtered off of it and I don't know that that's a global

 

Kiera Dent (05:48)

Mm-hmm. ⁓

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Fred Heppner (06:03)

representation of the DSOs starting to slow their buying and really focus on the profitability of the offices they have to really maintain the profitability due to higher interest rates. Maybe they're slowing down their buying. Who knows? The interesting thing about it is that it's somewhat of a closed loop in DSO work. You really can't get into and find out exactly what everybody is doing unless you're member of their organizations, which is fine. And I respect that.

 

Kiera Dent (06:12)

Yeah.

 

Fred Heppner (06:32)

private information, but it begs the question. And ultimately, if a dentist is looking to buy their own practice, eventually they're going to need those one to two years experience, liquidity, good credit score, in order for them to go to one of the commercial banks and say, I want to buy a practice and let me get a practice to buy and then we'll put it together. Okay? So I can tell you that private practice is alive and well.

 

Kiera Dent (06:55)

Mm-hmm.

 

Fred Heppner (07:02)

very bullish on the individual dentist who's out there still practicing and doing quite well. I can also tell you that those kinds of doctor to doctor transitions are extremely successful. The idea is some people who look at a transition like that would think, my gosh, the dentist leaves, all the patients will leave. They'll go somewhere else, they'll go to other practices. Well, if that was true, let's carry that forward. If that was true,

 

Kiera Dent (07:14)

Mm-hmm.

 

No.

 

Fred Heppner (07:28)

then that would mean that the loans that the dentist used to buy the practice would go in default, would they not? Because if all the patients left, there would be no revenue and they'd have to fold up camp and see you later, right? The default rate on dental practice loans still over the last 15, 20 years and even recently is 40 basis points. 100 basis points is 1%. 40 basis points is four tenths of 1%. So if you follow the math,

 

Kiera Dent (07:33)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Fred Heppner (07:58)

The default rate is less than half of 1 % on the billions of dollars that are loaned by banks for dentists to buy practices. They don't fail. Okay.

 

Kiera Dent (08:08)

Totally. They don't and they're such a

 

good investment. I think that that's why so many people like, that's why I think DSOs are buying up practices. ⁓ And I think that that's where so many private practice owners now, I would say I've watched where it used to be legacy practices and there's still legacy practice doctors who do not want to sell to a DSO. Like when they're there, they want to sell doctor to doctor, they want to bring in an associate, they want to bring in partners. I think

 

By default, dentistry tends to be a more humanistic, ⁓ very relationship model ⁓ versus I still think though, right now DSOs, you're right. I don't think people are getting as many calls. ⁓ But what I will say is my doctors are probably getting 20 to 30 emails every month from a DSO interested in buying their practice. So they are getting it as private practice owners. And so I think that that's where, ⁓ like I said, some people within the last eight years bought a practice as a private practice.

 

the DSOs, they were profitable. were within the metrics that the DSO wanted. And it just made sense. was like, I'm going to get 10x EBITDA on this. My EBITDA is great. No private party is going to pay me what this DSO is going to pay me. And while yes, I'd love it to maintain a legacy practice, I'm in my 30s and I could basically have retirement today. mean, there's more risk selling out because they have a lot of it in their stocks and there's a whole ⁓ game around that.

 

I think that that's where maybe some of the younger generation might be looking at transitions sooner than I think the more senior population of dentistry is. think that they're starting to be the shift and that's where I'm very curious of like, maybe conversations need to be had sooner. Maybe because DSOs are aggressive on the emails to the dentist. Like it is wild and they are sexy offers to them that are not always true. And that creeps me out too, because they're hearing a number. Like I had a doctor and he had a DSO.

 

Fred Heppner (09:49)

Yep. Yep.

 

Kiera Dent (10:04)

come to him and they said, Hey, we're going to give you 5 million. And he's like, here, it seems like a great deal. And I said, yeah, but you're going to do 5 million next year just in your own production. So that's actually a bad deal because you're already going to make that without selling to them and having to work for them for the next five to 10 years or like three to five is usually what their requirement is. So again, I think that this is where it's like, how do we cut through that noise to know when I do transition? Because I think people are getting asked to transition from private practice.

 

sooner. You're right, they go work at the DSO, they go to some of those bigger corporate practices to get the experience, then they go buy their private practice, and then it really is, or they do a startup. And then it's pretty aggressive because I think Wall Street's pretty hot right now and private equity is very, very luring, but they do have to hit certain requirements to join DSOs.

 

Fred Heppner (10:53)

Yeah. There are tons of verticals that people are getting into, the private equity is getting into, you're right. There's a ton of money at it. You know, I would tell you that the devil is in the details. It may very well be that there are transitions that occur where a DSO or a corporation acquires the assets of a private practice and the dentist stays and works back in the office. And that transition works swimmingly well for the dentist who sells for the DSO.

 

Kiera Dent (11:02)

Mm-hmm.

 

Fred Heppner (11:21)

And ultimately everything works out fine. There are others that don't and they're, they're out there. And I think what you mentioned earlier is, you know, I could get 5 million from my practice. Well, why would you, you will be able to make that in, your earnings in 2.3 years, whatever it might be, whatever the math pencils that be. But if you think about it, if it, if 10 times EBITDA is their offering price, what are, what are the details? How much cash at closing?

 

Kiera Dent (11:38)

Right.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Fred Heppner (11:49)

Is there a work back or a work back arrangement where you will be paid to be the dentist? And what is your compensation? What are the benefits that you would receive? And what is the term of that work back arrangement? You're right. It's creeping up now more into five years. 15, 20 years ago, was maybe, you know, stay on one or two years and we're good. There's a claw back. There's a hold back provision that holds back part of the purchase price. And the dentist has to meet the

 

Kiera Dent (12:04)

Mm-hmm.

 

Yeah.

 

Fred Heppner (12:17)

has to meet certain metrics from the trailing 12 months to be able to get that back. Well, let's pretend. Let's pretend that the DSO comes in and sets up the practice and nothing changes and the business continues to grow and develop because there's more marketing promotion and advertising. There's better cost control. There's just better stuff going on and that works. Well, what if it doesn't? What if all of a sudden the company comes in and says, we're changing these policies?

 

You were Delta Dental Premier, we're jumping into PPOs because we've got really good reimbursement rates on these 12 PPO contracts. Well, if that reimbursement rate drops from fee for service, does that hinder the doctor to be able to generate the income necessary for that hold back to be acquired in the next two to three years? And then there's equity. You mentioned that they offer a stock in the company to be able to ultimately participate in a

 

Kiera Dent (13:09)

Mm-hmm.

 

Fred Heppner (13:15)

recapitalization should that happen? Well, it'd be really interesting. You're going to love this one. I know you're going to love this one. So for any of your listeners, any of your A-Team clients, if they get approached by a DSO and they look at it and they think it's really, really good, have somebody look at it. What you will hear typically is you really don't need an advisor. You don't need an attorney. We've got all the contracts ready to go. You can come.

 

Kiera Dent (13:35)

Mm-hmm.

 

Lies. Lies.

 

Fred Heppner (13:44)

Exactly. You can just take all of this and we'll be good. Well, trust but verify. And ultimately a good team would be able to review these. I would be glad to review. I review paperwork all the time from dentists that are looking to transition. And if there's an equity piece in that offer, I turn around and contact the DSO on behalf of the client. And I say, we'd like to see your financials.

 

Kiera Dent (14:08)

Absolutely.

 

Fred Heppner (14:11)

What do you mean? Well, you're asking my client to acquire stock in your company in lieu of cash at closing. yeah, that's part of the deal. I need to see your financials. I need to advise my client on whether or not you have a healthy company and whether or not my client's going to be at risk by taking stock in your company. Well, nobody's ever asked us that. Well, I am. And doesn't it make sense? We've just provided to you tax returns, profit and loss statements, but sing along if you know the words, balance sheets, W-2, production reports, everything on the business.

 

Kiera Dent (14:21)

Yeah.

 

things.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Fred Heppner (14:39)

And yet you're not willing to provide the other. Just provide the other. Show us that your business is solvent. Show it that it is something that my client would like to receive in stock. So, mon bro.

 

Kiera Dent (14:50)

And there's strategy

 

for tax around that too. there are benefits to having stock rather than all the cash at closing for your total dollar amount when you want to retire, but only if that stock actually is valuable.

 

Fred Heppner (15:05)

Pays back. Correct. Good. And that

 

is so brilliant. You see, you're good looking, you're smart, and that's a rare combination today. So, so, but think about it. You just mentioned something that people really don't think. If, if I have a practice and they give me 1.5 million chopped up into the ways that we've mentioned, and I have $200,000 worth of equity in the company, what if that $200,000 is half of 1 %? Well, when they recapitalize, I get half of 1 % of what proceeds, right?

 

Kiera Dent (15:09)

Thank you.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

I love it. It's such a...

 

Fred Heppner (15:35)

So map it out. Yeah, map it out. mean, can

 

you sell your practice twice? sometimes yes, sometimes no.

 

Kiera Dent (15:43)

And there's so many sticky pieces around it. And that's where I feel like it's just a, think this is where people get leery to do it. However, I think like there are some, you said, that go really, really well, but agreed. And when I look at this people like Kiera, like I thought about that doctor and I was like, so sweet. You're going to five mil. That's your 10 X. You're going to produce 5 million. Your overhead right now is sitting at a 50 % overhead. So right now you're taking 2.5. Let's say you do get a $5 million check.

 

you give me 10 taxes, it's barely over your 2.5, which you're already going to get next year. So like, yes, next year, you still have to pay taxes because you're at a 50 % overhead. So you will still get a small amount more of cash to you. But there's a lot of strategy that goes into that 2.5, pending upon what you need when you invest that, like for every million, it's about like on average, if it's in the stock market, about 35,000 right now is like a very, very, very loose number to like estimate your financial future. But I'm like,

 

you throw 2.5 into the stock market right now, we'll high five, you're making about 100K a year. Like that's just to me, those are the things that I feel you need to be really smart about to make sure that your practices are assets and not liabilities and something that really will provide the retirement for the work you've put in rather than it just feeling good in the moment, but not really giving the life you want.

 

Fred Heppner (16:59)

You know, excellent point. And what you also said earlier, just in passing was, what dentists could buy my practice. can't sell to a private dentist. I've got to sell to a DSO. ⁓ surprise, surprise. That's a myth. There are dentists who would, I can tell you right now, if you could give me your client's number, I'll buy her practice. Well, yeah, well, I mean, that's gonna, that's gonna pencil. So the, the point that I would make is know that

 

Kiera Dent (17:12)

It is a myth.

 

Right? I know, me too. I'm like, actually, actually I would.

 

Fred Heppner (17:29)

Dentists that are out there who are looking to buy really profitable practices and can meet the production goals. So there's an important aspect there. Your client's doing two and a half million in profit, five million in productivity on her own. If a person coming in to buy that won't be able to quite meet those production numbers, they may hire the client back for a year or two. The bank may want them to make sure that there's some kind of arrangement where they have some help.

 

But if a bank is looking at a practice that has that kind of liquidity and profitability, they'll gladly loan the money to the dentist if other measures are there because they know it's going to be paid back. So I want to dispel the myth that big practices with large productivity and big profitability are excluded from private practitioners being able to buy them. It's not true. Is it? Yeah.

 

Kiera Dent (18:10)

Mm-hmm.

 

I agree. They get nervous because of the debt,

 

but I have somebody that I know that just bought into a $2.5 million is how much they had to bring to the table. Plus they have their student loan debt, plus they have their house debt and they were able to do it to buy into a practice. so I'm like, I think let's not assume that that's the only route. think figure out what you want and there is a buyer based on the outcome you want. I think Fred, I want to switch gears because I want to ask some questions about associates.

 

because I think we've kind of gone through like private practice. There's so many things like make sure you're taken care of, make sure you know where you're going. But now I want to switch gears because I think this is something I get asked all the time. And so selfishly again, welcome to curious therapy with Fred. I want to know all the pieces. This is my podcast that you get to be a part of. No, it's for all of you. ⁓ we get asked often, how do you set up a great associate buy-in? So like, how do I buy these people and how do I tether them in? I think one of the greatest, I would say

 

Fred Heppner (19:06)

I'm listening.

 

Kiera Dent (19:19)

stressors and like blind spots in practices and the thing that can really hurt a practice is when they have an associate that associate leaving. ⁓ And so they want to like golden handcuff these associates, but they want it to be good for both parties. What are some of those associate transitions to retain associates to get them in as partners? Is it a good idea? Is it not a good idea? And I think like we can wrap on this because I, I'm super curious of like what you recommend to help with that transition.

 

Fred Heppner (19:45)

The

 

capacity for the business volume has to be there. You've got to have, not only are you working, but there's this phantom practice out there that you can't get to as the provider. And you need somebody to be able to get to that. So bringing on an associate to get to that phantom practice immediately creates incremental income, which is, to the owner of the business, very liquid.

 

Kiera Dent (20:03)

Mm-hmm.

 

Fred Heppner (20:07)

The cost associated with treating extra people during the course of the day is the associate's compensation and variable cost supplies in lab. And if you're ⁓ providing can-to-can technology and your lab costs are very low, but you're producing crowns in a day, for example, and using that kind of technology, then the cost associated with treating every incremental patient and creating that revenue is very low.

 

we're suggesting that the team in place can handle the extra work. We don't have to hire an extra assistant or hire an extra administrative person. So given those things.

 

⁓ One of the best transition plans, in my opinion, is one that has time built into it. The associate has to develop some traction. They have to generate some productivity. They have to show that they can produce the numbers. But more importantly, the outcomes are good. The treatment outcomes are successful. The patients are adapting to them. The team connects with them. This is a good relationship. As an aside, really quick, when you mention relationship business in dentistry,

 

I think DSOs traditionally are a transactional business. They're really focusing on the transaction, right? Private practice focuses on the relationship. Not to say that corporate dentistry doesn't focus on relationships. They're focused more so on the transactions. I might get ridiculed for that statement, but that's what I see. And that's my opinion.

 

Kiera Dent (21:19)

I would agree.

 

Sure,

 

sure.

 

Fred Heppner (21:36)

So back to the associate, need the associate to develop some traction. And essentially that traction comes from being in the office, seeing patients, working with the team, and ultimately getting feedback along the way. And I think that's a one to two year cycle. Will you know as a practitioner and owner of the business within the first one or two months, if the associate is working two or three days a week or four days a week, will you know, do they get along with the patients? Do they get along with the team? Yes. Will you know about treatment outcomes?

 

Kiera Dent (21:40)

Mm-hmm.

 

Fred Heppner (22:05)

To some degree, yes. So early on, you'll know if this is cut bait, this is not going to work. Or yes, this person's fitting in great, primarily because they were vetted. So quick, quick retract back to how do you hire them? Go through a long process of vetting. Don't just take the first one that appears. Get to know them, make sure they're going to integrate well. I see a lot of associate plans.

 

work real well when the dentist knows the dentist owner knows the associate coming on board from some past experience. Great example is the dentist associate grew up in town, did an internship kind of in the office as a sterilization tech, kind of worked in the office, found out that dentistry was their passion, went to college for undergrad, went to dental school for dental degree and came back to the town to work for that dentist. Right. Okay, good. So somebody you know, ⁓

 

Kiera Dent (22:38)

Mm-hmm.

 

Totally.

 

Fred Heppner (23:00)

son of doctor, owner's best friend. So there's history there. You know, the quality of the individual. Okay. So once traction is developed during the part of that associate agreement, there's some discussion about ownership and building an understanding of how the practice works so that when time comes to be a partner and buy in, there's already some traction. There's already some traction so that if the person elects to buy the seller out,

 

in a couple years, then they can switch roles. But there has to be some traction. One of the things that's really perilous is thinking about jumping into a practice and being a partner right away. If you want to practice and you do two million a year, hygiene does 500, you do 1.5. I'm going to come in and I want to be a partner of yours today because I've heard how great your practice is. And you have the physical plant capacity, you have the patient capacity, and I can step right in.

 

If I pay you half of the value of your practice today to buy in, we can split up the medicine and supplies and drugs. can split up the equipment. We can split up the office equipment. ⁓ we can split up all the operatories, but how do we sort out the patients? Because come Monday morning, say we close tomorrow, Friday, come Monday morning, I need to have in my schedule, the ability to generate half of the revenue in the business so that I can pay myself and I can pay.

 

to having bought in. that make sense? And that doesn't really happen easily when somebody just freshly wants to buy in as a partner. So fast forwarding to partnerships, which I hope we get a chance to talk a little bit about today, that associate has to be in that process, in that business for a period of time. And that traction needs to get up so that they've got productivity under their belt. And again, going back to what we talked about about banks,

 

Kiera Dent (24:32)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

 

I agree.

 

Fred Heppner (24:59)

they wanna see that that productivity is there, that they'll be able to generate it because they wanna make sure that they get the loan paid for. And a really good associate agreement has, in my opinion, good restrictive covenants, not to compete, not to solicit patients or staff. ⁓ In some states, that's not allowed. The FTC voted that associate agreements or employment agreements should not have restrictive covenants, but there's no legislation yet that has actually mandated that.

 

Kiera Dent (25:05)

Totally.

 

Fred Heppner (25:26)

So keep in mind that it's probably not appropriate to think that you'll be able to limit somebody's ability to work. Now for them to essentially buy your practice, for example, and you as a, agreement have a restrictive covenant that you will agree to that's different because somebody paid you good and valuable consideration money for you not to compete against them because they bought your business in an employment agreement. It's a little different.

 

Kiera Dent (25:49)

Mm-hmm.

 

Great.

 

Fred Heppner (25:56)

So if a dentist comes and works for another dentist who owns the business, and after a couple of months, it's just not gonna work out, they're not gonna have enough connection with the patient base to solicit patients or solicit staff or the team. They won't. So would it matter if there was a restrictive covenant in that initial agreement? Probably not.

 

because after a couple months, if they've alienated patients and alienated staff and they're not very good at dentistry, you want them out of there anyway, forget about the restrictive covenant, they could go work for somebody else close by. It's probably the same thing that'll happen.

 

Kiera Dent (26:36)

I think it's really wise because I think so many offices hire an associate, but they're so scared to move them along in two months. I think that was wise advice you listed. It is so much easier to move them on in two months than it is to keep them for six months, eight months, 10 months, and then realize their dentistry or their team connection or their patient connections not there. so ⁓ it's, it's be very intentional within those first 90 days and make sure that this will be a long-term fit. ⁓ You can see it in two months.

 

Fred Heppner (27:01)

So how does this,

 

you can, I'm sure you can. How does this sound? For the first six months of an associate agreement, maybe you don't have quite a good background, deep background about that individual, but you feel that they would be good in the practice. They come recommended by their instructors at university, at dental school. was highly, someone was highly recommended. How about a single page,

 

six month agreement that says you come to work for me, I will pay you this. And if you want to go, you can go. If I feel you need to go, I'm going to release you. It's an at will agreement, no restrictive covenants, nothing in it that locks anybody down. Because again, what I mentioned earlier is how much traction can you generate really in one or two, three, four months, because you'll know after four or five months that this is somebody really want to lock in at six months, develop a really strong, well-written attorney reviewed.

 

employment agreement that has restrictive covenants that has specific on how to redo cases in case they need to be done at the end of the employment agreement. Right. What do you think? I mean, does that give that give the opportunity?

 

Kiera Dent (28:08)

Sure.

 

I think,

 

I mean, I like it. think that the devil's advocate in me would say, I'm not sure that the ⁓

 

millennial Gen Z generation coming through would say yes to six months. I think that they're looking for more security. They're looking for more guarantees. They come in with a lot more debt and a lot more risk that I am really curious. As a business, I think it's freaking brilliant. As on the other side, I'm curious, would you be able to get candidates that would want to come or is it too risky of an offer?

 

Fred Heppner (28:43)

You mean,

 

yeah, do you mean the associate dentist coming on board is thinking more about themselves rather than the practice?

 

Kiera Dent (28:52)

I think with the associate offers that are given currently, ⁓ I think agreed. It does show that they're thinking about it, but I also feel for a practice making sure that they're competitive with offers. I don't love having to be ⁓ like with hygienists. I don't want to have to go chase them, but you have to at least be competitive with other people in the market. So I think I agree with you. I just feel for practices making sure that maybe

 

Fred Heppner (29:05)

⁓

 

I understand what you're saying.

 

Kiera Dent (29:19)

you are so competitive with other people and offer. So you do get the candidates, but you can have some of these ideas within like that I think would make you even maybe more attractive. So maybe it's a year that we're offering, but like, Hey, in the first six months, there's no restriction. There's no nothing. We add that in in six months. So that way you are competitive with other people. Cause I think associates, they need that security and I'm watching more and more come through. I mean, they're walking out with one mil plus 2 million in debt. Like, so I think that

 

I think to be competitive with others, might need to be a possibly. This is my hallucination that could possibly just make sure you're competitive.

 

Fred Heppner (29:53)

Well, well, no, you're

 

so you're right on you're in a you're in another section of what the employment agreement might look like called compensation and benefits. I'm looking at just the period of time that you would be that a dentist would be employed in the practice to determine if it's a right fit for them and if it's a right fit for the practice and if it's a right fit for the patients and the team. Compensation can say exactly what you were saying. Now,

 

Kiera Dent (30:16)

Right.

 

Fred Heppner (30:22)

Unfortunately, it isn't the responsibility of the practice to provide for somebody who is unproven in their debt or to satisfy their lifestyle requirements. Yes, they're competing with other organizations that are offering salary, health insurance, vision, life insurance policies, all of those benefits that come along with big corporations. However,

 

It's a private practice. And the sooner I think that dentists who are coming on as associates know the intricacies and the difficulties of running a business and also the rewards that come with it, they would understand better how those arrangements are made. And I've seen compensation programs set up where it's the greater of over two weeks, a compensation per day or a percentage of a certain amount over a certain amount of productivity. So you can meet those requirements. can kind of meet.

 

Kiera Dent (31:15)

Mm-hmm.

 

Fred Heppner (31:16)

Kind of need halfway in between.

 

Kiera Dent (31:18)

Yeah, and I think that that's where I was saying of I feel like making sure that you're meeting in the middle. I love the idea of being able to protect like, you're right, like not being stuck in this with someone who's not working out and getting stuck, I think is actually something that happens all the time with associates. ⁓ And so I think like, Fred, it was such a fun like,

 

chat about us. I agree, we need to chat more partnerships because now it's like, okay, we've got these associates, we've got some ideas on it. We've heard about figuring out where we want to go and how we're going to be able to get there and needing to think about our future life and how when we need to transition, you said the three to five years, I think looking for like, what do need to do to be able to buy a practice? If I want to buy a practice, what do need to get? Then we talked about like the DSO offers coming for private practices, and how to assess that through Fred.

 

And then we moved into associates. So Fred, like that was such a like smorgasbord of topics, which I love. And I think definitely reconnecting because I think there's the next step is like, how do we bring in these associates for partners if we want them? How can we build a legacy practice? That's not necessarily just the DSO. So I'd love to get you back on the podcast and chat partnerships and like alternative transitions beyond, but gosh, Fred, such a fun podcast today.

 

Fred Heppner (32:10)

It was fun.

 

I am

 

happy to do it anytime. I appreciate what you do for dentistry. So I'll absolutely support you and be glad to do it.

 

Kiera Dent (32:36)

Thank you. Well, Fred, as we wrap up today, were there any last thoughts you had to give to the listeners? And of course, ArizonaTransitions.com, ArizonaTransitions.gmail. If you're looking to transition or associates or what do I do or hey, Fred, I just need help. But any last thoughts you have as we wrap up today?

 

Fred Heppner (32:52)

Yeah, I think

 

I tell you a funny quip that I think resonates with most people that I talk to. Dentists are excellent at curing dental disease, at diagnosing conditions and recommending treatments and working with patients to get them well. And, ⁓ coming into an event like purchasing a practice or selling a practice where they've never done it before. They don't have the experience or the education.

 

going in to understand what to do. I would encourage them to get advice and guidance from a great team. ⁓ I have a deal with my dentist. Mike Smith is brilliant. He has a practice called the biting edge here in Phoenix and he's brilliant. And he and I have an agreement. I don't do my own dentistry.

 

And he doesn't do his own practice transition stuff or practice management stuff. He relies on me to do that because they're in the middle. meet. So I want him to cure my dental conditions and make sure I'm in the optimum dental health that I could be. And I'm to make sure that I provide the services to him so that if he's looking to acquire a practice or merge an office into his, or figure out how the next plan would be for his practice growth or his transition, that he's going to sit down with me because he understands that that's my expertise and he.

 

he benefits from.

 

Kiera Dent (34:15)

Yeah, I love that. That's such a good way to look at it. Let's sit in our lanes. Let's do what we're really good at and not try to be a one-stop shop. I think that that's brilliant, Fred. And I feel like for all those looking for the transitions for what do we do? How can I do it? Reach out, Fred. I think you're a wealth of knowledge. You've been in it for a long time and just truly so grateful to have you on the podcast today.

 

Fred Heppner (34:36)

It's my pleasure. Absolutely. Have a great day. Talk to you soon. Bye here.

 

Kiera Dent (34:39)

Awesome. Thank you. And thank you,

 

Fred. Thank you, all of you. And for all of you listening, thanks for listening. And I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.

 

Kiera is joined by Fred Heppner of Arizona Transitions to talk through dental practice transitions. Their conversation includes when you should start thinking about your transition, what the economic outcomes will be any way you go, what a private indemnity group is (and how it can help), and more.

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Transcript

Kiera Dent (00:01)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera. And today I am so excited to welcome an incredible guest to our podcast, Fred Heppner. He's with Arizona Transitions. And honestly, I feel like right now in today's world, dentists need more than ever guidance and direction of like, what do we do? How do I transition my practice? What am I looking at for retirement? Do I go the DSO route? Do I do the legacy practice route? I just feel like there's so much confusion. And so trying to cut through that noise,

 

Fred is incredible. We met him and I just said, you know what? He's incredible. And so he said for him, it's whether a person is buying a dental practice or putting a dental practice up for sale, Fred truly can help you successfully navigate through that transition. He deals with complete transitions of dental offices and also practices securing a partner or an associate, which that is such a hard thing. Like, how do we do this? There's a million ways to slice and dice that pie because he's worked with so many different aspects of the dental industry. His experience allows him

 

to ensure that all parties are satisfied with the transition. So I'm super jazzed. Fred, welcome to the show today. How are you?

 

Fred Heppner (01:02)

I'm

 

doing great. Thank you, Kiera. I gotta meet this guy. Who is this guy, Fred?

 

Kiera Dent (01:06)

Well,

 

here he is, if I'm not mistaken. But truly, I'm so honored to have you on the podcast. When our team met you, they were like, Kiera, he's got to get on the podcast. And so just truly excited because like I said, this is a zone that I get excited to geek out on because we deal with it in consulting all the time. Our clients are constantly asking us like, what should we do? They want to bring on partners, they want to bring on associates, they want a retention model. ⁓ They want to know like,

 

I feel like your dental practice can be your greatest asset or your greatest burden, depending upon how you set it up. And so really being able to just dive in with you. And like I said, I think there's so much noise right now. The dentists are like, it's almost like ostrich in the sand. Like, I just don't want to even think about it. I'm going to put my head in the sand. I'm not going to pay attention. But the reality is like, let's educate, let's learn. Let's bring experts in like yourself. So that way dentists can feel more confident making the decision. I don't think it has to be scary. I don't think it's be daunting. We just need to be educated and.

 

Fred Heppner (01:41)

Yeah, I agree.

 

No.

 

Kiera Dent (02:05)

and hear wisdom and then do what feels right. So Fred, that was my intro, but anything else you want to add of how you got here or, mean, I'm just excited to riff with you today.

 

Fred Heppner (02:14)

I appreciate the opportunity and I can tell you even from what you just said back in, back in 1983, when I started in the business of dentistry, the interesting thing was I didn't hear very often, Hey, what's your transition plan? Because oftentimes dentists were really just going to build a practice and then that was going to be their retirement and they would sell their practice and retire. Financial planners were, were non-existent to a large degree. And it was early on that I heard somebody and it really resonated with me.

 

They asked a young dentist who had just taken ownership or started a practice, when are you going to hang up your hand piece? And the dentist kind of, I just got started. What do mean? When am going to hang it up? I got, you know, I got 20, 30 years here. No, no, no. The moment you take ownership of a business, you want to consider what your transition plan out would be early on so that it doesn't spring it on.

 

Kiera Dent (02:51)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Fred Heppner (03:09)

We may

 

talk here later on about, what happens if you're not there? What happens if there's an injury or disability or illness and you can't practice dentistry? Now what? And let's consider talking about that maybe later on. So early in the game, it's appropriate to have some kind of idea of some kind of transition plan. Transition plan doesn't mean I have to value my business. I have to procure a buyer act to make sure that financially qualified. I have to get a contract. I have to get a lease. That's not a transition plan. In simple, think.

 

Kiera Dent (03:21)

Yeah.

 

Fred Heppner (03:38)

The transition plan is what do you want to do when you sell your practice, when you move on from dentistry? And you know, as well as I do, you have clients who have been in dentistry and practice for 25, 30, 35, 40 years. And if they stopped doing something that they've been doing for three decades, what are they going to do with their time? And that's, that's really high on the scale of importance in a transition plan, because ultimately they're going to sit back and say,

 

Kiera Dent (03:53)

Mm hmm. Yeah.

 

Fred Heppner (04:08)

I don't know that I want to be home. I don't know that my spouse wants me to be home all day. And you have to think about these things. So it's much more than I have a practice to sell. I've got a purchase price. I have to figure out how I'm going to sell everything and my staff and my patients and so on. It's more than that. So I think in the initial phases of somebody considering what's my transition plan that can pull their head out of the sand and look at a spot and say, what do I really want to do if I

 

Kiera Dent (04:12)

Totally.

 

Fred Heppner (04:37)

If I don't do this, what will I do? And then feels a whole bunch of other questions into the play. Number one, how much am I going to make from selling my practice? What are the economic outcomes? How much in proceeds will I have after all the fees associated with selling the business and the taxes associated with paying for the proceeds? Now, what have I got left? What is that? What does that number look like? Well, I have no idea. Well, I need to find out. That's why I have a business.

 

Kiera Dent (05:05)

Mm-hmm.

 

Gosh, Fred, I am so grateful you brought this up because honestly, feel like so I don't know my financial advisor teases me all the time. He's incredible. And he's like, Kiera, you are the person that has every exit strategy. You're like, all right, so what's going to happen if this happens or what happens? And I love to play this game with my husband. I'm like, okay, so if there was a fire in our house in this location, how are we going to get out? Or if we had this, because I feel like when you have almost that North star, especially in your life of

 

Okay, this is how much I want when I wanna retire. This is when I wanna retire. This is like you said, if I want to, what am I gonna do when this doesn't, like when I'm no longer doing dentistry? Because you're right, I actually, ⁓ working at Midwestern ⁓ University in Arizona, I know a lot of dental students and I know a lot of dentists now. And ⁓ I've been gone from Midwestern for about now, about nine years. And ⁓ in those nine years, which does not seem that long, it's not even been a decade, ⁓

 

Fred Heppner (05:50)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kiera Dent (06:05)

There have been students who have gotten a disability. There have been students who have gotten cancer and can no longer practice dentistry. There are students that have already sold to DSOs. And I'm like, their life looks so different. The student I'm thinking about who ended up getting pretty sick and had to leave, thank goodness he had his ⁓ insurance on him, his disability insurance. But like when I met him,

 

there was no way that we ever would have thought like four or five years into practice. I went and saw him in his practice and now like he's not doing dentistry anymore. And so I think Fred, it's one of those things where I help him pray every dentist who's listening gets to work until they're 80, 90, however long they want to go that they get to practice their craft. but I think what you're talking about of let's think of what would I do if I couldn't do this anymore, whether by choice or whether by life, ⁓ and then be able to make decisions because I feel like

 

When you stair step it back, you're able to actually navigate today way more confidently than if you don't have a plan. And I think that gives you more security than anything else. ⁓

 

Fred Heppner (07:08)

Amen. And if your practice

 

is stable, strong, producing a good profit and you are able to not only retire debt, but start to put away for your own retirement, you are much more in a direction of control also. So retirement may not be a year or a number. It sometimes is an event because injury, disability, illness, sudden death have no discrimination. It can happen to anybody.

 

And if there isn't a plan in place for that, which I would recommend dentists look into, ⁓ if they don't have them in their community, forming private indemnity groups, disability coverage groups, where if a group of 16, 17 dentists that per oculi are in the same community and know each other and respect each other would agree that if anything were to happen, the group would get activated and it would cover the practice a day at a time on rotation for all the membership.

 

until the practitioner returns from the injury or disability or the practice is sold because the dentist is incapacitated and can't come back. As a side note, I want to mention to you that I do this for six different groups here in the Valley in Phoenix where I live. And there are anywhere from about 12 to 22 dentists in each of those groups.

 

So if you're listeners or if anybody in the A team wants to know more about forming groups, I'm happy to pay it forward, provide it for you. It's important. It's really something that dentists, we're invincible. Nothing's going to happen to us, especially when they're 30 years old and they just graduated from Midwestern and they bought their first practice and they're fired up. And it's like, they are looking at nothing other than growth, development, coaching. They're not even thinking if something were to happen to them. So.

 

Kiera Dent (08:38)

Mm-hmm.

 

hope. Right?

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Fred Heppner (08:57)

Just as an aside,

 

let's you and I make sure that we talk more. And for any dentists who want to develop those kinds of groups, it is invaluable. And there are tons of stories that I could impart to you and impart to anybody who's willing to listen about dentists that have a mishap. ⁓ Jim Jorgensen here in Phoenix ⁓ owns Squaw Peak Dental for years. He was in Vegas with his wife, Terry, midnight. They were up in the hotel room and he flatlined. He had a massive heart attack.

 

Kiera Dent (09:15)

Mm-hmm. Yep. Mm-hmm.

 

Fred Heppner (09:28)

She kept him going until the paramedics arrived. He survived. We activated the group. We covered his practice for three months. He came back, continued to practice. A year later, he sold it. So he couldn't have done that. He would have lost that asset and lost the value that that asset has on the open market if that group hadn't been in place. So.

 

Kiera Dent (09:39)

incredible.

 

Thank

 

I will. love that. And thank you for sharing that. And that's something I didn't even know existed. And I, I don't, I'm just very pro. Like, I remember when I was filling out our trust and I had to write my will and I was not very old, still like in my thirties, it was really weird. And it made me feel icky. And when you said the phrase earlier of like death, disability, illness, that has no discrimination. It hit me in my core of you're right. Like we do feel like we're invincible, but the reality is those three are hanging

 

out at any moment and we have no idea when they're going to strike us or our family or someone that we know. As icky as that is. And so I feel like it's like, let's just get, let's get prepared. Like when I had to figure out what's going to happen to me, if I ever am incapacitated and I called my brother, who's my power of attorney. I said, okay, this is what I want. Are you willing to do it? But now I don't like if it happens great. Like he knows, I know there's a plan in place and as much as I would hate for it to happen, there is a plan that's like, and I feel

 

Gosh, maybe I'm just a selfish egotistical human over here. It does give me a lot of empowerment to know that I know if something were to happen to me, things are good. And I will also say my whole team hates it, but I have an entire death plan of if Kiera Dent dies, I haven't made it so sweet that they want to kill me off. So like, that's my, that's my caveat. Like, let's not make it that good. But there's an entire plan because I realized...

 

If I don't have this plan in place, if things aren't able to be transferred quickly to people that I trust and that people need to execute on, this company would die and we would not be able to serve all the people that we have. And so as, as weird and as eerie as it is, I feel like Fred, there's so much empowerment that can happen because it's no longer scary. Just like getting an operations manual, just like getting all your systems in your practice in case someone leaves. I feel like it's the same thing for your business in your life. So Fred, like that's a great tip. And I think people should reach out and definitely connect with you.

 

Fred Heppner (11:42)

maybe

 

for another future podcast. Coming to an A-Team podcast near you,

 

Kiera Dent (11:44)

Like,

 

I mean, hey, I'm here for it.

 

Fred Heppner (11:50)

I don't know.

 

It's really important. People take it for granted. And it's interesting because the people that are in the groups that I have and sponsor just sitting back and say to themselves, why wouldn't anybody not be involved in this type of group? So good for future.

 

Kiera Dent (12:05)

That's helpful. Okay. All right. And Fred, just like, mean,

 

we'll, share it at the end too, but if people are interested, how do they connect with you? We'll just put it in the middle too. So people have the info and then of course we're going to continue on.

 

Fred Heppner (12:16)

ArizonaTransitions.com is my website. [email protected] is my email. Best way to reach you.

 

Kiera Dent (12:23)

And I'm sure people are

 

questioning, you work only in Arizona or do you work outside of Arizona just to clear that up for our listeners? Okay.

 

Fred Heppner (12:29)

Good. Time for a little backstory. So

 

back in 1983, when I started in dentistry, I was a, I was a business coach, similar to how you operate and develop business systems and coaching and training for dentists and their teams to grow and essentially develop profitable and enjoyable practices. I did that for about 20 years. And then about 22 years ago, I really saw a void in Phoenix where I live. moved here in 1995.

 

of the transition space. just didn't see dental practice transitions being done with integrity, in my opinion. They could have been, but I saw some of the aftermath because dentists would call me and say, hey, I just bought this practice. Can you help me? It's a mess. So I would go in and assist them. Well, slowly but surely, I saw an opportunity to be able to jump into the transitions realm. So I jumped deep into ⁓ classroom study and book work on how to do business evaluations correctly.

 

Kiera Dent (13:04)

Mm-hmm.

 

Fred Heppner (13:26)

the International Society of Business Analysts was my education forum. ⁓ Casey Conrad, who is brilliant, he taught me how to do business valuations correctly. And by the way, he writes the curriculum for the organizations that provide accreditation to people who want to be a business analyst. So I'm learning from the guy who teaches everybody. And then I started studying large contract negotiations.

 

Kiera Dent (13:45)

Mm-hmm. Amazing.

 

Fred Heppner (13:52)

As I developed that understanding and saw that there were things that I could contribute to, I jumped into that realm and became more of ⁓ a transition specialist here in the greater Phoenix area. Well, along the way, I came upon a group called American Dental Sales, which is a large cooperative of 40 dental practice transition specialists, 23 different companies. They cover all 50 states and they had a void in Arizona that they needed to fill. So they approached me and said, we'd like you to come on board.

 

⁓ I then met a guy named Hi Smith, who really was one of the preeminent dental practice brokers in the country. ⁓ He was in Naples, Florida. He had a place in Oregon, so he kind of commuted periodically. But Hi was very, very well regarded and still is. He's retired now. Hi was the transition specialist for the Pride Institute, a very well regarded practice management company out of California. And for 35 years.

 

Kiera Dent (14:44)

Mm-hmm.

 

Fred Heppner (14:50)

They referred all the business nationwide to High to develop any kind of transition plan or valuation or partnership or associate ship or practice sale. Well, he was a member of ADS and he actually, I want to say he took me under his wing to some degree because we just became very good friends and he became a really significant mentor of mine.

 

I fell ill and said, I'm not gonna be able to do this any longer, so you're gonna take over my book of business. and by the way, you're also gonna start doing seminars for the Pride Institute. And I'm gonna introduce you to the people over there so that when they need help, like I've been giving them for the last 30 years, you'll take over. So as a result, we were doing seminars all around the country. So four to five times a year, we'd be in Denver, Boston, Seattle, Orlando, Dallas, Chicago, Philadelphia, you name it.

 

Kiera Dent (15:30)

Mm-hmm.

 

Fred Heppner (15:43)

So people that would come to those meetings were Pride disciples, clients, and they would ask me to help them with their transition. So that became more of a establishing services for dentists that are outside of Arizona, not necessarily creating a footprint in each of those territories. The Pride Institute was purchased by Spear Practice Solutions about 10 or 12 years ago.

 

Kiera Dent (16:08)

Mm-hmm.

 

Fred Heppner (16:09)

So I got dragged kicking and screaming over to Spear and developed a really good relationship with the track practice growth partners at Spear and also Amy Morgan, who was the CEO at Pride out still with Spear. So that's the backstory to tell you that I've done transitions in 26 different States. And it's very easy for me to help provide consultation and guidance for transitions really anywhere.

 

Kiera Dent (16:12)

Thank

 

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

 

Awesome.

 

Fred Heppner (16:39)

Florida, as an example, Florida requires a person to be a commercial real estate broker to broker business assets. So I have colleagues in Florida that I refer to. And with my affiliation with ADS, I have boots on the ground in pretty much every territory that if I don't think I can provide value to the client, I simply connect it with the people in my group and everything gets worked right.

 

Kiera Dent (17:04)

That's awesome.

 

That's amazing. And it's such a fun story.

 

mean, I think our our paths have crossed on probably several levels. One of my business coaches is former pride. And as soon as you said that, I was like, Oh, my gosh, I bet we both know Liz. I'm sure we and all the different pieces. But I love that because I figured Arizona transitions might some of the listeners might feel like you can't help them and assist them. So I really wanted to clear that up that it's all across the nation in different areas. So all right, Fred, let's dive into like walk us through I know you've got some

 

Fred Heppner (17:11)

Yeah, chances are.

 

yeah, ⁓ yeah, absolutely.

 

Kiera Dent (17:36)

points.

 

I know you've got some things of like, what is the transition plan? Like how do doctors get to that level? What do they need to do if they're transitioning? Now again, this doesn't mean you're selling. Right now, I think there's a lot of options to sell, but also like prepping in case life, one of those three mysterious, hopefully never coming to you, like orbs is how feel. I feel like they're like floating around and hopefully they never strike. But what do we do? What are kind of the steps? What are some of the things you have for that?

 

Fred Heppner (17:56)

Yeah, yeah.

 

Well,

 

I think the first step in any kind of relationship that I build with a client, it would be a true consultation. And in that sense, it's tell me what your ideal retirement plan or transition plan would look like. You've worked your practice for a number of years. At some point in time, you're going to decide that you will retire from the practice of dentistry. What do you want to do? What does that look like?

 

What would you be involved with? I'll give you a quick example. Jerry Cox, who's a dentist in Old Scottsdale here in Phoenix, called me and said, I'd like you to help me sell my practice. And I said, I'd be honored, thank you. So I went and saw him and we put together the plan and I asked him the question, what do you want to do? What do you want to do after you retire from practice? says, well, I like to do sculpture. And I said, really, Fred?

 

Kiera Dent (18:56)

you

 

Fred Heppner (18:57)

What have you done? kind of work have you done? He says, well, let me show you. He showed me pictures of the statue of Heather Farr. Heather Farr was an amateur golfer 25, 30 years ago or so, who played at ASU, who was an enormous success, played on the LPGA tour, and ultimately ⁓ developed breast cancer and died. Heather's statue ⁓ was sitting at Karsten Golf Course down near ASU, which they've now plowed.

 

Kiera Dent (19:20)

Wow.

 

Fred Heppner (19:27)

and also at Greyhawk Golf Club. And Jerry sculpted that statue. And I got goosebumps right now. Anyway, so as an example, Jerry has a studio at his house. He said, as soon as I sell, I'm doing that. So the point is in the transition planning phase, know what you want to do. Know what you will occupy your time. If it's turn.

 

Kiera Dent (19:33)

Wow. Yeah.

 

So Fred, I'm gonna just like ask questions right here because, and

 

I'm gonna talk for myself. So guys, like this is my own therapy session. So thank you for being a part and a fly on the wall. Like sometimes we don't know. ⁓ So like I feel I'm very much, I know I wanna retire. I know I want more free time, ⁓ but I literally sit here and this, it's like, know how you think about like how time truly never ends. And if you think about like too hard, it actually creeps you out. Like that's kinda how I feel about like retiring of like,

 

Well, I know I don't want to keep working this hard. Like I don't want to be putting in as many hours, but I still love the impact. I still love the legacy, but I don't quite know what that looks like. And I feel like a lot of times people in their thirties, in their twenties, in their forties, I think as you get later on in life, you probably have more of that clear picture. But what about for those that are very fresh, like that truly maybe some people do, maybe I'm, maybe I'm the only one on my own planet. I don't think I am, but like, what do you do if you don't know what you want to do?

 

Fred Heppner (20:46)

You're not alone. So good. part of the time, what did Chelsea, what did Kelsey Grammer say? I'm listening. So the, the, the idea is that there are portions of people that don't know. There are some that are very clear on what they want to do and there's some that are kind of, well, I'm not sure. My, my recommendation would be, think about it. Then don't answer right now, but think about it because I want you to know what you will be doing when.

 

Kiera Dent (20:48)

Thank you. Thanks for my therapy today, Fred. I appreciate it. Thank you.

 

Hahaha ⁓

 

Fred Heppner (21:16)

you stop doing this and it may change over time. It may kind of morph into, my God, I didn't know that I really enjoyed painting. Okay. Then, then that's maybe what you might do because as you retire from the proceeds of your sale of your business, you'll, you'll build out a studio in your home or in the Casita or wherever it is. So it, it's okay that you may not know. It's okay that a person may not know what they want to do, but it's important to start thinking about it.

 

Kiera Dent (21:26)

Mm-hmm.

 

Fred Heppner (21:47)

And then we can kind of move into the rest of the, ⁓ the rest of the questions, which I would say, is it a year that you'd like to finish working? Some dentists may want to finish when they're 55. Some may want to work until they're 65. Some may want to finish working when they're 50 or it might be a number. My investment portfolio has to be at $10 million liquid, not including asset hard assets like home.

 

vacation home, cars, anything like that, boats, whatever, ⁓ but that the liquid assets have a certain number because then I know through my financial planner, because he did a wealth timeline, another side note, right, Kiera? ⁓ He said that if you keep doing what you're doing and you retire at this age and you pull in social security and you have this mandatory required distributions from your portfolio,

 

Kiera Dent (22:16)

Mm-hmm.

 

Right? Exactly.

 

Fred Heppner (22:41)

you'll be able to have this much money when you're 99. So, and that's just a mathematical spreadsheet that most good financial planners have. And I highly recommend it for anybody who's in business, who's developing a portfolio for retirement. So it may not be, I don't know yet. Okay, good. Well think about it and know that I may circle back during our relationship and ask you, have you given much thought? Do know what you're going to do?

 

Kiera Dent (22:45)

Mm-hmm.

 

Fred Heppner (23:09)

Early on, is it important? Not as much as when it's a three to five year window. When it's a three to five year window from retirement, then we want to talk more significantly about it. Because that will be a good...

 

Kiera Dent (23:23)

got it because that's what I was curious I was like should people be talking

 

when they're in their 20s 30s or is it something we're like start to think about it I know Ryan and I from Dentist advisors we we talk shop about this quite often of like there I mean there are studies that show that when you retire you actually start to atrophy in life and ⁓ there isn't as much of a purpose and so we talk often of like how can we continue that

 

mental stamina, the things that are going to fulfill us, whether it's working or something else of philanthropy, like whatever is going to keep you going as a human, whether you're working in the chair or you're not, I think is important. So that's I was curious of like, really probably connecting with you three to five years before we think we might retire, but with the caveat of, hey, if something were to happen to me, what would kind of be my exit strategy? your like death list like I do, like if I die, this is what's going to happen. It's creepy, but it's awesome.

 

Fred Heppner (24:15)

No, it's, it's creepy and it is awesome. And at the same time, it's a really good conversation to have because if we're three to five years out, then one of the first things to do is say, okay, so what's going to happen if you're not here? And that carries on to the discussion we had earlier.

 

Kiera Dent (24:28)

Mm-hmm.

 

The Dental A Team (24:31)

Awesome. Thank you. And thank you, Fred. Thank you, all of you. And for all of you listening, thanks for listening. And I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.

 

Tiff and Kristy talk about how to reach an ideal state: three-day work weeks and clearing that seven-figure mark. Their advice includes block scheduling, mining your patient base, aligning your team, and more.

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Transcript

Tiffanie (00:01)

Hello Dental A team. I am back here today with Kristy. I am so excited to be here, Kristy. And for those of you who maybe this is your first podcast with us, my name is Tiffanie and I am a dental consultant here with the Dental A Team. And as Kara said, we're taking over the podcast. So I've got Kristy, one of our other amazing and just beautifully minded and just sweetest ever.

 

consultants. Kristy, you are just one of the most amazing human beings I've ever met and I'm just so excited to have you here on the podcast with us as well as on our team. So happy Friday. It's Friday here for us and we are we've got a couple podcasts we're going through today, Kristy. I'm really excited for this one. But before we get started, how are you today?

 

Kristy (00:47)

doing wonderful. The weather's great and I'm here with you. It's equally ⁓ mutual feelings to be here with you and podcast for our people. So love it.

 

Tiffanie (00:59)

Amazing. Thank you. I'm glad you're having good weather. It's hot here. So be prepared for that. I know you're coming to Arizona soon. So it's very hot here right now and it should cool down a little bit next week while you're here though. So you should be fine. Maybe bring some of that nice weather with you. So today you guys, really want to chat. There's a few things I want to chat about and today on this podcast, I wanted to chat through

 

really making your life whatever it is that you want that to look like. And a lot of the doctors that we work with want to obviously cut down clinical hours. I think that's something that's on everyone's radar is really being able to.

 

Work the days of the week that you want to in the practice and then investing that additional time back into your family and into your personal life, your friends, all of those spaces that you would normally spend that time, whatever that looks like for you. And Kristy, we've talked about this a lot and I actually, have one plan I can think of off the top of my head right now that we have worked really hard to get his schedule and his intentionalities exactly what we're talking about today. And what he does so that everybody can hear is he works about three and a half

 

days per week and definitely definitely clears over seven figures and so what I wanted to talk about today is really how do we get to that three day per week clinical time and that seven figure mark that you know we're dentists here like you guys should be you guys should be making that if that's what you want to make you should be making that and how do we make that happen as a reality and when I first started working with this practice years and years ago he was like gosh I think you know Tiff

 

long-term, like within five years, this is what I want to be making, but I think I'm gonna have to add a fourth day a week. I'm gonna have to work Monday through Thursday. And I was like, well, maybe, but I mean, do you want to work Monday through Thursday? And at the time he said, I maybe by the time I get there, I do right now, I don't. Great, well, if you change your mind, then we can add it, but let's build this without that fourth day.

 

And he along the way decided, you know what, actually want to do two Thursdays a month because it fits, it just fits with his lifestyle, fits with what he wanted to do. So it turned into, you know, average of three and a half days per week. But he stuck to the idea of creating his practice to look like what he wanted it to look like. And I remember Kristy early on and still to this day sometimes that happens, but I remember early on him really acknowledging the fact

 

that this was what he wanted for himself, for his family. This is what he, you know, was active in his community and within his church. And he wanted this to be a reality for him. His opposing side, what was happening there, was that he was on a lot of dental forums with a lot of classmates and people he'd met at CE courses or wherever along the way. And he was really, really getting wrapped up in the numbers of it all and what...

 

what they're doing and having a bigger practice and adding operatories and adding an associate and five hygienists and he was thinking, gosh, to get where I want to go, all of these doctors feel like they've made it, you know, and do I then is that what I need to do to make it? And I think all of us do this, whatever position we hold, think even as like a mom, right? It's like just that compares the night as we look at other people.

 

other moms and we're like, how come I don't do that or should I be doing that or etc. And it's got to be so hard to live that way. Right. And really, really, what we had to do was we had to take a step back and think about what is the most important thing for you right now? What do you want your life to look like again? Right. And what does that mean in your life if you're posting?

 

And we had to create all of those spaces from a feeling standpoint and then implement them. So my story, that practice, know, it just pops into my head. He's the one that pops in my head when I think three days, seven figures. And he's just come such a long way and it's had its trials and its tribulations, but I really wanted to take a step back and look at what did we do? How did we create that for our clients?

 

and how do we help someone to get to that point? And Kristy, I know you've worked with a lot of practices as well, and you've helped dentists do the same thing. So I wanted to take them through some of those processes today and the build out of those goals with the intentionality behind it. Kristy, I know you...

 

work with a ton of practices and I know you've done this a million times and if I were to come to you and say, gosh, I have this dentist who wants to work three days a week, this is the amount of money that he or she wants to make, take home, the profit. What would be the first space you would, you would coach on? Where would you say, let's start here?

 

Kristy (06:04)

Yeah, I love that you're speaking that because again, we can make those goals. We just got to clearly define them. And to your point, I would definitely start with scheduling it, right? If that's what we need to make, let's reverse engineer it and block schedules so that we ensure that's happening. The other part that I would add in there is it's kind of funny that you're saying like three and a half days a week because ⁓

 

What we tend to see is when we do add those block schedule and doctors hit that three, three and a half days a week, they tend to be more profitable during the time that they're there rather than working five days a week. So yeah, most definitely I would start with number one, looking at that goal and then reverse engineering it into the schedule using their scheduling blocks.

 

Tiffanie (06:55)

For sure. I love what you said

 

there because it makes me think of, always tell my son like, gosh, you would take and I would too, right? If I gave you an hour in the morning to get ready, you would take the hour and be rushed.

 

But if I give you 30 minutes in the morning to get ready, you're gonna be ready at 28 minutes. Like you're gonna get it all in, you're still gonna get it done, you're just always gonna utilize the amount of time that you have. So what you said there is I do agree, I do see a lot of doctors that will work.

 

less clinical than other doctors and their intentionality behind getting the production in there, especially when there's a really good why behind it is so high that they work harder to get that production there and to maintain it. And so they actually do become a lot of times more profitable than doctors who are working maybe five days a week because their production is getting spread out, especially on the scheduling side for a team. They're like, well, I got to have something on Friday. We got it. We've got to be here. So

 

I'm gonna put this crown on Friday, whereas if we were only Monday through Wednesday, it would probably get stuck on Wednesday this week rather than Friday and giving so much availability to the patient. So I totally agree. And you're spot on with the goals. So that's exactly what we did. We said, okay, well, if you wanna make this much money, take home, what does that look like fixed cost-wise, overhead-wise? So we had to build out what that goal meant.

 

how we could get the practice to be profitable enough to make that much money as take home and then reverse engineer that. So we had to say, what does that look like? All the multiplication, the addition, all of those pieces. What does that look like in a production goal?

 

so that 98 % or higher of collections gets you to that profitability. Then you have to backtrack and say, well, great, this is how much money I need to make this year, maybe a million dollars, right? We wanna break one million this year. How do I do that? What does that look like per month in production?

 

Then we say, okay, divide that by how many days per month we're working. So if we're working three days, right, it was probably about 12 days on average. So what does that look like every day? And how much production does that equate to? And I do have to say a caveat here.

 

because I think it's easy to say, yeah, but what about the fee schedules? Totally agree with you. You need to get your fee schedules up. Number one, if you can do anything about your fee schedules, go work on those. First and foremost, number one, get those things in line. But I do have to say this dentist I'm thinking of specifically is in the heart of a very saturated state and a very

 

difficult area to get ⁓ fees increased and he is PPO driven in lot of different directions. So it is possible. It just depends on what you're willing to do and then also what treatment you're doing. So what we have done with that is we've built out that block schedule. We've built out how his optimized days would look. So when is he doing his crown preps? When is he doing his large treatment? ⁓ Is he doing root canal?

 

love them. So which root canals is he doing if he's going to do them? Oral surgery, like what are we doing in those three days? And how do we build the production to match that daily goal? And then it was a, there, are there things that you want to be doing that maybe you're not doing a lot of yet? And he, this specific dentist, I've got another doctor, I've got a couple doctors that are like, yeah.

 

Tiff, I want to do implants and I want to do cosmetic cases. I want to build smiles and do smile design. And I'm like, well, great. If you can get one or two smile designs a month, are you kidding me? We're halfway there. So then what we had to do is we said, OK, great. Where would we do those in the schedule? When they come, where would we put them? And build that out as well. So the implant.

 

Obviously the implant placements like those were going to go first. Where are those going to be and how many implants do we need per year to help equate to that goal? then Kristy, I know you've done this a few times as well, looking at the marketing space, right? Because what do you feel like Kristy then?

 

We've got this goal set, we've got this block scheduling in place and we're like, okay, great. We want to do more implants and more cosmetic cases. Kristy, what would you then look for to increase those within the practice?

 

Kristy (11:38)

Yeah, well number one, I always like to go mining in our own patient base, you know, and I love that you mentioned like the service mix and doctors wanting to do specifically in this case, the implants, because it's funny how many times we hear that and then we go back and look like at the last 12 months and maybe they've done five implants, you know, I love doing them, but why aren't we doing them, right? And so just by recognizing that, putting a goal to it and then

 

Tiffanie (12:01)

Yeah.

 

Kristy (12:08)

consistently going back and measuring that. We've talked about this before Tiff, if I'm gonna go buy a white car of a specific brand, all of a sudden I start seeing all those. So to your point, I would go back to our patient base. I would definitely make sure the team is aware of that goal and then enroll the whole team on how do we find more of these patients that could use implants, right?

 

Then amongst our own patients when they're coming in, do they have missing teeth? Did we do a recent extraction, right? Have we discussed this before and it's time to bring it back up? So ideally that's where I would go because they're already in your practice, they love you, you've got a relationship with them and you'll be amazed at how many patients you'll find just by putting it front of mind and enrolling the whole team behind you to look for it.

 

Tiffanie (13:06)

I agree

 

and training them on the right questions, the right scenarios. Like what are we looking for? Are we looking for missing teeth? Are we looking for cracks? we like bringing that awareness? I totally agree. think everything we want is actually already here. We're just not tuned in to see it. So just like the car, we want the white Camaro because we never see a white Camaro. We make that decision to like, that's what I'm going to get. I'm going to get a white Camaro because no one has them, right? Or a purple Camaro because no one has them. And this

 

Kristy (13:35)

Thank

 

Tiffanie (13:36)

the next thing you know, you're like, well, shoot, I was wrong. There's a million of them. I want something different. And you're just going to keep going on that road because you brought the awareness to you. So I love that analogy. And I think it's so fitting for any, any treatment that you're trying to increase in your practice. It's already there. We're just not attuned to looking for it yet. So there's already opportunities there. How do we get the team members?

 

Kristy (13:41)

Thank

 

Tiffanie (14:04)

in line with seeing them to support you in the diagnosis. Now, the biggest thing I can say right now is if you have this goal or a different goal, I don't care what your goal is, if your goal is to work three days and make seven figures, that's fine. ⁓ Whatever your goal is, enlist your team in the support factor of achieving that goal.

 

because without them, it's all on you and there's no way, doctors, that you can do it all. You cannot, you will not remember.

 

all of these spaces to look for the implants, especially if you're like, well Tiff, gosh, Kristy, I want to do implants, I want to do cosmetic cases, I want to try all on fours, I want to, you know, I want to reduce the number of root canals I'm doing, but I want to do more extractions, like gosh, dang it, there's 16,000 different things that you could want to do that are top of mind on your brain, but what is the decision of today? What is our focus?

 

How are we gonna measure it and how are we gonna stay consistent? I've had multiple dentists ⁓ wanna add more implants and Kristy, I love how you said to go back through the inventory, because it's exactly where we started. Many, dentists have done this very successfully. I know with me, with you Kristy, with all of us and on their own, really looking at how many did I do? How many have I done? Because sometimes, right, we'll think,

 

you get your hair cut and you're like

 

10 people tell you, gosh, your hair looks amazing, right? And the one person is like, I don't know if I would have done bangs. Like that was a bold move, right? And the next thing you know, you're in the mirror going like, gosh, dang it, should I have done bangs? Because one person out of 11 said that, and that's what you remember. And so when it comes to this, think the same philosophy applies because you might think, gosh, I've done a million and you did two. Or you're like, I didn't do any. And you're like, oh my gosh, I did 16. How is that possible?

 

Kristy (15:40)

Yeah.

 

Tiffanie (16:04)

we weren't looking at it. And if you've done whatever number you've done, how do we increase and layer on top of that? Because if you could find five last year...

 

I guarantee there's probably 15 more that we either diagnosed and didn't get acceptance on, or we just didn't see. So Kristy, to your point, really adding that in to even your morning discussions of looking at the patients and saying, who's eligible for whatever treatment it is that you're focusing on? Do we have patients coming in today that are actually eligible for that treatment? Do we have patients that we've already diagnosed this on? Can we ask, why aren't we scheduled? What's holding us back from getting this treatment done? Why not today?

 

Where can we find those opportunities within the patient base we already have? And then dialing in your messaging to the community. Because you've got to start making sure that you're attracting the patients that are going to build your business to meet the goals that you want. We cannot.

 

Just like we can't make everybody happy, we cannot serve everyone in the dental community. You are built to serve the community that fits your desired outcome. So if you try to blanket, serve everyone, you're gonna get a crazy mixed bag and you're probably gonna be really stressed out. But if you commit to serving the people that fit your avatar and who you are,

 

you're going to be able to reach these goals really easily. So dial that in with your marketing company or your marketing gal at the practice, whatever that looks like, dial that in. I know I've had a couple of practices, Kristy, that have struggled with new patients or they've had a flood of new patients. And when we look at it, they've had a flood of new patients, but struggling to meet production goals. And I'm like, well, one, maybe we have too many new patients or two, what kind of new patients are you getting? And I've had

 

all kinds of scenarios, but one that comes up a lot is too many limited exams, and we're focusing on same day treatment or like quick turnaround and not converting to comps, which it's technically a new patient into the practice, so count it how you want to. But when we've got, I don't know, 40 new patients and 25 of them are limited exams, 15 are only new, we're gonna struggle. So, Kristy.

 

We've got a lot here ⁓ going on all kinds of different tangents here and we still have one more point that I wanted to get to, but let's recap. So we've got.

 

Kristy (18:29)

Bye.

 

Tiffanie (18:36)

building out the goal, reverse engineering that and making sure we've got block scheduling in place, which we're not going to clearly do like a huge block scheduling podcast today, but there are a million and you can email us [email protected] for tips and tools as well. And then dialing in that marketing space to make sure we're getting the patients that we want internally marketing to our patients, making sure that we're speaking to them and then externally marketing to the patients that we want as well. And then Kristy this is a space, this next one that I'm going to

 

you to get to. This is a space I think you do really well with teams, so getting to the seven figures production is one space of it, the right patients, that's just one space of it. But we can produce all we want and if the money's not coming in you're not, you're just...

 

upside down and you guys are just tired. So Kristy, I can talk, we can both talk production for freaking days and marketing for days, but what do they need to do on the flip side of that and what support, again, from their team members do they need to make sure they have in order to reach this goal?

 

Kristy (19:39)

Yeah, absolutely. I always like to say, number one, let's start with ⁓ what is our parameters for the office? Your team members that are presenting finances, they need to have the understanding, what can they do? What are the tools in their tool belt ⁓ to offer to patients? And then it really is about getting creative. Even if the office is wanting everything paid in full on the day of service,

 

You know, are we letting patients walk out the door just because they can't pay it all at one time? You know, we could get creative and potentially even do like a layaway process, right? Or if these are big treatment plans, you know, do we have the right third party financing? There's specific finance companies that do larger amounts. And so getting to, you know, when we're presenting financials,

 

Tiffanie (20:28)

Yeah.

 

Kristy (20:37)

understanding truly what are the parameters, setting the realistic expectations within the office of what is our goal for finances. We want 98 % as a minimum goal for collections. So ideally we're meeting that. then also just making sure we have means for people to say yes financially, if you will.

 

Tiffanie (21:05)

Yeah, yeah, and I love the way that you go through that with your clients on getting that yes and getting the financial options dialed in because it is different for each doctor in a lot of ways. And in addition to that, making sure we have that follow up process. So if we can have the tools to treatment plan correctly, collect

 

in advance or on the day of treatment over the counter correctly, fantastic. And then on the flip side of that, we've got to have the systems in place for insurance claims follow ups. And then if there's anything outstanding after insurance for patients, how are we gonna get that money? How are they gonna pay? And what are our options for that? Because just like you said now, Kristy, making sure we have those options for treatment planning and case acceptance. Well, what do they do? What are their options if they have a bill?

 

leftover, is it the same? Like what does the team do with that? So I agree having those protocols written and having them dialed in and trained is massive. So thank you. That is a space I think you really thrive and I've watched you train, I've watched you train doctors on how to do collections. So I think that's impressive in itself. So I want to make sure you, you got all that out there. Thank you. So recapping, we've got

 

Making sure you guys know what it is that you want first and foremost. Know what it is that you want. Reverse engineer from there on how you're gonna get there. So build the financials out and then also build that block scheduling in there you guys. We harp on block scheduling and we're not the only consulting company that works with block scheduling and there's a reason for that because it freaking works. I just got off a call with the doctor an hour ago that was celebrating a 6 % decrease in overhead for quarter one because

 

is working, collecting is working, the protocols that they put into place and she specifically said the block scheduling is working. So this is within an hour of us recording this, go do it. And then making sure that your marketing is working internally and externally, you're attracting the patients that you want into your schedule and getting those collections processes in place you guys. If you don't have them, if you need help with any of this, you know to reach out, that's what we are here for.

 

We love giving information out. That's why we have all of these podcasts. I don't even know how many we have anymore. There's just a slew of them. whatever it is you need, just go to TheDentalATeam.com and search in the podcast tool bar and it will be there.

 

Kristy, parting words. I love, I know I shocked you with this, you're going to be shocked anymore, but I love your parting words always. So if you could wrap today's podcast into a bundle and impart some wisdom on these doctors that are listening, what would it be?

 

Kristy (23:48)

Yeah, I would say number one, track and measure, right? If that's your goal to do more of that, let's get more of it. Track and measure. When you have cases closed, really take a look at what did we do? Like how can we repeat what happened? Your conversations, everything, you know? And then when you are treatment planning implants, because we were talking about implants, say, and you have patients that leave and don't schedule.

 

Make sure your admin team or treatment coordinator, whoever is presenting that treatment, writes down what was the patient's words, what were their objections, because that's where our opportunity lies. And a lot of people automatically think it's a financial thing. And sometimes it's not financial. Sometimes it could be from the clinical side, how can we get better at presenting that treatment, expressing the benefits and

 

Tiffanie (24:34)

Thank you.

 

Kristy (24:43)

of doing the treatment, consequences of not having an implant, right? And add an expense if we don't do it. with that, really dial into those opportunities, celebrate your success, and then where the opportunity lies, we can certainly help bridge that gap for you. So, yeah.

 

Tiffanie (25:02)

I love that. Thank you.

 

Alright guys, you heard it from us here today. Go get to work, go build out those goals, go figure out what that looks like for you and for your lifestyle, what you want. And as always, drop us a five star review below so we know that this was helpful and beneficial for you and so that others can find it. [email protected] is an easy way to find us or TheDentalATeam.com are all kinds of different avenues to chat with us. So if you need anything, when you need anything, and when you're ready to take that next step forward on creating this in your own

 

life, reach out, we're here to help you and we'll catch you next time.

 

Kiera and Kristy discuss ways your practice can completely “drain the lemon” of juice (aka, financial opportunity) without becoming completely overwhelmed. This happens by identifying a goal and reverse engineering it. Kiera and Kristy give numerous examples of how this works, as well as other opportunities for hidden value in your practice.

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Transcript:

Kiera Dent (00:00)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and today is such a special day. I hope you guys are having the best day because I'm having a great day because today I'm podcasting with our one and only Kristy Treasure, one of our incredible consultants. And I am so excited to have Kristy with us. Kristy, how are you doing today?

 

Kristy (00:17)

Gosh, it's fantastic. The first day is spring and we're gonna bring some new life to clients here. Add potential clients, right?

 

Kiera Dent (00:24)

I agree. I completely

 

agree with you, Kristy And honestly, if you guys have not met Kristy, Kristy is incredible. She's been on our team. Kristy, feel is just like the queen of wanting to have these amazing practices, just hit great numbers. Kristy loves numbers. She loves to dig in. And Kristy has this like very delicate leadership style. Like I watch you and I see you just transform practices. You gain their trust, you build their trust, you help team members.

 

I mean, offices who've said, Kiera I only want to work with you, are working with Kristy and loving her. And so it's just really fun, Kristy, to have someone who just is so passionate about dentistry. And I'm just so happy to have you on the podcast with me today. So that's a little intro to Kristy. If you haven't met her, haven't heard from her, you definitely need to. So Kristy, love having you on our team. It's always a treasure.

 

Kristy (01:11)

Thank you. I love being here. It's a great culture and you know what? We just have fun serving clients and that's what it's about.

 

Kiera Dent (01:19)

We totally do. And so Kristy, I want to join the podcast today because I feel I've been watching you consult some clients and I've been seeing it's fun in our morning huddle. Don't worry guys, in Dental Team we have a morning huddle. You can tell I used to be a dental assistant, team member, that's what I do. And so Kristy, we always share client wins and it's really fun because then we can share from consultants like, hey, what are you doing really well? What things are we doing well?

 

And Kristy, I've been watching, she's been posting up some really fun changes that she's been able to do with practices, so much so that offices who have never been able to hit certain dollar amounts in their production, things that they never believed were possible, getting overheads like, Kristy is burning and churning and doing it, it's like, Kristy, you come in with this like delicate wave of authority and it's just beautiful. And so I kind of wanted to talk, not necessarily specific to these practices.

 

But I mean, offices who have never had 100 grand, Kristy's been able to help them. Offices who have never been profitable, she's been able to help them. Offices who feel like they can't get their leadership team on board, Kristy's getting them. People who say like, we'll never be able to make an operations manual. I'm watching and Kristy you're just like getting these offices to navigate along. And so I thought today would be really fun for us to talk about maybe what are some of the tips or tricks. Again, not necessarily specific to these practices, but things you see overarching that really work to add.

 

production to a practice or get a team bought into it. So let's start first. mean, everybody always wants to geek out on numbers. So Kristy, what are some of the things that you've found are just really successful? I mean, you're an office manager of a very, very, very successful practice. You've consulted lots and lots and lots of practices even before coming to Dental A Team. You've got some history with you. So Kristy, let's kind of share some Kristy magic of what are some of the things you've seen that really help impact numbers in a practice quickly and easily with a whole team bought into that.

 

Kristy (03:06)

Yeah, would say first off and foremost, like obviously picking maybe the top five metrics to start working on and every doctor in office talks about production and collection. And so starting with some of the basics that they already understand, but also like.

 

Figuring out that point, what are we working for? Not just in a five year or 10 year range. I mean, you talk about that all the time, but also what are we looking for this year? And then reverse engineering it. Because if we don't have a point to guide to,

 

It's just numbers and even when we're talking percentages, we can have 100 % of collections, but is it enough to pay the bills? Is it enough to do the goals that we're reaching for as a team? So definitely it's about starting where they're at and then letting them see something bigger, if you will.

 

Kiera Dent (04:07)

And Kristy,

 

I think it's such a good thing because like when teams just feel like they're only about today, right? Like it's like, here's my daily bread today, but we don't understand the bigger picture. This is oftentimes when offices get fresher and they're like, my team isn't even looking down the line. They're not taking the ownership. They're not doing any of these things. So Kristy, how do you get a team to look further down the line and not feel the overwhelm, not feel like, cause you know, you come in and start to change. How do you have some tips to navigate with team members who maybe aren't as pro?

 

Getting into it.

 

Kristy (04:38)

Yeah, I would say number one, I mean, we're starting out the year, we're ending first quarter. And so to think, ⁓ I want to hit a million dollars by the end of the year. That's such a big overwhelming number that we literally break it down. We can project out where are they currently, you know,

 

Where are their numbers currently projected to hit at the end of the year? And then reverse engineer that. Guys, my gosh, we're only $1,000 short a week. How could we go find $1,000?

 

right? And do what we do. It's all in the name of getting our patients healthy. you know, let breaking it down to that simple step and letting them achieve something daily, if not weekly, and showing them it's easy. And it all relates back to our why. Why did we get into dentistry? You know, it's to serve and get our patients healthy. So when we do that, and we know where we're headed, it's really easy to achieve.

 

and then just start building in the goals from there.

 

Kiera Dent (05:46)

Mm-hmm, I agree

 

with you because I think in dentistry is so fun I mean a million seems so hard, but let's break it down like if we really want to do I mean Let's just do some fun math here. So we're gonna do a million. All right, so some offices. They're like, I've never hit a million Let's figure out a million. I think these are fun. Kristi and I do love numbers So I hope you do and if you don't I hope you take on our mantra of like I love numbers and numbers Love me. I want the numbers to love me. So let's enjoy that. So if we have a million we divide it by 12, okay

 

And this is just really rough math. There's more sophisticated ways to project this. That's 83,000 per month. Let's bump it up to 84 because it's 83,333. So let's just do 84,000. So if we're at 84,000 and then we know, let's say you're a practice that is only working four days a week, that's fine. You do not need to work five days. You don't need to work six days. Let's just do a four day work week. Cause I like to prove to people and Kristy, I know you do too. We don't have to work harder. Let's just work a little smarter.

 

So with that, let's say it's 16 days a month. Does that make sense? You got four days a week. Most months are four weeks. I get that there's a few more, which is why this is very loose. Don't worry if you do this, you'll slush in the right direction. So what that brings it down to is 52.50 per day. Now let's say in this practice that they have two hygienists. Usually a hygienist is producing about a thousand-ish rough numbers. That's 32.50 per day for an office. And so I think Kristy agreed with you.

 

When we look at that and we're like, all right, if we're only scheduled to 2,700 today, where can we go find that extra $600 or $500? And it's not saying we're over diagnosing patients. What we're doing is we're looking to see, could we add in some fluoride? Could we add in that FMX? How can we do better patient care? Oh my gosh, that patient only wanted to do one filling, but they're about to get numb. And that quad of filling seems a lot more enticing because they're about to get numb. It's crazy how like, you know, when I talk to patients and they say, oh,

 

I think I just want to this one filling. And then when they're about to get numb, it's like, Hey, we can actually do the whole quad. And they're like, yeah, we should actually do that. It's wild. That injection, you guys never, ever, ever, ever underestimate the power of an injection. ⁓ but the reality is this is how you can look for it. This is how it becomes fun. And I think helping teams and Kristy, do an amazing job with this, helping teams have fun with this. That's the whole point of a morning huddle. We go to morning huddle to huddle. How do we win the game? Just like a huddle in basketball or huddle in football.

 

How do we actually win the game? Where are we at? What's that extra five? I mean, I have been shocked when offices will implement pro, ⁓ fluoride, or they'll look for FMXs. We're like doing our x-rays on normal cadences, or we're even doing our comp exams. That will add up so fast for you. Adding a sealant, adding in quad dentistry rather than single tooth dentistry. You can find these things so easily. And so, Kristy, I think you do a beautiful job of that with your practices. And I'm just curious, like,

 

But what happens when you have that one team member in the back who's just like not having it? What do we do with them and how do you get those team members on board?

 

Kristy (08:46)

Yeah, number one, most team members want something more for themselves, right? Whether it's a yearly raise or I don't know, maybe the office doesn't offer insurance and they want to offer insurance. And I'm like, well, let's find a way to offer it. You know, let's figure out how much it is. What does it cost? What do we have to do to show the doctor we can earn our way to doing it? So showing them that they can also achieve what they want. mean, honestly, today I had a

 

a team that was talking about taking time off between Christmas and New Year and possibly paying the team for that time off and surprising them. And I'm like, well, let's reverse engineer it, find out what do we have to do to pay for that. And then we can surprise that gift ahead of time because we can measure if we're on target for it. And...

 

give them that, gift them that time off if you will, but just again showing team what's in it for them and relating it again back to their why they got into dentistry which was to take great care of people.

 

And when you do it, we all reap the rewards. And I love that you said morning huddle because nine times out of 10, we have that treatment in our schedules already. And it's just having conversations with patients in a relationship fashion.

 

Many people think you have to have more new patients, right? We don't need more new patients. They're in our schedule and we have the opportunity to just do more on the patients we have. And if you don't believe me, have them run their unscheduled treatment report.

 

Kiera Dent (10:31)

Amen to you, Kristy. And I agree with you tenfold. And that's why we consult so well together. And I really love that you said like, let's show them, let's gift them, let's figure out what our team wants. And that's what's actually so fun. Like this is why I love numbers. I hated numbers because I didn't understand them. But when you realize that numbers can just be the way to get whatever you want in life. Like it's just truly this really, really fun, dreamy, like you said, if they want to take time off between Christmas and New Year's,

 

Fantastic, let's figure out what that production would be. Let's figure out the cost of paying all the team members. It's very simple, it's not a hard equation to do. Then let's add that amount, divide it amongst the rest of the months of the year. You can literally pay for it. So offices who wanna go on trips, offices who wanna add in bonuses, offices who wanna pay for scrubs, like you name it, all these things can be paid for. And for people listening, this isn't too overdiagnosed on the patients. It's not like we're going hunting because we're like, we wanna go on that trip.

 

it's we are looking for the best patient care like Kristy said. We are looking for the little opportunities that we're not doing. And every practice is like, no, we're doing all this already. Yeah, right. I promise you, I've yet to see one office who has done every single thing perfectly 110%. And so I think like, let's drop that ego as well and look to see where it can be. And Kristy, I love that you bring it. As you were talking, I'm like, Kristy to me feels like the analogy of like squeezing the juice out of the lemon or squeezing the tube of toothpaste.

 

And Kristy is the gal who looks at your practice and you're like, my tube of toothpaste is empty. And she's like, yeah, let me show you. got like three more months where the toothpaste in this tube, like we are squeezing it rather than just going and looking to buy a brand new tube of toothpaste. And within your practice, there's so much more opportunity to like squeeze the juice, squeeze the opportunities rather than having to look outside. Yes, we still need to work on the outside pieces too, but then when we look inside, and I think that this is where you do such a great job, Kristy like.

 

Kristy (12:04)

Yeah.

 

Kiera Dent (12:25)

I tell you, Kristy can turn to practice so quickly. It's been magic to watch you, Kristy I'm like, this girl comes in and she just like hangs out. She's working with the team. She's tracking the numbers and la la la la la. The doctor's like, oh my gosh, we hit this and I didn't even know that was possible. But Kristy's squeezing juice. You're looking for the juice constantly. And so I'm just curious, other squeeze the juice, squeeze the tube of toothpaste? You said like new patients, you're looking for unscheduled treatment plans.

 

Kristy (12:30)

you

 

Kiera Dent (12:53)

We don't need the new patients. We're looking for just little, what are some of those other opportunities, Kristy, that like I spy with my little consultant eye, what do you see in there?

 

Kristy (13:02)

Yeah.

 

Obviously there's a few areas, but one of the things too when we have limited coming in how many of those do we work to convert? I mean how many times do we schedule them for a half hour appointment when really if we just schedule them for an hour and trained up our assistants to have a conversation on the front end my gosh, if we could avoid future emergencies like this while you're here We could take a look at everything come up with a plan and still treat that tooth that's bothering you right so and if they're swollen

 

or in pain, at least scheduling them back to make sure, hey, you know, we could avoid future emergencies like this. Let's get you back and take a look at everything, but get you out of pain today. that's one area. And again, it's just taking and using what's already there and doing what's best for the patient, right? I mean, people only lose their teeth for a few reasons. Trauma.

 

Kiera Dent (13:53)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kristy (13:59)

Extensive decay, you know, so if we can avoid that just like you said the power of the shot if we could avoid Future damage and more cost wouldn't you agree we should take care of it today?

 

Kiera Dent (14:06)

Hahaha!

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Also, did

 

you hear what Kristy said? Wouldn't you agree? And that's a very like amazing line to take into your practice if you're not using that right now. I love the LOEs being converted into a comp exam. It is one of the most incredible things that if a practice will take this on. And so we were like, but Kiera, Kristy, they're just coming in for pain. Like they're not gonna like it. Yeah, right. A, you have to remember no one wants to come to see you. And I'm sorry, dentist, but this is the reality. And there's like 1 % of the population who's a little bit odd and they actually love to come.

 

But that's like truth. And so they don't wanna come anyway. They're already in pain. So let's do them a service. Let's do them a favor. Let's take pictures of their entire mouth, AKA x-rays. Let's do a full comp exam. Yes, we're gonna take care of that problem tooth. Absolutely, 100 % we're gonna do that. But odds are, and every doctor and every team member knows this, if I've got one tooth that's looking pretty wild, odds are there's probably a few other places in that mouth that are going to have the same problem come upon them pretty soon. But I think it's also,

 

training the front office to say this, training the clinical team on how we present this and how we can do this, but also realizing this is a huge service and benefit to a patient. No patient wants to come back. They really do not. As much as they love you and as fun as you are and as great as your coffee bar is and as fun as your movies are, being at the dentist, even for me, I had to go to the dentist and I was like, gosh, really? Like this place. And I work with dentists. Like I've been a dental assistant. People just don't enjoy having their

 

someone awkwardly put their hands in your mouth. It's weird. It's a weird thing that we do and yet we love it. So Kristy, I love that. What are some other ideas that you have around? Because yes, convert the limited to comps. Any other things that you have around? And again, I don't want you to give all away your Kristy Sparkle. So like what's one or two more that you have of like being able to squeeze that juice, squeeze that tube of toothpaste?

 

Kristy (15:59)

Well, I would say many times, especially for the dentist coming in or newly starting out having firm financial arrangements, know, and it's not firm doesn't mean strict necessarily, but it's it's comprehensive finances. You know, it's it's finding a plan to get all their treatment done. Even if you're phasing it out over time, but I would say really there's usually that low hanging fruit in AR or insurance that we can

 

just put in simple systems that go after that and stop it bleeding into, you know, aging out, if you will. So many times that's an area to start and just look at what our processes are. How are we collecting? Are we getting the good estimates to get the correct amount collected over the counter?

 

Kiera Dent (16:52)

Okay, so

 

in that, agree with you, Kristy, because a lot of times people are like, we need to make more. And I'm like, you don't even need to make more. It's just hanging out in your AR. Like you've already done the work. We just need to collect the money for it. So you mentioned making sure that when we do this, we have good treatment plan estimates, which comes from good insurance verification, which comes from good entering of that. That's gonna help a lot. What are some of the other financial policies that you've found that tend to work really, really well for practices?

 

Kristy (17:17)

Yeah, well, let me be clear that treatment plans are different than financial arrangements. Treatment plans are what we're going to do. Financial arrangements are how are we going to take care of it? And many times people are missing the how we're going to take care of it. They're like, yeah, they know the cost. We gave them the printout. But are we really solidifying how we're going to take care of it? You know, are you the type of patient that needs

 

to pay over time? Are we capturing exactly what they're doing, if you will?

 

Kiera Dent (17:50)

Yeah, which is really smart because otherwise

 

it's a lingering, it's are we paying with cash? Are we paying with credit card? Are we paying with financing options? What are we doing with that? That's going to firm this up and I agree as soon as that gets dialed in and people panic. Like I don't wanna put this out there. And I'm like, where do we feel like we went back to the 1800s to where it's like, just put it on my tab. Like I still do not understand why dental practices get so nervous to ask patients to pay for something that they just received.

 

99 % of the time in today's world, we're having to prepay for these treatments before services are done. And I feel like dentistry, let's, let's come to the playing field. Let's get a little more current. Let's get a little bit more on the same page of the rest of the world. It's not weird. It's weird. The fact that we think it's weird. That's what's weird. Like it's okay to ask patients to pay for it. It's okay to expect them to have financials before they come in for treatment. That's normal. And then what we do is for all the patients that we've been like,

 

lollygagging on in the past, it's okay, it's all right, there's no judgment here. Those patients we start to collect when they come in. So we start to collect on that side, we can send statements to them, we can run our AR and we get better for future and we have them sign on those financial arrangements so that way there's no confusion. The only reason patients get frustrated with you is because expectations were missed. So I love what Kristy said with these financial arrangements. It's a beautiful way to not have expectations being missed and a really good way to squeeze some juice in your practice.

 

to find those little missing opportunities. Kristy, you've been a freaking dream. Are there any other little like secret nuggets that you feel like you wanna leave with our audience before we say goodbye today? Because honestly, I just have loved this and I enjoy the imagery. I'm gonna like have you, every time I see you now, I'm gonna think of you like squeezing the juice. Like I'll just think of you like, Kristy's over there taking lemons into lemonade. So any other last thoughts you have as we wrap up today?

 

Kristy (19:32)

Yeah.

 

Yeah, actually you mentioned the financial arrangements and I just want to challenge people. literally, I almost love the practices where they say, see you later, send me a statement and flipping them to actually getting down payments or reservation fees for appointments. Like I've watched a practice go from literally that.

 

Kiera Dent (19:54)

Yeah.

 

Kristy (20:04)

to, my gosh, they're so excited because they are using Pre-Collect. But I also want to flip people's thinking. Just like you said earlier about patients not wanting to stay, don't put our own bias in it. Because I hear people say, well, we'll do a reservation for large appointments. I just want to challenge you that

 

allow that same opportunity even for the smaller payments. If I had $500 in my savings and you offered me to pay $250 today to reserve it and $250 when I come in, I very well may appreciate having that so it doesn't drain my savings or my checking or wherever I'm pulling that money from versus, hey, you could pay $50 today and now I have $450 to pay when I come back in. So I just challenge you to, you know, try.

 

gamify it a little bit and have fun with it and I promise your patients will appreciate it.

 

Kiera Dent (21:02)

Kristy, I love that you said gamify it. I think I heard once at a conference I attended and they said, business is just a game. Like it's truly a game. And when you look at it, it takes the stress out of it. think running a successful practice can be a game, not our dentistry being a game for the patients, but a game of how we think about things. I mean, I look at like chess or my brother used to play strategic or.

 

There was another game like Clue. loved playing Clue. That was like my favorite game. mean, I was the Clue master. I won that game all the time. I would love somebody to like challenge me on it. But the reason those games are fun is because we challenge our thinking. We think outside the box. We make it fun. And so I love, Kristy, these ideas you brought to the table today are how can we think outside the box? How can we make it fun? And I agree with you, Kristy. It's crazy how when you just change your thinking,

 

Just a smidge, we're not asking you to like completely and obliterate who you've been all this time, but just a smidge, you will see magic happen in your practice. You will see more patients saying yes to you. You'll see more patients scheduling. You'll see your AR being chipped down. Doctors, you'll see more money coming into your bank account. So many wonderful things this way just to change it. And I love that you said like offer it to even the smaller ones. Why not? Cause you're right. That is a benefit to these other patients. They might say no, but they also might say yes. And then collections become so much easier. So Kristy.

 

It was so fun to have you on the podcast. I love you on our team. I love practices who get to work with you. I always feel like practices who get to Kristy truly get just such a treat to work with you because you really do find these little simple ways to help them hit goals and possibilities that they honestly never believed was possible. So thanks for being on the podcast with me today and being on our team. Of course, and for all of you listening, thank you for listening and we'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team podcast.

 

Kristy (22:42)

Thank you.

 

Kiera and Tiff share highlights from the Dental A-Team Summit — the best one yet! They touch on communication, the life cycle of a business, keeping teams energized, and more.

Mark your calendars for the Dental A-Team Summit 2026!

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Transcript: 

Kiera Dent (00:00)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera and ⁓ gosh, today's a great day. I have the one and only Spiffy Tiffy on the podcast. I feel like we're going back to like OG status here, Tiff. Like it's been a while. Welcome to the podcast. How are you?

 

Tiffanie (00:14)

I'm good. Thank you. Luckily, Shelbi snuck a time in here for us. I mean, gosh, we've got a birthday podcast. We've got this coming up. Like we've got all kinds of stuff in the works, but I'll see you in a gear in a year. Right? That's all we get.

 

Kiera Dent (00:26)

I know, right? See ya! See you next

 

May. I'll see ya. No, I love it because honestly, you and I host, we podcast, you take a lot with the consultants and so ⁓ I selfishly put you in on my day of podcasting because I miss, I miss our OG days. I miss ⁓ us hanging out. I mean, I did take us on a hike and podcast. Like that was really going back in style. Supposedly the video works. If you guys saw it, give us a thumbs up. ⁓

 

We were both very awkwardly uncomfortable sitting up there, but it was awesome. And the things like this, got sunburned. So that was funny when we were up there, all the pieces, but it was a good time. And I felt like this back to our original roots, Tiff. Sometimes I think we need to remember where we came from and how we got here. So, I mean, I was just talking to Shelbi and Kristy and told them about our Venmo days and how you stayed with me through all these years. If you don't know the Venmo story,

 

Tiffanie (00:57)

There were so many courts.

 

I agree.

 

Here I am.

 

Kiera Dent (01:22)

When Tip first started, I paid her via Venmo and Venmo has maxes if you didn't know that. Tip was a 10.99, so I paid her via Venmo. I would not recommend this. And why Tiffanie stayed with me, I don't know because the Venmo would max and I'd have to text her and be like, hey, so it's maxed out. Give me like two days. It wasn't that I didn't have money. It's just that Venmo would max. So Tip, I don't know. Like how did you feel like that wasn't a shady business? That's question number one and then we'll get into our real topic today.

 

Tiffanie (01:31)

Thank you.

 

have no idea. Honestly, I don't have an answer for that. I truly just don't. I just trusted and I mean, by early on, it was like the first two months of working together and you didn't have employees yet. So I guess in the back of my mind, I was like, we're just creating the systems, like we're figuring it out. And worst case scenario, like I always, I always have a backup plan and I was still in my office. So it was like, that's fine. We're figuring this out. We're going to see how it works. And here we are almost eight years later.

 

Kiera Dent (01:51)

Ha

 

you

 

You are.

 

It's incredible. Nope. Definitely not Venmo. And it was funny because I was thinking back to like startup businesses and I did a podcast with someone else and we were talking about like, I think you forget when you like go to open your second location or your third of like, ⁓ yeah. Like we had to scrap it that hard when we first started. So Tiff, thanks for, thanks for being an OG, which stands for original gangster, not oldie, but goodie, but it's okay. If you want to do Kiera's style, I had to ask Tiff.

 

Tiffanie (02:18)

Not Venmo-ing.

 

Kiera Dent (02:44)

a things in my life. had to educate me on a few and that was one of them. was like, Tiff, does OG stand for? And here we are. So, Tiff, I figured with you and I on the podcast today, I thought it'd be really fun. You and I just in person did our fifth summit. Can you believe five summits? Like Tiff.

 

Tiffanie (02:49)

Luckily I'm all filtered.

 

No, when we had,

 

actually saw it on social media, on our social media. It said like, our fifth summit is coming. And I was like, oh my gosh, is that true? Like, you sent the postage on our Instagram and that's how I knew. So no, I can't believe that it was our fifth summit. It blew my mind when I saw that.

 

Kiera Dent (03:09)

you

 

Yeah, it was well and there was a point in time where I debated if I wanted to keep doing summits. And the only reason that I actually went through is because we started the summits. Our first one was in 2021. And I knew I would be able to remember how many we had done because 2021 is one, two is two, and I was like, we got to keep this up. Otherwise, I'm going to really get off count. So that's why I know it's the fifth because it's 2025.

 

⁓ But I think honestly, Tiff, you and I, I wanted to give some highlights. If you missed it, you missed out and you should definitely mark your calendars for next year. I will say with wild confidence and Tiff, I think you would agree of all the summits that we have put on, ⁓ this was by far, think our best production that we've ever done. I think it was our best content. I think it was our best flow. And like the feedback that we got from this summit was off the charts, like shocking how good it was. That's my opinion. Next year, it's April 24th. So if you missed us,

 

Tiffanie (03:45)

piece.

 

Kiera Dent (04:14)

this year, mark your calendars right now, block it out. It is a Friday. We do it for a half a day. It is CE. So you're definitely going to want to block April 24th, 2026. That's coming to you guys. But Tiff, I felt it was our best and I've got some ideas and we want to give some recaps, but what were kind of your takes on the summit this year?

 

Tiffanie (04:30)

Yeah, I think we just got it dialed in. We take feedback every time we do anything. Every time we consult a practice one-on-one, every time we group consult practices, webinars, like anything we do. So Summit, there's always been feedback requests. And I think we've done really well narrowing it down and figuring out what the biggest requests were. I think one of the major things that played to our advantage was really getting a ton of information in a short amount of time. I think,

 

crammed as much in, what do we do? Like four and a half hours as we have done in a day and a half. And we did really, really well. The presentation was clean. It was crisp. had a ton of engagement and honestly, we're still getting people scheduling the calls right now. ⁓ Today you've even done some during your podcasting day. I know just to make sure that everybody's gotten the resources that we had available. And I just think it was jam packed with a ton of information and

 

Kiera Dent (05:02)

Yeah, four and a half.

 

Yeah. ⁓

 

Tiffanie (05:28)

It stacks really, really well with the consulting that we do for our one-on-one clients and for our group consulting. It just honestly played right into how all of the consultants operate with all of our clients. So it was fantastic. I agree.

 

Kiera Dent (05:42)

Yeah, I thought it and I agree with you. think it was, ⁓ I think we really dug into this extraordinary and something Tiff, you and I, this was Tiff's vision. So Kiera's vision was summit, Tiff's vision were these in-person like doctor, leadership, masterminds. And you have been pushing me for probably what? Like four five years to do this. Like it has been, we're at five years then. It's been a solid push. I remember the day this came about, I think you do too. were, ⁓

 

Tiffanie (05:59)

Bye as long as we've been doing summit.

 

Kiera Dent (06:08)

definitely team was on a budget back in the day. And I still think to this day, even not on a budget tip and I would still do this. We're sharing a hotel room and we were sitting there chatting late at night. And I remember Tiff, you're like, Kiera, I have this vision of these in-person events where we get all our doctors together and we do like life and we do business. And I was like, I see it. And then you're like, and I also think we should have a coffee shop. Like it was like both mixed into one. I think the coffee shop also threw me cause I'm like, how are we going to do all that?

 

Tiffanie (06:29)

I'm

 

you

 

Kiera Dent (06:37)

But we literally came to it, by the way, just highlighting, you're in the blue shirt, I'm in the pink shirt today. How perfect is that? If you guys don't know, this is another vision. Tiff and I aren't going to be 90, 90 plus year old grannies. We have the same birthday. I'm gonna be cotton candy pink, Tiff's gonna be cotton candy blue. So whenever we show up this way, it always makes me giggle just how in sync we always are. But back to our vision of these in-person that Tiff had, I think it played into our summit of we're really getting intentional of like,

 

Tiffanie (06:56)

You can have steak.

 

Kiera Dent (07:06)

life on purpose and business on purpose. And so this year's theme was ⁓ unlocking, gosh, was unlocking extraordinary leadership and profitability. And what we wanted to do is I get really annoyed as a CEO when I do CE and it just is coming to me as the owner to then take it back and rally TIF. And honestly, when I've tried to come back and rally the whole team, I just noticed there was this disconnect. And I think as a company, we've always had this vision of like, it's dental, it's doctors and team. Like, look at our name.

 

Dental A Team doctors and team, like it really flies together. And so being able to bring teams together and doctors together in your office, in your space, but teach you life skills and dental skills. And Tiff, know like when you go to offices, people tell you all the time, like how grateful they are. You teach them life through dentistry. Like walk me through why you do that, how you do it. I know it's just like who you are as your DNA, but I think that's why you have so much passion for what we do.

 

Tiffanie (08:00)

Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. I truly believe that ⁓ if I can create passion in someone for what they do for a living, that they'll stay lifelong. think that, I don't know. I don't know, Kara. I think, like you said, it's just naturally ingrained in me. It's just who I am. I take a lot of...

 

what I learn personally, and I duplicate that and I kind of like copy and paste it onto who I am as a as a team member and as an employee because I don't believe I hate the term work life balance. ⁓ I have like a Jars and crazy because I live one life I have one life and I have different spaces of life for sure. But if I 100 % show up differently in every space of life, I'm going to feel like I'm running ragged. So if I can look at

 

Kiera Dent (08:31)

Ha ha!

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Tiffanie (08:48)

relationships as just relationships. And then there's the stack of like, intimate versus friendship, like for sure, there's that deviation. But if I can treat every relationship with the same basics, and communication with the same basics, then I'm not confusing myself. I'm not trying to be something I'm not, and I'm not working harder. You know, I love easy, you know, I love

 

nothing more than defined efficiencies. And like, that's a major efficiency in my life is really being able to stack a belief that I have and then copy and paste it into work. So the way that I communicate with you is the same way that I communicate with my boyfriend, Aaron, or my son Brody. It just, I'm using different words ⁓ to get a different, to get a point across. So when I go into practices and I work with teams and I work with doctors, that's the kind of stuff that I leave them.

 

So when I'm speaking about how we can communicate, I'm also mixing in how those communication tools not only have helped our company and UNI's communication tenfold, but also

 

how it helps me and my personal relationships at home. So I constantly, I think if you polled all of my offices, I don't think there's anyone out there who doesn't know who Brody is. He secretly probably hates that. He gets hellos, gets birthday cards, all these things. But I utilize him as such an example for how we can show up for our families and for our kids using the same tools. And so when I walk away and teams are saying that, they're saying, my gosh, Tiff, like.

 

Kiera Dent (10:00)

Mm.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Tiffanie (10:17)

I went home and I talked to my husband last night and I had the first real conversation that I've been able to have with him in forever because I listened, because I used the tools that you told me to use on patients. So the way that you're listening to a patient, the way that you're putting your ego aside and allowing your patient to be the most important.

 

person in the room, sometimes we have to put that aside and allow our spouse to be the most important person in the room for the time being and have a conversation instead of having a telling where we kind of just sit and we just talk at each other. We're not actually listening. We're not actively engaged and jumping to the assumptions, all those pieces. So I think that's how I do it. And then I want like mass scale of that because I can only hit so many, so many people one-on-one.

 

And I think that's something that you and I have envisioned for the company for a really long time. We know that there's a limit of how many teams and how many doctors each consultant can affect. So being able to take these pieces and these skills and these developments that do smash life and work together on a mass scale like summit or these in-person events that we're doing now for our doctors and our leaders was really something that I think spoke to both of us to be able to just

 

get the message out, get things changed on a mass scale.

 

Kiera Dent (11:32)

Totally. And I think that that just ties right into our vision of Dental A Team is to positively impact the world of dentistry in the greatest way possible. And we do that through expert consulting for dentists and teams. And you're right. Like it's funny, we always run into these zones of like, we've hit the ceiling, we've hit the ceiling of where we are. So how do we like turn and pivot and give more? Because as you were saying that I might actually think that that's the secret sauce to Dental A Team. I think we focus on life and business. We focus on you as a human and we do it through dentistry and like dentistry is our vehicle.

 

What did I say the other day? said, ⁓ life is my passion, dentistry is my avenue. And so really, or our platform. So we're able to come and like help you have this amazing life. And that's, think what all the summit was about. Like it was literally, how do we do this? And so we walked the participants through like, what does extraordinary mean to you? And so if you attended the summit, hopefully this is a good like analysis and like, how did you do and how are you doing? And kudos to all those who joined our Dental A Team family. By far, this was our best year of welcoming new offices in. And I think it just spoke to like,

 

the flow that we were in and the mission that we're about. And we really brought in our Dental A Team Success model and we call it the Yes Model. So you can say yes to more things in your life, to whatever you want. And the Y stands for you as a person and the E stands for earnings and profitability. The S stands for systems and team development. And when you add those three components together, you get success with E's. And Tiff, I think the U part was probably my favorite and funniest part of the entire thing we went through. There are these little.

 

human beings that we draw and we like break up all the parts of our life and Tiff did one of the funniest things she's ever done in front of me. And we were we were looking at her like current life and how her time was split up. And she'd never done this exercise. I was so excited to do it with her in real life. And then Tiff tell about your ideal life and what ⁓ what we uncovered. So like, okay, let me just give the vigil. Basically, what the idea was, and you can try this is you take like a little image of you as a human and you break it apart and you you look to see

 

like in your day in and day out life, just like Tiff said, it's not, we're breaking apart, like you, your life and your work balance, but it was like, how are you spending your time, cut up on a human body? kind of like, like if you think about those cows and they have like the meat chunks, like drawn out of them, like here's the filet, here's the ribeye, like kind of like that, but on you of like, where's my work? Where's my family? Where's my friends? Where's my hobbies? Where's my working out? Like whatever's important to you and like how much of your physical body, like in a visual of your full life,

 

How much of that are we spending in different areas and what does it look like? Like it's a really awesome, if you didn't get to participate in it, it was real fun. And then what we do, and we had like two little, little images next to each other. And then on the other side, we said, okay, this is what you're doing currently and this is what real life looks like. What would your ideal life look like? Like, what would you want to spend? Like, where would you put this? And it's so fascinating because where people put things, it actually says a lot about them. Like what you put on the legs and what you put on the feet and what you put on the arms and what you put across your heart, what you put on your head. Like it really helps to identify things. But tip.

 

Go ahead, take this away as long as you're not embarrassed by it, because it was so freaking funny of how this shook out in real time.

 

Tiffanie (14:30)

I mean, I've got

 

hundreds of people already, so why not just ramp it up? Now we've got thousands, I guess. That's fine. No, I never, nothing's, no, maybe some things are too far, I guess, but I'm an open book. So it was actually, it was really, really cool. And I had not done it yet. I've done other things similar to it. Even we have done similar things to it, but just really looking at

 

Kiera Dent (14:37)

Why not? Here we go.

 

Tiffanie (14:56)

I took it as like my vision of where I wanted my life to be. And then like, what is going to propel me there? Like what aspects of life and relationships, et cetera, will propel me to that vision? So kind of what we did in person in March. Yeah.

 

Kiera Dent (15:08)

And kudos to you, Tiff, because that's what it's supposed to be. Like it's literally

 

helping you see like, okay, where am I spending it? And then where do I want to become? And the idea is to help you visualize your future, but also take it in as an identity of you to help you actually see how you yourself is that identity of the future vision. So huge kudos. Tiffanie got it. That was the idea behind it. That's why we put it in a human form for you. It kind of looks weird. Like they like these weird little doll. I don't know. Like they look weird. We still are trying to work on it.

 

Tiffanie (15:34)

She likes to call them voodoo

 

dolls. They're funny.

 

Kiera Dent (15:36)

Shush, don't

 

say that. That's really going dark, Tiff. Go on, go on. She's sharing all my secrets.

 

Tiffanie (15:41)

you call them them. So maybe don't tell me those things because I'm an

 

open book apparently. So we did the first one and I was like, well, it was really good. It was enlightening. It was actually really cool. And afterwards, I keep thinking about like where things were in order with my chakras and all of that stuff that, you know, I'm obsessed with. So it really made a huge difference there. But I did my first one. And then what I did is I folded the paper. They're both on the same piece of paper. And I was like, I don't want my

 

Kiera Dent (15:48)

Bye!

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Tiffanie (16:11)

current layout to impact what I want my what I'm desiring. Right. So I folded in half so I couldn't see my current layout. Well, what that did was took away from my brain the pieces that I had on there. And I had everything on my future one on my what I want my ideal. I had everything duplicated on there just like different spaces except I forgot to put work on there.

 

So work got removed from my life. I don't know when this is happening, ⁓ but apparently, I don't know. I said, you know what, it's just because I don't have a work-life balance. I just have life and work is just integrated into every piece of my life because I enjoy it so much. So yeah, it was a really humorous event ⁓ during summit. know somebody said in one of the chats, what was it? Best resignation letter ever.

 

Kiera Dent (16:44)

you

 

you

 

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

 

Mm-hmm. Exactly.

 

Tiffanie (17:07)

I was like, my gosh, that's

 

hilarious. That's amazing. So it was, it was funny. think that, I think that I have this innate ability to think of my life as what I want it to be and work supports it. And whatever it is that I'm doing, I make sure that I'm passionate about the avenues that I'm taking. I think that's why I do include so much life because life

 

like coaching and those pieces have just helped me so much in my personal life. And so as I looked at it and as I thought back about it, I'm like, gosh, it's just that those are the pieces that are insanely important to me and work is insanely important to me. But work is what propels those pieces in a lot of ways for me. And so thinking about like the amount of time separated out, I think just didn't feel right. You know what I mean? On that one, but it was hilarious. It was a great moment. If you were there.

 

Kiera Dent (17:58)

Mm hmm. It was really funny. It was really entertaining.

 

Tiffanie (18:03)

Yeah, it was super interesting.

 

Kiera Dent (18:03)

It was super entertaining. And it was it. But I think as you just said it, Tiff, and I didn't think about this at the time, I actually think it's awesome that your identity is not work. And I think that you as a human, like work is a part of it, life is a part of it. But work is not an identity piece of who you are. And I think that's been the case for so long. And I think for me, like work was such a huge identity piece for me that like we shifted it to where

 

it's not work and actually changed what I view about the company and now the company is my passion project. And so it gets lumped into my passions more so than it gets lumped into work. And it's even interesting the language. And so we really went through these pieces and it was awesome to go through and tip. Thanks for sharing that. And I just think like such a good visual. ⁓ it was funny because I was like, so tip, is this your resignation letter? Like on live screen and she's like, it's not, I promise. Like things are good.

 

⁓ But it was, it was quite interesting. And then we also went through like the life cycle of a business. And I think that actually was so telling. We pulled that from Tony Robbins and like, where are you on the life cycle of a business as you as a human? And it's been interesting is when we've talked to people post summit, they've said that that helps them just so much to see like, my gosh, like me as a human, I may be further along, but my business is at like this toddler stage. And so I need to hire people that are more in this younger energetic space because I'm over here on the other side, or I need to like,

 

kick it up and have this, or maybe my team is on this further side where they're maybe closer to retirement, but me as a new owner, I'm actually not there. And I thought it was just such an interesting spot for them to see where they were. And then of course we dug into the earnings, the money. So we walked through them through like profitability and overhead calculator and your monthly cost expenses. And then how do you figure this out? And how do you become profitable? And ⁓ really helping them see how like your supplies and your costs and your overhead directly impact your profit. And then

 

a couple quick ways for you to actually watch this, and that's through a KPI scorecard, and then also giving you then the systems, and we purposely hit two systems within, like we had you assess 12 systems on a 12 monthly basis, so that way you can keep them as a cadence, but then really diving into a couple that will boost your profitability and help your patients, and that was through block scheduling and case acceptance. So just a really fun way, and then after that, we hit.

 

Some of my favorite parts and some parts that people really loved, like I thought it was interesting when we went through like enemies of efficiency and the delegation ladder and like, where are you at and how much are you delegating? So many people said like, my name was in all these tiers of the delegation ladder. And then we actually went through case studies, like what are, like looking at hundreds and thousands of practices, I loved this part so much Tiff and we brought to the table like, what are the characteristics of these extraordinary leaders?

 

for teams and for owners. And then what are the ones of the not so good? Like it is not hard when we walk into a practice, when we look at these leaders, we can usually see, are they going to be successful or are they not within very short amount of time and even talking to them on the phone. ⁓ And so being able to go through that. I think just like the way it all stacked of like looking at you as a person, looking at your business, looking how they combine together and not be separated. And then like, shoot enemies of efficiency delegation, like just so many nuggets. And if you missed it,

 

reach out. There might be some things that we could share with you guys, but I hope you put it your calendar because I think one people left there inspired and excited. I've had people like I saw an office right after and they said, Kiera, like what you guys put together was so helpful and so impactful. And like I was able to take things and have tactical and like people had their teams there and they're like you teaching my team to think about our practice as a business, but also as a patient centered focus and also as us as humans, like

 

Where do you get that in CE anywhere else? And Tiff, really truly think that that's the secret sauce of what we've tried to create and what we have created for all these practices. So that's kind of like my nutshell of like, love the case studies. I love sharing what people do. Like I loved going through leadership and like the good and the not so good. And we actually had people like put in there, like, what do think good leaders are? And what do you think bad leaders are? And like the not so influential ones. And to see, because there are truly patterns and to like figure out the pattern and DNA of these great practices so you can go model and mirror it.

 

I just think was like freaking magic to share with people because we see it. They don't necessarily get to see it day in and day out.

 

Tiffanie (22:12)

Yeah, I totally agree. ⁓ I always tell my practices, my and my doctors, that my biggest goal is that the business works for them, not them working for the business. And I think the tools that we shared with them and the things that they could take home, the communication tools, the efficiency tools, all of those like, yes, models, everything that we sent them away with are easily, easily implemented, and will propel towards that goal where the business literally is supporting

 

your life and maybe, you know, right now today on your current little man, your little person, your, you know, work, your business might be a large portion of that human being. And it was for us for a long time because it had to be, it was a space that

 

We had to create that and we had to show up every day for the business so that eventually the business could show up for us. And I think we've gotten to the point now, both of us where this company and this business and the people that we have here with us on our side are supporting that vision and really things have started to shift. So on the life cycle of a business, like you might be in that stage where you are hungry to get your business running off the ground and you might be putting more in there than your future self wants. But guess what? If you know that vision, it's

 

super clear, you can make your business work for you so that you're not constantly working for your business and eventually it will turn

 

Kiera Dent (23:34)

And I think it's just a to me that's like what gets us excited like I love giving people their life back I love like tiff as much as I give you a hard time about having work off of there That was not the case a year ago Like you were stressed out of your mind about work And I think it would have taken a huge chunk and I was stressed a year ago about work too like I think it was a huge portion of our time our mental energy and I think like you and I have both helped each other get our lives back. I think that we are happier humans now

 

And so we're living proof of it, but then also to give practices their lives back, to give teams their lives back to, like there's an office that I'm super excited we're working with. And they said like, I'm sober out. feel like, and like the whole leadership team, they're like, we're the ones who are here after hours. We're the ones that are here before. We're the ones who are like, just they're like exhausted. They're like ringing a rag out and then you squeeze it even more trying to get like the last two drops of life out of them. And I said,

 

What would it be like if I told you that if you got out of here every day at five o'clock, you're not allowed to stay later, you're not allowed to come in earlier. And at the end of that week, you'd be able to go on a trip to Cabo or wherever you want to go, pick your dream location, Hawaii, the Caribbean. I don't care. You choose your place. Or if you want like, I don't know, say 50,000 bucks or whatever it is, could you get out on time? And they were all like, yes. And I said, so A, we know it's possible and B,

 

that's getting your life back. So first homework assignment working with us is everyone's out the door by five, at least one day this week. And it's crazy because just small little changes that don't seem huge help people get their life back. And Tiff, it was just so magical to be with you and to be in person with you and to present and to give this. And I think that that's probably why we were both so excited from it. Like we, felt like we were in Taylor Swift. Let me just give a little Swiftie, like the lavender haze. I felt like we were in the Dental A Team haze after the summit of just the

 

Tiffanie (25:19)

Thank

 

Kiera Dent (25:23)

euphoria of knowing we were able to give people their life back, their teams getting energized, giving them hope and excitement. Again, not just about a practice, but about a life. So those are kind of my takeaways to have any last thoughts you have, because I loved it. I'm so grateful you were a part of it. ⁓ Ride or die, cotton candy pink and blue for life, like truly just being able to deliver our magic and to change lives and to bless them through dentistry, I think is something that we both... ⁓

 

I think I took for granted for a hot minute and realized like what a beautiful blessing it is in the way we're doing it now versus stringing ourselves up to dry, doing it so hard, now doing it through passion and ease and flow rather than through force and pull like we did in the past.

 

Tiffanie (26:04)

I agree. Yeah, I totally agree. I did all of that. And I think having the team that we have behind us, the consultants who are here and they are so excited to help so many new clients this week, we have just seen such an influx of people ready to change their lives, ready to change what their business model looks like. And like you said, get their lives back. It's been just really incredible and watching our consulting team just rise to the occasion rally. I mean, we've got clients that just signed up this week that I've got Trish and Kristy and

 

Dana has already implemented tools. Dana has already within weeks found significant money issues and things going on that it's just really cool to be able to watch so many people outside of you and I be able to truly transform lives. And that's what that's what we're all about is really just creating the best for everyone that's involved.

 

Kiera Dent (26:57)

Yeah, Div, I love it and I agree. Our consultants are second to none. And so if you missed out, you did miss out. And put it on your calendar for next year. I do believe that Dental A Team Summit is next to none. We just have so much fun. We bring fun to CE and we make it enjoyable and easy. But I hope you choose to join us next year for sure.

 

But if you're thinking like what we just talked about, you want to know more about, or you want some tips for it, or you want some of the resources that we share, reach out. [email protected]. We'll happily like assess it with you and your practice. Like we have given so many tools out and so much help to all these practices, but I think truly giving you your life back, helping you help more patients and having more fun is what we're about. So Tip, thanks for being on the podcast. Thanks for doing Summit with me. ⁓ I enjoyed it and I just appreciate and adore you so much as a human and as a colleague, as a coworker, as a mentor, and just being in my life.

 

for who you are. So thanks for being here today. I super appreciate you.

 

Tiffanie (27:48)

Thank you. Thank you for having me and supporting me through my journey.

 

Kiera Dent (27:52)

And for all of you listening, thanks for listening and we'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.

Tiff and Dana discuss the numerous innovations happening in the field of pediatric dentistry, specifically minimally invasive care and maximizing shortened attention spans.

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Transcript:

Tiffanie (00:02.2)

Hello Dental A Team listeners. We are so excited to be back here with you. If you listened to an earlier podcast, I alluded to the fact that Dana and I were going to have some fun with a really cool podcast. I'm excited for this one. I think it took a little bit for us to prep for this one, but I think that's the world of dentistry for us. Dana, thank you for spending so much time with me this afternoon busting out a few podcasts here for the...

 

For the listeners, how are you this lovely afternoon?

 

Dana (00:33.698)

Doing good, doing good. I'm excited to be here. I've had to reframe my podcast time to Tiff time because it helps really get me pumped up and excited for it.

 

Tiffanie (00:39.768)

I'll make it.

 

Tiffanie (00:44.986)

I appreciate that. I love that so much. It is our time together. Kristy started saying the same thing too. And, I love getting you guys on here and I can't wait to get some with Trish and all the other consultants that, that we have. think it's just so valuable for us to get the time together, share ideas. Cause you know, we have, we have our consultant co-labs, but this seems to be where the most ideas just like randomly spur out. Cause it's almost like we're coaching.

 

when we talk about these things. So you're welcome to the world. Thank you to the world for joining us for our consultant time. It's my Dana time, my Britt time, my Kristy time. So thank you, Dana. I appreciate it. Today, I thought it would be fun. And I want to caveat this before I truly talk about what we're talking about. This is for everyone. We want to focus today on pediatric dentistry innovations. But

 

I really think that there's some valuable tips and tricks in here for everyone and not just pediatric practices. I know a lot of GP practices see many children. I know a lot of pediatric practices that refuse GP referrals, which I think is really funny. And I totally understand because when I was in my GP practice, it was like we would take kids, but the worst kids we did not. And so I totally get it. It just makes me chuckle every time.

 

Regardless, my oral surgery practices, you guys are seeing kiddos and by kiddos, mean like realistically 16 and under is what we're talking about here today. I know my my periopractices, sometimes you guys are seeing them too. My son plays lacrosse and gosh dang those teeth. just cringe every time something happens, mouth guard or not. I have seen, I don't know how many mouth guards fly across the field and they have stopped play because it's thank God. I thank God for this for these.

 

rules and regulations, but it's part of the uniform. And so if they're missing, if they if if the ref see it fly out of their mouth, they'll call the bell stop the game so they can go get it. But I'm like, you got hit so hard your mouth guard blew out. Anyway, it's periodontist. I know you're seeing kiddos too. So everyone's seeing kiddos. And today it's just pediatric dentistry innovations and

 

Tiffanie (02:57.342)

I think, Dana, you said it well just before we got on here. There's not a lot of exciting new things for pediatric dentistry or realistically right now for dentistry in general. We've kind of hit the space of, we're gonna try this stuff out for a little while. So I agree with you there, but I think we've come up with some really good things and tested and seen some amazing things that are working for the generations of kids that we have right now.

 

we were talking attention spans. So I know that that will come into play with some of the stuff we're speaking on today, but really, really honing in on, I think it's, again, it's going to come back to like that trust and that value and making sure that emotionally we're, we're emotionally evoking things for our patients, whether they're adults or children, so that they're comfortable, they're confident, they trust us and they want to return. For the kiddos, I get really emotional and

 

I just love on the pediatric practices. I myself could never work in a pediatric practice full time. There's no way. I don't have the patience for it, but man, do I value and appreciate the work that all of you guys are doing and Dana, that you were able, that you've done and are continuing to do in your efforts as well. Because to me, I've done mostly GP and oral surgery.

 

And I really had so many patients. I've met so many people that are so afraid of the dentist because they had a horrible experience as a child or because they had a parent who had a bad experience as a child that passed it on to them. Those were the worst for me, but I just value and appreciate the amazing pediatric practices who are out there doing amazing work and creating lasting.

 

impressions for people because you've really set them up for success in so many different places. So whether you're a GP, a specialty, a pediatric specialty, no matter what a lot of these pieces we're going to talk about today are really going to help you set the stage and the tone for these people's lives. And Dana, you've done pediatric dentistry. Thank you. Praise to you. I just, you know, I love kids, but this

 

Tiffanie (05:13.536)

I just don't have it in me and I know that about me. I can consult them and I can spend a day and a half in office with them and love on those kids while I'm there and then I'm exhausted and need to go home. So I love it. Thank you, Dana for being there. Dana, I actually I really loved some of the things you were talking about, like the continuation of products and services and stuff that we're already utilizing. think GP and pediatric offices are using a lot of those. Tell me

 

here with everyone listening a little bit about some of those pieces that you used and that you're seeing still lot of your pediatric practices are using and what have you seen just continue to innovate in the world of that.

 

Dana (05:53.472)

Yeah, I think one of the biggest things that pediatric practices are always looking at ways to innovate is minimally invasive care. So how can I get this kiddo treatment that they need improve what they came here with in a way that is as minimally as invasive as possible because of exactly what you said. think pediatric practices beyond yes, all practices have to work on experience pediatric practices are unique and they've got a parent experience and a patient experience and oftentimes the patient experience impacts the parents.

 

experience, as I can tell you my mom heart, just for my mom heart too. So I feel like they have worked really, really hard in trying to find ways to treat kiddos as minimally as they can, right? And but yet still getting some really great results. So they have found a lot of things, you know, we're even starting to see a little bit of like, you know, non injection.

 

Tiffanie (06:26.552)

Yeah.

 

Dana (06:49.088)

anesthetizing and things like that that really really, know, SDF has made huge leaps and bounds. There's Cura.now for... What's the word I'm looking for, Tiff?

 

Tiffanie (07:01.784)

Keep going.

 

Dana (07:02.7)

Yeah, and so there's just all sorts of ways that we treat kiddos now that like didn't exist before and that is truly because we're looking at ways to treat them that helps create that positive experience and doesn't put them fearful in the dental chair.

 

Tiffanie (07:16.492)

Yeah, well, even Dana, I'm thinking too, even fluoride has come world so that they're not swallowing it or it's not as toxic, I guess is the best word to use there, or difficult because remember it used to, gosh, I remember the trays, right? I remember trying to shove those trays in kids' mouths in my office and I'm like, this does not fit. The doctor's like, no, it's supposed to be too big and it's just like fluoride foam is everywhere. So thank heavens those are.

 

hopefully a thing of the past. But even in the world of fluoride for kiddos, like what have you seen in that world, Dana, that has transpired over the course of last few years?

 

Dana (07:57.036)

Yeah, I think, you know, obviously the big switch to the varnish, think to like, I mean, I've even seen some pediatric offices, like I had a pediatric dentist and she basically like reached out to all the pediatricians in the area and was like, fluoride these kiddos as early as possible. I'll teach you how I'll so it's just expanding like the reach on that too has been incredible. And I think just the education to the parent because kiddos, you know,

 

they expose themselves to a lot of acidic things now. Diets have changed a lot over recent years and things in our food have changed a ton. And so as much as they can also just educate the parent on those choices and like, hey, we can kind of counteract some of those choices with Laura. really want to...

 

do a ton of nutritional counseling happens in pediatric practices too, but it just kind of reinforces the need for as we see these things change, we've got to make sure that kiddos get access to that too.

 

Tiffanie (09:05.462)

Yeah, and I think that's space of innovation as well that you just mentioned, the nutritional counseling. That's not something that's always been there. It's been there to a level, right? We know like soda, and I remember telling kids or being told to swish with water after I ate my lunch at school because I wasn't going to carry my toothbrush, you're supposed to brush. Like I remember all of those pieces. But I think in the recent years, nutrition, I think nutritional counseling in general, in the health industry has become bigger.

 

situation. It's become a bigger conversation and I know even standing in office with my pediatric

 

practices, consulting them, watching them work with patients. I've been just amazed at the level of nutritional counseling that they're giving the kids and the parents. And like you said, we're working with the parents. It's two experiences there, but really honing in on what are you eating and how it's affecting. And I think one of the biggest spaces that I love the most, is really being able to see like...

 

acid reflux, right, for one thing, but even just like the tongue thrusting, the different habits that they're able to see because of what the mouth looks like, and then they're able to correct it so early on and really build lasting changes. They can tell just by different visual things within the mouth, right? If there's gut issues, does your kid have an allergy? Like, maybe you should go check this out. And they're referring them back to their

 

there are pediatricians to get nutritional counseling or to get these tests and things done, or there's a lot of them that can be done in dental practices now as well, but really honing in and looking further than we've ever looked before to ensure that these patients are as healthy as possible. And I think that's massive. That's a huge innovation within the pediatric world. And I think it's a really easy space for dentists and...

 

Tiffanie (10:58.924)

for pediatric dentists specifically to really get extra training in. It's offered, you know, everywhere. I've got, you know, we've got gym.

 

trainers doing stuff like that, taking courses like that. So to be able to have your degree that you've got, your doctorate that you've got, and then add that aspect to it is just really, really freaking cool, in my opinion, and saves so much time and trouble and probably saves the parents a lot of time and trouble in figuring things out or finding out too late. So that was a huge one that you mentioned there. I think one space

 

One, I love that you highlighted again that it's two experiences. It's the parent's experience and it's the patient's experience. And when I work with pediatric practices, like we're building out avatars to attract the parents that we want because they're gonna have the kids that we want. So we're not talking to the kids, they're not making the decision, we're speaking to the parents.

 

One thing that I hone in on is the avatar, but then the second step to that is how do we ensure that the parent wants to come back? How are we making them comfortable in the practice? How do we make them comfortable with the diagnosis, the conversations? How are we integrating them into all of this as well? And making sure, like you said, my mom at heart, that the patients are well cared for.

 

one space we're hitting with the generations, you know, the generations are getting further and further from us. But those generations that we're hitting now, there's a huge attention span differential between even our you know, teens right now already have like pretty low attention span compared though to like our

 

Tiffanie (12:40.408)

are four to eight to 10, like that 16, 13 to 16 is like, gosh dang it, this is kind of kind of annoying, you know, but then you get under 13. And it's like, holy cow, I've got about five seconds to grab your attention. And then you're gonna we were saying like, our kids keep saying, I'm bored. I'm bored. I'm like, oh my gosh, did I hear you say I'm bored before we get to the industry one more time, I'm gonna freak out. But their attention spans are so low. They're so small, because there's so much

 

stimulation, constantly going around, that we have to take that into consideration, I think, within the dental practice, because we've got to keep their attention, we've got to keep them excited and interested and build an experience that they don't walk away frustrated by, because the parents are taking into consideration their experience. Like, did you have coffee on hand? That's a huge one for the moms out there.

 

And then did the kid have a good experience? So I think those aspects are massive. And Dana, what did you, we talked earlier and you actually wrote this newsletter. So if you're getting this newsletter, good job, Dana wrote this one. If you're not getting our newsletters, you should go subscribe because they're pretty freaking awesome.

 

and they're written by the consultants if you didn't catch that there. So Dana, what are you suggesting the practices are seeing practices? I think this works for all practices, by the way, these ideas here, but specifically pediatric dentistry is going to thrive with it. What are you suggesting right now to a lot of your clients that they integrate and innovate within their practice to help keep those attention spans? like here, that they're excited and interested?

 

Dana (14:14.38)

Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's like a twofold. How do I keep them engaged and interested and excited and make dentistry fun? But then also, how do I kind of distract them so that I can do what I need to do in that short amount of time so that they stay comfortable and calm? And so I feel like we're looking kind of at a bunch of different tools. see, you know, I know there's lots of

 

TVs on the ceilings and and I'm even seeing some virtual reality. You know, kids are always like loving those oculus as I have a nephew that he's constantly like banging into the wall and you hear him on phone calls and I'm like, what's he doing? My sister was like, that's his oculus, his virtual reality game. And so it does allow you to kind of transport kiddos into the next world. So I think that it's, it's just coming up with how can we make dentistry fun? How can we make it engaging and make the patient feel like they're a part of the process? So these

 

Tiffanie (14:42.808)

Yeah.

 

Dana (15:08.494)

things that we use in general too but taking photos and showing them and talking about the icky bugs and like making it fun and in their terms and then also having tools on hand to be able to distract the kiddos that you can really do what you need to do very quickly very easily without minimal hands and minimal squirming so that again it creates that experience that you want them to have quick seamless easy in and out for them.

 

Tiffanie (15:33.344)

Yeah, yeah, the headphones are massive, right? I think the Oculus for the waiting room is brilliant. I know I've got to practice.

 

beautiful practice and she has a theater room and so they she's got like comfy chairs in there and that's dark and the movies going it's the same movie that's playing in the back and so the kids can go into the theater room but that oculus idea or the VR headsets whichever one you you choose is a great idea to have a little room where it's obviously the kids by themselves for

 

exactly what Dana said about her nephew, right? Kids are by themselves, but they're playing with that. used to do, I mean, gosh, this is so long ago, but I remember we used to have like a PlayStation one, you know, and it honestly drove me crazy. told you kids are not, I love kids, but.

 

Dana (16:06.446)

you

 

Tiffanie (16:20.728)

kids are not my jam for dentistry, but I would go crazy because it was the PlayStation one. So we had to flip the discs out, right? And so we had like 10 different games, but I had to keep them behind the counter and the kids would come up. But this is a little bit different where one, the kids know how to use this stuff. When we had the PlayStation, the kids did not know how to use a PlayStation. Kids were not like, they didn't understand it and they didn't get it. But now they're teaching us how to use this stuff. Like a six and eight year old could tell you how to use a VR headset.

 

My kid, he looks at something and he just knows. And I'm like, how did you figure that out? He's like, it's obvious. It's not obvious. I didn't get it. Right? Like, that was not obvious, but it's fine. So all these

 

these spaces of really making sure that they are super entertained. Like are we making them sit out there on their own phones or do we have things that they can do? Even as simple as like a coloring table. I know I had my boyfriend's kids the other day were walking through. It was old Navy and they were doing some sort of safety something. They had a table set up over the side with crayons and

 

coloring sheets, those kids flipped. They were so excited, screaming. It lasted about 10 seconds, right? Because it's going to be over quickly. But even just having something like that or having iPads with the color by number app, kids are obsessed with that right now. But making sure there's some sort of, like you said, that distraction, but also in the waiting area, like where are they sitting? And what are you making the parents do? You know, the parents are sitting in their school on their Instagram. So how are you keeping the kids entertained so that both parents or both

 

sides right are enjoying their time. So I love the VR headset. I love the the movies are still a pretty decent hit as long as you get bluey on there or something. I know it's got to be super relative. Apparently, the Disney movies are not super relative anymore. It's got to be bluey or bust.

 

Tiffanie (18:10.552)

But making sure we have those, think headsets in the back are really fantastic if they're going to be back there for a while. Or if you're going to be using the drill or anything like that, mean noise, have those noise canceling headphones so that they don't understand what's going on. And then one space too, Dana, that I think all practices are starting to implement. And I think it's brilliant for pediatric care because it makes it seamless and easy as the AI tools. So making sure you've got those AI tools, Pearl or

 

whatever it is that you decide to utilize, download it and working because I mean, Dana, how often did you see, I know just in our practice we'd be like, shoot, like that was hard to see or we just couldn't get to it that something could have been missed, but also like you said, super non-invasive attempts.

 

Dana (18:58.966)

Yeah, yeah, I think AI tools are great clinical AI tools are fantastic as far as helping us diagnose again with like minimal contact within the teeth or in the mouth for the patients. And then even AI for like having a chat for parents because parents right typically work when the office is working. That's why those middle hours are so hard to fill and ding ding pediatric practices, right? So if I've got an AI bot that can chat with my parents after work can get them scheduled can do those things. That makes it so much easier because again, like Tiff said, we've got two experiences

 

here but our target experience is that parent and so the more that we can make those things easy and again pediatric practices rely on volume right so bones are constantly

 

Last time I was in a pediatric practice for a visit I was just like the phone does not separate in there are hundreds of phone calls every single day and so having an AI tool that can get the ones that we miss or that can chat with the parent via text or can be available for after hours those types are crucial for pediatric practices because that is when the parent has free time

 

Tiffanie (20:00.504)

So.

 

Yeah, that's brilliant. That's brilliant. I think that's a wonderful tool. So AI in a lot of different areas. We've got the virtual reality headset, the Oculus or whichever you choose, AI pearl or whatever chair side to get as much value out of that appointment and that chair time as you can. And then also the AI communication tools. think that's brilliant. Virtual assistance is also a great way to handle that because they can work any hours. And so we've got a lot of practices

 

Pediatric or not that are utilizing virtual assistance to catch those after hours and also I know a lot of practices especially pediatric practices are closed on Fridays or they're closed on Mondays open on Friday So you've got that you've got that four-day work week three or four days and so

 

The AI tools, the communication tools or the virtual assistant can grab a lot of those missed opportunity phone calls. And I know from the marketing standpoint, working closely with the marketing company for a few of my clients, that is massive.

 

being able to bring either of those tools in to grab those calls has drastically changed the marketing efforts and increased their results tenfold just because the opportunities were getting missed while we were closed. So I love those and that's brilliant. I think there's a ton of tools here. think kids are digital natives. Kids know what's out there. They know when you're not a digital native. So watch out for that. They will tell you they will call you on it. And if your VR headset is

 

Tiffanie (21:33.07)

is like, I don't know, an Amazon $20 ordered one, they'll tell you. tell you. I'm not saying go spend a ton of money on it. I'm just saying make sure whatever you get is going to keep the attention span of the child and that the games that are on there are quality. I think movies, things like that are fantastic. So my suggestion, my action items for you, really look at the patient experience. Take your dentist cap off.

 

and say if I had to come here, what would I expect if my kid were coming here? What would I expect? And really look at what your systems and all the pieces that are keeping people's attention, what are those things doing to create that experience for your patient and your parent?

 

and really take inventory of those spaces. Is there something that we can innovate on that we can just make it better, make it new? You always want to have that seamless experience and make it high end. And if we stay where we are, never innovate or change, we will eventually just die. So don't let that happen. Dana, thank you so much for your nuggets. Thank you for being our pediatric brain here in The Dental A Team and for sharing those tips and tricks. I appreciate you being here today.

 

Dana (22:49.28)

Yep, I always have fun. Thanks for having me, Tiff.

 

Tiffanie (22:52.062)

Of of course. All right, guys, go take inventory, go figure out what it is that you need to innovate on, if anything, and leave us some comments in the section below. Five star reviews are always appreciated. If you've got tips and tricks that you can share with people, people really do go through and read those reviews. So if you've got some, drop them in those reviews. We want to hear them too. [email protected] is how you can reach us. And if you are a practice who's ready to freaking innovate, let us know. We are here to help you along your journey. Dana, thanks

 

again and everyone we will catch you next time.

Kiera and Tiff are tuning in from a hike to talk about their shared birthday (today, May 8!) and how their personal and business evolutions have morphed.

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Transcript

The Dental A Team (00:00.977)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and... Spiffy Tiffy. Oh my gosh. We are on a hike and we're in the middle of the wilderness. We're a hot mess right now. So Tiff flew in and we decided since we're actually together, we should do our birthday podcast together because little known fact, if you don't know, Tiff and I actually shared the best birthday in the entire world. Yeah, May 8th.

 

I think they knew that though. I think they did too and if you didn't well welcome and so I convinced if we were gonna go on a hike today and when we used to be like old school old school dental a team we used to go on hikes and podcast on a hike so we decided to We've got cords all over us. Like this is in our ear. We haven't done this in so long I feel like rookie move here So if the video turns out amazing and if it doesn't well Just imagine Tiff and I are sitting up on a hill on this bench

 

It was a beautiful hike up. We're in Reno, Nevada right now, but we get to celebrate our birthday and I wanted to riff this because May 8th is an incredible day. Tiff and I are both like so random. Tiff, we met. I feel like Tiff and I in the work world, we met on a blind date basically. Like we were set up by a mutual friend for Tiff to come and join and she is still on my phone Tiffany Trader DPP. Yep. DPP is the company that Kara previously owned that brought us together. it was DPP. Dental placement pros. Tiff was a recruiter and then

 

Recruiter turned consultant turned lead consultant. She's kind of done it all but if I feel like happy birthday to you Happy birthday to you. Gosh, it's like just right around the corner It is and so this is releasing on our actual birthday And so I thought a fun rift would be to if we are both about to enter a new decade of our lives And I thought about thinking about like decades decades in practice ownership decades in our life I don't know how you're feeling but going into our birthday this year

 

I've really been like on this mole of like, do I want to be in the next decade of my life? And what do want that to embody? And I know you and I are both kind of on that same path. It's really fun. It's been fun with you. think over the course of time, shoot girl, it's been almost eight years. Five, eight, eight years. That's actually cute. But just thinking about like, we've gone through so much together. And I think if we were to look back at when we first started the company.

 

The Dental A Team (02:14.635)

I feel like Tiff started it with me. Like seriously, you've been through 99.999 % of all of it. just thinking back of like, I think of who we were when we met versus who we are today and really like huge kudos to us of like both progressing and growing. But I'm like, Tiff, what does this next decade look for you? Like I thought, let's think about it. And like, maybe what was the decade before? What was that focused on? And then what are we going into for this next one? From your perspective, from my perspective and helping owners and like offices think about like.

 

when you first started your business, might look different and like, what are the different decades or even five years of your life? How do we kind of like capture that and maximize? To me, this I feel like is living life on purpose rather than just unconsciously going through the motions. Yeah, yeah, I agree. I think it's actually it's a really fun conversation, not only because it's a fun conversation, but it's actually.

 

I think I can make it super applicable for life and for business in general. So whether you're a dental practice owner or you're an entrepreneur of your own or just whatever kind of business you're owning or working in or managing, I think I can make it pretty applicable because when you ask me that question, like, what am I going into? What did I come out of? Like, what does that look like? And I think we both are very intentional human beings. So we're always very intentional with our time and we're very intentional with like what's coming and how can we make the best or the most of what's coming.

 

And I can say this one's fun too and easy for me because I'm going into a whole new world of age. Going from 39 to 40, that whole new like 10 years, everybody looks at their lives in like 10 year segments. And going into 30, that life was how can I show up the most for my kid? Because Brody, you know, was at an age where he needed me.

 

He needed the best parent that he could have. He needed the happiest mom that he could have. And I was very intentional with who I was being and what kind of a life I was creating for us so that Brody could have the best experience as possible. So going into 30 was like, okay, how do I show up the best for my kid? Because he's at these formative years and ages that he just, needs me to continue showing up and how do I show up the best for him? So it was very much about my identity as a mom, I guess, and like reforming that.

 

The Dental A Team (04:27.144)

And allowing my work to be a part of that and a part of Brody's life and a part of showing him how to be a good employee and good team member and a good human when it comes to work as well. And it's fun actually going into this next decade because Brody and I hit milestones together, which is incredible. I didn't plan it that way, but it works out really nicely. And so as he is graduating high school and going on to college, I will be a year into 40.

 

And so I'm going into my 40s with this whole new mindset of how do I support my adult child the best, which frees up honestly like so much for space for me because he is going to be so independent. And when I think about that, it's crazy because now I have all this time for me and this space for me. So really like reforming what that looks like for work, for pleasure, other relationships in my life.

 

making sure that I'm super intentional still, but thinking about it in like a business mindset, it's kind of like the, last 10 years was like my teenage years. Um, those Brody's, you know, out of like middle adolescent to into his teen years and really being intentional with that time in the teen years of like grit and the hard and the, um, emotions and the

 

puberty and all of the changes and business does that too. It does. Right. So you get to like five years in business and you're like, okay, I still have like a screaming toddler. And then you get to 10 and you're like, okay, this is kind of cool. We're sustaining. And then you, that next 10 years, right? Like if we're getting to those markers is like, okay, now we're like in our adolescence or however you might want to look at it. But then you get to the space where it's like, wow, this has opened up and I have leads and I have people on my team that are

 

sustaining my business. So it's like having an adult child, right? Who's like in college. So I still have to like be there and hold accountability lines and like do so much of it and financially still have to be there. But then in the next, you know, one to six years from now, that's going to shift and change again, where it's like, now I'm like, maybe not finance, so financially tied and so emotionally invested. And when you look at your business, I think it's kind of the same trajectory. So

 

The Dental A Team (06:49.486)

That's my long-winded answer. I liked it. No, I love it a ton because like, so when we did Summit together and we talk about the life cycle of a business, which came from Tony Robbins, and it really does talk about like from toddler to like from birth to top like infant, then toddler, then you go into like your middle school years. I do remember Brody in his middle school. were going to like, Tiff was like on coaching calls. We were running to like after school pickups. We weren't like the longest line.

 

And then they go into like high school then they move into college and then it's kind of this prime and it's interesting because I think as you and I shift into these decades That are different like I agree with you. I think our 30s were so much of building us building a business building who we wanted to be I feel like so much of my identity and who I am Not that it's tied to the business. I think at the beginning it was and I think we both watched We watched a lot of that and then we realized like this was crushing us and crippling us and we had some really strong breaking points like you said I think it's like that

 

refining and redefining who we are and like what we actually want it to be because we're no longer in survival mode like thank heavens like cheers to that like we should cheers our microphones here we go but like cheers to that that we got out of survival mode because every business and I think every person goes into survival mode that it's almost like tiff I'm I'm a little scared but like beyond optimally optimistically hopeful

 

that we can like sit and take a breath and actually enjoy what we created and enjoy the life we created rather than trying to keep building. And I think like that's like the crusting it feels like we're headed into in business and life. Like, so to like what's on horizon for 40. I mean, for me, I know I've been looking at, and it's funny, you and I are actually gonna probably switch roles. You're about to be childless, like less dependent. And if everything goes the way that my life is shaking up, we will become very child dependent. Like babies were hoping like that becoming a portion of our life, which.

 

Honestly, it feels funny that you and I are constantly shifting lives, like literally shifting all the time. But also so beautiful that the different seasons of life, we can show it for each other in different ways. But like what's on the horizon for 40? Like what does 40 feel? Because I've been thinking like, what's the energy of that? What do want it to be? We think of this in business every year. There's an energy, there's a creation, there's a like a word that we have. But it is interesting to not feel so survival-ish, but more sustained. And like to me, it feels like we're headed into true prime.

 

The Dental A Team (09:08.765)

in business and true prime in life. So what's on Tiff's prime? Like Tiff's not, Brody's like full-time parent all the time anymore. Like he's weird. That's gotta part. You also feel weird. what's the vibes you're feeling for moving into that decade of your life? Yeah, I'm really excited. I think the human and the man that Brody has already become, he impresses me every single day. Like literally every day I'm He's an amazing human.

 

I feel so lucky that I've been a part. mean how he was so little I think it was eight when we met and so to watch Brody I feel like I didn't see the child like I I don't know Tiff is like brand-new newborn mom I have no clue and that feels like hard hard years of your life And I met you when he was eight but to watch you and him just this incredible bond and he's such an amazing human like kudos to you has got to feel really good of like moving into 40 you grew

 

you raise this human that's really going to go impact the world in such a special way. is. He is going to do something incredible. And I remember when he was an infant and when he was like a baby and a toddler, I remember reminiscing with his grandma, his dad's mom, that he was going to do something really incredible. And every year of his life, the two of us have just been like, he's going to do something incredible. So we have known since that baby came into this world that he was here to impact the world in really great ways.

 

Brody does a lot of it on his own, if I'm honest with you, like I love taking credit for it because I know that I do impact him and I know that the way I communicate and the person that I am definitely helps mold him. but we've had a village of people around him, you and Jason included, like that have just impacted who he is, but Brody just intuitively and innately knows how to be a good human and he trusts himself. He trusts his intuition and he just goes through life. So.

 

I'm really proud of him and it's fun to watch that. so I'm really excited. I'm so sad. Like, gosh, it's just like heart wrenching to think of how massive that changes and like how different life will look in a year. But I'm so excited to see him as an adult and like see him create his own life and all of his own adventures. So I'm really excited about that. And what the next decade looks like is, I don't know, it feels like,

 

The Dental A Team (11:24.478)

I feel like things are slowing down but still speedy at the same time, if that makes sense. Like there's a lot coming, a lot of trips and a lot of fun and Aaron and I's relationship is just incredible and there's a ton on the horizon there, I can tell, and with his two younger kids. But being able to be in a space and in a relationship that I can continue to soar and continue to.

 

find freedoms and share those and spread those with him and explore the world with him while still being a part of the kids' lives but not being dependent on for that. don't know how to say that. You're be the auntie. Yeah, I'm not raising the kids. I'm there to positively impact and to support Aaron in whatever ways that he needs, but he doesn't need me to raise the kids, which is freaking incredible. It's the best relationship I could have ever drummed up.

 

So like that's on the horizon fostering that relationship those relationships all three of them and their mom fostering a relationship with her. She's incredible and really I don't know intentionally devoting into that new space and area and allowing me and Brody to find a new Just a new adventure like for both of us. It's gonna be The next ten years is gonna be really shifty. I mean just think he's gonna go from

 

18 theoretically to 28 in a decade Jason I were talking of like how crazy is it that when you look at the decades of your life So like from 1 to 10 you go through a lot of school But from your 10 to 20 like you're finishing up high school So basically like almost 20 years those first two decades are so much school But then I feel that third decade the 20 to 30 is so much freaking growth. It's finishing college. It's figuring out who you are It's getting your first job. It's figuring out how life works and then I feel like your 30s to 40s for us at least we're like

 

building. Like it was the big build of who we are as people. It's building your, it was building the business together. It was building our identities. It was building, like you were building with your children, um, like just so many pieces. And then it feels like the forties, it's almost like you've crested the mountain, which that was cute. We're at the top of the mountain right now with podcasting, uh, and knowing that there's so much more ahead, it's not the, it's not the final peak. There's so many more peaks, but, uh, it doesn't feel as hard as it was to grind to this area. And I think for,

 

The Dental A Team (13:46.043)

For me, I'm not quite to 40. I'm very close to one year behind Tiff. So that's kind of fun to talk about. But I've been looking and I think for me, the 40s feel very much like we said, mean, moving into motherhood feels very thrilling and daunting all at the same time. Like me morphing into that. I've wanted this for so long. You know that you've gone through the journey with me for so much of it. But like, how does that shift me as a CEO, as a friend? Like I've watched you put Brody ahead always and to

 

to have that fierce love come into my life is something that I'm so excited to, like more find in Jason's relationship even more. But also it's very much I'm looking at my 40s, there's so much health and I think you and I are both hitting health harder than we ever have. Just to make sure that the body I have that I've been gifted with really can help me have the life that I wanna have till I'm 90, till 100. We have this great vision of us, we're both in pink and blue. Tiff and I have this vision of I'm in pink, she's in blue.

 

Tiff's gonna be the cotton candy blue granny. I'm gonna be the cotton candy pink granny. We have like, I'm gonna totally have pink hair. Tiff's gonna have blue hair. We're like cruising. Tiff, I don't know if I've told you, like it's gotten a bigger vision. We're gonna be on the beach somewhere. I've already thought through this, because it was originally like jazzy with this, but we're gonna have this like freaking villa of like all the awesome people that we wanna be around that are in this amazing villa.

 

We're going to have a tour if we have to be in Jazzy's. It's only because they're fun. have NOS on them. Well, they have the like sand tires. Yes, 100 % sand tires. And then we're going to have our own like private like boat and yachts that like we can have this trail go to. We're going to have people that live there. Like it's going to be the most amazing place. I'm so excited about it. Like living just our best lives. This will be your tree space, Tiff. Yeah, thank you, Will. You found it. just like making sure that I take care of my body now and really putting an emphasis on that.

 

to be able to sustain. But also I think, like you said, no longer so much focus on me personally, but being able to give more. It's a weird shift, but who knows? Shoot, having kids, I probably will be like, Tiff, I lied. I lied about all this. I had these grandiose ideas on that mountain and like, screw it. It's like just pure survival. But really I think that there's like impact, health, and a continuing morphing. But I think that this is evolution of souls. Like this is evolution of business. This is evolution of owners.

 

The Dental A Team (16:04.989)

And I think if you're a new owner, just realize it does get better. True or false, Tiff? my gosh, true. I actually, it's funny that you say that because I have an email ready to go for a client call today and my client's been a practice owner for like, gosh, just over six months now. And one of the action items is like, help me feel less crazy, right? Like he's like turmoiling all the time. And I thought to myself, as I was reading it this morning,

 

I was like, bro, it's not happening yet. Like you just got to sit tight and know that like that's where you're going to be for a hot minute. So, I feel like you said like the tens to the twenties to the thirties, right? And I felt like the twenties for me was like infancy again. Like the twenties was like, even infancies. I think twenties for me was like that two years to two years old to five years old age where you're just like, not sure how to be or how to act or how to communicate yet.

 

but you're trying everything and you're running as fast as you can and climbing things before somebody catches you. Yeah. And like asking for forgiveness, not remitting. I feel like that was my 20s. It's just like, what can I do? What can I get into? Like, how can I just be my most wild self? Yeah. have to like live wild and Well, it was like, how do I test the waters of being an adult? And how do I navigate this adult world and figure out what's okay and what's not? I kind of felt like that was my 20s and my 30s was like, okay.

 

Now I'm going to dial in who I am, but like the reality is, it was still just like testing the waters and like 40 is like, I'm my most confident self today than I have ever been. And I feel more true and aligned with who I am today, even than I did a year ago. And so something like, I feel like it's like, we say we're in a cocoon all the time and I feel like that's, I honestly haven't even.

 

I feel so guilty. There's so many like friend events and things that I just have pieced out on in the last year and maybe even two years, but specifically the last year I have super recluse just like gone inwards and really dedicated and devoted to really figuring out what the important pieces of my life are. Not that these friend events aren't important pieces. It was just like noise. And I had to, I had to reduce some of the noise.

 

The Dental A Team (18:17.468)

And I can see and I can feel that in the next six months to be here, like that will start opening back up again. But I had to recluse in order to be able to like see more clearly. Yeah. And I actually think it was it was I don't know if it was duly induced or if we were separately on the same track. But I think both you and I.

 

hit a breaking spot last year where we both broke, which is odd because we were so confident, but I think we broke on the noise and really, I know you took an inward step, I took an inward step, and we both were like, all right, independently and connected too, which is really interesting to look back on, Tim. I didn't realize how almost like same track we were on, just independently. It just looked a little differently. It did, but I agreed with you. was like...

 

cut out the noise, figure out what's really important, what really makes me happy rather than what I've always thought made me happy. And I think like to relate this back to offices, I think that there becomes noise in business too. I think that there was noise in dental lighting. I think that we were growing, we were really like after a shining star. And I remember, it was an interesting moment where you told me, were like, here we like kind of lost our vision and not kind of like we straight up lost it. It was like almost thrown in the trash on accident.

 

We were just chasing something, but we forgot why we forgot what we were doing. We forgot the everything that like it's something funny. I remember I was on a walk and I called you and I said, tip. Why does it have to this hard? And you said, I don't know, but it feels freaking hard right now. And I think right after that is when we both like hunkered in, we went inside and I mean, people said like, why haven't you guys been on the road? Well, this is why this is why we had to figure it out.

 

But it's so beautiful on the other side of it. I think as practice owners realizing like there is time to be quiet, there is time to internally reflect. Like just because you're at the prime right now doesn't mean you're gonna stay in prime. We know that we're headed towards this prime area, but it's also gonna be something done with intentionality. We're very intentional with all the hires we make. We're very intentional with the moves we make in the business. And I think this is so parallel to business and life. Like business to me is such a spiritual personal gain that I think teaches us so much about who we are as people if we want to.

 

The Dental A Team (20:24.689)

But I've learned so much through it. It's kind of fun to but I also think like celebrate the next decades that we're going to celebrate the awesome things are headed to but I would say in the last probably like one if not two years I think as people we figured out who we were And as the business we figured out who the business was and maybe as I'm saying this Maybe the business is also reflect you as a person. my gosh. It totally does. It's just absolutely reflects both of us

 

We try not to be in turmoil at the same time. Yeah, but it does. It absolutely reflects this. I think as you were saying all this, Karen, I think it's so precious and valuable. There's a space there that I was thinking, gosh, actually like us both were like, gosh, we had to clear out the noise. I think every chapter. All the pause was the timing. Hold that one.

 

Okay, I think what happens we go inwards right we had to clear out the noise we did we went inwards personally, but I'm thinking like Okay, how does this really exist you believe business is going through your businesses are going through the same things just like our business Whatever the life cycle so I'm thinking gosh I wouldn't I went internal and I had to like clear out some of the noise and to decide intentionally where I was spending the energy and my time I think that's like

 

you are a new patient, narrowing down what procedures you want to do. Because I think when you start out, when you're an infancy and toddler and adolescence of being a dentist, you are doing everything. You're like, what can I grab at that's going to bring in the revenue and get me profitable? And you're just go, go, go, go, go, do, do, do, do. And you have to do that. You have to. That's like starting a business. the waters. So too, it's like, what do I want to do? You can't figure out what you like or want to do if you haven't tried it.

 

We can't decide what sport we're going to play when we're a kid if our parents didn't allow us to try them all. So that's a parenting tip. True. I'm listening. I'm taking notes. Don't push them into one. Let them try and let them decide on their own. That's my parenting plug. But I'm thinking, gosh, you're like.

 

The Dental A Team (22:30.095)

noise is I don't want to do root canals anymore. Like I don't want to do this thing anymore. I don't want to have a doctor that's like, I don't want freaking do any more fillings. I'm like, stop doing filling. Yeah. Like it's fine. But you're at, he's at the point now that he can't do that. And I think that's the clear out the noise when it comes to a dental practice is what is noise? when I, a year ago, but however long it's been now.

 

When I was like, I can't do this anymore. I literally felt like I couldn't think like it was so noisy. Nothing was making me happy. Everything was just like a sword being poked at me. Everything that happened was something and I was like, this is not my natural state of being. So in my mind, when I feel out of my natural state of being, when I feel like things are hard, when I feel like things are chasing me and I'm chasing a golden carrot.

 

I know something has to give and that's that's when I when I either slow down enough to like clear out the noise or a break and last year I broke um but I I had to break in order to the change but that's where it is at your practice too so if you're in your practice and you're like this sucks Kara like I'm

 

This sucks and I can't do this anymore. ready to sell it. Can I just sell this? like, you can, let's prep it. Always be prepared to sell. So then by time we get through with that, they're like, actually, I kind of like this. We just had to out the noise. So you just have to clear out the noise and dial it in. Normally, what I find and what we found, right, is that we had lost our vision. So we were chasing everything instead of looking to accomplish our mission and our mission and bringing in things that supported that. We were chasing all of the things. So was like every client.

 

That's what Tony.

 

The Dental A Team (24:20.818)

So it was like every client is the client. Like every client is the one that we want. Instead of being like, what is the client? What does the client look like that supports our mission? Who's here to help us support our mission? And who's here to like, just go through an operations manual, just buy the operations manual. That's being freaking fast. If you're here to support our mission, we want to support you. That's what we had to do. That's what we had to come back to. So it's just like that.

 

clarifying moment as we were talking, I'm like, actually, as we went inside, and as I morphed and changed and figured out what I needed to clear out this year, that's exactly what it is. Totally. And Jeff, I love that you brought that up because there is so much noise. And I think there was so much fear that held us there. There's no way I can stop doing this. Like I remember we thought like, if we don't say yes to every single client that comes through and dental team isn't like providing for all of them, we're failing the mission rather than like

 

A, we're never gonna be able to serve everyone we want to and we're building things to be able to serve. That's why we do the podcast. That's the way we're able to serve every person that wants to be a part of this. But I think like before you get to that breaking spot, which I think you and I both, we learned a good lesson.

 

realize that you can actually say no to those fillings. You can say no to the root canals. You can say no to these things. Tiff and I were like, we don't want to travel. And Tiff, like, let's do in-person events. And I was like, I don't want to do those. And I'm so grateful we did it because they've been some of the most incredible things in hearing the clients. You had a vision that I couldn't see. And I also would say to owner doctors, don't be afraid to let your team help you find that vision while you're going through it. Tiff had the vision. She saw where we needed to go. I couldn't see it. And so trusting that Tiff.

 

whether it's for like, was like, shoot, Tiff, if this is what you want to do, take it and run with it. But truly, I'm so proud of you and so grateful for you because you saw the vision when I was blind and I couldn't see it. And I think having trusted people in your life, but realizing your life, like I think we get to do this one time. And that's why I'm super excited for us to be going to this decade. That's why I wanted to do this podcast with you. I was like, sure, can I rift about our birthday on my own? Yes.

 

The Dental A Team (26:20.617)

But I'd love to talk about it I think we bring different perspectives of your business is just like your life. So when you look at and I think one of the bigger things that I started looking at was when I'm 90, 100, 110, 120, when I look back, what am I going to want to be at that point in my life? How am going to want to act? What are the things I'm going to be proud of? What are the things that I'm going to be like? That was my legacy. I realized I wanted to leave a legacy and I wanted to have impact.

 

And Tiff, I know that's right aligned with what you are and what you want. And I know there's spaces in your own world that you want to do. We talked about it. There's other things. And so really becoming those people we want to be that we're proud of. And your business is the same. Like, you go to sell your business, what do you want them to look like? What's the legacy? How do you want this to play out? And I think that helps you make decisions more clearly. So I think, like, as we wrap this all up, like, hey, Tiff, happy birthday. Like, I'm excited. I'm excited for the 40s together to see, like, what we become and how we do.

 

Also in business, clear out the noise tip. think that was one of most beautiful things, clear that noise out, really hunker down. Like if you're in the beginning, you're gonna be hustling. Like realize it's the hustle, the grind. But if you're later on, realize that you can make changes to make life happier and that's also okay. I believe we get one life and we get to make it the best or the worst. And it's kind of like a schedule, like our schedule's terrible. We're like, you made it that way. Like you have the choice to change that. I think it's the same with your life. Like this is your life. Yes, we're all dealt cards.

 

but we're the ones who ultimately get to paint the canvas of what we want it to be. And Tiff, just, love you in my life. I love sharing the business with you. I love creating with you because you push me and inspire me in ways other people don't and you get it. And it's beautiful to create canvases together simultaneously and independently and just be huge raving fans of each other. And just so grateful for, for the life that we've been able to go on this journey with. Yeah, I don't know. Like I can't even say it better. And I think that we've created something really incredible.

 

The ability to share it with other people has been so much fun. Bring more people onto the team that can get behind what two girls trying to figure it out created. And it's just been really fun. Everything is done with intentionality. I think something you said made me think like just ownership of your life, ownership of your business. And at the end of the day, what do you want people to say about you?

 

The Dental A Team (28:33.342)

when you saw your practice, what kind of a business owner were you? Because I think we've all walked into or you've purchased the practices where the teams aren't talking so great about the previous owner or the patients are like, thank goodness or whatever. Be that guy that people are like, wait, where did he go? I always had so much fun and I wanted to talk with him or whatever. What do want people to say when you're done with whatever this piece of your life is? What will it look like when you're gone and take ownership of that?

 

and take ownership of the power and control that you have over it. Totally. And I'll say, Tiff, like just the silver lining for everybody listening, if you're going through the suck that Tiff and I went through, it does not matter where you are on the business life cycle, this will always hit you. So just know it's going to be there. So I think one, be very intentional with where it is. And Tiff, when you and I got more intentional, there you go. You're welcome. We got more intentional. Hiring became easier. Yeah.

 

We stopped trying to be everything for everyone. Like me as a CEO, I was like, fine, people are going to talk about me. That's fine. This is who I'm going to be. And this is Kira. This is the version I want to be. And I feel like I stepped into a role that I had never owned. We started hiring people with a lot more ease. We started attracting clients with a lot more ease and things really got better. So I think if you're in that space of just like, don't know, close down the noise, get really intentional. Where do you want to go? Who do you want to be? What are the things you want to be known for? What are the things you want to do? Get that vision boxed in.

 

We brought our leadership team together. got four of us like dialed in of exactly what we want to be together. And it's wild that in six short months from that first meeting to shoot, we're six months from that meeting. The ease and the flow that has come has been something that I can't even explain. It's magic. So go in, if we can help you out, if you're like, my gosh, guys, I'm living your life, call us. We don't just say that we need, we're here to consult you. are truly, we've been there, we've done successfully and we want to help you. So reach out, hello at thedentalateam.com.

 

Thanks for Rifton, happy birthday to us, happy birthday to all the maids, people out there. It's a national holiday, so I hope you go turn on some pink and blue lights on your house, wherever you are, celebrate Tiff and I, and Tiff, thanks for just being in my life. I just truly love and adore you, and it was really fun and special to do this. I agree, thank you for setting it up, and thank you for making it my life. Yeah. I'm proud of you. And for all of you listening, thank you for listening, and we'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.