We're looking at options for a patient referral gift especially since we've just started our membership plan. We used to give out the best brownies in the world, but we wanted to see if there was something that would have more wow factor...

Does your office give any kind of referral gifts or even thank yous? I'd love to hear what's working!

Short episode: Personal tragedy struck this week and we weren't able to go into the office. Luckily, our team picked up everything. They were able to keep treating our patients and keep the office running smoothly with minimal intervention. I've never been prouder of what we've built.

It's easy to think you can just be anything you want to be. But I call BULLSHIT. You're a CERTAIN kind of person. You can improve certain skills with practice, but you don't have infinite potential. Rather than thinking you can do anything or be anyone, try being a little creative and hack the system. I share one of my biggest personal weaknesses and explain how I get around it.

Episode Show Notes:

00:13 - You can improve, but not infinitely

00:30 - Mentors are great to aspire to but...

00:59 - You're a CERTAIN KIND OF PERSON

01:10 - My huge weakness of meeting people

02:20 - Hacking my weakness

03:08 - Get to know yourself better

03:37 - Be creative

04:32 - Don't be too hard on yourself

05:35 - Encouragement only goes so far

05:44 - New launch of Practice Blueprint

06:33 - Please share your own struggles!

I wanted to give a few updates that relate to previous episodes and some new developments. In this episode, I cover our new receptionist, the FlossClub membership plan we're offering to our patients, more info on how we dropped the DMO plans, how we found out our fees were too low, and a new segment, where I share something I learned last week.

Episode Show Notes:

00:05 - We hired a receptionist!

00:47 - We're almost ready to launch FlossClub (see link)

01:43 - Subscriber question: How did we drop the DMO plans?

02:16 - Letting our patients know

03:20 - Our fees were TOO LOW by almost 50%

04:27 - What I learned this week - Manage your staff WITH your staff

05:20 - Are passions found or developed?

07:33 - Your own staff can help create the relationships if you interact

References:

Front Office Rocks

https://frontofficerocks.com/

Our FlossClub Membership Plan Website

http://www.flossnyc.com/flossclub-info

FairHealth Consumer Site

https://www.fairhealthconsumer.org/estimate-costs/step-2

Our Dental Membership plan is almost ready for launch and we wanted to share some insight into why we did it and how it works.

The main reason we felt we needed to create this was because we were getting inundated with patients who had DMO insurance. This was problematic because they ended up taking so many slots in our already packed schedule. This created a major revenue problem that we needed to fix quickly. But we were trying to solve the wrong problem. We needed to take our own advice and REDUCE THE FRACTION.

So we did it and realized that we could offer a much better solution to these patients. We worked with our attorney to draft up the legal contracting, I built the page and payement systems and voila, our plan was born.

Episode Show Notes:

00:16 - Huge influx of patients but revenue didn't match

01:00 - Basics of DMO insurance

01:33 - No skin in the game for DMOs

02:17 - What do we do? Initial ideas...

02:38 - REDUCE THE FRACTION!

03:04 - A better idea...

03:35 - How does it work?

04:03 - The plan in the wild

04:50 - Create predictable cash flow

05:09 - Slow to start

05:55 - Could all patients move over?

06:20 - Plan specifics

06:45 - Complete transparency

07:04 - Specialist partners

08:15 - Signup in the office before treatment

08:55 - Have you started a dental membership plan?

So it's been a crazy week of ad placing and interview scheduling in an attempt to replace our receptionist that just quit on us. The good news: the prospects have been surprisingly good and we were able to find some seemingly qualified candidates in the first round of interviews. Typically, we post the ad, do a phone interview, and then do a working interview where they work all day to make sure they jive with the rest of the staff.

I wanted to share my process and some tools we use to find and weed people out quickly. This can be extremely time consuming unless you have some tools that save you time. I also share my thoughts on candidate ambition and on-boarding.

00:42 - Successful working interview candidate on first try!

01:25 - Our process of hiring

01:46 - The importance of phone interviews

02:26 - Easy way to schedule your interviews

04:00 - Career aspirations of our candidate

04:11 - My philsophy on lifers for a receptionist

05:07 - Onboarding is crucial with this philosophy

05:40 - Remove the trauma of staff replacements

Tools:

Indeed: indeed.com

Calendly: calendly.com

On Monday, our receptionist quit and gave us two weeks.

And this after we talked to him and told him we need MORE than two weeks. While he's not required to give us more, it really put us in a bind and pissed us off. We're implementing a lot of changes right now so stability was key for the summer. Ragini and I talk about our frustrations as we drive back from our weekend vacation.

We'll clean this up later, but right now we just want to complain...

Episode Show Notes:

00:09 - Sudden departure of our receptionist

00:35 - Short notices hurt

00:59 - Mutual respect was lacking

01:58 - Gave him an opportunity

02:36 - The shit that got me mad

03:06 - Temporary help is VERY temporary

03:27 - Still jarring even though we were prepared

03:52 - The dream is the lifer

04:10 - Positives of the experience

04:26 - Next steps for his replacement

04:30 - Indeed.com has great tools for hiring

05:10 - Quick overview of our hiring process

It's pretty remarkable. Every few months I get stuck when I'm working on my projects. I'm moving along and then BAM - I lose my motivation. Sometimes the work gets complicated or convoluted. Sometimes it requires too much creative energy. All I know is, it happens regularly. And it's annoying as hell.

I love learning about psychology, so I started researching what others do and found some unintuitive ways to approach motivation. For instance, one method called for DOING first, and letting motivation follow.

Huh.

I was obviously skeptical, but then I tried it.

Episode Show Notes:

00:20 - Procrastination instead of working

01:22 - "Do the Actual Thing"

01:56 - Practice actually counts as doing something

02:22 - The iterations of the Like button on Facebook

03:27 - The iteration of Instagram portrayals

04:50 - "Act yourself into a feeling"

05:40 - My struggles with my projects

07:00 - Et tu?

References:

The Moment You Finally Change by Kris Gage

https://bit.ly/2IzoH0t

Feeling by Doing by Ben Hardy:

https://bit.ly/2NsNiYp

What does the invention of windshield wipers have to do with trying to solve our DMO plan problems?

NOTHING. Actually, that's not true. I think we can all agree that windshield wipers are a great invention. The problem is that they were solving the WRONG problem. We did that at the practice when we were trying to figure out how to handle the low reimbursement DMO patients. They were clogging our schedule and reducing our revenues. So we needed a new approach and it wasn't simply increasing fees or having dedicated DMO days...

Episode Show Notes:

00:36 - The INVENTION of the windshield wiper

00:52 - The ITERATION of the windshield wiper

01:23 - What is the real issue you're trying to solve?

02:00 - Solving problems faster

02:20 - Intro to Reducing the fraction

02:50 - Why Reducing the fraction can save you time?

02:55 - Our fraction is our DMO patient problem

03:20 - Chasing the wrong problems at FlossNYC

03:44 - Intro of Dental Membership Plan

04:10 - Provides better service which is our main issue

References:

Everything That Scares Us About Autonomous Cars Is In Windshield Wipers by Mitch Turck

https://bit.ly/2JqWcU0

Often when we're trying to motivate or train our staff, we focus on the best performer. But running a practice is a team sport rather than an individual one. You need all your employees performing well because no ONE employee is going to seal the win.

Worse still is that bad performers have more impact on your business than the good ones, so focus your energy there for better and more impactful results.

Also in this episode, a quick update on the new staff meeting agendas we set up and how it's working so far...

Episode Show Notes:

00:12 - Worst employees vs best employees

01:00 - Team management in basketball vs soccer

02:00 - Dental practices are like soccer teams

02:40 - Strongest link is most tempting

02:55 - Spend time with the weakest link

03:44 - Part 2 - Update on the new staff meeting flow

05:06 - More productive and less blame - jury is still out...

References:

Revisionist History Podcast-My Little Hundred Million

https://feeds.megaphone.fm/revisionisthistory