The Delivering WOW Dental Podcast

Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Delivering WOW Dental podcast. I am super excited to have you guys here. Today, we're talking all about team bonuses, how do we create bonuses for our team members, when is the right time to be able to provide a bonus and what is the most efficient, effective, and profitable way to be able to provide bonuses to our teams.

And so we're going to cover all of that. If you've not yet had a chance, I would love to invite you to join us inside of our dental boss entrepreneur Facebook group, where we have thousands of dentists coming together to be able to learn how to better run, grow, and scale their businesses.

To join us there, you can head on over to dentalbossentrepreneurs.com. So inside of our Facebook group, we did have a question come in that was asking about team bonuses. How do we incentivize our teams? What percentage of production should we give to be able to bonus our team members?

And so I wanted to spend some time answering this because there are specific strategies that we can use and things that I want you to actually consider that perhaps you might not have considered. Now, I will tell you, I remember being that practice owner early in my career, making a lot of mistakes.

And the mistake that I made was that if I want to have team members do the things that I'd like for them to do, which is to be able to have patients follow up and schedule treatment. If I want team members to go out and help me with marketing, if I want team members to help to hit our practice goals that are in our whiteboards, I would need to just give them extra money to do the things.

And I really had that mindset and I was telling myself that story of that is how I can actually get them to do the things. Until I remember one of my early coaches coming to me and she said, "Anissa, let's look at your numbers. Let's look at your profitability."

And once I did that, I realized that, and I really knew it to be honest with you as well, that I really didn't have the money to be able to do that. In fact, at that time, I was actually not really paying myself much of a salary. But I love my team members and I wanted to be able to do more for them.

And again, I had the belief that in order to get them to do things, I'd actually have to pay them bonus. And so again, I was just taking money out of basically my own pocket, what was not even there, and paying them. And so maybe you're that doctor right now that is paying team members bonuses.

That's looking at production and saying, "Okay, I'm going to give them this amount." And maybe you don't know your numbers yet. And so I want to make sure that this episode really serves you and that you understand exactly how to know when is the right time to give a bonus, and again, how do we actually provide a bonus?

Because believe it or not, the lie has been told that we are to give a bonus on production. And oftentimes many of you might have even heard me tell my lemonade story of when I was back eight or nine years old, I had this idea to get a Rainbow Brite doll. And my mom said, "Okay, we can get it for you at Christmas."

And I said, "I want to get it sooner. Can I go out and have a lemonade stand?" And so we went to Winn-Dixie, we got the sugar and the ice and the cups. And the next day I literally went around knocking on doors and I said, "I'm Anissa. I love around the corner. I'm wanting to get a doll. I'd love if you could come out."

Gave them my address, "At 12 o'clock and support me so that I can get this doll." Well, 12 o'clock came and the line was down the street and I actually sold all the lemonade. And I got really excited. I'm like, "Mom, I'm going to be able to get my doll." And she said, "Anissa, I'm so proud of you. You had a great idea for a business.

You actually had a great product, and your marketing was great. All of your lemonade was sold. But I really need you to understand that today you did not make 17 dollars and 58 cents. Today, you made three dollars and 24 cents because the rest, the cups and the sugar and the ice, that's actually what it actually cost you to make three dollars in your business.

And so I remember back to that time when I was giving bonuses based on production, not knowing what my numbers were. And guys, if that's where you are right now, it is actually a little bit dangerous. And so as we start thinking about, "Okay. I get it, Anissa. My eyes are open.

My ears are open and hearing you, how do we do things differently?" One of the things that we want to look at is how do we know our profitability. How do we understand what our business is actually making?

And what's really interesting is that as I'm asking practice owners, when we're going through our business boot camps, what I'm discovering is so many people really just have no idea what their business is making on a monthly basis or on a weekly basis or on a daily basis.

And at a minimum, you really do need to know how much your business is actually making. And this is not production. This is not collection. And so the question is, well, how do I know how to do that?

And so one of the things that I encourage you to do is to have a process where you have a team member that every single Monday, for example, they're pulling a report from your practice management software, that now allows you to be able to see your production and to be able to see your collection month to date.

So every Monday, for example, that number's being put into a template or to an Excel sheet or written on a piece of paper or written into a whiteboard. From there, what's also really powerful is having a process, where as your bills are coming in, those bills are being put in place as well into that template.

So even if you're not paying the bill that particular week, it's being entered in. So now you can look at your cash flow ahead of time, you can see what's coming in and now you can subtract the outstanding that is due for that month, from what's actually come in for that month on a weekly basis.

So you can actually see where you stand for the business. This is pretty powerful. If you've not yet been a part of our business acceleration boot camps, I highly encourage you to get in there. We actually provide the template. We actually teach you exactly how to do this, which is really, really powerful and insightful for you to have that information.

But now, you know how much you're actually profiting. And it is off of that number because that is the money that you are actually making after all of your bills are paid, after your team is paid, after your lab bill is paid, after your rent is paid, after your utilities are paid.

And now off of that money, off of that amount, you can now go ahead and say, "Well, you know what? I'm going to give my team 5%, 10%." Right? And what I also encourage doctors to do is to actually have this calculated and do this calculation quarterly. Because there will be months where you will have more profits and there will be months where you will have less profit.

And so it's really nice at the end of a quarter to do an average of your actual profit and to go ahead and set your calculation there. All right. So that's one thing that I highly, highly recommend.

The other thing is really helping your team to understand that profitability is actually what allows you to be able to give them additional earnings so that they can do more and take care of their families, have those vacations, and to be able to buy their dream homes and all the things that they're working for, just like you're working for things to be able to do for your family.

And so as we're looking at how do we increase profit, it is yes, increasing our high-value services, it is looking at ensuring that those insurance payments are going in, that statements are going out. It is really understanding what profits are actually coming in from different PPOs that you're using.

Because now that you have that knowledge, you can see if it makes sense to be able to go with this PPO.. Or maybe you're doing specific services, for example, ortho, so we're going to choose one PPO over another. Okay. So that's something that we want to look at.

Another thing that I highly recommend is for your team to understand that profits don't mean that's how much your doctor is making. And so as I'm working with teams, as my team is aware, profit is not what the doctor makes, profit is where we can now have the ability to make decisions about taking courses, and buying new pieces of equipment.

And of that profit, you can actually allocate a set percentage that goes into an expense account for travel, or that goes into an investment account for the business so that money can be compounded, or that can go into that rainy day fund.

And of course, as a practice owner, you do have the benefit of being able to take dividends out of the profits that are coming in as well, which is obviously one of the benefits of making a decision to own your own business. All right.

So as you are thinking about building your bonus system, the first thing again, that we want to look at is how do we understand our actual profits versus just understanding our production and our collection. We also want to have a system to be able to know how to calculate that number. And again, not you, your team.

You've got people for that. Really simple processes allow them to be able to calculate that. And then having a way for you again, to decide, okay, we're going to go ahead and give out whatever percent. It could be 5%, 10% to your team. And that's done typically on a quarterly basis. All right, guys.

So hopefully that was super helpful for you. If you've not yet had a chance, we'd love to invite you to join us inside of our next business acceleration boot camp, where we'll be sharing more strategies for you to grow your practice, as well as helping you to understand how to get to those numbers to be able to grow your practice, provide more earnings opportunity for your team, and to be able to build that practice of your dreams.

Thanks for listening to another episode of the Delivering WOW Dental podcast. Now the next step is to join us inside of our next free business acceleration workshop. And to join us, head on over to deliveringwowbootcamp.com.

Hi everyone and welcome to The Delivering WOW Dental Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Anissa Holmes. And today, we're talking about how to effectively analyze your team and get what you really want out of your practice. This podcast really was inspired by a doctor who posted inside of our Dentalbiz Chiks Facebook group that she had a team member that came to her and said that she was offered more money in another practice and if the doctor would match it and would give her an increase in her salary. The doctor thought about it and the doctor said, okay yes, we'll go ahead and match it. And on Monday, the team member didn't show up for work. And so I don't know how many of you have been in this situation where you have had something similar happen to you. But I actually want to talk to you today about the analysis of team members and really looking at how do we build and scale that multimillion-dollar practice and what sort of team is it going to take to get there?

And how do we analyze a current team to see if they are at the point where they have the capacity to support us in building our practices? Do they want to be there? Have we been clear with them on what we want? And so I want to take this time to really focus on really analyzing our team, because oftentimes what we discover when we have team members who leave, is that we will actually go through this process of frustration. Why? Because we have to now look at getting another team member. But what I often hear is after the fact, it was the biggest blessing because the person that came after them was the best person that they have ever had in that position. And so I actually want us to start looking at, and I'm going to give you a process today, to actually evaluate your team because perhaps the team that got you here is not the team that's going to get you there.

And so I want to talk to you about how we build that team that's going to get us to that next level of growth. Being able to grow, scale, and serve more patients. Being able to grow in a way that you don't have anxiety, that you're able to be really happy, doing more dentistry that you love, and earning way more money so that you can support your team, so that you can support taking them on trips, giving them those benefits, being able to purchase equipment cash, being able to have way more money to put into your retirement account, your investment accounts, being able to take care of your family and take amazing vacations without apologies. And so, as we start looking at our team, what I want you to start doing is to really ask yourself three specific questions, right? And the first question is, does your team, and I want you to do this, take a sheet of paper out and write down each team member's name and ask yourself these questions.

Number one, does this particular team member understand what you are having them there for? Does the team member understand their role? Does your team member understand how to be the most effective in their job? Does your team member understand what the deliverables are, and what guarantees that they're being successful in their role? Have we been clear? And one of the biggest things that I see oftentimes is, because we are so busy that we don't have the ability to train our team, or we don't have the skill set in the knowledge of how to be able to have our team to be able to step into being the highest performers within their role. Oftentimes what happens is that our team members really are not clear on what they are supposed to do. And so I really want you to ask yourself that question is, does your team member understand their role, right?

Do they get what they're there for? Have we been clear about what they're supposed to do? What are their measurables? What are their deliverables? If they are a treatment coordinator, do they understand that X percentage of patients that come in, that they're talking to about scheduling treatment, we want to have actually scheduled, or are they just there every single day, just doing their best, right? So I really want you to analyze that. The second question is, does your team member actually want to be a part of your practice vision that is growing, that is serving patients, and is allowing them to grow personally and professionally as well? And you know, I will say this, as I am onboarding new teams into our coaching program, one of the biggest things that I ask them, or one of the first questions I ask them is, how many of you guys want more for your families than you had growing up, right?

Like, I don't care if your doctor's watching, like just it's okay, I'm giving you permission, raise your hand and let me see. And then I will say doctors, how many of you want more for your kids than you had growing up, right? And what we discover is that we all want the same things. We all want to be able to take care of our families. We want to have them have more than what we had growing up. And so, as we start looking at that, what I often share is that if we had a table and the doctor was trying to pick up the table by themselves, it would be really heavy. If the office manager came to help, it would be a little bit easier. But if everybody picks up a piece of the table, then we can all move across the room really, really fast.

And so one of the things that I often talk about is this concept of being on the bus. And if we want to go from say Miami to LA, one thing that I've shared with my team, I remember when we first did vision boards when I shared my vision of my practice is, I said, guys, we're going to be there. And anybody who's with me, I promise you, I will never forget. And when we get there, we are going to celebrate. We are going to be able to be so excited about what we've done together. And so for me, for you, for your team, I want you to evaluate them and ask, the second question is, do they want it? Do they want to be a part of a practice that is really serving patients hard and collectively you are growing so that you collectively can be able to have the business grow so that everybody can benefit from that, right?

And I often tell this story as well, when I'm talking to team members, is I'll say, when we first started my practice with our first coach, I remember our coach having us do exercises, similar to what I have teams do within our programs, right? And I remember the team member coming to me and she said, you want us to write down what we have to do daily, weekly, and monthly. You're asking us to do vision boards. Like, this is silly. This is not going to work. And I remember going to Nicole, my team member and saying, you are a great assistant. I think you're amazing, but I need you to know that we are going there and so if you are not wanting to do the things, it's okay, and she was like, well, my last doctor didn't make us do this.

And like, this is not going to work. And I said you know what, we're going there. And so I really want you to understand that in order to get to the next level of growth, it really does mean having to make next-level decisions. And it also means really looking at the current team, because if you have team members that are coming in, that are saying, you know what, this other doctor is going to increase my pay, I just want to go over there, can you give me more money? That's not solution-based. Being solution-based is how can we all come together to be able to have more same-day rollover so that we can all make, not just a little bit more, but a lot more. How can we have the ability now to be able to trips together as teams? How do we have the ability to serve our patients hard?

And I will tell you, I have been able to, within my dental practice, within our coaching programs, I'm really proud of it, build cultures where team members really want to be able to serve the people that we serve. And so within my practice, it's all about, guys, this is my vision, I want to be able to be the number one practice. I want to have the latest technology. I want to be able to offer services that nobody else is offering. Right? And that's why we're looking at putting in sleep apnea and really investing the time in the training. Because for me, I know that we can save so many people's lives. But guess what? I can't do it alone. I need a team. I need people around me that are going to help us to be able to serve all of our patients. And you know what, you're the right person to be here on the team.

And I'm going to train you. I'm going to empower you. I'm going to inspire you. And collectively we're going to be able to help more people. Right? Same thing in our coaching program. I go to our accountability coaches and I say like, I want to support you. Tell me what's important to you. You want to have your first home, your first car, like as a business, I want to be able to support you and your personal dreams. And let me tell you the vision of our business, like our business model, what we're really all about, is helping doctors should be able to grow and scale. I want to be able to help hundreds more doctors to be able to build multimillion-dollar practices, women to be able to grow amazing businesses while being able to maintain a household, and have a ton of time for their self-care. That's what I want to do.

And so now what happens is I've got a team who's like, oh, oh my gosh, I love your vision, I want to be a part of it. And so, as you're looking at your current team, again, do they want it? Because it is so amazing when you have people that are collectively growing for one purpose and one cause, right? And if you have people on your team who are just clocking in, clocking out, being negative Nancy's, talking about other team members, guys, they're never going to be the right fit. And what's going to happen is, it is going to start your growth and it is going to delay you from building the business that you're meant to build. Okay? So the third question that we need to ask ourselves is, do our team members, individually, do they have the actual capacity to do what we are requiring for them?

And I often tell a story of one of our coaching clients who came in initially and she actually had her mom, was her only employee and her mom was doing insurance. And so the question again, asking these three questions, does mom understand that she's supposed to call the insurance company, what she's supposed to do? Yeah perhaps, perhaps we've given mom that knowledge that she's the insurance coordinator. Does mom want it? 100%, mom wants to be there to help her daughter be successful. Does mom have the capacity? Right? And the question is, mm, maybe, maybe not. Because mom keeps making mistakes and no matter how much we keep training mom over and over and over and over again, she's getting frustrated, she doesn't have the capacity. And so as we start looking at that, then we can do a few things. Number one, we can move mom into another role.

And so you move mom into the scheduler. So now she's scheduling appointments, she's confirming appointments. And now you have a team member who's thriving, right? So I want you to think about that. We've had lots of shifts in my practice where we've had people who were really slow in terms of assisting the doctor, but who had a ton of knowledge, dental knowledge, to be able to help patients. So they now came in as a new patient coordinator to actually find out from the patient their chief complaint, to have conversations, because they were actually able to use their slowness as a strength to actually be able to slow things down and have great deep conversations. And so we want to look at our team and analyze like, do we have people in the right seats? But also the capacity, a lot of it is, are team members trained as well as they can be trained?

Like, are they masters in verbal skills? Are our teams understanding the power of being leaders and not going to make excuses or being in denial when things are slipping through the cracks? Does your team have the skillset to be able to come together and problem solve? If you have broken appointments, how can everybody come together? If you have one of the team members whose goal is to be able to start three, $10,000 cases a month, does the team have the capacity to be able to understand how to support that person with what they're doing individually as their role, right? And so capacity a lot of times really comes into training. Are you getting your insurance coordinators the training that they need to be the best, right? Oftentimes we are not investing in our teams. We are winging it. We are hoping that they just get it through osmosis, but the fact guys is that's not how it happens.

And so investing in our team, looking at how can we give each team member continuous training. If they're the scheduler, how do you become better at scheduling? If you are a dental assistant, how can you become the best dental assistant to be able to create systems and processes for consistency so that you're staying in budget so that you are being as efficient as possible? So these are the things that we want to look at. And so, as we start looking at those team members that are coming in that are saying, I want to go somewhere else because they're giving me more money over there, what are you going to do? I want to empower you to not be pushed up against a wall and say, you know what? If this practice is not the right fit for you, it's okay, because we are building a family here that we work together and we are going to continuously grow and celebrate together.

If you have negative Nancys who are going against your core values of building a positive team and family spirit, it's never going to work. You will want to have 100%, A players. Now, how do we get those A players? It really comes into the process of how are we hiring. There are frameworks for hiring. Really looking at asking specific questions during the interview process, looking at having group interviews, looking at including in behavioral style assessments so that you can match the position that you are hiring for with their behavioral style. So if you're looking for an insurance coordinator, for example, you want someone who's detail-oriented. You're looking for somebody who's going to be at the front desk, you want somebody who's outgoing. Who's going to ask how's your family doing? So there are processes for hiring that again, oftentimes as practice owners, we don't understand. I didn't always understand this until I actually invested time learning how to effectively hire.

And that is why now, I have not one but two businesses where we've got amazing team members that I'm able to leverage and have them to be able to be the best of their role. I often will say, in our practice, in our team, we want every team member, no matter if they are in sterilization, if they're your assistant, if you're cleaning the office, to be the director of your position, where you can come in, where you can offer suggestions of how to grow. But that comes in with building your team to become leaders and helping them to understand the power of their role in the practice, empowering them. All right? So hopefully this was a really helpful podcast for you. The key really, in getting what you want, is really analyzing your team. Is really starting to understand how to build leverage in your business and verbalizing that what got you here, won't get you there. All right? Take care, guys. Enjoy the rest of your day. And I will see you in the next episode.

Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of The Delivering WOW Dental Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Anissa Holmes and today I actually want to talk to you about something that is pretty dear to my heart, and it really is all about building leverage in your business through associates. Now, I know some of you who are listening to me right now, you perhaps have associates in your practice. Some people who are listening, you might be thinking, "Well, is now a good time to bring in an associate or what's the benefit of having an associate?"

And so I actually wanted to talk to you to address this because what's been really valuable, instrumental and transformational and allowing me to grow my business, my dental practice allowing me to be able to earn a significant amount of income, grow my wealth, and honestly be able to serve our patients at a much higher level has been by bringing in associates.

Now, some people bring in associates and their thought process is, "Well, I can now bring in associates and I can do more high-value procedures," which is really, really great. But I actually want to challenge you to actually think a lot bigger than that. And I remember when I hired my first business coach, one of the things that I really ask myself is, "What do I want in terms of my business? What is my business going to look like a year from now, three years from now? How am I going to be able to build the ability to have time to spend with my family If I wanted to work three days a week, how could I do that without apologies? How could it take a month off in the summer? How can I build a business that actually serves to me versus me slaving and doing all of the things in my business?"

And what's really interesting is a lot of times because we especially as women have never had an opportunity to learn how to run a business effectively. We are doing our best. We are running our business, we are at the same time managing a household, looking after our partners, taking care of our kids all of their schedules. And we actually have a very unique situation where we are really trying to manage doing all of the things. And unfortunately, what happens is oftentimes time for us comes up short. And we don't have the ability to go to that yoga class or sit down by ourself and read that book.

And so for me talking about this topic for all of you, especially for all of you who are women is really to understand that it is not only important and valuable, but it is almost like oxygen. Something that we need to really start understanding leverage, what leverage is, how we can build leverage in our businesses so that we can have the ability to collapse timeframes in terms of growing our wealth, growing our plans for our retirement. How can we have the ability to duplicate ourselves so that we can have more procedures being done and offered in our businesses so that we can serve way more people at a higher level?

How can we have the ability to have other people doing things so that we as a business owner have the benefits, the true benefits of being a business owner, which is being able to choose how we're spending our days, what services we're providing? What are we doing with our free time? Are we able to make a decision to go into work at 10 o'clock because we want to be able to have some personal time every morning for meditating or going to the gym or going to yoga, being able to and work at a certain time. And again, while we're there be able to do the things that we want to do.

And again, just going back to me, my mindset when I hired my first coach because I didn't know how to do it. I said, "My goal is I want to be able to take a month off every summer with my kids." And in order to do that, I have to be able to build leverage. I have to be able to have somebody who is making sure that things are not slipping through the cracks who's not me. I have to make sure that systems are in place and I need other people that are producing in my business so that if I'm not there, it's not a big deal.

I often time hear inside of the Facebook groups I'd love to be able to take a week off and be able to go on vacation or, "Man, I haven't taken a vacation in multiple years or I'd like to be able to go and take this CE course. But if I do that or if I take my team to this training, we're not going to be able to see patients during that time. And all of a sudden we're going to lose income, and we're not going to be able to pay our bills." And guys, I'm here today to be able to tell you that it doesn't have to be that way. There is another way, there is another solution. And it really does come by adding in leverage.

So what does leverage mean? For me, I am a big proponent that you can have every single thing that you want in your business and your life. You just need to set the goal, you reverse engineer it and then now you just start following out the steps of your action plan. And so for me, I said, "Well, if I want to take a month off, what does that mean? If I want to be able to take time whenever I want, what does that mean?" That means that I need to have other people producing.

Now, what's really interesting in terms of associateships, and again, you might be in that position where you already have associates. And oftentimes I hear people saying, "Well, I want to be able to do all of the things and the high-value procedures, and I want to be able to give them just the fillings and all of those things so I can focus on doing all of the big cases." And I'm not saying that that's wrong, but I'm actually challenging you to think a little bit differently.

I can tell you inside of my practice, I remember thinking, "Well, what are the things ..." And I'm going to challenge you to build this list. What are the things that you're not doing in your practice yet that you'd like to be able to offer your patients, but you have no desire to do? And as you start thinking through that list, I know for me when I started to build that list and that list has changed and evolved throughout the years is I remember saying, "I love to be able to offer clear aligners in my practice. I want to be able to offer sleep and be able to create sleep appliances." Why? Because there are patients who have crooked teeth. There are patients who are snoring in my business.

And so not having the ability to help them is not what I want. I want to be able to help all of my patients. And I ask myself, "Honestly, are these things that you want to do?" And I'm going to tell you inside of my practice we do clear aligners. We're in the process of having training right now for sleep. We do laser treatment in our office. And I can tell you I never learned. I went to the course, but I've never done a clear aligner case. I will never do a sleep apnea appliance in my practice. In fact, in my practice, I don't even know how to use the TRIOS and iTero scanner.

And the fact is that I don't have to. I have team members who have been trained by the best. I have when we brought in laser, I had someone who came in and trained my team for clear aligners. I had my team go through, my associates go through training. I had coaches that held their hands through ClinChecks until they were confident. And so as we start thinking about leverage and bringing in more and offering more, I want you to start thinking differently and start thinking, "What are the procedures that you can bring an associate in for and you can actually have them to be able to be trained?"

The last associate that we hired, she actually was a past nurse before she went to dental school. And she was an older student because she had already had her first career. And so coming into my practice, I actually was looking for somebody that we could invest in and be able to get the training for sleep. And because I knew that was the purpose, I was able to be very specific in my recruiting process. And we went through many people until we found this amazing doctor who has compassion and who had a desire to be able to create in our practice this Blue Ocean Strategy.

And so what it looks like in our practice is that one of our doctors has a tremendous skillset in doing cosmetic dentistry, All-on-4 complex restorative cases. And so what happens is we've actually created within our practice a little situation where she does those procedures. Another doctor is really good at doing clear aligners so she's doing clear aligners. So you have one doctor who may be really good at doing extractions or doing endo. And so what I want you to think about is how can you not create a situation where you're feeling like you have to do all the things, but actually start reversing the process to say, "How can I interestingly do less, but bring in other people to do those high value?"

I often hear sometimes too, "Well, how much of a budget do you have for your associates? Like what if you pay for things and they leave?" So again, we're talking all about leverage. So even if you were to spend $10,000 having a team member to go to an institute, maybe a Spear or a Pankey to be able to go to clinical mastery and you spent even 10 grand, the question is, "Would you get a return on that investment of that 10 grand?" I find would a too many times the mindset is really so closed in terms of, "What if I make that investment?" And I'm like, "My mindset is completely different. It's like let me get you in. Let me find somebody who wants to grow with a company and I invest in you. "And at the end of the day, again, I invest in you. You are happy, you are growing."

And now what happens is that you're able to do, again, a one $10,000 case that will now pay for that. And the practice will continue to benefit month after month after month. So again, I really want you to start thinking about leverage. And for me, the question is how can I be able to get to the point where I can have associates actually producing to the point where I could choose to work if I wanted to or not? And so that's actually my challenge for all of you to be able to think about that. How can I bring in one associate, two associates? And for me, it was like if I bring in two associates, then I would be able to earn the current income that I'm currently earning and even more if they're doing high-value procedures.

So I really wanted to share this message with you to have you to start thinking a little bit differently. And as you start bringing in associates, now you can look at being able to have more time to do those things that you love. And that could be, "You know what? I no longer have to do root canals. I no longer have to do dentures." As I started bringing in associates in my own practice, I really, really enjoy doing complex restorative cases, restoring implant procedures.

And so I essentially stopped doing all of those other things. And I said, "You know what? You do those extractions. You do the clear aligners. You do the endo." You do all of those things. And now what happens is you're able to create a situation where you're doing the dentistry that you love without apologies.

So what I would say your action item for today's episode is to really think about if you have an associate, what are the things that can be handed over to your associates so that you can do more dentistry that you love? Making a list of services that you would like to perform in your practice that you're not currently performing and really look at can you bring in an associate to be able to do those procedures for you. Or if you have a current associate having a conversation to say, "You know what? Let's create some Blue Ocean opportunities in our practice for you to be able to thrive."

And in essence, become a mini specialist to be able to do that inside of our practice and invest in them, invest in their training so that they can be successful so that they can get up and running as fast as possible. And then you want to make sure that you're using the frameworks that we're teaching you inside of our programs to be able to create goals, to be able to use the whiteboards and the scorecards to be able to track performance. And ensure that your team members are actually hitting the goals so that now you have the ability, again, to be able to earn more, to be able to accomplish more, to be able to grow your business without apologies. All right?

So hopefully that served you. If you've not yet done so, guys, I would encourage you highly, highly, highly to join us inside of our Dental Boss Entrepreneurs Facebook group. We're going to be having a lot of really cool things happening in there coming up within the next few weeks. We will be having a get more testimonials challenge, helping you to understand how to be able to build more trust and loyalty with your existing patients, so much so that they're actually creating video testimonials that you can use for your social media, for your marketing.

We're also going to be having an upcoming wealth workshop so that you can understand what's your number, how much money do you want to start putting in now so that you have a set amount ready and available for you five years from now, 10 years from now. And understanding how to build in passive income that can grow tax-free. So really, really excited about that workshop that's going to be coming up and having you to be able to create your game plan of knowing what you want to set aside and how specifically do we budget for that within our practice so that we can ensure that we're hitting our wealth goals.

Definitely want to make sure that you're inside of our Facebook groups, so that you can get access to all of the amazing things that we're helping you with to be able to grow your practice. And if you've not yet joined us, you definitely want to make sure that you're joining us dentalbossentrepreneurs.com. All right, guys. So that's pretty much it. Thank you so much for listening and we will see you next time.

Thanks for listening to another episode of the Delivering WOW Dental Podcast. Now your next step is to join us inside of our free Facebook group Dental Boss Entrepreneurs where you'll be able to connect and collaborate with like-minded dentists. And if you're looking for help to be able to grow and scale your practice faster, we invite you to join us inside of our Dental Boss Academy where your first month is free. To join us, go to dentalbossacademy.com. Take care, guys, and we will see you in the next episode.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Delivering WOW Podcast with Dr. Anissa Holmes. We'll catch you next time.

Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Delivering WOW Dental Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Anissa Holmes. And today we're actually going to talk about how to have a team that does their job without being told. So this was actually a question that came into our Dental Boss Entrepreneur Facebook group. If you're not yet a member, we'd love to have you in our community. We have lots of amazing doctors that are getting together that are connecting, collaborating, and communicating. But again, we had a question that came in, and it said like, "How do I get my team to do those things? I'm feeling a little bit overwhelmed. I'm feeling like I am not having accountability. I'm to telling people what they need to do and they're not doing it." And so I actually wanted to address this because it's something that is extremely common as we all probably can imagine.

And it's something that I can tell you, I'm extremely proud of that we have inside of my practice and that we've been able to actually create frameworks for practices, to be able to implement certain tools, certain systems, to be able to have that accountability, which is really great because a few things happen. The team members actually become happier in their positions. They see that they're being able to give their feedback and come up with ideas that are actually being listened to and supported. And what happens is, as a result of it, we have more things happening because we have more people working together for a common goal and for their personal goals within their role in the practice. But as a result of it, the doctor can now focus more on what they really love to do. And what they're really, really good at, which is the dentistry or saying, you know what? I really want to take this course and learn a new skillset, or I want to invest in upping my knowledge of how to run my business.

And now that I have my team, that's taking care of these other things, I can feel focused on my learning, my personal development, my professional development. Again, really looking at doing what you really love to do the business and being able to have more time as an owner of a business, to be able to reap the benefits of that, which is being able to not have to work extremely long hours after work doing things, because now you have leverage built-in.

And so one of the first things that I always say when I work with colleagues is we definitely want to look at having three separate steps. So there are three things that we always want to be able to look at in terms of being able to get this accountability. Number one is we want to have the right people in our business. So we have to have people in order to have leverage. If we're trying to do everything ourselves, or we say, you know what? I asked my team to do this. They didn't do it. I got frustrated. I just did it myself. You're never going to have freedom that way. You're never going to be able to take a vacation. You're never going to be able to take time away because everything's dependent on you. So you definitely want to make sure that we look at the people component.

And the first step really is people because without having a team that you can empower to the next level and I get it right now, a lot of people are saying, well, we can't get team members. I'm not talking about necessarily having to hire people to do this. I'm talking about the people that are currently within your organization. How can we elevate them to actually become leaders within the organization, to have specific things that they are accountable for and they're actually doing it? Okay. So we're going to talk about how that process works, but we first need to again, have the right people.

The next thing is we want to have the right processes. So this is something that is done consistently every single day, every single week. A process is something that is not something that we choose to do one day. And then we kind of do it next week. And it's kind of random. It's something that we do every day or every week or every month or every quarter. And we do it consistently at the same exact time, or the exact same day, or the exact same day on the exact same time. And that way becomes a pattern and it is not something that's going to slip through the cracks. Okay.

So the third thing that we want to look at is making sure that we have tools because what happens is that if we have tools to be able to hold us accountable to the goals, and to the processes that we're setting, then now the tool is going to prevent us from having behavioral changes come in. Oh my gosh, we started this new process and we completely forgot. Or we set this goal, but we really didn't have something to be able to track it. And so how do we get that accountability? I can tell you one of the tools that I actually put into my practice that we've helped hundreds of practices, probably thousands now actually, to be able to implement is this process of number one, inside of our morning huddle, having a daily whiteboard, where we can put our goals, where we can look at historical numbers, where if we're starting a new procedure, we can actually look at that and we can see, have we hit our goal? Have we not hit our goal?

It's really interesting about a week or so ago, I was talking to a doctor, interestingly, that's been following me for a while. And she's implemented a lot of systems that we have put into place with frameworks within the coaching program, the Platinum Coaching Program. So she joined the coaching program, she's getting some progress, but honestly, she's not getting the ultimate process or the ultimate result. And so I started reviewing some things with her and I said, "Okay, let's start back to business foundation. Like, where are you with your scorecards? Do you understand why you're using them? Or is this just an exercise?" Because she said, "I'm feeling like I'm having to do all the things." And she said, "Honestly, I kind of feel like it's an exercise." And I said, "Okay, well that means that clearly I've not communicated or you've not been clear, your team has not been clear in terms of why we're actually doing this."

Nothing in your practice should ever be something that you do without understanding why you're doing it. If it's not giving you an outcome that you desire, you have to figure out, am I doing it correctly or does it even make sense? And I can tell you, like at a morning huddle for me, at one point we were reading out charts. We were saying, "Oh, this patient has mitral valve prolapse. So we need to pre-medicate them" which really wasn't really getting us anywhere. It was just something that we were doing just for the motion. But what I told her is that whiteboards are not that. Whiteboards are when you go in and you say that you want to start doing a new procedure and you're not, then now it actually opens up a conversation for you to be able to have within your weekly meeting an opportunity to say, you know what? We are consistently not being able to get patients started with clear aligners. What's the real issue?

And so the team members can say, well, we're talking about it, but we're just not yet being able to have the patient convert. And so now you're able to have a conversation and you're able to realize that your team and you really do need to invest more in verbal skills training. Or you may discover through this process that, you know what? You said you were going to do a marketing campaign and you didn't. So the first piece is being able to have this tool or being able to use a tool such as a weekly scorecard, where you can track your doctor production per visit, hygiene production per visit, accounts receivable. And you're able to look at all of these different metrics. How many are being rescheduled? What's the hygiene reappointment percentage?

And what happens is that when you have goals, the scorecard is something that we teach our doctors within our academy, as well as in our Platinum Coaching Program, we actually have performance scorecard dashboards built into our e-learning platform. And we create a process where every week a team member goes in. So that's the people part. The process is that they are going in and updating the scorecard. Again, production collection, doctor production per visit, case acceptance percentage, hygiene reappointment percentage, hygiene production per visit, AR over 30. And so now what happens is that the team members doing that, not the doctor. Okay. So that's the process every Monday.

And then the tool is actually the scorecard itself. The scorecard is where you're able to go in and you set your goals. If you hit the goals, great. If you hit them three weeks in a row, how I train within our academy and within our Platinum Coaching Program is once you hit the goal three times, then now you give yourself permission to increase the goal. And it actually shows you when you look historically at the scorecard, it actually turns blue in all areas where you actually changed your goal.

And if you don't, are not hitting a specific KPI, it actually points you to training within our platform that your team can watch. And you can watch to be able to get that number up. So if your case acceptance percentage is flat, we're going to point you to the training to be able to increase that number. So now that you have the person, you have the process and you have the tool then what happens, is that the tool is actually holding us accountable. So if your accounts receivable goes up from one week to the other, you know about it, it's not slipping through the cracks. And you have a specific team member who does your collections in your practice, the treatment coordinator. If you don't have that, the person who is taking care of the payments up front, perhaps this is your front desk team member, your office manager. Now they have a tool that if the number goes up, it can alert them. And now they can go and research that insurance claim, or they can say, well, what happened? And they realize, oh my gosh, the statement was not sent out.

And because of this tool, now they never want to see that happen, so they're going to make sure that statements are sent out and insurance claims are not having those errors. And as a result of it, you'll never get yourself in a situation where your accounts receivable accumulates because you're looking at it. But then are you looking at it?

And so the next tool that we really love to teach and help you to implement in your business is actually having a weekly leadership meeting where you can do some connection within your team where you're getting together, sharing what went really well for you in the last week. What are you proud of? Personally, what are you proud of? What's going on with you? Really giving a core value, highlight who's that team member that really over-delivered to a patient or helped you calling them out and giving them those kudos and that appreciation. But really within that actually weekly leadership meeting, that typically I will say should happen every ... Ours are actually on Tuesdays, right before our first patient, right after morning huddle, again, a consistent day, a consistent time where everybody shows up. And now what happens is that you're able to have that time that's dedicated for the first five minutes or so even, five to seven minutes reviewing that scorecard and saying, okay, well, what really took off? What goal that we have that we really hit?

And then you can now celebrate your team for coming together and hitting that goal or say, you know what? It's time to increase it. Or you say, oh my gosh, we've not hit this goal consistently for the last three weeks, but now not only have we not hit it, but it's dipping, it's dipping. Or the AR just keeps rising and rising. Or our doctor production per visit. Maybe it's not dipping and dipping and dipping, maybe it is. And then now you can, later on in that meeting structure, you can actually have a discussion to brainstorm and strategize about how you're going to improve it. And maybe it's improving your verbal skills. Maybe it is actually doing some role play. Maybe it is doing that marketing campaign that you know that you want to do. And now it's like, okay, well, I really have to just go ahead and do that now. Or maybe it's really tracking now back on your whiteboard, the number of same-day add-ons that you're going to do.

Again, being able to use tools that are first fueled by processes, meaning this is what we're going to do to be able to get that information. And then again, having that once a week time where you can get together and you can ensure that you're going to review so that you can again, see what's flat. And if something's flat, you can improve it. For example, in my practice, we saw that hygiene production per visit was flat about two or three years ago. And so we made a decision just based on that data to look at how can we increase it? We put in lasers, we put in [inaudible 00:13:52] protect. And all of a sudden we were able to increase that number, but if we weren't looking at it, we would not have known that was a sore thumb in our business.

So again, a lot of times people ask me like, what's the key to people, processes and tools? Or what's the key to getting my team to do things and I don't have to do them? And I will typically ask, are you using these tools? Are you using a process that it's done consistently? Nothing in your business should ever be done as an exercise. And I'll tell you, like I'm really very, very proud of where my business is, but here's the thing.

Like I had to make a decision to really focus on implementing these people, processes and tools in my practice. I had to go to my team and say, I give you ownership of this particular number. And so it's for you to come up with brainstorming ideas of how can you get those unscheduled patients rescheduled. This is your role in the business. I'm hiring you because I think you're awesome. Give me your ideas, give me your strategies. Let's talk about it as a team, within our weekly meeting and maybe focusing on each person's individual high goal that they have for the quarter, their rocks, things that are what's most important for them to contribute. And we all support each other through that process.

But again, if you're not having this weekly meeting or if you're not having the tools to hold you accountable, then now you're just taking things day by day by day. So hopefully that serves you. And again, people ask me like, what's the key? How do you have your team doing all of these things? How do you have your office manager running your business for you? And you don't have to really have micromanaging going on? I can ensure you that although I may not be looking at my profit and expenses sheet every single day or my scorecard every single day in my practice. If I log in, my scorecard's being done, my expenses and profit sheet's being done, my team understands how to run ... Any one of my team can run one of these meetings to identify cracks. They didn't know this at first. How would they know?

It's because I took the time, first, to learn it. Secondly, to develop processes and systems. And thirdly, to teach my team. And now they're able to follow the flow, follow the process and we don't miss. We don't miss a morning huddle with the whiteboard. And we've been doing this for probably about 15 years, some of these processes, and we don't miss having that scorecard updated weekly. We don't miss that weekly leadership meeting so that we can review and see what the real issues are. If there are real issues going on and you identify that even in your huddle, that you're not hitting a particular goal, then now you can go back and say, well, let's talk about that in our weekly meeting and strategize on how we can get those patients coming in or how we can figure out what the real issue is about a new service.

Maybe the real issue is just that the team doesn't feel clinically competent. And so we can talk about that. We can leave, and the whole purpose of those weekly meetings is not to go and sit down and just have a discussion. For me, it's all about leaving with a list of items, a list of to-dos and who's going to get those to-dos done. Each individual person, what are they going to work on that week? And that will be done by the end of the next week. What's going to be solved? And it's not just, let's just get together and talk. Otherwise, it doesn't make sense. And so hopefully this is serving you, this is helping you. I'd love to be able to continue to help you guys, if you fear or feeling like, oh my gosh, I need this inside of my practice and I know I'm not where I'm going to be, I'd love to be able to help you.

Our Platinum Coaching Program allows us to be able to work one on one with training your office managers to take this off of your plate so that now they can lead your team, working with you to really have those one on one strategy calls, to be able to grow your practice, looking at helping you and your team with training, on scheduling, on hygiene production and productivity, the marketing, the insurance. So we are able to help you and support you one on one and with a one on one coach within our platinum coaching programs.

But within our Dental Boss Academy, we have created the number one online training platform to help you and your teams with the business side of dentistry. And so we'd love to give you an opportunity to first get started with us, perhaps, even in the Dental Boss Academy, where we do have 24/7 online training to help you and your team to put in these systems, giving you again, the online training, giving you access to a group coaching call every month to be able to get support, teaching a new system to you and your team, helping you with those verbal skills, through the training, marketing, marketing calls. We'd love to be able to support you.

If you're ready to get started, we'd love to see you inside of the academy. If you go to dentalbossacademy.com, your first four weeks are actually completely free. So we'd love to be able to help you get started right away. After the four months, if you decide that you are wanting to stay in the programs, continue with the program, which we'd love to be able to help you do, then the monthly investment is only $297, which you can cancel at any time. So again, I'd love to be able to help you in your teams to be able to add in that accountability, getting these things off your plate. And what I often tell doctors when I speak to them is how much would it be worth it to be able to not have to do all of the things in your business, to be able to have that leverage, to be able to know that your case acceptance is high, your marketing is working, that you have team members that are being empowered to get to the next level. Well, that's actually what we help doctors and colleagues do every single day.

So again, feel free to check out Dental Boss Academy. We have lots of fun things that we're doing. Currently, we are starting an out of network challenge. So we're actually going to be a helping practices who want to come out of network, come out of network. We're going to be teaching and empowering the teams to understand the real cost of running a business. What does it really cost to do a filling, or to do a crown so that they can understand the cost of materials and that we're not necessarily making what they think that we're making on the procedures.

In fact, we may or may not know. And so excited to be able to teach that, to be able to teach the case acceptance frameworks around coming out of network. To be able to do something different, we have to have new skill sets. And so developing that through our verbal skills within our academy and Platinum Coaching Program, again, in our out of network challenge. We're actually going to be doing some role-playing with case acceptance with teams also helping you to develop the out of network marketing plan, as well as giving you the templates and tools to help you to be able to better communicate with your patients and what out of network means to them. All right. So hopefully this was a good episode for you. You got lots of value out of it, and I look forward to chatting with you again, really, really soon.

Hi everybody, and welcome to the Delivering Wow Dental Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Anissa Holmes, and wow, it feels really good to be here podcasting. It has been far too long as many of you may have noticed. We haven't had an episode in a while, and honestly, it has been a very busy last four months. I have been focusing on quite a few things. Number one is just building out the most incredible experience for our platinum practices that are in our platinum mastermind. We have been focused on our dental entrepreneur Facebook group, by the way, if you're not yet in that group, I definitely recommend that you get in there. It's a great place to be able to connect with other doctors, to be able to have a great community of people who are there inside of your back pocket, cheering you're on and really being there to help support you.

And we've also spent the last six months actually building out our CE modules and our messaging platform for our Dental Boss Academy. And so it's been a really, really great last six weeks. Some of you guys might have even been in our boot camps. We had our first business acceleration Bootcamp, free Bootcamp back in November. Had it again in February and so that was honestly one of the most impactful feelings I had. We had about 300 practice owners that joined us on both bootcamps and a few nights we were on until 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock at night, and it was just pretty special. And so today what I'm actually going to be doing, and what I'm going to doing over our next episode is I'm actually going to be answering questions that were asked inside of our Dental Boss Entrepreneur Facebook group. And so the question that I ask is that, if I had a magic wand and I can give you anything inside of your business, anything inside of your practice, or if there's something that you would want to learn, what would that be?

And so we actually had a ton of responses. And so over the next episodes, what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to take time and I'm going to help you to understand what it really means to be able to grow your practice, or how do you build a business that scales? And so if you are a beginning practice owner and you know, I want to be able to take my business to the next level, I don't want to take a lot of time, I don't want to make mistakes or if you are a practice owner that's been practicing for 20 years, maybe you are not where you want to be yet still, or maybe you've even had some coaching in the past or a lot of coaching in the past. And you want to learn new things. This is definitely going to be a really great episode for you.

So today we're talking about profit margins and how do you understand profit margins? And so before we even get to understanding profit margins, I really want to help you to understand why this is so critical. Now, as many of you guys know, as many dentists are coming out of school or starting their practices or acquiring practices, one of the first things that oftentimes people do is say, "Well, how do I get new patients?" And so what I want to do is go ahead and sign up with a bunch of insurances because now I will be able to have patients and I can go ahead and have an opportunity to treat them, to be able to help patients and to be able to earn income for the business. One thing that I say to coaching clients inside of my Platinum Coaching Program, and also within our Dental Boss Academy, one I teach inside of the academy is that, what's most important inside of your business is having information.

When you have information, then now you can make decisions that will allow you to scale, make decisions that there are certain things that you may want to stop and you can actually create a roadmap and plan. And so, as it relates to profit margins, I'll tell you a quick story. So one of the doctors that I was looking at her last year's revenue, her last year's production, collection, her profits, we were actually having a circle of focus call. This is something that I feel is really important to be able to look back at your last 12 months to be able to say, "Okay, well, if we want to grow by 40% this year, or 100% or 30%, or if we want to come off of PPOs, how do we actually create a strategy and a roadmap to do that?" So looking back at again, the last 12 months saying, "Okay, well, we said we wanted to do sleep, but we only did four cases."

What if we really focused on it and we focused on case acceptance and we focused on making sure that our team had the verbal skills and we had the verbal skills. What if we were tracking it on a whiteboard? What if we made sure that everybody really had clinical competency, what would be the outcome? And so we start looking at that. We start looking at where revenues coming from. And so I had a doctor and we were doing a call, circle of focus call and when I looked at her production, it looked really amazing. In fact, she had about $2 million in production for a practice. Now, for many dentists, if you or a practicing as a solo practitioner, or maybe even with an associate, you'd say, "Wow, that's great. I'd love to have a $2 million practice," right. But what was really interesting is that I looked at it and I said, "Oops, uh-oh we got to talk about this."

And she's like, "What?" And I said, "I am so excited that you did 2 million, but your collection is only in relation to the production, only 1.3 million." And so before I give you the strategy based on what I see from last year, to be able to increase your revenue, we've got to fix this because if you're making $2 million, that means that your marketing is probably working and your case acceptance is working, right? Patients are accepting treatment. In fact, your team probably thinks that you're super rich, as well as your friends and family who come to the practice because the practice is really, really, really, really busy. However, based on this, I know that the financials are not exactly matching up. In fact, you might, based on what I see here, not be taking home much money. And she said, "Yes, I agree."

And so what we did was I said, "Okay, before we look at anything, I need you to understand what your profit margins are for your procedures. In fact, let's just start with something simple, like a filling." And so we went through this process of having her to be able to lay out all of her fixed expenses, all of the things that you have to pay, whether you see a patient or not. We taught her what all of those different items were. We went into looking at the team costs, not the doctor and hygienist, because we're looking at a filling. And then from there, what we did was we actually came up with a cost per hour for the fixed expenses for the team cost. And then what we did was we now looked at the cost of supplies. And so one of the things that we provided, in fact, if you're in Dental Boss Academy, if you navigate to the resources and go to forms, you'll actually see the profit margins template there.

But inside of that template, what you'll see and what she saw was a sheet like an Excel sheet or a Google Sheet where I actually did the work because I'm a geek like that and actually made a sheet and put in the materials that we often use for filling where you put in the cost of that material that you're using. And then it actually puts in how many uses you have for that material and the costs per use. And so based on that, adding that up with the cost per hour of your team cost per hour of her fixed expenses, again, that is your rent, that is your phone bill, your power bill, all of those different fixed expenses, what she noticed is that it was actually costing her about $110 to actually do a filling. And so my next question to her was, "Okay, well, how much do you charge?"

And it was really interesting because for the PPO that she was on, she said, "I'm actually only making $108, or maybe it was 120, I can't remember, but essentially either she was upside down or she was only making like 8 or $10. And so my next question was, "Okay, well, let me ask you a question. How many of your PPOs are you on?" And she said, Anissa, I'm only on one." And I was like, "Okay." Right. It's really interesting because you look at that and many people, I don't know about you, but there was definitely a time in my practice when if a patient balance was less than $10, I didn't send out a statement. And there was definitely a time where if somebody came to the office and I knew them from outside of the practice, maybe they were a parent of a child that my kids were friends with.

Or maybe I saw them out at the supermarket, right. Any reason I was giving people a discount. Why? Not that they asked for it, but I felt in my mind I was supposed to, or I needed to, or I felt bad until I learned profit margins, right. And so all of a sudden, you start to say, "Well, if you're giving a discount and also worst case, you're not sending out statements, you really, really are upside down." And so again, really powerful to be able to understand your profit margins. Now, in this case, she's like, "I do want to become fee for service," and so now we can say, "Okay, let's create a plan. Let's look at the services and decide what we're going to focus on for Q1 and what we're only going to focus on."

So it might be clear aligners that the practice is actually very comfortable doing, but if you focused on it again with your verbal skills, with learning our case acceptance frameworks with focusing on, also the marketing, maybe you do an Invisalign flash sale. I know recently we helped a practice. They actually showed up to our marketing office hours for Dental Boss Academy and they were like, "Well, we want to do an Invisalign flash sale." And we're like, "Okay, well, we can help you. I mean, that's what we do." And so we actually shared how to be able to do the campaign, how to market the campaign. We actually provided even templates to post around the office from CAMBA, emails to send out to the patients. And that practice did about $90,000 within one day and became a platinum Invisalign provider, right? So now as the practice says, "Well, I want to come off," we can create that plan. Or we can say, "What else do we want to implement this year?"

And perhaps it might be something like sleep, right? There are so many patients in our own practice that's snoring and if we're able to provide an opportunity to be able to help them with sleep appliances, then now we have the ability not just to be able to help patients, but to be able to bring in that additional revenue, which, sleep appliances is about $8,000 on average, right? So as we started looking at the gaps in the practice and looking at the circle of focus, now we are able to create an opportunity for the doctor to actually collect and not just produce $2 million. So it's pretty exciting stuff. And I'll say this, like knowing your numbers, knowing your profit margins could also help you in a different way. I had a practice that interestingly helped that was a $2.5 million producing PPO practice, which is a great PPO practice.

And what was interesting is that when we did their profit margins, they actually had an orthodontist that came in a few days a week. And so even though the fee was low for a filling because they have expanded services and do ortho, one of their insurances had a very high benefit for ortho. And so it made sense to keep that particular PPO because of the ortho benefit. Okay. So as I'm speaking, I want you to start thinking like, "Do you know your profit margins?" Because it is very frustrating as you know to put effort into growing your business and go to work every day and finish seeing patients and then you have to focus on running the business as well. And at the end of the day, you're tired, exhausted, and you're not sure where you are. And again, this is something that I feel is incredibly important for you to understand and it is a game-changer.

I have been fortunate enough to have been able to help many, many, many practices to understand our profit margins and when you get to this point, all of a sudden you become more confident when you discuss your fees, because you know what your fees actually are. You have accountability for your collections. Your AR is no longer a problem because you and your team really get it. So hopefully this has been an informative episode for you. And I can tell you, profit margins are extremely important for you to understand for your practice. Once you do, then it actually allows you to unfold other things, for example, looking at your schedule, because if you are scheduling a patient for fillings and they have, for example, four or five, six fillings, you can do it in one visit instead of four visits.

Then now you're able to decrease the supplies so you have more profits, or as you start focusing on training for you and your teams, again, learning case acceptance frameworks, then now you'll be able to have an increase in your doctor production per visit. And of course, using the tools, the whiteboards, the scorecards that we do provide inside of our academy are going to be extremely effective for you to be able to set your goals, to be able to look at what's happening from week to week and month to month so that things are not slipping through the cracks. All right?

So hopefully that was super helpful for you. Guys, if you know that you are needing help with profit margins, I'd love to be able to help you. This is something that we do every single day inside of our Platinum Coaching Program, as well as inside of Dental Boss Academy.

And if you've not yet gotten your four weeks for your access to Dental Boss Academy, I encourage you to go to Dental Boss Academy now, and go ahead and claim your free access. We actually are not only providing training for you and your entire team with individual training tracks, but we also have a monthly systems call, a monthly marketing call, as well as group coaching. We also have a bonus call for startups, full marketing content, and over 150 hours of included free CE. And again, as a listener of this podcast, we'd love to be able to help you to understand your profit margins, getting access to our templates and our training so that we can help support you as you're growing your dental practice.

All right? So thanks again, guys, for listening to this episode. It was amazing getting back on this microphone, I have really missed it, and I look forward to chatting with you in our next episode. Thanks for listening to today's episode of the Delivering Wow Dental Podcast.

Now your next step is to claim your four weeks free access to Dental Boss Academy by going to dentalbossacademy.com. We look forward to seeing you in our next episode.

Hi, everyone, and welcome to another episode of The delivering while dental podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Anissa Holmes. And today we're talking about teaching your dental team, how to get your patients to come back. Now, this is one of those topics that I absolutely love. Because a lot of times, as many of you guys know, we're focusing so much on what's happening day to day, we're focusing on marketing, and we have a huge back door problem. Patients are not necessarily making their recall visits, they're coming in or setting treatment plans, they're not scheduling. And so this is a topic that's really extremely important for us to consider.

So as we start looking at having our patients coming back, creating a process for that, the one thing that we want to look at is do we have a system to actually track what happens with our patients week to week, how many patients do we have that came in last week, that actually left without an appointment? Now what you're going to want to get to, you're going to want to develop a system, that now your team can actually come to you in a weekly meeting and a weekly meeting. And they will say, Doc, letting you know, last week, we had 10 patients who were unscheduled, and this is why they were unscheduled, this patient went to see the endodontist, this patient didn't have any additional restorative treatment, this patient is going to go ahead and apply for financing. I'm going to follow back up with them next week, Monday, right, you want to get to that place.

So as we start looking at getting patients to come back, the first thing that we actually want to do is see how many patients are actually leaving out of the back door. Right? Really, really important.

So obviously, that's one of those things that we want to look at, as we're looking at building out our systems, we also want to look at as well, what is our AR looking like week to week, right? Is it going up? Is it going down? I actually had a call yesterday with a doctor who was looking at coaching, and she was saying that they had a huge accounts receivable issue. In fact, statements had not been sent out in over a year and she had no clue. And so that's another system, as many as well as many other systems that you're going to want to put in place that you're tracking week to week. But as we're getting back to getting your patients to come back, once you have that system in place to just see where you are, then now you can actually go ahead and create processes to improve. So as we're looking again, as how we're going to train a team, one thing that I hear a lot of and I see it a lot in Facebook groups are people saying let's have a morning huddle and see which patient that comes in that we can ask for a referral.

Okay, now, that's all great and fine, where we're actually having that discussion and asking for referrals. But the first thing that we want to do just to kind of push it back a little bit, is to actually think about why would somebody want to refer? Right? What is our what is our culture and our practice look like? What sort of experiences are we providing for our patients. And one thing that you're going to want to make sure that you put in place is a system, again, a way to be able to make sure that you're giving consistent, great experiences to your patients.

And so definitely those different touch points I've spoken about in the past, having coffee table culture books, where patients are coming in, they see how you're serving the community, they see what you're doing, in terms of taking care of your team doctors, they see that you're doing continuing education they're seeing before and after pictures of the great work that you're doing. Perhaps you're offering complimentary coffee, tea, perhaps you have, you have a toy box where kids actually go to the toy box first, right? That can be an experience for the kids. you're offering a tour.

You've got your core values on the wall, perhaps you're offering a warm peppermint sentence, how at the end, right? What experiences are you having with your patients because at the end of that process, what you can actually do is now when the doctor comes into the room, the doctor can say, how was your experience today? There are so many people that are afraid to go to the dentist that we want to make sure that you have an amazing experience, right? How was that warm peppermint-scented towel?

So you have our dental assistants who have been trained in hand and arm massage. And so they're able to actually offer that service to patients, right? So we can ask, you know, how was that? How was your experience?

Did you enjoy the Did you get a cup of hot chocolate or the freshly brewed Blue Mountain coffee, right? So we can ask those questions. So as we're planting seeds in our patient's heads, reminding them of the great experience, how was the tour right? Then now what we can do is as they're going to the front desk, now we can have that extroverted team member to ask that patient again, how was your experience today, and when that patient says it was great, it was amazing, then now they can say, wonderful, we would love if you'd be willing to share that experience.

There are so many people that are afraid to go to the dentist, it just might change someone's life, that now we're able to get that video testimonial that now we can add to our website, or now we can upload to Google My Business or now we can upload to Facebook. And we can actually create some ads so that now we have not only hundreds but 1000s of people hearing about that patients experience. Okay, so as we start looking at how can we get our patients to come back? Number one, we have to think about what are the experiences that we're actually providing for them.

Okay, the other thing that we want to look at in terms of how we're going to get our patients to come back, is to really think about what's the real issue in terms of why patients are actually not coming back. And a lot of times, so what it really is, is that we don't yet have the training, we don't yet have the skill set to actually be able to have conversations that will lead our patients to actually go ahead and get started with treatment. And a lot of times, honestly, is that we have this fear of being objection blocked, right? So we have spoken about procedures to a patient and the past. They've said, does my insurance cover it?

And we say, No, insurance doesn't cover this, or it doesn't cover all of it. And so the patient says, Well, let me think about it. And we say, okay, and why do we say okay, because that is the skill set of where we are. So what we want to start focusing on in order to be able to get our patients to come back is investing in training for you and your team. So that now you can be able to have the conversations that when you're presenting a treatment plan, you can say something, for example, here's the thing, insurance is not going to cover all of this. But why are patients choose to do this anyway, is number one, they know that it doesn't take a lot of time, or it's going to save them time, or it's going to save them money or it's not going to cost that much money. And it's going to give you that peace of mind. Right.

So there are some verbal skills, definitely want to look into training. So that now you can get you and your team to the point where now you don't have patients leaving because you have not yet developed the verbal skills for case acceptance. So that's definitely something else that you're going to want to look at as you're looking at creating a process to make sure that you don't have a back door issue. Okay. So again, the three things that you're going to want to look at is, do you know how many patients are leaving out of the back door, the second thing that you're going to want to look at is of all of the patients that are coming in, are you providing a great experience so that they will actually want to come back and not just so that they want to come back so that they will actually tell their friends and their families. And they will actually be able to provide things like video testimonials, that now you can again, utilize in your marketing so that you can attract more amazing patients just like them. T

he third thing 100% you're going to want to focus on verbal skills, and case acceptance that is extremely, extremely powerful. We've actually worked with hundreds and hundreds of practices, helping them to be able to grow to be able to scale to be able to put in systems to be able to fix these backdoor issues. And again, one of the things that we definitely want to look at is are you getting your team trained, right?

And as the doctor you may have an understanding, or you may think you have an understanding, you may say well, yeah, I think case acceptance is pretty good. And then I say okay, well what is your case acceptance percentage rate doctor, so that we can now go ahead and create opportunities to be able to train and get that hire a lot of times, practice owners just don't know. Right? So we definitely want to start looking at where do we need to focus.

Again, as doctors, we are the C II O's. We are the owners of our businesses. And as we're looking at growing businesses that are healthy businesses that allow us to continue to grow and serve people, we want to make sure that we're focusing on providing those great experiences, focus on training our team and focus on again, creating those experiences that will last and we'll allow our patients to share.

Alright guys, so hopefully, this was super helpful. If you have any questions about growing your practice, about setting up these systems, feel free to reach out to me, DM me on Facebook, go to our website delivering well.com we'd love to be able to help you to be able to grow your practice. But again, thank you so much for listening to another episode of The delivering wall dental podcast. I look forward to seeing you guys in our next episode.

Hi guys, and welcome to another episode of The Delivering WOW Dental Podcast. Super excited to have you here today. Today, we're here talking all about low-cost dental marketing strategies for startups or new practices. So excited to be here today with you talking all about marketing strategies. As many of you guys know, I absolutely love marketing. It is a way that we are able to have all of the people who are there out in our communities who need dentists to actually find us. And so, again, so excited to be talking today about what actually works for startup marketing.

So about four or five years ago, I started working with startups to be able to understand how to be able to bring in new patients before they open the door. And what that looks like is having patients not only scheduled but have patients who know what we're known for so that when they're coming in, they're actually telling their friends and family so that when you're out at the supermarket, at the gym, they're saying, "Aren't you that dentist? Aren't you that dentist that just opened a new practice?" Getting you to a place where you have other businesses that are actually sending patients to you, having people in your community who are sending patients to you, that's the type of marketing that we're talking about.

Now, as we know, there are many types of marketing and as startups are looking to get new patients, and a lot of times what happens is as you're getting your practice loan, the banks are saying, "Well, this loan is contingent upon you actually having a marketing plan, knowing exactly how you're going to be able to get customers," or, in our case, patients into our practices. And so that's the first thing that we want to look at, is creating your marketing plan. How are you going to get patients in? How are you going to get patients to refer to you your community? What are you going to do in terms of external marketing, whether that's going to be building out your website or it's going to be building out business cards, if you still are looking to do business cards, right?

What's going to be your Google strategy, your Facebook strategy? It can be very, very overwhelming. And so what we've actually done is we want to talk about how can we simplify this process? Because as we know, there are so many moving parts. As you have a startup, you're looking at the build-out, the equipment. And at the same time, you do need to think about where are you going to get patients coming in? And so, one thing that we want to look at is how can we, again, create a marketing plan that allows us to be able to get patients in without having to spend a lot of money. Now we've got a few options. Number one, we can go ahead and drop down $5,000 and do a mail drop. Now I am, a little bit, not the biggest fan, to be honest with you, of mailers.

Not that they do not work, but the problem with mailers a lot of times is that they are very expensive. And if you are doing mailers, many times it does take two or three months to kick in which means that you've spent about $15,000. The other thing with mailers is that because a relationship is not built, a lot of times you have to provide a gimmick or a freebie or some sort of hook that's going to get people to actually call. The other thing with mailers is that if you stop putting out that $5,000, a lot of times what happens is that your leaves dry up. And so what we want to do instead is we want to create marketing solutions that allow us to be able to do the work once and essentially have the results or get paid forever. And that's the type of marketing that I'd love to be able to help you guys with implementing for your startups.

So the first thing that we are looking at with our marketing is number one, having that marketing plan. Number one, you want to make sure that you have that in place. The next thing that we want to look at is how do we build rapport in our community as fast as possible with the lowest cost. And what I'm talking about is not only the lowest cost, but how do we build rapport for in our community so that they see exactly what we're doing so that they are, number one, ready to come in and ready to tell other people. And as we all know, the best way to do that is by using

Facebook marketing and Instagram marketing. This is going to allow you to get out there, let people know what you're known for, take people behind the scenes of your practice build-out and it's going to allow you, as well, to be able to start talking about dental topics so that you can show people how much that you know about the dental topics.

And so, as we start looking at marketing through Facebook, we want to make sure that we have a plan. We want to make sure that you know exactly what to post. We want to make sure that you have a strategy so that you can not only post your, if you call it, to talk Thursday videos but how do we get people to see them? And that's the biggest thing that a lot of people are not aware of as it relates to Facebook marketing or startup marketing. They're getting on there, maybe they're doing some good posts, but what I've seen, the mistake that so many people make, is that they've actually invested the time into learning how to boost effectively.

And what's really cool about boosting Facebook posts is that now you're able to spend $30, $50, and you're able to have a lot of people who see it, who live in, for example, a specific street, a specific neighborhood. You're able to target based on location. Perhaps there's a country club in your area. You can target people who have recently visited that country club. If you're in the US you can target people who are in the highest net income. Once you start doing your videos that is allowing you to become that expert and talk about dental topics, now what happens is that you're able to, again, have people who have previously watched your videos, people who are within a certain mile radius, who live in certain neighborhoods, see those videos.

And now that people are starting to watch your videos, what happens is that now anybody who's watching your videos, you can retarget those people to see your additional videos. And so what happens is that you start to build this rapport where people start to see you coming on over and over and over again. And as you're building your startup, you want to make sure that you're taking people behind the scenes. What sort of tile are you picking out? What sort of team are you looking for? How are you going to serve the community? What's going to make your practice different? And as we start looking at startup marketing, what's really cool is that you're able to get the marketing done at a really low cost.

I would say nine out of the 10 startups that we work with, with delivering, while they're able to launch their startup and their total budget is between $700 and $1,000 for their total marketing, I do recommend that you start marketing at least three or four months before you open your startup. And what if you say, "Okay, Anissa, this is great, but I'm already a startup, I'm already opened. The best time to start is now, right?" Because it does take a little bit of time to go ahead and have that awareness. Imagine if you are seeing a commercial on TV, you see it one time, you probably don't even pay attention to it. But after it shows up two times, three times, four times, all of a sudden you start taking notice, you start singing the jingle.

So what we're going to want to look at as well with your marketing strategy are what are other things that you can do. How can you leverage YouTube? How can you leverage Google My Business? There's some really cool things that you can do to actually get all of your videos seen for free on Google, so that when people are searching for your practice, they're seeing those videos. As you start opening and you're getting patient testimonials, there's actually a really cool feature where you're able to get those videos on Google, again, at zero costs, which is really cool. So these are some tips that we want to look at as we are marketing our startup practice. I'd love to be able to help you guys. What I would recommend that you do 100% is get started, get into our marketing and practice growth challenge.

That's going to be able to help you to be able to kickstart with a social media campaign. And if you know that you're ready to get started with marketing your practice, we'd love to be able to get you inside of our Delivering WOW marketing Program. We have a program just for startups. We actually have a startup call for our startups, where we help you along the journey, helping you month to month of what to do. We have monthly marketing calls. We have all of the marketing content that you need to be able to run your campaigns as you are opening up and

you're wanting to go ahead and promote your high-value services, your implants, your Invisalign, your cosmetic dentistry. Maybe you're an orthodontist, maybe you're a pediatric dentist, we actually have high-value ads that you can actually use and implement and execute right away.

If you're looking at doing marketing funnels to be able to grow your email lists, we've got everything already ready for you, built out for you as well. And what's really cool is that our program is extremely affordable. You're able to get in there and get started right away. All right, guys. So I would love to be able to help you in any way. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out. But again, looking forward to seeing all of you guys grow and be able to take your practices to the next level. What we do absolutely matters. And as we're building a business, it's really important to think about our marketing strategy, how are we getting our patients into our practice? Are we're getting patients based on patients who are discounting? Or are we getting patients who are going to come in, who are going to have a great experience and refer their friends and family?

And this right type of marketing is not just about getting patients from Facebook. It's about how do we do internal marketing? How do we get our patients to tell other people? And again, how do we get relationships with other businesses so that they can market for us as well? All right, guys, that's it. Take care. We look forward to working with you and your teams to be able to get your startups to the next level. Again, to learn more, deliveringwowmarketing.com. All right, guys, take care. I love chatting with you guys inside of this podcast, and we will see you in the next episode.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Delivering WOW Podcast with Dr. Anissa Holmes. We'll catch you next time.

What's up, everyone? It's Anissa Holmes here with a new episode of the Delivering WOW Dental Podcast. And today we're talking about how you can add an additional million dollars of revenue to your practice this year. I'm so excited about this. We have been over the last few months working with doctors as we are in the beginning of a new year, looking at how we can create this Circle of Focus. And as we're going into these meetings, I am sharing, okay, let me go ahead and say this. You have probably heard me say in my practice that I've been able to double profits in my practice. I've been able to double revenue in my practice and it may sound like a marketing thing, but actually, I'm going to show you exactly how you can do the same thing too. And so that's what we're going to actually be doing within this call.

And so, as we're creating our Circle of Focus calls, what we're doing is we are creating opportunities to look at what was done last year and to decide what was most profitable? What were our bottlenecks? What is it that we need to focus on in terms of additional services training for our team? And now as a result of it, guess what happens? The doctors are able to say, "Oh my gosh, I see that I don't have to be overwhelmed. I don't have to be stressed out if we just focus on this one thing and this other thing, this particular quarter, then all of a sudden, Oh my gosh, the compound effect of that for Q2 Q3, Q4 and the compound, that effect for the year is going to be exponential."

And so I wanted to take you a little bit behind the scenes of what we're actually doing in these calls and share how this can again make a huge difference. Now I've been in practice for over 20 years and over the last few years, we've actually doubled our profits multiple times. And it's actually as many of you guys know not very uncommon to increase profits if you have a startup practice. But if you have a seasoned practice, that's not quite as easy.

So what we're going to be talking about is a sneak preview of the process, okay? So the first thing again is that we're going to be looking back at the previous year and we want to make sure that we're working out the opportunity gaps that could have a massive impact on your practice. For example, if you look at even X-rays a lot of times we're thinking, "Well, we're too busy to take X-rays." But the thing about it is that as we start focusing on providing the best patient care, the question is when we are having our patients coming in if we're not doing X-rays, are we missing out on seeing if there's pathology or are we seeing if there are infections that are going on or are we missing that? Are we seeing if there are issues with cavities on second molars because of impacted third molars?

A lot of times we don't understand that these things are really, really important. And so we say, "Well, you know what?" Or we say that we're too busy, we don't have enough time. Again, not really focusing on the best patient care, but from a profitability standpoint, if we're able to focus on even things like X-rays then now what happens is that we can easily add an additional 50,000 revenue into our practice for the year. Or they've been many examples when I've asked the question of, "Do you truly believe that a sealant can prevent a cavity?" And the doctor will say yes and I'll say, "Well, I certainly believe it. I have sealants on my teeth now. I'm an adult. Why is it that we're not talking about sealants to our patients?"

And it always boils down to, "Well, the insurance is not going to cover it." And the real issue is that our team doesn't want to be an objection block because they've presented sealants before and because insurance doesn't cover it and patients say it's okay, they stopped presenting it. And so if we started looking at how can we focus on training our teams for verbal skills so perhaps putting out there, there is something that we can do to prevent cavities. Would you like to learn more? They say yes. We say, "It's a sealant. How it works is that we painted on your tooth and once we do, sugar, food and bacteria cannot get through. As a result of it, we're able to reduce your chances of getting cavities by up to 80%."

Now here's the thing. Insurance doesn't always cover it, but why our patients choose to do it anyway is that they know that number one, it doesn't take a lot of time. In fact, it actually takes about five or 10 minutes. We can get this done for you while you're already here today. Number two, it doesn't cost a lot of money. In fact, it's actually a fraction of the cost of a filling. And number three, it will give you that peace of mind. We do have time today to go ahead and get started. Would you like to while you're already here? Go ahead and take care of all of your sealants today. So as we start looking at focusing on having the conversations, the behavior of being consistent and having the right verbal skills. Now, what happens is that it asked doctors, "Do you think that if you were using this verbiage or your hygienists or your team was using this verbiage, do you think that you could do five more sealants this week?" The answer is yes. What about 10? Absolutely.

And if you were doing even 10 more sealants like two patients alone at $30 a sealant, then now what happens is that you have the opportunity to be able to, again, bring in over 50, $60,000 of revenue into your practice. Now you may think, "Well, that's not a lot of money." Think about it. What if you had an additional $50,000 that now you could pay cash for that next operatory? I just got a message, a boxer just before I came on this podcast with a member of our mastermind saying that she has made a decision to go ahead and pay cash and get a new operatory at $18,000. This is how we're able to do that. What if you had that $50,000 now that you're in that earning stage, you're able to put into your retirement account an extra $50,000 into your retirement account? How would that affect you as you are now getting older? What if you took that $50,000 and you put it as a down payment on a property that now you can get rental income?

You look at $50,000. Again, people are saying, "Well, I'd love to be able to get better team members, higher pay team members or be able to get higher, more skilled team members, or I'd love to be able to pay my team members more." This is how we're able to do that just by doing two patients a week with sealants. So as we start looking at Circle of Focus is extremely valuable.

Another thing we want to look at is looking at the past year, looking at month to month to month, what was the service that allowed us to have the best month? Was it crown and bridge? Was it ortho? Was it that we introduced sleep appliances? What made that happen? Because again, as we start looking at month to month to month, a lot of times we see if we're not looking at this information on a monthly basis, what happens is that behaviors are changing and we have no way of knowing it. And so say, for example, you say, "Okay, we're going to go ahead and implement Invisalign or the best month we ever had, we did Invisalign." And maybe you did 10 cases or you did 20 cases, or you did 40 cases, whatever the number is. And the next month, all of a sudden that drops in half, then all of a sudden, now you have a lower month in revenue and you're not sure exactly why.

And so as we start looking at change of behavior, then now if we saw that dip, then now we can say, "Okay, guys, something has happened this month. We either did not have conversations. We did not have a good follow-up with our patients. We slipped on our marketing this month." And again, now behaviors can change from month to month. So I always love to look at what was that procedure that allowed us to have the best month. And a lot of times it may not even be what we think it is. I have been able to work with doctors and realize that the biggest revenue opportunity for them in their highest revenue month in the past year might've even been dentures. And then I'll ask the question, "Okay, well, do you want to do more dentures?" And they may say, "Actually I would like to do more dentures" and I'd say, "Okay, great, well, let's talk about dentures. Are you currently doing All-on-4? Do you have that skillset?" And they'll say, "No, not yet."

And I'll say, "Okay, well, what if this year we focus more on dentures because you want to do more. And what if we focused on getting you training so that now you can implement All-on-4 in your practice this year?" And we say, "Great, let's do that. When are we going to do that? What month of the year are we going to go ahead and implement getting that training?" And based on that, when we start actually doing All-on-4, what's going to be the revenue for that first case? What's going to be the verbal skills for that first case? What's going to be the marketing for that first case?

And now that we have that first case, then now we can carry that revenue if we did just one case every month for the rest of the year, what sort of impact would that have on our business? Not even doing two or three or let alone five cases. What if we did just one case? What if you're All-on-4 was an extra 20, $25,000 and you're able to do eight cases this year? That would add an additional 200, $300,000 a revenue into your practice right there. Okay? And what if you were now after that first month able to take some of that money and dump it into marketing so that instead of having one case come in, you actually have two, or you have three because you have more people that are coming in?

What if you started focusing on your Facebook marketing, your Tooth Talk Thursdays, which we help practices to be able to really get great results with that now people are seeing that you're actually known for that new service. What if you started focusing on a new service for their hygiene team or your hygiene team, whether you are looking at implementing laser, whether you're implementing a Perio Protect, what would that look like?

Another thing that I love to analyze is looking at current case acceptance. And what we see a lot of times is no matter how good you think that you're doing in case acceptance, you can always improve. And so when we start looking at coaching you and helping you with neurolinguistic programming, which understanding how to be able to get patients to get to that emotional state, being able to actually present cases that are not logic-based that are emotion-based. Asking the questions of what are your goals with your smile, your teeth and your health? Why is this important to you?

Asking specific questions and again, working monthly with your team every single month to be able to keep expounding upon your case acceptance, even having an opportunity to come into your practice and do two-day workshops where we're working directly with your team, training your team on verbal skills in case acceptance. What if we were to be able to improve case acceptance, even without increasing new patients? What if we were able to do more of those Perio Protect cases or perhaps you're doing Invisalign now, what if we were able to actually have more of those cases actually closed? What would be the result of increasing case acceptance?

And so a lot of times we're looking at let's create a Circle of Focus. Let's look at Q1, we're going to be focusing on verbal skills. We're going to be focusing on making sure if you have other issues, maybe you have an accounts receivable issue. We're going to focus on AR this quarter. And we're going to focus this quarter on getting you trained in All-on-4 or getting you trained in laser or sleep apnea. Getting your team trained in XYZ.

And so now we have a solid plan. Once we execute and implement that plan, what happens is that, again, we have already increased case acceptance because we've previously been focusing on that. We're able to go ahead and start executing the new services. We have a scorecard, we have on our whiteboard how many services that we are actually setting as our goal. And now we have an opportunity to see the results that happen every single month. What's really cool with the Circle of Focus calls is that we're actually mapping out what the actual revenue is going to look like once we implement these changes what the profits are going to look like as well for the business.

And what's really exciting is that at the end, the doctor says, "Oh my gosh, I don't have to focus on everything." And I show them, even if you did not change revenue in fillings, you did not change your revenue that you're doing even in crown and bridge. Although it would, if your case acceptance increases, you just focus on one or two or three things and be consistent with one or two things. Then now you're going to have a major compounded effect in terms of the results in your business, in terms of, again, profitability, being able to make sure that patient care is not slipping through the cracks, and making sure that you have, again, that healthy business.

All right, guys. So hopefully this is super helpful for you. We absolutely love working and coaching our clients to be able to be successful to be able to get to the next level in their businesses. If this is something that you feel would be helpful for you, we'd love for you to reach out. Feel free to reach out to me, DM me on Facebook, send us a message, or go to deliveringwow.com to schedule your free strategy growth call. All right, guys, that's it. Thank you so much for listening and we look forward to seeing you in the next episode of the Delivering WOW Dental Podcast.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Delivering WOW Podcast with Dr. Anissa Holmes. We'll catch you next time.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Delivering Well podcast. Super excited to have everyone here today. So today we are actually talking about something that's going to be pretty exciting for you, and hopefully we'll share some pearls that you can implement in your practice right away. But today we're talking about systems you need to put in place to grow your dental practice. Now, one of the areas that I see a lot of people struggling with is actually having accountability in their practice, having all of their team rowing in the same direction, and really having a proven plan and process to be able to grow their production and to be able to serve more patients at the same time.

And so the first system that I actually want to talk about is making sure that you have a system to create your morning huddle with a purpose. A lot of times I hear people saying that within their huddles they're focusing on making sure that they're prepared for the day, looking at what patients are coming in that are having medical issues, things that they need to look at. They are looking at financials, who owes money to the practice. They're also looking at what patient can we talk to, to ask them to refer another patient? And while all of those things are well and done, I think there are actually better systems for making sure that you are being held accountable to those things. One thing that I would love to make sure that everyone is focusing on is being very intentional in terms of adding in accountability, in terms of empowering your team when they're successful, and making sure that you are on track to hit your practice goals by what you're doing daily.

And so one system that I love to help practices with is actually implementing in a whiteboard. This whiteboard will allow you to, number one, look at all of the services that you're providing in your practice, make sure that you're having the conversations, make sure that you are actually empowering your team to help you to hit your goals or to help each individual team member to be able to hit their goals. And also have an opportunity to be able to look at when you're hitting your goals, what can you do to change the dynamic? And so you might be saying, "Okay, Anissa, what do you mean by that?" So what's really interesting is over the last few weeks I've been working one-on-one with our coaching clients, mapping out their plan for 2021. What's going to be your roadmap so that you can double your revenue this year or double your profits issue or grow 40% or whatever the goal is of the doctor.

And so it's really interesting is looking at doctors who say, "Well, I want to start implementing a new service this year. I want to start doing more dental implants." And so now that you've declared that goal, if you have a whiteboard, it is now your circle of focus to focus on dental implants. And so you can now say, "You know what, we want to start doing four cases a month, or we want to start doing 20 cases." Maybe you've been doing implant cases and you want to really focus on it this month, or you want to do 40 cases, whatever your number is. Now you have a way to hold yourselves accountable to the behaviors that will happen. And so what that means is what sort of marketing are we doing? Are we implementing Facebook or are we implementing Google ads? What are we doing to be able to have conversations with our patients?

Do we need to focus on our verbal skills and our case presentation? Do we need to make sure that we have our schedule set up so that we can accommodate new patient consultations and making sure that we're time-blocking for actually completing and scheduling these high value services? What is our financial policy like? And so the first thing that we want to look at, and what's the one domino that can actually knock down the other dominoes, is actually having this metric, having this goal, represented on a tool or a whiteboard that you can look at daily. And so, as you are setting your goal, if you're hitting the goal, then now you can look at what are the elements that allowed you to hit that goal. Maybe you changed your marketing, maybe your verbal skills improved. Maybe you have a better system for follow-up that you put in place. And now, because of it, you can identify what made that happen. And you can continue to focus on that circle of focus so that you can continue to grow.

And so this is one service, implants. A lot of times we look at things that we may not see that are that critical in our business. And it could be something like even x-rays. Are we being comprehensive? Are we really doing the full mouth series when our new patients come in? If our patients are coming in, are we doing the bitewings? Or are we saying, "You know what? We're really, really busy. We'll do them next time." You would not believe the impact on our practices when we start focusing on consistency with the little things.

And so if you know that you're not doing x-rays or you know that you are ... Even sealants, so you're not having conversations about sealants with patients, if you believe in them as an option, focusing on that is going to make a huge difference. For example, even if you were to have four patients that did four sealants a week, now you can bring in, in many cases, depending on your fees, an extra, $2,500, $3,000, $3,500 a month, that can now be reallocated back into education, taking another course or investing in more marketing for your practice to be able to bring in more patients.

So that's one thing that I definitely want to make sure that you're doing, is you're creating your huddle with a purpose. And if you're interested in learning more about these whiteboard strategies, I encourage you to participate in one of our marketing and practice growth challenges, where we actually help you to be able to implement this particular system in your practice.

So the other thing that we want to look at is making sure that you actually have systems where everyone in your practice has actually has their number. They have their KPI, they have their metric. And what's been really exciting as well is looking at practices that have intentional focus within each individual team member. And it could be for the scheduling coordinator how many 10K cases are they going to actually have patients accept? Or it could be for your scheduling coordinator, how many patients are being rescheduled? Or looking at last week's schedule and saying, "What's the minimum number of patients that we're comfortable with actually leaving without an appointment?" Or it could be your marketing coordinator saying, "Well, let's go ahead and have a number of how many patients that we're getting from this particular traffic source," whether it's going to be Facebook or it's going to be your Instagram or your Google ads. Being very, very intentional.

And so as again, you start to be intentional and you start to track the now as a team, you can actually come together and you can say, "How can we support you so that you can hit your goal?" And so say, for example, it's a treatment coordinator and she's not been closing 10K cases, then you can say, "Well, how can we support you? What can the doctor do to support? What can the hygienists do to support?" And so when the patient's in the chair, what is their role in case acceptance, maybe identifying that the real issue is that the team needs to have in-depth training on verbal skills. Maybe it's mindset, understanding that, you know what, there are verbal skills and ways that we can communicate with our patients that will allow us to provide solutions.

So a solution is number one, many of our patients are able to start big cases because they have a credit card, maybe even a zero interest credit card, or number two, patients are able to get their work done in one or two visits because they're able to pay it off a little bit over time, and so you're giving them that solution. Or solution three is that we can create your treatment plan. We can split it up over multiple visits. We can plan ahead of time what your budget is, so that we can go ahead and pre-book your appointments. So now you're providing solutions for patients versus having a patient say, "Well, let me think about it." Because quite frankly, they're saying that most times, because they just are confused of how they're going to fit in into their budget. And we start shifting our focus into training on verbal skills and understanding how we can move patients into understanding their options of how they can actually fit dentistry into their budget. And next thing you know, they're actually scheduling.

So that's something that we want to focus on, making sure that every team member has their number. If it's your hygienist, looking at what is their hygiene reappointment percentage, making sure that they're focusing on that. So now their behaviors will move in a direction of not having a patient leave without a next appointment, because now they're looking at it, they're tracking it weekly. One thing that we love to help our clients do within our delivering while coaching programs, is to actually have these scorecards where you're setting goals, you're looking at it weekly. And now that you're looking at it weekly, again, we are able to ensure that our behaviors do not change. Because a lot of times that's what it is. We get excited. We start focusing on something. And next thing you know, we totally forget that our intention was for example, our hygiene reappointment rate or making sure that every patient has the next appointment. And next thing you know, our behaviors change and our results change and patient care slips through the cracks. And so that's extremely important.

The other thing that I want you to focus on in terms of a third system and the third system that I'm going to share today, and believe me, there are hundreds of little pearls that we could talk about, but the other thing you want to make sure is that you have a system for having a weekly meeting where you can look at what are the things that you're focusing on. So if you have a new service, are you really getting the traction and results that you want? If not, identifying as a team, how can we best support each other so that we can hit our goals?

If you have for example, case acceptance and your case acceptance percentage is not where you want it to be, or your doctor production per visit is something that you're focusing on this year, then you can say, "Okay, well that is our circle of focus. And what we're going to do is we are going to have as our circle of focus with everyone has a number, looking at our doctor production per visit, then we can say, well, how can we increase that? Well, maybe we need to take a new course. And so once we are increasing our clinical competency or we are learning how to do a new service or procedure, then now what happens is that we are going to drive that number. It's going to move forward."

And so having that weekly meeting to say, "Okay, well have we actually scheduled that course? Have we scheduled that training? Or maybe what we need to focus on is again, verbal skills. Then now we can create that circle of focus. So we can look at looking at all of our patients who've been unscheduled, filtering them by highest treatment plan. And we can go ahead and get those patients in." Or we can say, "You know what, we're circling our focus this particular quarter, on making sure that when patients are there, we're providing those solutions so that they can go ahead and get scheduled."

And having that effective meeting allows us to be able to not only look at production and collection, but what is our AR? How did that change last week? Why did it change? Why did it go up? And so when we start looking at that, we can ask better questions, "Is it that we didn't send out statements? Is it that we have checks that have not been entered? What's going on with our AR?" And now when you're having this weekly meeting, you can dive in, you can have that hour of focus to really look at what's working, what can you improve on? And collectively as a team, you can actually create those solutions of getting to faster results and success.

So these are three systems that I highly recommend that you put into your practice so that you can start making that change. You can create your circle of focus, and you can be very intentional about growth this year. Creating a healthy team, creating traction in your practice, and ultimately being able to serve more people and change more lives as well as create a better business. So hopefully this serves you and that you got lots of value. If you haven't yet already done so, make sure that you are a member of our Delivering Well Facebook group, Dental Boss Movement. If you're on Clubhouse, make sure that you are part of Dentist Club. We have thousands of dental professionals now who are connecting, collaborating, and we have a great community. They are on Clubhouse.

And if you're looking for solutions to grow your practice and take your practice forward, make sure that you're reaching out to us @deliveringwell.com. I'd love to be able to talk to you and discuss how we can help your practice grow. But again, thank you so much for taking time to be a part of our Delivering Well community, listening to our podcasts, getting pearls, taking action, and living your best life through building an amazing dental practice. All right, guys, thank you so much for listening. Take care. And we'll talk with you very soon.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Delivering Well podcast with Dr. Anissa Holmes. We'll catch you next time.

Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Delivering Wow Dental Podcast. I am super excited to be here today. So today I'm actually here to share with you something that is perhaps going to be pretty insightful for you, as you are looking at, how can you have an amazing year for this 2021? And one thing that I have had a lot of our coaching clients come to me and say is that they want to be able to grow their practice, they want to be more profitable this year. And one thing that a lot of people have the wrong idea about is that if they increase their production, then all of a sudden they will grow, right, or a production is what's most important. And so I'm actually here to share some insight that production is actually not the most important thing that you want to focus on in your practice.

And so I'm going to be giving some specific examples today of exactly what I mean and exactly what you can start to look at, some pearls that you can think about for your practice as you are mapping out your plan of how you're going to hit your big goals, how you're going to hit your profit goals for this year. And so one thing that we are looking at with our coaching clients is actually looking at historicals from the previous year, and seeing what were the different services that made up the production that we have every single month. And that way we can see were we consistent month to month to month. If we said that we wanted to implement a new service, were we actually implementing the service? What does the report show? Right?

One thing that we're also looking at is not just production, right, and what makes up production, but we're looking at another metric, which is of course our collections, but even further than that, our collections percentage. And so you might be asking, "Well, all right, what does that mean? What is collection percentage? I'm listening here." Right? And so collection percentage is the percentage of the funds that you produce that you actually collected. Okay?

And so what that means is that obviously we want that number to be as close to a hundred percent as possible. And unfortunately, most times it's not. And so as we start to look at our collections percentage, then now it starts to see where things are perhaps slipping through the cracks. And so a few examples of that is looking at your adjustments, right? Are you doing adjustments for friends, for a family, for people that you see out in your community and they come in and you feel like you have to give them a discount, right? Looking at adjustments is a great way to see how you are perhaps not collecting what you really should be, and really analyzing your adjustments.

Another thing that you can look at as well, and if that number is not as high as possible to 100%, is that, are you having statements that have not been sent out? Unfortunately, sometimes people come to me as a new client and I realize, "Oh my gosh, your AR is really, really high." Right? And we look at the reason why the real issue is that statements have not actually been sent out for eight months or 10 months. Right? And so you have patients who are happy to pay their balance, but they just never knew. Right? And so if you're looking at your collections percentage by a monthly basis, month to month to month, then now you have the ability to say, "Wait, we have dipped, why? Why did that happen?" And that would be one of the metrics that you're looking at.

Another thing that you can analyze with your collection percentage is that, do you have your checks, right? Perhaps you have checks that are coming to the practice. Are they being input in a timely fashion? Is it that your team is so busy doing calls for unscheduled patients to get them rescheduled, which is a whole nother podcast in of itself, of why that is not the best way to be able to schedule patients. Then what happens is that they're saying, "I don't have enough time. I'm going to get to those checks." And there's checks that are literally sitting there that are not being entered as they're coming in. Right? And so that's another way that maybe you have money there in the practice, but it's not been entered into the bank, right? And so that's something that's important.

Also, maybe you have electronic payments that have come in, but you've not answered them into the ledger, which means that there's going to be a discrepancy between your bank statements and what you actually have in your practice management software. And so these are a lot of things that we start to look at as we're looking at collection percentage. Another thing that we want to look at is really our fees, right? And are we collecting what we're producing? And how many PPOs that we're on? And what is the amount of profit that we're actually making per procedure if we are taking a PPO?

It was really insightful this week. One of my newer coaching clients, we started analyzing this in her practice and I actually gave her an exercise. And I asked her to calculate her practices profit margins for her different procedures. And what that means is looking at the expenses that you have in your practice, that you have every single month, whether it's your payroll, whether it's your rent, whether it is you're looking at your utilities, and calculating how much you're spending monthly divided into the number of hours that you're working, so that you have a cost per hour. And then from there, what we're doing is saying, "How long does it take you to do a filling?" So say if it takes you a half an hour to do a filling, dividing that by half, right?

And then from there, what we're looking at is, what are the supply costs for actually doing that procedure? And so we help and we show them how to quickly calculate that supply costs. But this one client, what happened was that she realized and we analyzed that she was actually getting reimbursed $80 from one of her PPOs for a filling. And what she realized is that her supply costs, her fixed expenses, her costs to actually do the procedure for a filling was $120. And so she was frustrated that she felt like she was working to pay her team because she wasn't getting paid. But the real issue is that things would never turn around because you are operating at a higher cost than what you're getting reimbursed for.

And so when you start looking at your collection percentage, all of a sudden, you start to realize that there is a difference between your production and your collections. And now you can start to dig into exactly why, what is going on, what is happening there. And now you can go ahead and make some changes so that you can move forward in your practice. So hopefully this serves you, hopefully you got lots of pearls to be able to help you to understand that production is not what's most important. Because a lot of people think that, "If I'm busy, if I have patients in the chair, then all of a sudden we are going to have profitability." Right? And the fact is that, that's not the case. What we want to do is we want to focus on how can we maximize the revenue that we're getting in our practice, and how can we make sure that we're leveraging really great systems, like looking at our collections percentage to identify the gaps.

Thanks again for listening to another episode of The Delivering Wow Dental Podcast. I would love to welcome you to join us inside of our free Facebook group, dentalbossmovement.com. And if you're on Clubhouse, find us inside of The Dentist Club. And if you haven't done so already, make sure that you head on over to our website, deliveringwow.com, to get access to your free practice gap assessment. All right, guys, take care, and we'll see you inside of the next episode.