The Dental Marketer by Michael Arias

November 11, 2024 Dentist to CEO: Secrets to Balancing Clinical Work and Business Mastery | Dr. Rehan Shahid | MME

How can a dedicated CEO day skyrocket your practice growth? In this episode, Dr. Rehan Shahid shares his wisdom on transitioning from merely being a dentist to embracing the role of a CEO. Discover how to "work less and earn more" by implementing efficient systems that streamline operations and enhance patient care. Dive into the nuances of building a robust practice, where patient feedback is the compass guiding success and training your staff is the keystone to maintaining excellence.

Dr. Rehan opens up about his personal journey, taking you through the trials and triumphs of managing a practice from the ground up. Explore his strategies for time management during the challenging startup phase and understand the critical importance of dedicating time to strategic business planning. Through practical tips and heartfelt stories, this episode sheds light on creating sustainable growth in your practice by sharpening operational efficiency and elevating the patient experience. Whether you're a new practice owner or a seasoned dentist, Dr. Rehan's insights are your roadmap to redefining dental success.

What You'll Learn in This Episode:

Key strategies for shifting from a clinical role to a CEO mindset.
How to work smarter with efficient systems for patient care.
The art of effective staff training to ensure consistent quality.
Importance of patient feedback in measuring practice success.
Time management techniques for startup practice owners.
Significance of scheduling CEO time for strategic planning.
Steps to enhance operational flow and patient experience.

Tune in now to discover how to elevate your practice's growth with Dr. Rehan's expert advice!

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Sponsors:

Studio 8E8: Dentistry’s story-driven marketing agency. Traditional marketing repels. Story-first dental marketing attracts.

We bring your story to life in a way that captivates and connects: https://s8e8.com/affiliates/tdm?utm_source=tdm&utm_medium=affiliate&wc_clear=true

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You can reach out to Dr. Rehan Shahid here:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drrehanshahiddds/

Email: [email protected]

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Mentions and Links:

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Terms:

LMS - Learning Management System

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People:

Dr. Scott Leune

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Books:

Buy Back Your Time

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Businesses:

Breakaway

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If you want your questions answered on Monday Morning Episodes, ask me on these platforms:

My Newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/

The Dental Marketer Society Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041

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Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)

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Michael: Hey Rehan, talk to us. What's one piece of advice you can give us this Monday morning?

Rehan: Hey, Michael, the best piece of advice I would give would be work less to make more money.

Michael: Work less to make more money. Expand a little bit on that. What do you mean?

Rehan: Yeah. So it's kind of, ironic when you actually play less dentist and play more the owner or the CEO of your company, you'd actually end up making more money.

And a lot of people find that counterintuitive, but when you actually really dive deeper into that, it makes 100 percent sense.

Michael: So for example, when you're doing your startup, you're opening up things like that, you kind of have to be on the clinical side, don't you?

Rehan: Yeah. So you have to be on the clinical side, but in a startup example, someone has to be actually creating the systems that you do in your office.

Figuring out your marketing campaigns, figuring out, Hey, if I want to do this amazing new patient experience. What does that look like from someone walking into the door to leaving the door? And that's not going to be your team, really, that's coming up with all of that because it's a startup.

Like you have to, as an owner, create that. And so a lot of people make that mistake and they just jump right into dentistry. And that's good as a producer, but then you're not really playing the owner at that point. So you don't want to be your own associate. You want to be the CEO of your company.

Michael: So that just

Rehan: happens to do dentistry.

Michael: Yeah. I like that. So then I know many practice owners, struggle with, streamlining their operational flow. So for you right now, what specific systems or processes have you implemented that have made the biggest impact do you measure their success?

Rehan: there's a couple of ones that we've done, but one of the most important ones is what I call. Follow the patient. And that means from the moment the patient literally stops their car and walks in the building from that moment, all the way until they're leaving the door, really mapping that out.

So when they're walking in, What are they looking at? So, Aka, what's on the front door? What's your signage look like when they open the door? What are they walk into? Do they just walk into a huge smelly dental office or is it nice aroma, a refreshment center on the side, etc. So, Really mapping out every single moment from that patient walking in to walking out has been a game changer for us.

Michael: Okay. So follow the patient. Interesting. I like that a lot. And so then that operational flow that came from where, why did that come out to such specifics?

Rehan: I think a long time ago and you might've heard of Scott Luna before. I took a course a long time ago when he was previously feeling with breakaway.

He had a thing called the five senses, which was as a patient, what do you smell? What do you touch? What do you see? What do you feel? What do you hear? And all the five senses and just expanding that further. I took it on myself and just call it the follow the patient from walking into walking out.

And when you started doing that, you really get to put yourself in the patient's shoes. AndIt allows you to find all the areas of improvement that you're not probably doing, but also really to focus on areas. So when a patient comes in, as a patient, I want someone to greet me and even tell me where the bathroom is or offer me some water, little things like that.

Now that I'm mapping it out. Helps me provide the best experience, but then also allows me to create an operational flow for the team to be able to, do just that.

Michael: So you created that system. And then how do you measure its success? How do you know? It's like, Hey guys, we're doing it.

We're making it happen. And everything's going greater.

Rehan: So there's something called NPS. Something score. I forget the word off the top of my head, but just random audits and then getting feedback from patients. So occasionally we'll get patient feedback and say, Hey, actually describethe flow.

Hey, when you walked into walked out,what was the amazing things you saw? What was some areas of improvement? And then just asan owner. I like to just randomly walk in and not say anything, but every morning when I'm walking into the office, I'm pretending I'm a patient. So I get to kind of see that almost daily when I'm walking first thing in to see, their aroma?

Am I seeing that, when they're greeting the patients? It's just really auditing it every single day and then allowing the patients to audit it at a frequency that you're comfortable with.

Michael: Gotcha. Okay. That's interesting. So then when you're doing this training staff, and I know possibly the operational flow is like new patient calls, things like that.

Right. And we know that's crucial. But how did you go about creating an effective, training program for a lot of these things? Especially like new patient calls or, yeah. The things like that, what key metrics do you track for that?

Rehan: first is always just understanding the why behind it, meaning, hey, why do I even care about this?

For example, a new patient call, why do I even care about how it goes? If the team's in alignment with why it's so important, then you get to actually, when they understand the why, talk about now how do we actually make it better or even improve it? Things that we then track is one, how's the quality of the call?

So if you're using some sort of phone tracking vendoryou get to actually write that and you put a frequency on that where some former of leadership team or manager. Is listening to a call once a month, which is, you know, very, very easy to do, spot auditing calls where I have literally my family members call my office and just tell them, Hey, give me your feedback right after that.

And I'll record that, date and time or they'll record it and then I'll be able to listen or have a leadership team member listen and say, Hey, here's X, Y, Z that they didn't do. And believe it or not, you can actually tell if a person is smiling through the phone. Just by their tone of voice.

And so that's one of the things are great on is, Hey, is everyone smiling a few seconds right before they pick up the call? And then just, you know, there's certain parameters in the call that we look for. Like, Did you mention the patient's name? Which is the most beautiful word in the English language is what people say, patient's name.

Did you repeat that name multiple times throughout the conversation? Did you offer. A scheduling opportunity. And then did you follow the two concepts of yes. Meaning instead of saying, when would you like to come in? Did you give them a, Hey, we have Monday at two and a Tuesday at four, meaning either way, it's a yes.

So we're looking for certain key things that they're saying in that call, and if they're not allowing training opportunities to help get them there, members like that,

Michael: I like that, man, real quick, how long have you been

Rehan: I'm a COVID grad. It's a 2020. I have four offices and so I work clinically about half the week and then I focus on running the actual organization the other half the week.

Michael: Wow. So since 2020. you graduated and then you opened up four offices.

Rehan: Yeah, so 20, 20, I mean, a Covid grad, we got tipped off on our education, so I had to kind of learn a little bit on my own.

But I was the very big, from dental school I was gung-ho on hey, I want to learn as much as I can about business because my goal was to be my own boss and have an empire really. And so just been really. Spearheaded toward that. And blessed to be able to hit the goals that I want and just continue to keep that path growing.

Michael: Interesting, man. Okay. So then I have a question, like when you were doing these, I guess the operational flows and the systems, do you, cause I feel like a lot of the times, Rehan, we focus on.

got to get new patients. I got to get patients just in general. Right. I opened up, it's just my family. I'm seeing right now. I got to get more. So we focus on like filling that up and then sometimes we create systems based on mistakes, right? That are we're seeing are based on flow. Is that what happened with you or no you, you created this infrastructure.

First,

Rehan: you have to really focus both at the same time, a lot of people will focus so much on that new patient acquisition, throw a bunch of dollars in marketing, et cetera. But then their phone call system sucks. So they're getting all this influx of calls, which they're not even tracking.

And they're wondering, you know, why am I not getting patients? I'm spending crazy amount of dollars on marketing, but they never realized, Hey, maybe it's not the marketing dollars. It's the training that's lacking or the system flow that's not there. we kind of talk at the same time where, Hey, I'm going to pay a marketing company to do the marketing.

but I'm also going to focus on my time on leading the company. And so when you tackle it from both ends you're tackling all the variables that are involved. that's super important. You can't just put all your marbles in one bag, so to speak.

Michael: Okay. Gotcha. So you're kind of doing both at the same time.

Now, how do you balance your time between producing as a dentist and playing the CEO role?

Rehan: Yeah. So I think as a startup, you have the privilege of time. versus, you know, when you buy an office, let's say, or have already producing office, you don't have that as privilege because the startup, you have the time because you're not as busy, like you said, if you're just seeing predominantly family members or, one or two patients a day, utilize that time like crazy to create those systems, because that is the time to do it When you have that luxury of time after you've, you get busier now, you have to buy time. I'm a big fan of Dan Martell wrote the book, buy back your time. And what I do now is the reason I have an admin day is I purposely created time where I have to have time to actually focus on the company. So for people that struggle with that, you know, taking half a day, like an afternoon to where you're still produced a morning.

And then the rest of the afternoon, you're not saying.Doctor patients. Maybe hygiene can still go without exams. So your flow is still going over the office, but now you're focused on What actually needs to happen doing half a day, once a week is not a hard thing to do, especially if you recognize the need for it.

you have to be able to give the company time to be able to work on the company instead of in the company. That's a big mindset shift.

Michael: Yeah. have you ever seen it where it was like, Hey man, I'm the only doctor and I just have one assistant, one office.

Rehan: Right.At the end of the day is where I can likeeither have time for myself to focus on, But then you also have your family you have to think about and then you know all these other thingswhat advice would you have for a doctor like that where it's likehey money to friday And then I have to work my associate too because i'm not making enough yet So I think you just described the average dentist,

Michael: right?

Rehan: And that's the reason the average dentist, if you really survey people, they're really are unhappy because they're working on Monday through Friday. moonlighting at an associate on a Saturday. They're coming home now and actually working on their business and now they've taken away time from family, loved ones, friends, and that's where they become unhappy and experience burnout.

So my big thing is. I don't think it's hard to get half a day. If you can't get half a day, then getting two to three hours during a workday, I'm a strong believer of don't bring work home because it never works out for the better for anyone. When you bring work home, you're already drained from the day.

Your significant other is upset with you, et cetera. But if you choose like, Hey, if you work till five, three to five is my CEO time. Now you actually have two dedicated hours when you're still mentally in work mode. You're in scrubs or whatever you're in work mode. You're not chilling at home on a couch.

Like you're actually still in work mode and you're able to dedicate to creating something for your company. So I always tell people, you know, start with something two hours a week. That's enough for that point until you get to the next level, which is half a day, and then finally the full day. every single owner that I know, they all have some form of admin time to work on the company instead of in the company.

And it is a mindset shift. you have to value your time more than, money because you see the bigger picture at the end of it.

Michael: So what specific tasks do you focus on during your dedicated CEO time? And how have you seen it drive your practice growth?

Rehan: So for example, today during my CEO day I'm focusing on the operational component where, we're revamping all of our, operational flow. So that's the job descriptions. That's every system for every position, every system for every role, every system for. Every task that a team member has to do.

So I'm revamping it creating it into video formats. So when new people come onto the company, it's not dependent on me running the show anymore. It's now they get to watch a video, get a handout and essentially creating this LMS, the learning management system. So people can actually be set up for success from day one.

A lot of dentists rely on the manager that'll train them or they'll train them themselves and. It's kind of so dependent on a person rather than the system. And when the person quits you're stuck right there. You have to now go and train and you're, you get more burnt out from that.

I'd rather create something, spend some time and then let the system do the teaching with a mentorship position created as well to help guide that teaching.

Michael: Interesting. So right now you're creating that, right? Systems in your practice, because you have four.

Yes.

Rehan: So we have the systems already. What I'm doing is revamping them. So every once in a while we hit a level of growth where we have to go and revamp something. Previously, for example, we had systems on paper. I'm adding the video component to it. So just to give it a little bit more of a, more detail, more, takeaways, more tips, et cetera.

Michael: Can you give me like clear signs when you hit a new level of growth?

Rehan: For us it was when we hit four offices we had to hire Levels of leadership. For example, we have an operations manager. Now, some people would have a regional manager at that point. Now the regional manager or this person operations manager, they have to have certain things that they look for.

And so I have to create certain things now for that whole position. You start creating an HR position now at that point. So you have to create new job descriptions that you didn't really have those issues at one office. So you may not need an HR person because the manager is the HR person in one office or the doctor is.

Now when you grow, you start having to develop different positions because you're tackling that level of growth.

Michael: Interesting. Interesting. Rehan, man, thank you so much. This has been awesome, and I appreciate your time, and if anyone has further questions, you can definitely find them on the Dental Marketer Society Facebook group, or where can they reach out to you directly?

Rehan: They can always find me on Instagram, Dr. Rehan Shaheed, or my email which is drrehanshaheeddds at gmail. com, or just tag me in the Facebook group. I'm a part of your group, Michael. I think it's an awesome group where a lot of people get to learn a lot of different things and feedback.

Michael: Nice.

Awesome. I appreciate that. And that's all going to be in the show notes below. And Rehan, thank you so much for being with me on this Monday morning episode.

Rehan: Yeah. Thank you for having me.

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