The Dental Marketer

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In this week's Monday Morning Marketing episode, we're joined by Shawn Rowbotham from DentalMarketing.net to explore how to effectively use direct mailers and postcards to attract new patients to your practice. Get ready for some eye-opening insights as we delve into surprising research that reveals how even younger generations are increasingly drawn to the power of direct mail. Discover why a pristine 5-star rating might not be the perfect fit for your practice, and learn how to strategically bolster your online presence to up the impact of your direct mail marketing efforts. Plus, we'll dissect the crucial "how" behind prospective patients' search for dental practices and reveal actionable strategies to capitalize on this evolving landscape.

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Tune into this episode with Shawn for the best up-to-date practices on direct mail marketing!

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You can reach out to Shawn Rowbotham here:

Website: https://www.dentalmarketing.net/

Phone: 435-503-1725

Feature Comparison for Direct Mail Companies: https://www.dentalmarketing.net/all-inclusive-pricing/

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Other Mentions and Links:

Google My Business

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

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

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

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Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)

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Michael: Hey, Sean. So talk to us about direct mailers and postcards. How can we utilize this or what advice suggestions or methods can you give us that will help actually attract new patients through direct mailers and postcards?

Shawn: Well, I think one of the things that, you'd want to start with is that people often have a tendency to think that.

they can just mail postcards and, uh, get something in the mail, and then the patients are just gonna come in droves, and the phone's gonna ring off the hook. it doesn't work quite like that. It's, uh, probably, in many ways, similar to... Dentistry and when a patient actually, provides like a really simple, explanation of what they, you know, think that you're going to do for them.

And you, on the other hand, know that there's a million little steps that have to go exactly right, or things don't work out well. For instance, if may say that they need a root canal. And so they're saying, okay, so you're just going to, you know, put a new, new tooth on top of that, you know, a crown on top of that, and it'll be all set in.

And though that's accurate, you know, as a dentist, that there's a million other steps that actually occur and they have to be done very precisely and very accurately, or that's not going to work out very well at all. And unfortunately, direct mail is the same way. And a lot of people think that all I need to do is go ahead and, you know, make up a pretty card and send it in the mail and things are gonna go great.

There's a lot more to it than that, especially nowadays. the other thing that I think is, uh, which I'll share with you a little bit more about that, but I think the other thing that's really valuable for people to appreciate and understand is that, a lot of people look at direct mail and they think of it as kind of a really old methodology.

They think, you know, some people are even think like, uh. who even does direct mail still? Who, who still mails postcards for goodness sake? In a world of digital and, you know, email and, uh, you know, text marketing and every other kind of digital marketing and such, the challenge is, is digital marketing has become so popular that it has overwhelmed everyone.

Every one of us get All kinds of, you know, solicited unsolicited texts. We get all kinds of emails. We, you know, pay no attention to, and ironically enough, the people who are most efficient at getting through that and spend the least amount of time focused on them is the younger generations, so they're really adept at.

completely ignoring, you know, digital advertising by and large, but at least getting through it very, very quickly. So it gets very, very little attention. And so, ironically enough, they also tend to be the strongest market. And the studies show that they respond stronger to direct mail than the people who you would typically expect that grew up with direct mail, the older generation.

So, ironically, it works even better for them. and the other thing that is happened in direct mail is the fact that because. Digital marketing, social media, and all that have become so prolific that now, the, old, older, you know, direct mail type thing is looked upon as kind of more of a novelty.

There's not nearly as much competition in the mailboxes there used to be back in the day. If you remember, you know, especially for those of you who are older, you used to get tons of direct mail. I used to get catalogs. You used to get all kinds of stuff, uh, flyers, postcards galore. Now. We don't get that we get a little bit of mail.

You know, we don't get nearly what we used to because of that. Frankly, there's a lot more attention given to the mail that we get, which enhances the results that you tend to get on direct mail. Unfortunately, at the same time that there are benefits in that there's less competition. There are a lot of things that make it tougher to get direct mail to work properly.

So right now, you really have to make sure that you're leveraging a lot of the best practices that in our day and age right now have a big impact on the results that you're going to get. And a lot of those techniques and best practices dovetail with digital. There's been studies done as well that show that when you do digital in conjunction with direct mail, it increases both by about 65%.

On average, in terms of their response. So it's a huge, huge impact. So it's really crucial that you take advantage of that. The other thing that is really, really important to appreciate. Is that before you ever even consider something like direct mail, you need to make sure that your digital presence your online presence is strong.

Nowadays, admit it and think about it, the fact of the matter is, most patients are going to pick a dentist not to dissimilarly than the way they're going to pick the restaurant. They're going to go to tonight. They're going to go online and they're going to put in. Best Mexican restaurant, if they're looking for a restaurant, it's going to pop up and Google my business, the top three, you know, results, as well as a couple of potential ads that people have paid for.

It's going to show them on a map. It's going to show more, you know, if they want to. And a lot of the times they're never even going to click that button. They're going to pick one of those. And most of the time, you have to ask yourself too, when was the last time that you chose a sponsored ad restaurant over an organic ad?

It almost never happens. Me, I'm not sure it's ever happened. So you want to keep that in mind. And that's not to say that using Google ads and PPC isn't effective. It certainly can be. But you just want to keep the realities of the medium at the top of your mind when you're considering what you're trying to accomplish.

so if they go ahead and they don't see you in the top three and you're lucky enough to have them click on show more, you have to ask yourself, where are you listed? How far are they going to go down the list before they find you? And when they do find you, what star rating does your practice have?

And how does that compare to all the people above you? And then Even more importantly, they're both really important as you can imagine, but even more importantly is how many reviews do you have? ironically enough too, most people would assume that five star rating is the best rating. It isn't. When you have a five star rating, people assume you're lying.

They assume that somehow you're working the system, and there's been a whole lot of studies done on this. So actually, believe it or not, the very, very best rating is 4. 9. That's actually what you want. Five star. I wouldn't try to get it down to 4. 9, but just keep in mind that if you're not at five star, it's not bad.

Now, if you start falling into 4. 7 and below, then it is bad and you're going to have challenges there because chances are your competition is. Ahead of you, if that's the case, there's a darn good chance. They're going to select them instead of you. So I tell people even when they call us and want to do postcards.

The first thing that we do is an analysis on their online presence. And there's 6 primary points that we review. And if they aren't in a good situation with those on with the online presence, then frankly, we tell them we need to work on that first and get that in place, or at least if they're close, we can be on track to get that in place before card set homes because otherwise they're frankly going to be paying the advertising bill for their competition.

Because what ends up happening is now I send out a postcard, it gets into the homes, the people are interested, they're like, yeah, my last experience with my dentist wasn't so great, you know, my tooth hurts, whatever it is that motivates them to call. They then go ahead, go online, and they check out your practice, and now all of a sudden you're competing with everybody else around you.

And if you don't look like a good, solid choice. You don't have to be number one, but you have to look like a good choice. And if you don't, there's a very high probability that they're going to call someone else. Just like you would do the same thing if you were picking a good Mexican restaurant. It's no different.

You might look at an ad from somebody, it's great, but you see that these others are rated twice the reviews and they're rated higher, where are you going to go? You know, that's what happens.

Michael: No, that's true. That's true. So then all this kind of falls into the best practices for having direct mailers and postcards to be effective.

Shawn: It does. And the challenge is, is this, is unfortunately, and I'm not trying to, you know, cast stones at anyone, but unfortunately, there's a million people out there that are happy to mail a postcard for you. So, you have to really pay attention to who you choose as a partner to help you with that. If they're not paying attention to these things, they're not asking about them, they're not talking to you about them beforehand.

You likely should be choosing someone else, because just getting a postcard in the mail is not the recipe for success. There's a lot of variables that are going to have a big impact, and if they're not paying attention to these most basic type things at the beginning, they're not going to be paying attention to a lot of the other things that are really important as well.

So one of the things that I would share, with your audience, and I don't do this to, you know, even sell them on our, you know, on our service, but we've put together an intensely valuable resource, which we keep, uh, you know, current and active, uh, and updated all the time. Um, as a matter of fact, we even put the date it was last updated on this comparative analysis of all the top companies out there that people choose.

Or, uh, direct mail for dentists because you can spend a tremendous amount of time trying to figure out who's the best and most of the time what most dentists do is throw up their hands after talking to a few people and just say, you know, Hey man, I just got to get this done. And, you know, so then they just find themselves going with whoever gave them the best sales pitch.

And unfortunately, the sales pitch rarely connects with the best provided, you know, provided service that's going to get you the best results. And so it's really worth your time But we understand that doctors don't have the time to do it or even their uh, you know practice administrator or office manager So consequently we put this together and we maintain it so that they can take a look at it So if you go to like dentalmarketing.

net and you go to the pricing page Frankly, most people that do what we do don't even have a pricing page because they won't tell you pricing until they've talked to you we actually it's the first thing we talk about and we put it right there in front of everyone And by the way, this isn't, you know, a stacking the debt.

We did the same thing that you would have done. We went online and we put best dental postcard companies. It's not high tech from that standpoint, we get the list of who the people are that they're most prominent and that's, who's on the list. And you can look on there and you can see all the, uh, you know, people that people are using and how they compare with each other, which saves you a tremendous amount of time.

We found over doing this for 15 years. That, uh, there are a long list of a number of things that are crucially important to get you the best results. And so consequently, those are the things that we rate all those companies on. So you can see how they compare with all those variables that we found, how that, you know, impact on your ROI.

We also feel like it's super, super important that you pay attention to ROI, return on investment. Frankly, I don't care whether you do digital, social postcards, The receipt on the back of the grocery, you know, receipt you get, whatever you do, it doesn't matter. You shouldn't be doing anything if you're not tracking the ROI.

If you're not, you just can't tell where your money is best spent. And inevitably it's likely going to be spent poorly. not going to get you the results you're looking for.

Michael: I know at the beginning, you kind of mentioned something about the younger generation. Can you give us like a real quick, what's the age on that?

Like, is it 19 to like... 30 that are now looking at postcards or that you've witnessed the data shows.

Shawn: Yeah, anybody who's on their own, frankly, so, you know, the Millennials, Generation X, the different, you know, whatever the, you know, the different, these different generations, all those younger generations that most people think of intuitively, they think, oh, well, these people don't pay any attention to direct mail.

You know, it's the older crowd that does, and. What the studies have borne out is that's actually just not accurate. Ironically enough, because they didn't grow up with it. It's a novelty to them. And so they love actually getting direct mail. They spend more time with it. They pay more attention to it.

They respond stronger to it. They, choose, uh, you know, More often they're choose someone they've gotten direct mail from over somebody that has, they've gotten, you know, digital from, and they tend to believe it more, it's more believable to them as well in terms of the credibility factor for whomever they received it from.

So all those things come into play. And at the end of the day, you end up with a really strong response. Now, in our particular business, a lot of people are eager to get regular new patients. However, there is a tremendous amount of emphasis on practices that want to get, more higher dollar cases, you know, specialty cases, things like all on X or full arch or implants, you know, cosmetic, uh, veneers, you know, ortho, a lot of these kinds of cases, even sleep, stuff like that.

And so those types of cases are often, you know, more focused on the older generation and of course, direct mail is, you know, tried and true there as well. and, you know, I can go into, and I don't know if you have specific questions that you'd like me to cover in relation to direct mail or in terms of actionable things I can share to those online presence metrics that we pay attention to if that's helpful.

But what do you think would be most helpful to your audience?

Michael: Yeah, no, right now this has been super helpful what you, uh, let us know everything that we have to have into place first, right, before we decide to do direct mailers. Um, and then from that point on, we can kind of continue with it, right? targeting the right thing, but making sure we, we determine it.

Shawn: And the thing is, is those, the, those kinds of things that are crucial for direct mail, they're not unique to direct mail. It really doesn't matter what you're doing. Whatever you're doing, you need to make sure that you have a strong online presence because anything that you do is going to be hand in glove with your online presence.

So it's just a crucial foundational step that needs to occur first.

Michael: Yeah, awesome, Sean. 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?

Shawn: Um, well, they can go right to our website, like we're mentioning, the dentalmarketing.

net. That provides a lot of insight and answers a lot of questions. And of course, they can contact us. They can, you know, frankly, contact me directly. we're extremely transparent, extremely open and eager to help whomever. Frankly, whether you work with us or not, and I'm, give people my, you know, direct line.

They can reach me, you know, my number actually 435 503 1725. You can call me pretty much anytime. Unfortunately, I eat, drink, and sleep this stuff.

Michael: All right, Sean, I appreciate your time, man. And thank you for being with me on this Monday morning marketing episode.

Shawn: Thank you so much.

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Guest: Michael SonickBusiness Name: Michael SonickCheck out Michael's Media:

Website: https://www.michaelsonick.com/

Michael's Book - Treating People Not Patients: https://a.co/d/gsHKkx3

Email: [email protected]

Phone: 203-209-7029

Free Course Preview: https://www.michaelsonick.com/freepreview

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Other Mentions and Links:

Dennis tarnow

Christian Coachman

Peter Diamandis

Broadway Theater

Monopoly

Unreasonable Hospitality - Will Guidara

Danny Meyer

Shake Shack

Eleven Madison Park

Gramercy Tavern

Union Square Cafe

Zagat Model

Adam Grant

The Wizard of Oz

Blink - Malcolm Gladwell

Harvard University

Invisalign

David Garber

Frank Spear

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Host: Michael Arias‍Website: The Dental Marketer

Join my newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/‍

Join this podcast's Facebook Group: The Dental Marketer Society

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My Key Takeaways:

• How can you really wow patients, going above and beyond their expectations?
• What are the keys to hiring, including personality, effective roles, and must-haves?
• What is the first, and most important step to bringing on effective team members?
• The 5 core values of Dr. Sonick's practice, and how he implements them.
• Human to human interaction is irreplaceable when it comes to connecting with patients.
• The secret sauce Dr. Sonick takes from the restaurant industry to apply to his practice.

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Please don't forget to share with us on Instagram when you are listening to the podcast AND if you are really wanting to show us love, then please leave a 5 star review on iTunes! [Click here to leave a review on iTunes]

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p.s. Some links are affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase, I will earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you. Please understand that we have experience with these products/ company, and I recommend them because they are helpful and useful, not because of the small commissions we make if you decide to buy something. Please do not spend any money unless you feel you need them or that they will help you with your goals.

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Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)

Michael Arias: all right, it's time to talk with our featured guest, Dr. Michael Sonic. Michael, how's it going?

Michael Sonick: It's going great. Thank you for having me on the show, Michael.

Michael Arias: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I appreciate you coming on. If you don't mind me asking right now, tell us a little bit about your past, your present.

How did you get to where you are today?

Michael Sonick: Well, I'm a perinatalist. I've been private practice since 1985 and I graduated dental school in 1979. So I'm probably than most of your audience. And I've had a true passion for, you know, working with my hands and also customer service. And so over the course of my 35, 40 years of building a practice, One of the things that resonated with me was really developing great connections with my patients.

And my background was in the, not only the furniture business and woodworking, I was a lifeguard, but I also played cocktail piano. I did a lot of work in the restaurant business. So I waited on tables. I was a bartender. I was a busboy. Um, I even was a chef in the kitchen. So in college, every, every summer I would have a job, you know, when I wasn't lifeguarding, I moved over to hospitality. And that was a lot of fun. I met a lot of people and I realized the importance of connecting with, you know, my customers who are people in the restaurant. So for years, I always thought about the importance of really serving, people and we do that as dentists and also serving people in the restaurant business.

So there were a lot of parallels between the restaurant business and my office. So when I first opened up my practice, I opened up in 1985 and for whatever reason I was sort of entrepreneurial. I didn't know it at the time, but I just decided I just wanted to work for myself. And, you know, today we have a lot of different choices.

You can work for somebody else. You can work for a large corporation. You can open up your own practice. I still think there's a real strong need for people to be in their own practices and to connect with other human beings. But you're going to connect with other human beings, even if you're in a large corporation, or if you're working for somebody.

That is critical. So in dental school. I did okay, you know, I liked it, but when I became a periodontist, you know, I was a general dentist for a few years, and then I went to my residency program, became a periodontist, and then I really just really enjoyed it, and I'd pull all nighters, and even though there weren't any grades, and it was a pass fail, I just really, really got into it, and I spent a lot of time the first 15 20 years of my, my, my career.

Building my craft. And I think that's essential. You have to be really good at what you do. Most patients don't really know if you graduated first or last, or if you did a good crown prep or a bad ground prep, or you're good at dentures or extracting teeth, but what do they know? They know that you didn't hurt them.

They know what your fees are and they know what the experience was like. Unless it's a front tooth, they're really not going to understand, the quality of your work. So. I still think it's real important to do great quality work, because it puts you in a niche, a top. So that's what I did. My first part of my career, I just studied, and I went to a lot of courses, and I spent a lot of time teaching, and I've been teaching for 40 years clinically.

But I also realize it's real important to be able to connect with the people that you serve. And you have to do it by building a strong team. And that's by hiring the right people. And that's a whole different, you know, that's a whole different thing. How do you hire, how do you get the right people?

How do you develop a culture? So there's a number of things that I believe you have to do to be a really successful dentist. One, you have to be great at your craft. Two, you have to have a nice looking office. It has to be clean. It has to be neat. You have to be clean and neat. And three, I can't say it's most importantly, but it's really important.

And it's something that's not taught in dental schools. You have to have the ability to be able to give great superior customer service. Now, when I say customer service, it's not the stuff that's expected. It's the stuff that's not expected. It's the unexpected. It's going above and beyond. And, you know, Mike, I'm sure you remember those four or five great meals you had in restaurants or somewhere it could have been in someone's house.

And you, if I asked you what was a great meal, you probably could think like, well, it's this meal. And what happened during that meal was the food was good, but there's also something very special that meal. Maybe it was the type of wine they opened. Maybe it was the way they. Gave you special attention.

Maybe you didn't tell them that it was, you know, your friend's birthday. And then they came over with it and they did an over the top, you know, thing for them. Those are the things that, that we really remember. And I try to do that for my patients on every visit. We called it in our office, giving them the wow experience.

Michael Arias: I really like how you pointed out these four things. You got to be great at your craft, nice looking office, ability to give great customer service. And I remember not that long ago, I read this book called Unreasonable Hospitality.

And it provides... By William Godera.

Michael Sonick: Yes, uh huh. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a classic.

Michael Arias: Love that book. And I like how he said, service is black and white, but hospitality is color. Right. And so it is what you said, like you got to go above and beyond. So how do we do that in a practice? Because I know you're kind of a master at this.

You wrote a book called Treating People, Not Patients. And so you dive deeper into this topic on just hospitality or what is that about?

Michael Sonick: Yeah, that's a good question. Well, Will Guderia's mentor was Danny Meyer. I don't know if you know who that is. Danny Meyer. People know Danny Meyer because of Shake Shack, but Will Guderia, his restaurant, 11 Madison Park, was top restaurant in the world one year, voted.

it's one of the best restaurants in Manhattan. Well, that was Danny restaurant, and Will Guderia bought that restaurant from him. Danny Meyer started Gramercy Tavern. And he started a union square cafe and he hunted 11 Madison park. He has about 50 restaurants in Manhattan, but he got put on the map financially because he started Shake Shack.

And that's a, that's a whole nother story. that's what made him very wealthy, but he, he brought what we call hospitality to the restaurants. And we'll get there ran with that because, you know, he was a mentee of Danny Meyer and took it to the top. And in his book, he talks about the things that they do.

They actually have somebody on staff there that's just there. I think it calls the director of customer experiences. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Great experiences there, buddy. He gives them those, those unique experiences. And in his book, he talks about. these like four people there. I think they were from Iowa and it was their last meal in Manhattan.

And they're about to go back to Iowa. And he goes, what restaurants were you here? And I talked about it and, you know, a bunch of food. He used to talk about the same thing. And he probably a foodie if he read that book he says, well, what was your best experience? They go, we had a lot of good ones.

He goes, anything you missed? He goes, yes. We never had a New York city hot dog. And so we'll get the era who's, you know, owns the restaurant. He goes outside in his suit in the middle of the day and he gets a couple of hot dogs in the street. brings to the kitchen and he asked them to cut them up.

He says to serve and they play them with mustard and relish and, you know, some sauerkraut. And it comes out, of course, the chef didn't want to do that, you know, being a, chef in a, in a top restaurant, but he wanted to do it to give them that experience. Now, whatever kind of food they had, I think they had duck that night.

It didn't really matter. They're going to be talking about the hot dog and the hot dog has nothing about food. So how do you do that? And in my book, I have 10 different chapters. I also have a series of videos that you can purchase that are specifically there to train the staff and there are different techniques you need.

You need to be able be nice. It's basically four words, be nice to people. And when you have somebody in your chair. Or in your office, or in your waiting room, you know, are you nice to them? And how does your practice look to them? So the model of my practice is actually based on the restaurants, but it's called the Zagat model.

Now, Zagat was a restaurant review book that was published by Tim and Nina Zagat out of Yale. It's no longer on the market. It was bought by Google, but they rated restaurants based upon three things, food, service, and decor. So I'm going to make an assumption that every dentist out there knows what they need to do to do good dentistry.

So we don't serve food, we serve dentistry. But we still have to have good decor, and we still have to have good service in our practice. So how do you do the decor? Well, there's a whole series of checklists that we have, and we have a checklist for everything that we do in our practice. We have a checklist for the human being in our practice.

Is your hair combed? Are you clean? Is your uniform pressed? Do you have a nice smile? Are your fingernails clean? you wear nice shoes? We have something in our office called the white sneakers. So in our practice, everybody wears white sneakers, and they're clean, and I buy them for everybody. And if they're not clean, they go out and buy a new pair, and they're had permission to do that.

So when people join our practice, we tell them what our team is about, what our culture is about. And as one of one of the most important things in the dental practice is to be neat and clean because people are afraid of a couple of things in the office. They're afraid of pain. They're afraid of how much it's going to cost.

afraid of the unknown, but they're also afraid of diseases and germs and cleanliness over the top clean office. You're going to stand out. Very few offices are like that. So we do a check and we go through it. We go through everything in the office and I do sort of, I'm sort of very picky when it comes to cleanliness and having everything run very smoothly.

So I'll do little things like I'll unscrew a light bulb. I'll see how long it's going to take for somebody to realize that the light bulb is unscrewed. And I say, hey, how come nobody saw that light go? We used to have telephones with the cords that used to be raveled. I used to, if I saw a raveled phone cord, I said unravel it.

And then when I unravel it, I'd unplug the phone and take the cord out. So people would answer the phone and there'd be nothing there because the cord would be unraveled. They go, Oh, Dr. Sonic was there doing that again. Sometimes I'll leave a piece of trash on the front lawn. I go, didn't anybody see that?

and I do sort of games like, you know, with that, with, with the people want to practice. I say, bring it up, bring it up, bring it up. So I think to do that, you have to just make a decision early on. Are you going to be an excellent practitioner? Are you going to be someone who really wants to give great service to your patient?

Do you realize that's important? Because I'm telling you it is. It makes such a difference with your patients if you are present for them. And I have a lot of different strategies for that. Cleanliness is one. Another one is giving everybody. On every visit, a phone call after their first visit there, whether it's surgery or not surgery from the team.

And the next day, I will call a patient. So, a patient gets two phone calls from our office. Not many people get that from their dentists or their doctors. Another thing that I do that's really important and that I've recommended to every dentist, but nobody does it, is the patient letter. every first visit, Michael, if you came to see me as a new patient, let's say you had, you come in and you look like you have nice teeth, you have no disease or anything.

Michael, it's a pleasure seeing you today. Today we did a diagnosis on you and a comprehensive examination. The good news is you have no periodontal disease, you have no decay. You don't grind your teeth. You don't need a bite guard. Okay. And, um, I'm very happy to say that if you get your teeth cleaned every four to six months and just brush and floss, you'll probably not need any dentistry for the rest of your life.

Pleasure having you here. If you have any questions, feel free to call me on my cell phone, 203 209 7029, or email me at my private email, mikeatsonicdmd. com. Who gets that from their dentist or their doctor? Now, if you had a severe problem, you'd get a more detailed letter. And then I would say to you, go home, read this, discuss it with your, you know, loved one, or your friend, or maybe you know somebody else who's a dentist.

Read it, and if you're not sure about whether you want to go through a treatment, come on back with your, you know, husband, your wife, your mother, whatever, your son, daughter, and let's have a consultation, we'll talk again, and share that letter. So what I do is a very specific strategies as I give information and I make it very easy for patients to communicate with me now.

A lot of doctors. Now, I work with a lot of positions. It's really hard to communicate with positions. They want to communicate with faxes. They do not give you your personal email. You never get their cell phone. So if I'm going to meet somebody new, Michael, if you were a new person I'm working with, doctor Michael, what's your cell phone, what's your personal email.

I get that all the time. And I have a database and I have a huge database so that I can call you directly when I want to communicate, as opposed to, I haven't heard back from him. I haven't heard back. So I'm very proactive about getting things done. I think my skill is I'm well known as a good surgeon, someone who does a lot of implants, et cetera, but my real skill is good communication.

being very clear and direct with my patients. No ambiguity. You know, I don't know if you know about Adam Grant. I'm sure you've read his work as well, a psychologist from the University of Pennsylvania. He says what people find more and more challenging is not getting negative information or positive.

It's that one in between. It's the ambiguity. When someone is ambiguous, It's confusing. And you've probably been with people, I mean, a lot of people do this. they don't do it advertently, but they may do it, you know, because it's just their habit. They use confusion to control you because they don't want to make a decision.

So they'll start to say, you know, well, I could do this, this way. And you're talking with a patient, it's like, are you going to go through treatment or you're not going to go through treatment? What's the deal? So I find out, I go, you know, seem a little confused. I go, what is it? Is it the money? Are you fear of going through it?

Have you had bad experiences? Do you not think you're worth it? Do you want to give the money to your children? Or do you have to pay for something else? Or do you just not trust me because you don't think I'm competent at what I'm doing? Here's what I can do. And I give patients all the information that I can.

And I have, I can give it to him many ways. I can talk to him like I'm talking to you. I can write down the pictures. I can open up my website. This is another topic we can talk about. We should have over 1200 pages of content on my website. So they can go there. I've written six books, four of them picture books that are self published in the office.

So this is a gum graph before, this is after. And we can all do this. We can just take a picture and do that. So I show them my work so they can say, this is my stuff. So you can look at it. Very few doctors will show you that. I don't know what that's like. Oh, you don't know what a bone wrap looks like?

Here, here's a PowerPoint presentation. This is a flap reflector. This is the bone. This is the graft. This is what it looks like six months later. I will show them. I'll take away the mystery. I always say to patients, it's sort of like you're in the Wizard of Oz, and I'm the wizard, very omniscient, have all these powers, I'm behind a curtain.

Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to take back the curtain, I'm going to bring you into my world. I'm going to take you backstage. And I love going backstage in operations, but I'm going to take you to my backstage. And I'm going to show you what I actually do. And a lot of doctors are afraid to show the patients what they do.

And then it becomes ambiguous because they don't trust you. And what's the most important thing you want to bring to a dentist or doctor or anybody that has a responsibility? You want to be able to trust them because you want to be able to feel love. cared for, nurtured. It's almost a spiritual experience when you're having that kind of a relationship.

It's not an I it relationship where like you're an object and I'm just giving you a coin like I'm going to a toll. It's a really intimate relationship. and I try to break down those barriers. Now, I look, I've been practicing a long time. I couldn't do this when I was 30. I had developed confidence I was very arrogant as a young dentist, because you know, I was good.

I was good. You know, I was good. I was good in my residency program. I had no experience, but I thought I was good. I thought I was smart. I thought it was cool. it was all basically a front because I was insecure. I realized I didn't know anything. I've been practicing one year. How do I talk to a patient with confidence?

It's very hard to do that. what do you do as a young person? If you don't know how to, if you don't do that, you tell the patient what you can do. You tell the patients what you do know. You tell the patients what your experiences is. And you give them that great experience, you know, in that area. there are a lot of little hints that I can give you to do that.

You know, from the simplest ones, to writing a letter, to cleanliness, to calling the patients, to developing a team. Now, developing a team is a very difficult thing to do. Most dentists say, Oh, I love the dentistry. I just hate my staff. Well, that's a problem. Okay, you want to be able to love your staff and you want your staff to support you.

I get a lot of compliments on my staff. Most, actually, most people leave the dental practice not because of the quality of the dentist, but because of their relationship with the staff. before I even meet a patient, you know this 'cause, because this is what you do for a living before a doctor, before a patient even meets me.

They probably have 15 to 20 different touchstones with our practice before the referral. The phone call, the website, the location, the outside of the building, the parking lot, what is the door squeak or not when you walk in, when it confirmed properly, did they say, or do you say hello? Hey, Michael, welcome or say, what's your name?

they know it's at 11 o'clock. We've got one patient coming in. Might as well greet them by their name. How are you doing? The nurse meets them, they go in there. By the time I walk into that room, I got to really be bad to blow it, because they've already been sold. They've been sold because they've been treated well up until that point.

And it's like, all of a sudden I walk in, it's like I'm a movie star walking into that room. Because they say, oh, a doctor's here. Yeah, but they've been treated well up until that point. And they often say, you know, well, Danielle or Amelia treat us really well. Whatever they say to do, we'll do, because our team is really what supports us and lifts us up.

Michael Arias: Gotcha. And I feel Can you give us a little bit more insight on like how we can build the perfect team? I feel like there's a lot of people who feel like they get B players and they turn into C They get A players and then the B players are bringing them down kind of thing

Michael Sonick: it really started, it starts with the, with the leader of your organization when dentistry, how do we become dentists?

Well, you got to get good grades in school. It has nothing to do with clinical skills or building a team or being nice to people, right? it means you're good at multiple choice tests. I always say to some of my friends, you know, that are really smart.

But they're not successful. I said, you know, the problem is you're too smart. you always the expression, the, uh, the A students work for the C students, you know, so it's a different skill set to build a team and it's, I have a whole chapter on hiring and how do you build a team?

And we build it. First of all, you got to know what you want. And I think before you build a team, you got to figure out who you are and that sort of starts with developing a mission statement or a statement of purpose or whatever you want to call it. It starts like, well, what is it? What does your practice want to look like?

does your practice want to look like someone who's just making money that just does high quality dentistry? Or does it want to look like someone who really. helps other people. So we developed our mission statement decades ago, and it's really, we've dumbed it down now. It's not really dumbed down, it's simplified.

And it's really to improve the quality of patients lives. So when I hire people, I want people to be able to be similar to my mission. I want them to be able to help people. Now, I can't really train people to be nice. You know, I hire nice people. So that's, that's what I would hire you. You seem like a nice guy.

No, you're, you're smiling. You're good. You connect with people. So you'd be great. You know, I would probably hire you based upon this, this podcast right now. you can really get, you know, Malcolm Gladwell, I'm sure you know, he talks about a blink, you know, it's like immediately you sort of know. So we develop our core values and I think every practice should look at their mission and their core values.

And that's, that's a lot of self work and our core values are involved being servant hearted. So I want people to be servant hearted. I want them to be able to treat Patients. Well, I want them to have very high integrity. I want to be health oriented, and I want them to be teammates. I want them to be educational.

So those are our five core values. So the most important ones, okay, are having integrity. That's, that's a, that's a non negotiable in our office. You know, if you don't have integrity, if you lie, if you steal, et cetera, that doesn't work. Um, and you have to be serving hearted. You have to want to serve the people.

So everybody in my practice, I have 25 people in my practice. Everybody is there to serve. Okay, that's what we're there and also they should be good teammates. So we want to get along when you have 24, 25 people in the office, small office. It's not always easy, but we always talk about it. We talk about that and we're very transparent.

No ambiguity, like I talked about earlier. So we're transparent and that there's a problem. we're going to bring it up and we can say, Hey, what's the problem here? Not make it personal, but talk about what the problem is. So once I find who I want, then we craft an ad and we, we interview people, but before we interview them, we get their resume, and you can tell a lot from resume, We get them to fill out a, um, employment application, you know, some basic information, but what's really important is we do something called a culture index. And not a lot of people know about this, but I do this on almost everybody in my life. What a culture index is, is, is a way that we can, I can look at somebody's personality and I look at them for seven different characteristics.

Are they autonomous? Are they going to work on their own? Are they going to follow orders? Are they very social? Or are they very, are they not social? Are they very detail oriented? Something very important for dental assistant or they're not detail oriented. Do they have a sense of urgency or if they're really laid back and they'll just move at a slower pace.

So those are the four major ones, but then it's like, how logical are they? I want people who are logical. Do they, are they creative? And do they have higher or lower energy? So I look at that and I'll tell you something. If I look, there's seven dots and I can look at these seven dots and I look at probably, probably look at 15 resumes and culture and disease a week.

I can look at them and within about literally seven or eight seconds, I know what that person's like. Okay. I can, I don't know their integrity. I don't know if they're smart, but I know what kind of worker they're going to be. If they have the wrong culture index, they're not getting hired. And every time I don't follow the culture index, I hire the wrong person.

Okay. I always try to fire it. So the culture index, the resume and the, um, appointment application. If I like the culture index and their resume, which is about one out of every 25, then they get a FaceTime interview with one of my office managers. If they like them after the FaceTime interview, they bring them in and then we do the blink and I look at them and within about three or four seconds, I know if they're a pretty good fit or not, if they know nothing about my practice, you know, if they haven't read the website, they're probably not very good.

They're not curious, and they're probably not the right fit. If they don't stand up and look me in the eye and shake my hand with a firm handshake. They're not going to get hired. If they come in, they are looking terrible, disheveled, unwashed hair. If they're 15 minutes late, okay. If their fingernails are dirty and their shoes are all scuffed up, they're gone.

So, I mean, it's just very quickly and it saves us a lot of time. We very rarely hire the wrong person anymore. It took me a long time to do this. And when I like, if I like them doing that blink, then the rest of my team interviews them. If they like that, they go home. Then if we like them at that point in time, we make them back for a working interview where they spend a full day with my team.

And that's not for me. My team that makes the final decision. Are they a good teammate or not? We know very, very quickly. If I ever feel badly, sometimes people look great on paper and they, you know, and the other people like them, but they give me a knot in my stomach. They don't get hired. And I think, you know, that you either like it or it's a very, it's a chemical thing that happens.

And once you're pretty perceptive and you become perceptive to this, and you can train yourself to become more perceptive, you start to see, because there's nothing worse than hiring the wrong person, and now they're there for four or five months. Now you got to let them go. It's stressful. their life. I'm doing somebody a favor if I don't hire them. you know, I don't want to have to hire somebody to fire them and we very rarely fire anybody. the reason people leave is because, um, usually, you know, the husband gets transferred or wife gets transferred, something like that, or, or they go back to school.

We have a lot of people go back to school and, you know, better themselves. You know, I have like three or four people who went to medical school or dental school. So the hiring process is something I find very fascinating because I get to put the team together and I'm not hiring me. I'm hiring a teammates and it's like somebody doesn't work out one area.

We have other jobs in the office where I can move them around to like, one of my best. One of my assistants is really social, but she's terrible with details. I mean, you know, I asked her to hand me the blue thing. She hands me the red thing. I know that about her. She's been with me for 11 years, always forgetting stuff.

But she's the nicest person, and she always takes care of people who are nervous, and she'll do whatever it takes to really connect with people. She's the best connector, but she's the less detailed. So that's what we use her for, connecting with people, making people feel good. She's great, you know, and we love her.

She's just a great, great human being. And I have other people that are really detailed, and really, and really persnickety. They're going to get everything right. great. Those are the people who do all my ordering and make sure everything is there. You know, so I'm not going to give my ordering to the person that's really nice, but not detail oriented and vice versa. I'm not going to put that person, uh, who's very detail oriented, not always that nice, you know, with a, with a disgruntled patient, something like that. very fascinating. How do you put the team, the teams together, stress when I have a good team.

Michael Arias: you built like a, a system here to do that. You know what I mean?

Especially tailored to you, or I think you can kind of like create this, uh, system and put it in literally any practice, but then they can kind of tailor to their mission statement and stuff like that. Right. and it's very strict in the sense of like, or not strict, I guess, but it's more like, Hey, this is the requirements because every, everything has to have a requirement.

Right. In order to, to function well, even if you have, if you play Monopoly, right, you can't just, if I were to play Monopoly with you and I decided to do my own rules, you're going to be like, this is not fun no more. Right. I don't like doing this, but if I were to go by the rules, we can all enjoy it. And it's fun.

And, uh,

Michael Sonick: nobody in my life is perfect and I'm certainly not perfect. So we're all different. We all know, like my partner, I have two partners and my, partner, Ray Ma, he has a very different personality than I do, but I don't expect him to have my personality he's not a visionary.

He's very good surgeon. And he's very detailed and he likes to look at numbers now. I'm good with numbers, but I don't like numbers. I don't like to look at him. I don't like to look at the pros and cons. I give it to somebody else. I make money, but I don't, do the spreadsheets. I don't even know how to use a spreadsheet.

I mean, that's, that's not what my, where my brain is. So, like, we said, you know, can you teach me numbers? Yeah, I can teach you numbers. You know, if you make money. And then you have this much, this much debt, you subtract your debt from the money. What's left over is the number that you got. That's your, that's your net worth.

I just really simplify it, but he's great at that. And we work out very well because we do different things. So I try to get everybody into their own lane in the practice. So my lane is very clear. You know, I'm the visionary and a marketing person and I do surgery and I try to keep the call and I try to keep to culture.

Running well. So when I'm not there, because right now I only work two days a week, I work Tuesdays and Wednesdays. So the rest of my time is either teaching or, um, you know, writing which I love to do too. So I, well, I'm there Tuesday, Wednesday.

So I come in Tuesday morning. I'll be frank with you. It's not the same as when I leave on Wednesday night and, you know, boxes may be out. This is here. I go, what's going on? And I just come through and they know it, they know what's coming on. I go. That's right. Dad's back in the house. Okay, get in line, man.

I know it. I know it. But I buy him lunch too. And I'm real nice to him during the day, but they know exactly what I want, when I want it. last night we had a, uh, we had a meeting with a group of dentists. We do a lot of education in the office. We have a study club and last night, The other dentists were going, man, they really treat you well.

they're putting a cup of coffee down for me. They're cleaning up my area. I go, yeah, they are. They are treating me well. It's not because I beat them. It's because they have certain roles to do. So do I, if I have to entertain 30 dentists, do I need to go down and make a cup of coffee at that time?

Isn't my time better spent up there running that room and doing the education, doing everything else. And I make sure that they're all. They're all rewarded for that. they don't know this yet, but we do a bonus system. this month, each of my staff is getting a 2, 000 bonus because based upon what we do, I don't push them to make money because they're not, they're not on this bonus system.

Like the more we do, because I don't want to do that. But you know, when we, when their office does better and we're above a certain percentage, you know, they, they get the share in It's always like a gift that they never expect, but nobody would do that.

So nobody's on like a percentage there or anything like that. There are hourly employees, including my hygienist, and some people like to bonus them for doing more, but they don't have to do any selling for me. They just go in there and work. then when they work hard, you know, sometimes they get, they get rewarded.

So we haven't told him that. I just found that out last night, my partner, because he doesn't.

Michael Arias: That's fantastic. And it's good to do that, you know what I mean? To see the team achieve it and everything like that.

Michael Sonick: Yeah, and we buy them lunch. We do a lot of nice things for the staff. We go to a Danny Meyers restaurant every year.

we rent out the back room. This year we rented out the back room at Gramercy Tavern, which is an unbelievable room. And a lot of my team members have never been to New York City. They've never been to a Broadway play. You know, we'll We spend nine o'clock in the morning until probably midnight every summer, you know, taking the team to New York with four or five events, staying in great restaurants and having a really, really nice time.

And so they talk about it to the patients, and then they bring back the same culture from Danny Meyer's restaurant to our office. And they know that we're running Meyer's restaurant. On the cover of my book, my blurb is Mike's deeper calling is to use hospitality gifts to make people feel better as lessons applied in a customer facing business.

And it's Danny Myers. he gave me a blog top of the book, which was a big deal. I mean, that meant a lot to me. He, for me, is my role model for hospitality. And Will Guderian. Of course, I mean, you know, he's, he's phenomenal what he does, you know, we call it a wild experience.

You know, he tries to do that for everybody in his, in his place. And that's how he became number one restaurant in the world. If you read his book, you know, he, the first time he was, he was invited to Europe. I think it was London. And, uh, they were going to give him an award for being one of the top 50 restaurants.

He goes, yeah, great. One of the top 50, but they didn't know where he was. He was number 50. Okay, so one of the top 50, but I'm 50, it bothered him and that was the night he went back to his hotel room with his, um, partner, the chef, and he wrote down on a piece of paper because we're going to be number one, you know, within the next five years.

And I think it took two years later. And then he wrote down unreasonable hospitality and that's what he wanted to do. Every time a patient comes in, I want to give them something that they're going to think about. It could be, like, if you want the best restaurants in my area, I have a list. If you want a place to walk, I have a list.

If you want the top neurologist, I have that number. You want to go to hospital special surgery, you need knee replacement surgery, I have a list of doctors down there. I have a periodontist in L. A., I know who to send you to out in L. A. So, we make sure that our patients always are well taken care of, and I connect with other people that are similar.

And so you end up building a network of like minded people, you know, so if you want to be great, you want to run a really successful practice, look at other successful people and ask them, how can you help me? Call me. I don't do consulting, you know, I just do teaching and, you know, lectures, that's what I don't have a consulting business.

But if you have a question, send me an email, mikeatsonicdmd. com. I'm happy to give you some advice. I have it in a direct you to the right place. Oh, you're you're, you're in Idaho. I know somebody out there. That's pretty good that you can look at. You're in Columbus, Ohio. I know a great guy there that you can talk to, find other people to mentor you because great people love to mentor others.

I mean, that's what you do. You like to help people. I mean, that's sort of what the core value of your business is making the people that you work with more successful. And that's a, it's a pretty cool way of living that every day I get to go to work and be the gift to my patients, which basically, you know, they always say giving is better than receiving.

It is. It is. I mean, it definitely, it definitely is. it's, it's just a great, and you get paid for doing it too. I mean, we, we have a great job. We get to help people get paid for it, do clinical things, meet all these great people. I mean, you know, and improve the quality of people's lives. Yeah, I could be better than that.

Michael Arias: Yeah, a thousand percent. So then where can we, cause I know right now we kind of just talked parts of the book, right? Where can we go get this book?

Michael Sonick: Well, you can buy it on Amazon, so it's, uh, it's called Treating People, Not Patients. You can go to my website, which is my name, michaelsonic. com, and, uh, on my website, you can see courses that we teach.

you can download videos, uh, there's a video series that, that is, uh, I think very powerful. It's three and a half hours videos that you, that are in segments, 15 minute segments. So once a week, you sit down with your team. And you look at the segment comes with a workbook, a course workbook, you can have your whole team right through the course workbook.

And there's a series of questions and you get to evaluate your office. You know, there's a bunch of series in there. Like, how do patients want to be cared for? Are you good at telling a story? You know, do you do comprehensive examination? We haven't talked about that, but that being comprehensive is really important.

most doctors, most dentists do not do a comprehensive examination. They look for procedures to do Most dentists are pothole fillers and they don't treat people comprehensively because they think they got to fill their book and they got to make money. Bottom line is you treat people comprehensively.

Even if they don't need any treatment, they're going to refer you to other people that want the same thing. And going to be waiting around the corner to get into your office, you know, I mean, I booked until January and I don't do any. I mean, I don't do any real marketing.

My marketing is all internal. I just started to do some external marketing because I have two partners, my younger one to build their practice and I was just playing around with it, and I take no insurance, so I've never taken insurance. And, uh, 4 to 7 percent of the population, dentists don't take insurance.

My partner who joined me 10 years ago, wanted to take insurance to get busy. I go, no, wait, just treat people. And it took him a couple of years. He got busy. It's slower to build a practice if you don't take insurance, but you can do it, but you can't do it by being mediocre. You've got to be exceptional, not as a dentist, but as a human being to your patients, and if you want to do that, you can do that.

That's a lot more fun. and my, my youngest partner, you know, she's been with me two years. She thinks no insurance either. So I'm booked. Uh, I'm booked until January. My mid range partner who's middle age, she's 40. He's booked until I don't know, he's booked like six weeks. And, uh, my youngest person, she's out on pregnancy leave now, but she's got a full schedule.

not the waiting list, but she's on me when I have 2 years, but in 2 more years, you're not going to get into her schedule either. So, yeah, you know, I always say to my partner. the way, I'm an American I practice in my hometown, 200 yards from where I went to high school.

Ray Ma is from, China. communist border of North Korea. Uh, Soo Jin Yoo is from, Korea, Seoul. So, I mean, you know, and I have five, six people from Europe here. I have a very international practice and it doesn't really matter. It doesn't really matter where you're from. The same principles apply.

I, I said to my partner, he goes, well, you know, I can't really do what you do. Cause I'm not from Fairfield. I said, I can open up a practice in downtown Beijing and be busier than you. I said, as an American, he goes, what are you talking about? I said, because I'm going to treat people well. And the joke was, cause he's Chinese, all the Chinese patients came in and wanted to see me.

Not him, I didn't realize at the time that it was like a, status to see an American dentist, as opposed to a Chinese dentist. It's like everybody in Korea wants to go to Harvard, Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Arias: Gotcha. Interesting. My, my Korean

Michael Sonick: partner did go to Harvard. So,

Michael Arias: yeah, yeah, no, that's interesting.

you're doing a lot, man. The seminars, study clubs and the book, right. And then your practice that you're running. It's a lot. So if you could, uh, one of the final pieces of advice that you can give our listeners right now, that would kind of help them move the needle towards where they want to go.

Michael Sonick: first of all, I'd take two days. Go to a hotel room by yourself, or somewhere by yourself, and start to write. And write what your practice would look like, if you could do whatever you wanted. If you could take a magic wand and wave it in front of you, what would you like that to look like?

And then, I mean, spend some time doing it. Do you want to be a restorative dentist? Do you want to do a lot of Invisalign? Do you want to do a multi specialty practice? Do you want to be, you know, you want to own a group of practices? Because there's so many different options. You know, if you feel like you're entrepreneurial, you want to buy practices, you don't really want to work, but you want them, and create them.

And then find mentors and role models that have done that. And hang out with them. I remember when I was in my Early thirties, I said to a friend of mine, I said, in 25 years, this is what I want to do. I want to teach all over the world. I want to be well known nationally and internationally, and I want to be an educator, and I want to write articles, and I want to be well known like these people.

And the people at the time were David Garber, who a lot of people know, and Frank Spear. And I said, I, that's where I that's a lofty way to be. I said, and I said, that's what I want. And so what I did was I started to meet those people. And all the well known people in our field. I know, you know, I wouldn't say they're friends of mine, but I have all their cell numbers and I talk to them all the time the sharing that goes on is really, really magical.

So create a network of people. One of the things that a lot of people do today, especially your younger audience, is they do things on their own with social media and they learn from Instagram and they see other people and they text, that is a way to do it. I'm not saying it's wrong. But it's not a way to really connect with people.

You don't build your practice by texting. You don't build it with social media only. it's a way to get people in front of you, but you really build it with human connectivity. All the work you do for your clients is useless if they come into a dirty office where the dentist doesn't care to them, doesn't spend the time looking in their eye, talking to them, and asking if they have any questions, and handing the business card with their cell phone number or personal email.

You don't have to do that. By the way, my cell phone does not go off when a patient is calling me. They very rarely call me, but when they do, if I'm there for them to re cement a crown on it, like as I did last Sunday morning, before the patient flew off to Portugal for two weeks, because their front tooth fell out, you know, his dentist didn't, I'm a periodontist, his general dentist didn't pick up the phone, I did, and I re cemented it in with permanent cement, so he'll be okay in Portugal, and I gave him the name of a dentist I know in Lisbon, say call him if you have a problem.

Giving it, not only cementing it, but give him a contact and then giving him my cell phone saying, if you're listening, the tooth falls out, call me. That's a wow experience. That's a hospitality that's over the top. And what did it cost me? I live a mile from my office. It cost me 25 minutes and a little bit of cement, and that is great marketing.

Because that patient's going to be telling that story. And I said to him, I said, he goes, well, what do I leave for this? I go, nothing. He goes, nothing? What am I going to charge you? Can I make enough money for that one visit to get the marketing value? Then, not only was I there, I didn't charge him. I said, nothing.

I said, you know why? I said, because you're going to be telling this story to people for the next 10 years about how nobody would call you back, but I came, your periodontist came in and re cement your tooth and gave you a cell phone number and a dentist and Lisbon. I told him exactly what I was doing for him.

He happened to be a retired guy who was, who used to be in marketing himself. So I told him, and that's kind of transparency was pretty fun, you know? Yeah. Because you could say that I wasn't saying, well, oh, don't worry about, no, hey here, I'm doing it because I'm manipulating you to promote my practice and come back here.

By the way, he's gonna need an implant there, so he's gonna be back in, you know, in, in and a few weeks, and I'll take care of him at that point in time. But that really gives great value to him and I, and I, by the way, I sent him a follow up letter to say, call me when you get back. Let's take a look and come up with a treatment plan.

Okay? Not only did I see him, Did, did the service, gave 'em a contact number, gave 'em my cell phone. I sent them a letter. Okay, that's over the top and it's fun doing so. What do I do? Be nice to people. Be really nice to people. Connect with them. don't rush off. Be there. And the biggest way you can build your practice is when something goes wrong.

Fix it. don't dismiss yourself in a part. That's a lot of younger people. I don't want this complication. Be there. If you can't fix it, find someone who can and develop relationships with those people. It's all about human connectivity and those will transform your relationships, you with everybody.

Yeah. This is not about dentistry. This is just about, you know, connecting with people.

Michael Arias: No, that's wonderful. Wonderful. So with that in mind, if anybody wanted to reach out to you. Call you or anything like that. Where can they reach out to you?

Michael Sonick: Well, they can email me at Mike and Mike at sonic dmd. com. They can text me on my phone.

Two Oh three, two Oh nine, seven Oh two nine. They can go to any of my websites, my name, michaelsonic. com. You can read my book, which I think you'll find very helpful, a lot of dentists have read it. I've had over 170 reviews from dentists from Dennis Tarnow to Christian Coachman to leaders in industry like Peter Diamandis and others.

It's been really well received. Um, my goal is to get this book into every dental school so that we change the culture of how we treat people, you know, both dental and medical schools. and I'm, I'm talking to physicians as well about this. So it's my passion. I'm not hard to find. So nice, nice,

Michael Arias: awesome.

So guys, that's going to be in the show notes below. So definitely reach out to Michael and Michael, thank you so much for being with us. It's been a pleasure and we'll hear from you soon.

Michael Sonick: Okay. Thank you, Michael. Thank you for having me.

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For a membership software that is built for growth and keeping the profit in the practice's hands, learn more about Dr. Chris Phelps' excellent Dental Membership Direct plans at: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/dental-membership-direct/‍

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In this week's episode of Monday Morning Marketing, join us as we sit down with the insightful Dr. Chris Phelps, founder of Dental Membership Direct, to dig into promoting your in-house membership plan! Dr. Phelps will share his expertise on identifying the ideal candidates for your dental membership plan and navigating the changing landscape of employer-based insurance. Learn how to empower your patients to save money while elevating their oral health through a strategic shift in mindset. Discover the art of tailoring your pitch to both the "fact finders" and "fact avoiders" among your patients, and uncover the key questions that can make your membership plan an irresistible choice. Tune in and transform your dental practice with actionable insights on marketing and promoting your membership plan to your existing patients.

Don't miss this episode – your patients' smiles and your practice's growth depend on it!

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You can reach out to Dr. Chris Phelps here:

Website: https://www.dentalmembershipdirect.com

Email: [email protected]

Chris' Book "How to Grow Your Dental Membership Plan": https://a.co/d/6UrDMw6

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Other Mentions and Links:

Dr. Drew Byrnes

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

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

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

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Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)

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Michael: All right. It's time to talk with our featured guest, dr. Chris Phelps and Chris talk to us about membership plans. How can we utilize this or what advice suggestions or methods can you give us that will actually help us? utilize and grow this membership plan?

Chris: Yeah, well, you know if many of you know that if you read my book on membership plans, i'm a fan You know, I grew two of my practices with them.

I had over 3 000 patients on the membership plan between my two offices combined and it was a powerful source of revenue and growth for those offices, um, both of which were fee for service as a result. So, you know, I would say there's really two big opportunities that I see with membership plans that is only getting stronger.

Right? Because, you know, who this is for is people without insurance and or people that are tired of paying for crappy insurance or their employer is constantly switching to the next plan and a different plan year after year that gives more and more restrictions, more and more exclusions on what they'll cover and with less and less reimbursement.

And of course, we know that's, you know, one of the reasons we'd like to get out of network is because our reimbursements have done nothing but gone down every year. So, if the number of people nationwide, uh, without dental insurance is increasing and the fact that they don't have insurance because our culture, it's, it's so ingrained in us, right?

We're so conditioned that you have to have insurance to go see the doctor for any reason, If they don't have insurance of any kind, like dental, then they feel like they can't come see us. So if they don't have insurance, they won't come see us until it hurts or they're in pain and more and more people are leaving and going without insurance.

Well, that tells us there's a, there's a need, but also there's a huge opportunity for us right there. So kind of 1 of my favorite things to do to start with is, let's say, you know, use this membership plan because it should be a profits interfere practice, right? It's something where your fees go up every year.

But the discount you give stays the same. So you, in theory, now your reimbursements go up every year. So, make sure that we're translating that with our patients. Because what, I love presenting membership plans to existing patients with dental insurance. Not for them to use it with the membership plan.

But to plant a seed and show them that maybe they don't have such a good deal after all. So the example I give is this, right? So most of them in a pre COVID world, so let's flash back even four years ago, back then the employer actually paid the significant portion of the employee's dental insurance benefit.

To the tune of the employer was paying about 60 bucks a month for the policy, and the employee was paying about 30 bucks a month for the policy, right? Not bad. Well, in a post COVID world, when companies were shut down and they're looking to recoup costs, companies realized they couldn't get rid of the benefit altogether, or people would revolt, right?

It's like scarcity, you take it away, and now people want it all of a sudden. So they knew they couldn't get rid of insurance, but they did something clever. They passed the buck. Meaning they started putting more of the cost of the insurance policy onto the patient. And then they got really good in the fact that they started bundling it in with medical insurance.

So they, to hide the, this fact. Okay. So they put it all together as insurance benefit. But the truth of the matter is, and what we found with a lot of patients is when you get, when they ask their HR person, seriously, how much is going to this dental insurance policy every month? What's going on in my check every month? You know, what a lot of them are finding is now the employee is paying 60 bucks a month and the employer is only paying 30. they're seeing 60 bucks a month coming out of their check for, again, a policy that keeps getting worse and changing every other year. And you present them with an option that costs even, let's say, you know, 35 bucks a month, 40 bucks a month.

Suddenly, when they're 60 and you're 35. That's a lot better deal. So we can actually influence our existing patients to do the math and go, Why am I paying for this thing over here? This makes no sense. And it keeps getting worse. Your thing is the same every year? Every year. Well, maybe I should do that.

It's cheaper. Hey, maybe you should. Right? So, plant the seed, point out the comparison of what they're paying every month and what your plant is going to cost them every month. And suddenly, They do the math. How do you do

Michael: that, uh, Chris? How do you start, let's just say somebody comes in with PPO insurance.

They never even mention it, right? That they need a membership plan or anything. Do we just bring it up? Like, hey, by the way, we have this membership plan. Or what would be the script for that?

Chris: Yeah, so with, usually if it's a, an existing patient, um, that doesn't have insurance, then I'm not necessarily going to promote the membership plan at the hygiene chair.

Okay. But if it's somebody with dental insurance, then I definitely want to promote it at the hygiene chair. And I usually like the hygienist to start the conversation, Hey, you know, Mrs. Jones, we're so glad you're here today. Dr. Phelps will be here shortly. You know, he's probably going to mention, uh, you know, this membership plan that we have.

Maybe not for you, but you may know someone that doesn't have insurance. I'll let him talk about it. So the idea is I'm going to come in and bring this up because they may know someone without dental insurance who may need help. We have something. So before I come in, I want to get my team to pre suede the patient by asking that key question.

Hey, I'm just curious before he does, have you noticed that your dental insurance policy your company's provided you, is it the same as it's always been or does it keep getting worse every year? Meaning cost more or your benefits go down, more exclusions, what have you. So automatically ask that commitment question.

Does it seem to be getting worse every year? Yeah, it seems like my costs are going up, and yeah, they keep, the benefits keep getting worse. Used to be 2, 000, Or, you know, used to pay for all kinds of things, now it won't even cover a bridge. If I'm, you know, I've got a missing tooth clause that we didn't have, So ask those kind of questions and see what kind of response they get. If you get any kind of answer that the, that it has gotten worse every year, then you've already got them in the right mindset to be receptive to hear your membership plan. So then when I come in, it's a lot easier conversation. The team's got to prep me and say, Hey.

You know, I talked to Mrs. Jones. Yeah, she has dental insurance. She may know someone without a plan, so it's worth talking about the membership plan. But just so you know, she did tell me that she does feel like her insurance benefits are getting worse every year and or more expensive. Perfect. So the seed has been planted.

The mindset is set. So when I come in and I can talk to her, I say, Mr. Jones. Yeah, so Sally was just telling me. So yeah, this insurance of yours. Yes, you must be like the majority of my other patients. So I'm going to leverage this idea of social proof. all of them say the same thing, their benefits are getting worse.

Right? The costs are going up and they're getting less for it. More and more reasons for the insurance to not pay for what you need. If you've, so you found that to be true for you too. Okay, great. Well, not that this is for you, but just so you know, we have this new thing, right? It's really for people without insurance or who would like to break free of their crappy insurance plan and get onto something different.

So, real quick, here's a couple of things, includes the same cleanings, all the things you're used to, uh, your two exams for the year, all your x rays, and you get a fixed discount off everything that we do. And the good news is the benefits don't go down every year. So here's a brochure. If it's ever of interest that you want to talk about or you want to talk about how to get off your insurance plan, feel free to ask the question.

Or if you wouldn't mind helping us out, please pass this brochure on to someone that doesn't have insurance. Because we found that a lot of times not having insurance is keeping people from coming, but we want them to know we got their back. We got something for them.

Now let's get to why you're here. Oh, your examples. Oh, I think look great. So it's a two part thing. It's a, it's a one, two punch, right? So the, the, the team sets this up. So that could be the assistant can be the hygienist. Right. And then I come in to deliver the final blow, if you will. Okay. So they planted the right mindset.

My insurance is getting worse. I come in and plant the seed. I've got something better.

Michael: Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. So basically the hygienist is just asking the questions kind of like. Creating that space of doubt where you're like, you know what, you're right. Like my insurance is, and then she's giving you all the answers that you're wanting. Right. Kind of thing.

Chris: And then all I'm doing is in, so the hygienist is just asking questions. That's all they're doing. Yeah. But those answers are critical, right? Especially from an influence and persuasion standpoint. It's leading them down a path every time you ask a question, whether the patient realizes or not, it's setting the stage for this.

Yes, to the membership plan. So, if that answer is yes, this sucks. It's worse. It's changing anything in that category, then the door is open for the conversation. Let's just say the opposite happens. Let's say they're like, no, this is the best thing I've ever done. I love this insurance. Okay. Well, guess what?

This is not the person for that. But now, you know, yeah. Still doesn't mean I might not present it to them, but I may not leave the part. I'll probably leave the part out about them dropping their plan and jumping over to this, but I'll at least say, Hey, well, I'm glad you love your insurance plan.

That's fantastic. You're the only one I've heard out of the thousand,

but if you know anybody without insurance, do me a favor. Make sure they get this, and you hand them the brochure to pass on. Turn them into your advocate. They all know somebody. Like, what if every existing patient with insurance, whether they moved over to your plan or not, passed on that brochure to one potential person, one potential patient, who wasn't going to a dentist because they didn't have insurance.

And let's just say for, you know, for the fun of it, two out of 10 of those come in. How many new patients do you think that could translate every month? If you did that for every patient with insurance that came in, of the 10, they pass and they all pass it on to one person. And two out of 10 of those came in.

I'm gonna tell you right now, it would double or triple your new patient numbers. Yeah. Yeah.

Michael: Production would go a big time. Now, you say you hand them a brochure. What specifically in your area of expertise, like where, or what you've seen where it's too much on a brochure, like, you know what I mean? You're mentioning all, or is there no such thing when it comes to the membership plan?

Chris: Well, you know, I liked, uh, it should be simplified, but yet detailed, right? people kind of fall into two categories. Uh, they're what we call fact finders, or they're fact avoiders. And you don't really know where they are on the spectrum, right? So, you know, a third of the population can be either or. But a third are fact finders, meaning they need all the detail, and the other third are the quite opposite.

They want to avoid all the facts and details. They just want the two most important points. Simplified kind of thing, right? So the brochure should start out simple. Everything they need is on the 1st thing they see to get the gist of what's going on in bullet point fashion. But for all those fact finders, this is why I like a 3 panel brochure.

Right? I got a lot of real estate now to work with. So the 1st thing they open, here's all the bullet points, everything you need to know. But what's on the rest of this thing is all the other detail and data the fact finders got enough and everybody in the middle. So you kind of build it to accommodate both.

Assuming that those that are just looking for the quick facts will see it first and get what they need. But those that really want to just keep digging and digging, they can just keep reading, keep going left or right on the panels. to get the information that they need and hopefully satisfy their search.

Gotcha.

Michael: And how do you follow up? Or do you normally see like with this one two punch it's like, Oh, immediately they want to sign up or what's the follow up game look like where you're, All right, we gave you the brochure. Do you call them if you don't see them again in six months or like maybe you're going to see them again

Chris: or?

No, you know, obviously, well, we would call them just to reactivate them if they're overdue for sure. But in that kind of case, it's, this is a, it's not pushy. It's all I'm doing is trying to plant a seed, right? And, and see if they can make the connection that I'm paying too much over here when I could pay less.

And get the same, if not better, results over here. if they get that, great. We welcome them onto the membership plan. If they don't, you know, for some people, the timing's just not right, right? So I've had several patients, you know, in my own practices, that were like, okay, yeah, this is great. Well, you know, I'm stuck in this thing.

I can't drop it. But when it's time to renew next year, I'm not going to renew. Hey, great. Fantastic. So I just trust the process, right? It's either going to work at some point or they're so committed to having insurance. They can't even see a different opportunity. And I'm okay with that either way. But at least if we're having the conversation.

Now I got a chance and I'm happy.

Michael: Do you think it'd be a good to start presenting it now? Like as the end of the year approach, you know what I mean?

Chris: Yeah. Well, cause most people's insurance renewed in January, January 1st, right? And usually by November 1st, they have to decide if they're picking it up again.

So now's the September and October are prime times to start making sure you have that conversation. your insurance policy is going to renew, right? Yeah. Have you seen the premium? Is it going up? What's your part going to be? Are you comfortable with that? You know, are the benefits going down on top of this premium going up?

You know, ask better questions. And suddenly you might get a different outcome.

Michael: Yeah, yeah that's true. And like now would be the time, right, to start presenting. To start doing that. So real quick, I wanted to ask you, Dental Membership Direct, right? That's um, your

Chris: plan. Yes, so Dental Membership Direct is a software company, uh, Dr.

Drew Burns, uh, started, and I've been working with him for the last several years. Uh, joined him in a partnership, and basically we're a small mom and pop company. Dentist to dentist. And that's what we do, right? We're passionate about membership plans and making sure doctors understand how to build a plan that's profitable for their practice and customize for their practice, but at the same time, build it to where you're not paying so much money and fees per month.

That you have to price your plan where your patients can't afford it. Does that make sense? Because ultimately there's companies out there that charges you percentages and it just seems like the fees are just never ending and like if I've got 3, 000 patients on my plan and I'm paying somebody some percentage of every one of those, you can imagine the check that would have been back in the day.

Astronomical. Gets out of hand quick. So, an affordable way that you don't have to do that, because every time you pay someone, right, whatever the rate is, you have to build that into your pricing, so it doesn't cost you anything, so to speak, you're passing it on to the patient. Well, as that continues to rise, as your fees rise, What you pay them rises, because it's a percentage.

If you keep adding that to your cost of what you charge your patients, eventually you're going to price them out where they can't afford your membership plan anymore. And you've defeated the whole purpose. So I'm a big believer of keep the profit in the doctor's office. That's where it belongs, So at Dental Membership, that's what we do.

We help them have an affordable way that they can track this stuff, a simple way for their team to onboard patients, and keep more of the profit for themselves. Gotcha. Normally

Michael: right now, and that's true, I've seen that a lot, where the fees get higher and all that stuff, right? But, dental members should direct.

If I were you and I wanted to, listening to this episode, I'm like, okay, I want to jump on. How much is

Chris: it? So, we charge a flat 199 a month.

Michael: and I can get on as many people, or?

Chris: As many people as you want. As many plans, you could have a perio plan, you could have an adult plan, you could have 15 kid plans, you could have an ortho plan, you can have whatever plans you want, right?

We don't limit you in the number of plans that you offer your patients, that's totally up to you. And we don't limit you in the number of people you can have on your plan, right? Because there's no percentage, it's a flat rate. we built this like thinking about my own practice.

Now, if I've got 3000 patients on the plan, guess who's keeping all the profit? I am. Right. So to me, if you're unsure, if you're, you want to dabble in the membership game, You know, go with one of the bigger names because they spend more money to get notoriety. That's fine. Okay, but just know you're paying more and get serious about a membership plan and you see when you start getting to 100 clients on 100 patients on it and 200 and you start feeling the effect of the fees.

Then it might be a time for a change. Yeah,

Michael: no, yeah, definitely a hundred percent. And I've heard from a lot of the listeners as well, they say DMD, right? Like Dental Membership Direct. It's very simple, easy, right? and that's the thing, I think, like, it has to be simple enough for your front office to be like, okay, let's, let's go through this, right?

Chris: Well, I'd heard other software companies and patients or team dentists and their team complaining to me that it was taking them, you know, 15 to 30 minutes to onboard a patient onto that platform. I was like, why is it taking 15 to 30 minutes to charge someone's credit card?

It's stupid. it takes more than 30 seconds to a minute to onboard someone with our software, then somebody please call me. Yeah,

Michael: yeah. Awesome, awesome. So, that's going to do it for this episode. And at the same time, Chris, if anyone wanted to reach out to you, where can they find

Chris: you? Oh, you can find me, probably the best email, because, you know.

The more you get to know me, the more you'll know I got my hands in several things, uh, several different companies. But probably the easiest is just Chris. So chris at drphelpshelps. com. Awesome.

Michael: So that's going to be in the show notes below. And Chris, I appreciate your time. And if anyone has further questions, you can definitely reach out to him there.

Um, or on the Dental Marketing Society Facebook group. And thank you for being with me on this Monday morning marketing episode. Thank

Track 2: you.

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Today I want to tell you about our sponsor for this episode,  Olsen  Dental  Chairs!

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Guest: Minal SampatBusiness Name: Minal SampatCheck out Minal's Media:

Website: https://minalsampat.com/

CE On The Beach 2024: https://ceonthebeach.com/ (Discount code for $150 off registration: TDM150)

Minal's Book: Why Your Marketing Is Killing Your Business

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

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Other Mentions and Links:

SmileCon

CapCut

Canva

Aruba Marriott Resort & Stellaris Casino

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Host: Michael Arias‍Website: The Dental Marketer

Join my newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/‍

Join this podcast's Facebook Group: The Dental Marketer Society

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My Key Takeaways:

• What are the steps to empower team members to take action and be excited about marketing?
• How to create incentives and fun goals for team members.
• How can I scale my incentives based on growing team size?
• YOU have to be excited and engaged if you want your team to feel the same.
• How to choose the right team member to spearhead a marketing team.
• Tips on a successful social media marketing campaign. How to get started AND stick with it.

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Please don't forget to share with us on Instagram when you are listening to the podcast AND if you are really wanting to show us love, then please leave a 5 star review on iTunes! [Click here to leave a review on iTunes]

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p.s. Some links are affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase, I will earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you. Please understand that we have experience with these products/ company, and I recommend them because they are helpful and useful, not because of the small commissions we make if you decide to buy something. Please do not spend any money unless you feel you need them or that they will help you with your goals.

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Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)

Michael: All right. It's time to talk with our featured guests, Manal Sampat. What's up, Manal?

Minal: I'm doing great. How are you?

Michael: Not as good. You travel a ton. Where have you just, You came from SmileCon, right? Recently? Yeah.

Minal: Yep. I spoke at SmileCon in Florida before Florida, I was in Aruba before Aruba, I was in Pennsylvania before Pennsylvania.

I was in Virginia. I don't even know. It's, it's been, it's been, uh, it's been a lot of travel, which is amazing because I, I love to travel and I get, I love to speak. So it works out.

Michael: Yeah, that's good. So then I know in SmileCon, you, you did quite a bit of, uh, workshops. If you don't mind me asking, like, what's your favorite topic to discuss?

When it comes to marketing,

Minal: can you, I mean, it's like asking you to choose between your children.

I don't know what would be my favorite topic. I mean, I love everything. I love internal marketing. I love social media. I guess my best feeling is to provide the tools for people to implement. you know, for my thing, no matter what I'm teaching or how I'm doing the workshop, I want to implement, like, for example, like, I just spoke at SmileCon and some other meetings, and like, I have, you know, doctors messaging me saying, hey, I just implemented this, or I just did this, and oh my god, I can't wait, or I'm now obsessed with doing reels, I love it, right?

And that's what I want, like, end of the day. No matter what topic I'm hearing about or how deep dive you go into marketing, any kind of marketing, it's getting somebody super excited and having them take action because that's what makes it work is the action. So if they can do that, it's amazing.

Michael: Yeah. And I feel like a lot of the times the doctor, the practice owner may come excited or even the office manager, but the rest of the team really isn't all that excited or they're not ready for it.

Or maybe they excited one day or two days and then they died down. Right. So. Talk to us if you can give us like a step by step process or system on how can we get our team excited and continue to be excited about marketing?

Minal: Oh, it's, I think that a lot of it comes down to making sure that your team is one, they understand your goals.

And to the house, they get incentivized. There's something in return coming up because you have to realize the team members are busy. They're already busy doing their actual job. So if you want them to now work on your marketing so that you could grow your practice, there should be some sort of give and take, right?

Creating simple systems like, Hey, guys, our goal for this month is. So we are at 80 right now. If we get 100 new patients and everybody gets this, or you create incentive based on who's scheduling the patients, right? Or you can say, hey, our goal this month is to get 30 new reviews. So, let's go ahead and create a goal and create an incentivization.

Now, for some team members, it works well, if they're individually incentivized for others, it works where it works. Well, if they are creating a, a, Big team kind of, you know, if you reach together with 30 reviews, we're all going to go and get many and patty. So I like we're all going to go for a happy hour or something like that.

But you want to create a goal. I have a lot of practices and I get practices at my own events. Um, you know, from anywhere between 3 to 18 team members, they literally fly them to the destination events that I throw and they bring their team members and usually they make that happen as hey, let's let's reach this goal.

And if we reach this goal, then we can all go to Aruba. We can all go to Turks and Caicos. We can all go here. and so now the whole team is excited and moving towards this goal because they want to do that. The first thing is you need to create some sort of excitement, incentive around it, just because not everybody's organically going to share your practice.

And if any of the listeners here have my book, chapter five of my book, where I say teamwork. literally goes through the exact systems of creating and getting your team excited about marketing. So it's, it's, and it goes through the steps of how do you start with it. It goes through the steps of, you know, what you need to do as well.

So it's super, once you start implementing it, it becomes easier.

Michael: Gotcha. Okay. So then you mentioned incentives to provide of all the incentives you've seen your clients, practices, people you've spoken with what has been the best, like Oh, yes, this is really going to keep the fire lit under

Minal: the team.

It's very hard because I work with practices who are one providers to practices that are 60, 70 locations. So their incentive package and how they work their system is very different. If you are a smaller practice. Then, yeah, clearly you have you could do individually in civilization or a group one. If you are a multi location, then you have a lot more team members, right?

So it's not easy for you to fly 50 team members to some kind of a location. Maybe you fly your management team or your. Marketing team or your clinical team. So it depends on it. You know, your practice culture, you know, your team members, you know, is it going to work well as a group celebration for reaching your goals or individual incentives or perhaps both or maybe taking them out for, you know, some sort of a destination kind of event or whatever it is retreat or however you want to call it.

It really. comes down to your specific. I have practices who do as simple as 5 for every new patient that we scheduled or all the way to, hey, we are going to fly to whatever, and take everybody with us. So it just really, it just really depends.

Michael: Gotcha. Okay. And then what if they are trying, like, I've seen this before where they're like, yeah, they're excited.

They're, they're trying to reach the goals, but month one, they didn't month two, they didn't now they're getting demotivated month three month. And then they just kind of like, we just doctor, we can't reach it. We need. More money for ads, or I don't know, something,

Minal: do you not? Yeah, so it's, it's different, right?

So what I used to do was, Michael, I used to be the marketing ambassador for a dental practice. because of that, I did this every month. And the way that I kept the team super excited was every single month, I held a 90 minute meeting. Now, this wasn't like a meeting of like, here's a memo. This is what we are doing, right?

Like, no, this will be a fun meeting. So I used to come up, I came up with this game, like a Jeopardy, like a Jeopardy game, but what I would do is, um, we'll, you know, shut down in the lunchtime. Get everybody gets lunch. You know, the lunches at the practice and they know this is a team meeting and I would create the jeopardy game and then in the jeopardy game, I would have all the questions, right?

It will be clinical questions from desk questions, but also marketing questions and then all of the questions will have points. 5 point question. 10 point question. 20 point question bonus. And I would divide the team into different departments. So depending on how big your team is or how big your practices are, you could divide them into teams and you create a competition.

And what people have to do is, because they know these questions are coming, this is where you add everything, something new you implemented. Perhaps you are doing a whitening promotion this month, or perhaps you change your FA, right, your financial agreement this month, or perhaps you change your script, for something with clinical, or something with the front desk.

Whatever it is, you come up with all the questions, and you put your team members in smaller teams. And now you create a competition where you run this meeting as a fun team activity, and you would be shocked how much they all got excited every single month with everything we were doing, including marketing.

And we will have a winning team and the winning team will get like some kind of a prize or a gift card or whatever it is, whoever it's in the winning team, and they would literally study. So they would go on like if they know the team meeting is scheduled for next week, like the week before I would start getting questions, they would be on the website.

Checking out what promotions we are running, or they would be on like the social media checking it out, or they will, the clinical team will be asking the front desk team. Hey, what did you guys change this month? And you know, vice versa. And they all got super excited for this game because they knew it was happening.

There was a winning team. There was all this fun questions. And it was a great way to learn because instead of creating. a memo, again, nothing against memo, but that could be boring. But now you would have some sort of a question. Hey, we just changed our appointment time for new patients this month.

And then people were like, what is our new appointment time? And then, you know, the team, I would get buzzers from Amazon. They're like 20 bucks you get. So it's like buzzer. Everybody's trying to buzz and everybody's trying to, you know, get super excited about it. And it's amazing. It's super fun. And now everybody's talking about, oh, the new appointment time that we have for the new patient and the entire team is present there.

So everybody knows about it. Everybody's making a note. And I did this every single month. And then during that same meeting, I would share the goals. I would share whatever, You know, where we are trying to be, whether it's marketing, because again, I was a marketing ambassador. So I did the whole marketing part.

What do we, what results do we want? How are we working as a team? Where are we really lacking? What do we need to do to accomplish that? And it worked great. if you want to keep your team excited, you have to be excited. And you have to show that excitement to them, right? Like I would even go in and at the, at the lunch, at the lunch room, I would, I would have a graph or even in the dry erase board.

I will tell them where we are every single day with our new patient numbers. So every single day they came down and be like, okay, we are at X. Well, this is our goal. So I'm like, are those people calling? Are we converting them? What do we need to do? And tell me what I need to do at my end. Sometimes they will come to me and say, Hey, next week schedule is falling apart.

Can you go ahead and push out some social media ads? You got it. I'm going to push out some social media ads. Let's go ahead and do this. So there was this full on communication. Every day that I just kind of posted information, so they all knew where we were. But on a monthly basis to show them how excited we were, the doctors were, and I was, and the management, the team members were now excited too.

Because if it's not in front of you, you're going to forget about it. It has to be in front of you. You have to get excited about it.

Michael: Gotcha. So, one key thing that I feel like you're talking about too is, you kind of give the accountability to one person. In this scenario, it was you, right? So, who do you recommend, if it's a smaller practice?

You know what I mean? Who can we give this accountability to and then almost kind of like train them to do this?

Minal: It's easy. I mean finding the person who we want to be accountable one day how to be somebody that is organized So they could take on this task and they could stay organized with it. But the second is the personality They need to have like a fun energetic personality where they can actually help with marketing and with you know, capturing Content for social media or like working with the team and getting them excited because they are excited.

Right? So you do need the personality. So organization personality. And then the third part is you want somebody who is also okay with tech. You don't want somebody who absolutely hates technology or is not even themselves on social media. You know, that doesn't help you because they don't understand how it all works.

So those are the three things and you want to give them extra time. So you may be thinking of somebody already on your team that you have. and you can easily give them two hours extra a week is what you would need to get started with. And then you could add more and more and more, but you could get somebody on your team, or you could put out an ad and get a part time person who can come in.

Or maybe you have a niece, a nephew, a daughter, a son, a friend, somebody, you know, uh, who's totally into this kind of stuff. And they can come in and kind of help out to for for few hours a week. So you can easily do that. The reason I said that you want somebody in charge of it is because, as you and I both know, when it's everyone's job is nobody's job.

Yeah. So, somebody needs to take on the ownership of this and get excited and get the doctors and share with the doctors so the doctors are also excited. And this is true for the doctors. You need to be excited. You need to be excited because I sometimes get a lot of team members who are super excited and they will call me and be like, the doctor just won't take photos and videos.

Doctor, this is your business. This is your practice. If you don't take photos and videos, why should your team care about your marketing? Right. Why should they even put anything in? Because you don't put anything in. So that's just some real side talk And if you are uncomfortable with photos and videos, perhaps select a brand ambassador, like a practice ambassador for your practice who can interview you or show it.

But at the end of the day, it's your business and you're as a leader. How you act and what you do is what the team sees. You are the leader of the practice. You are the owner of the practice. So if they don't see you doing this or hustling or getting excited about it or sharing about it, then they are not going to do it either.

Michael: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So then capturing the content for social media, that's super important to have in house, you would say? Oh

Minal: yeah, 100 percent because everything happens inside your practice.

Michael: Okay, so then they... According to you, like, or your advice, what's the best right now, like today, to be like this is the best type of content you need to capture for social media?

Minal: Reels. less than 30 second videos. Videos of what? Oh, so much. This could be anything from a practice culture, to patient appointments, to testimonials, to a tour of your practice, to the team having fun, the morning huddle, you know, the doctor sharing a tip. It's just, it has to be a, Less than 30 second video and the 1st frame of the video, like you could even do a video and photo, photo, photo, photo.

You know, you could create 1 video with videos and photos, but the beginning has to be some kind of motion. So the beginning slide of that 30 second video has to be a video and all the listeners here, if you were to go onto my Instagram page, uh, you'll see that I have a couple of reels on there. You'll see that one of those reels is like me in a boat, and you'll see, if you click on it, you'll see that I start with a video of me sitting on the boat, like smiling kind of thing.

But then there's like a photo, photo, photo, photo, video, photo, photo, right? But so what it does is, You have, in general, your audience spends three seconds. before deciding if they want to watch your content. Our attention span is three seconds. And because it's three seconds, you have to capture them right away.

And if there's movement, they usually are like, what's happening here? Cause we are nosy people. So we're like, hold up, what's going on in this video, right? So you want to always start the first frame with a video, and then you could have fun with a reel where you could combine videos and photos together, things like that.

But the first thing is always a video. Okay.

Michael: So video first, And everything else later on, how often should we be doing this? Because some people are like, I'm going to do it three times a week or

Minal: I mean, you want to share at least four times a week, but you don't have to share a video four times a week.

That's, you know, you don't necessarily need to do that. You just need to share consistently four times a week, real photos and videos. And this is why it's so important that your content collection happens inside the practice because you and I both know that. If you see that photo of that stock family wearing their blue shirts and their blue dresses one more time on social media.

You know, everybody knows which one I'm talking about. That's not, it just doesn't work. Stock doesn't work. Um, the whole point, like the first word in social media is social. You have to be social. The first word in Facebook is face. You have to show your face, right? The first word in Instagram is Insta. It has to be something that captures their, their attention right away.

So these platforms are not even lying to you. They're telling you it's in their names, what they want. So it's not really that hard to figure out what kind of content the hard part is. A consistency staying consistent and actually sharing. and many times I would have practices reach out.

They're like, our social media is not working. And I'm like, let's take a look. And they probably shared something three weeks ago and they haven't shared anything since then. So what happens is the algorithm is like, well, you're not showing me any love, so I'm not going to show you any love, right? It's all about how much time you're spending there.

It's all about how much time people are engaging with your post, what's going on. So again, if you don't show the platform any love, why should the platform show you any love? So the things are just there. So the trick is to stay consistent. So you want real photos and videos and you want to post every other day.

So that comes out to be three to four times a week. And that's totally fine. Photos just start simple photos and videos. If you look at your patient, uh, your appointments, and let's say that you're open for five days a week, and let's say I'm going to be super like conservative, right? And let's say that you only see five patients a day, and you're open for five days a week.

That's 25 patients you're seeing a weekly basis. Can you capture four photos? From 25. Yeah, you can. You could capture a photo with a patient with a doctor, the doctor coming in the morning, the team doing the morning team huddle, You could share photos of you guys, you know, going out to lunch together.

You could share a testimonial from a patient. So you could share it. Photos and videos and always, just a side note, always get a written consent from your patients, for anything that requires marketing. Yeah.

Michael: I know when it comes to pediatrics, it's kind of easy to, you know what I mean? Like, share those photos and talk about it and it's like, it's a cute kid, right?

Like, here you go. When it comes to adults, do you ever feel, Manal, like sometimes you're looking at a practices page and you see like, them with the patient, them with the patient, them with the patient, and you kind of grow numb to it. You're just like, oh, another one. Can there be something, a better idea of them with the

Minal: patient?

Yeah, that's, to be completely honest with you, Michael, my favorite patients for social media are boomers. I have so many clients, practices who are killing it, killing it on social media by showcasing boomers. You know why? Because boomers love you. They are the ones who come on time to their appointments.

They bring you cookies. they bring your cards. They know everything that's happening in the practice. They are super supportive. They respect you. They listen to your treatment. So I love to showcase boomers, but you want to do different fun things. So you want, like I mentioned, you want to have a combination between your practice culture.

And your patients. So you want to show off your team huddles. You want to show photos of the doctor to the patient. You want to do a high five a great day, or you want to go ahead and create a testimonial, quick testimonial video with your patient as well. So there is so much content that you could do.

And again, if you go to Instagram. on Minaal's stamp at LLC. I share all of this. Like I share, give you like nine dental reel ideas. You have them. I actually tell you what to post. Uh, hook ideas. Hook is what goes on the reel. It's a subject line that captures somebody's attention. I share it with you.

I have an entire post on how to get your team excited about marketing. So all of those specific tips. You can easily grab, information is always there. It's the overload. And this is why I don't want to give out too much on the, on the podcast. Cause this is what happens when I usually do that.

They get overwhelmed and they're like, Oh my God, there's no way I can do this. You can do this. All I want you to do, if you're talking about social, is start with four posts a week. That's it. That's your job. Your job is to start with four posts a week. I don't even care if the same posts are all patient photos of the doctors.

It's fine. Just first get consistent with it. Just make sure you're implementing it. Then go crazy with all the trends and what's happening. But the first thing is to get started. It's like working out. You can't just run a marathon right away, right? You have to go slow. You have to practice every day. You have to get your speed up.

You have to get your stamina up. You have to work out every day. This is similar to that. So it's harder for you to jump directly into the big stuff. Uh, you know, if I'm here talking about like, go ahead and find this and go ahead and do this and, you know, push it this way where you're creating a different kind of reaction and you're changing how it looks, you're going to.

Say, Oh, that's too much. And that's the thing. Just start. Now, if you are somebody who has already started, good for you. Amazing for you. You're doing awesome. This is when you start leveling up and this is when you do start utilizing all those trends and topics and start, creating cross marketing and start collaborating with other people on Instagram and Facebook.

Collaboration means whatever you post also goes on their page. You start creating internal contests with your patients. So there's a lot more you could do, but just get started. Thanks.

Michael: So just get started four days, out of the week. Yeah. And then how can we just get started with getting the team motivated?

Cause they feel like you told us a lot of like amazing stuff, but

like, let's just say for example, the doctor's listening, he's like, okay, I have the perfect person in my team. She's going to be able to do this. I call her marketing manager, marketing

Minal: director, whatever, marketing manager and marketing ambassador, content, social media manager, the name is just a name.

Michael: Yeah. And then I give her what specific duties that she needs to do.

Minal: Capture four photos or videos a week and schedule them on social media and then go and engage with them. Okay, and then you only need two hours a week to do that, so you don't need to do more than that. Their job should just be, Hey, look at our schedule.

Look at the patients coming in. Let's highlight the patients that are more likely to take photos and videos with us because they love us. They're amazing. They're awesome. Let's capture a review from this patient. Let's go ahead and take a photo with this patient. Right? Let's go ahead. We have a team meeting coming up.

Let's make sure we take a photo of the team meeting. So on a Monday morning, they should just look at the whole schedule and be able to tell what photos they're capturing. And then what I do is you always want to take photos and videos and create into a library. So let's say you did a team meeting and you took 20 photos.

Don't share 20 photos only share 5. Save the 15 for future, right? So, because you will have those times where you have a lull or it's not, it's crazy busy and you don't have time. But if you have a library of photos, you can always take those photos out and just share them. So, you know, take a lot of photos, keep the library open, but their job should literally be take four photos and videos.

Start with our patient base and what our team's doing. And let's just share that. And once we do that. This is when we can start adding more and creating it But yes keep it if you are brand new starting at this and you're talking to a team member also don't overwhelm them Keep it very simple for

Michael: them as well Gotcha.

Okay. This has been fantastic. So besides that I know You got something coming up pretty big which is I mean, you got a lot of things pretty big coming up, but...

Minal: Uh, no, you're kind. Uh, yeah, I have CEO on the Beach in Aruba coming up. So, I'm super excited. So, CEO on the Beach is a destination conference, pretty much.

Um, you know, I've done it, uh, I called CEO on the Beach because I grew up in St. Thomas, and... Beach is my thing. Island life is my thing. So, done the event in St. Thomas, have done the event in Turks and Caicos in 2023. And in 2024, it's going to be in Aruba! And it's super fun. It's all different topics. There is marketing, there is practice management, scheduling systems, there is clinical topics.

I have amazing speakers coming. There's panel discussion. And like I said, everybody, you know, depending on who they are, your team members are welcome to join us. So, it's a fun event. How many days is it? So it's one full day is three days, but it's different audiences, right? So one full day is for coaches, consultants, speakers and companies in the industry.

And then there are two half days for dentists and teams. And I say half days because you're in Aruba. you know, so we start at 8 a. m. We end at 1 p. m. Because I know none of you are going to stay inside in a room in a conference room in Aruba. Yeah. So, uh, yeah. And then, um, I'm kind of the event see on the beach.

My, it's known for like epic beach parties, like in Turks and Caicos, we run the number one beach in the world for like a dinner and sunset and dancing and all the fun stuff in Aruba, the beach party is on a private island with flamingos.

Michael: That's pretty cool. Yeah.

Minal: You know, I kind of want to provide experience.

Like, if you're coming to Aruba, that's awesome. And you write it off as a workation because it's a work trip, so you're writing that off. You're also kind of, you know, doing that. But at the same time, I always want to do the beach parties are my way of doing something that you won't otherwise do, right? So this, going to this private island and Being there checking it out, seeing actual flamingos, uh, you know, on the islands, interacting with them and stuff.

So the beach parties are epic. They are pretty fun and people come with family and friends. Like, they really make it into a workation because the hotel gives a group room rate for over a week. So most The people come with family and friends and it becomes into a big, uh, big like networking event, but lots of fun and learning at the same time.

Michael: That's nice. What's the hotel that, or is it already kept

Minal: out or now? Yeah. Yeah. Everything is, I mean, we are, we are 50 percent full. This is not till July 2024. It's already 50 percent full. so it is in Aruba Marriott and Stellaris. So that's the, that's the hotel and the dates are July 25th to 27th.

Michael: Okay.

So there's going to be a link to that in the show notes below. And at the same time, if you type in TDM 150, you get a pretty awesome discount. So type that in there, TDM 150, and then that's also going to be in the show notes below as well. But any final pieces of advice, Manal, that you want to give to our audience?

Minal: Um, no, like I said, if you're just getting started, keep it simple. Your job should just be to stay consistent. Just, it's just like working out. If you want to get better, you know, if you want to get in a better shape, you just have to show up every day and you just have to work out, right? You can't work out once a week and then don't work out three weeks and then go back to it.

So keep it super simple. If you are somebody who has already started it and you are like, yes, I'm ready to. Level up. This is when you start using the trending sound. This is when you start getting more creative. You can use platforms like Canva and CapCut for like your videos and stuff as well.

So you could start getting a lot more stuff. And if you're already on it, you're probably much following some of those trends as well. And then, as I said. Be excited about it. Like share those numbers every day or on a monthly basis, create fun meetings for the team so that they're excited about it and they get to see you and they get to see how amazing this is going to be.

And they are into it as well. So remember, you are the leader. How you show up for this is how your team's going to show up for this. that's a big part of this. And the practice that I was a marketing ambassador was 25, 000 patients and like 40 team members. So I had a lot of writing on, you know, I have to create all 40 team members to get excited.

So it could be done. You can totally do this. Baby steps, just baby steps.

Michael: Baby steps. Awesome. So guys, thank you so much for tuning in. It's been a pleasure, but at the same time, and I'll thank you so much for being a part of the podcast. It's been a pleasure too. And at the same time, if you guys want to go in the show notes below.

Click on any of our links to reach out to her and then check out CE on the beach in Aruba and type in TDM 150 just to go check out that awesome discount. Okay, it's awesome. Thank you so much for tuning in and we'll talk to you in the next episode Thank you

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Get a Free Marketing Assessment with Gargle here!

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In today's episode of Monday Morning Marketing, we sit down with Jake Goates from Gargle to dive farther into the world of Membership Plans. Setting up a successful membership plan can be a game-changer, so it's important to start off on the right foot! We explore the essential first steps, answering the "what, when, and why" questions surrounding dental membership software and membership offerings that have been proven to succeed. Jake shares valuable insights, from crafting a FAQ to ensure consistent responses from your team when patients have common queries, to the key to getting patients on board with the plan. We also uncover the golden rule of marketing: communicating something seven times in seven different ways for maximum impact. Plus, we address concerns about scaling without a monthly payment option and leveraging your sales contacts for invaluable insights on membership plan setup.

Tune in for a comprehensive guide to making your membership plans a resounding success!

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You can reach out to Jake Goates here:

Website: https://www.gargle.com/

Visit for a discounted rate on DentalHQ's membership plans: https://www.gargle.com/in-house-dental-plans/

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Other Mentions and Links:

Dental HQ CommunityCONNECT

Dental HQ BusinessCONNECT

Delta Dental

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

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

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

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Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)

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Michael: Hey, Jake. So talk to us about in house membership plans. How can we utilize this or what advice, suggestions, or methods can you give us that will help us

Jake: with this? Yes, uh, do them. That's the short answer. Uh, there's a lot of moving parts. And so traditionally speaking, I've, you know, I've dealt with everything from the strictly fee for service to very heavily PPO practices.

And it really doesn't matter what situation you are in. There are always going to be consumers out there that don't know about them. And so. The first step is really once you establish what it is for your practice and you design it the way that you feel is going to be most beneficial and the most natural for the type of practice you are, once that's all documented, you've got it ready to roll.

You've got to get the whole team on board. You've got to come up with your own list of questions of frequently asked questions that you know you're going to get. And role play those questions over phone calls in your trainings, however, you need to so that the whole staff is on the same page answering the same questions in the same way, once you feel like that training has rolled out, and this does not have to take long.

Don't overthink it, but. I think starting is the first thing, and then how are you going to educate and go to market? How are you going to let your existing patients know about it? we've all heard in marketing, you've got to, you know, to market something or to communicate something, you've got to communicate it seven times in seven different ways.

And so what are those seven different times? What do those look like? And then how are you going to communicate that? What, you know, how are you going to go about marketing it in seven different ways? As you start to grow it, I think where I find a lot of my practices get it in over their skis a little bit, is they will, they'll, they'll outline the entire thing and then they will fail on follow through.

It's this beautiful idea, but nobody's quite sure and they're a little bit uneasy on how to, how to really start managing that in their system. And so sometimes they'll say, well, I got to go hire a software, you know, and like at Gargle, we've managed to partner with Dental HQ. And the number one reason we chose to partner with Dental HQ is because they have something called Community Connect and Business Connect, and it is the way that it scales it.

So a lot of times people say now I've got this thing, but we've only got 50 members that have ever signed up for our in house plan, and they don't know exactly how to scale it and get more and more enrollments on a consistent basis. They might have a good flash in the pan, get 15, 20 people to sign on, and then it sits there, so as you get it all documented.

My recommendation is typically you want to manage that in house before you go and buy a software because you're gonna get a feel for how much of this can I manage as I'm getting the ball rolling and your practice management systems are equipped to typically keep track of this, but it gets to a point.

The scalability side is where people get stuck. And so to really make it a revenue stream for their practice and a benefit and a loyalty patient retention tool, that's where you really need the software to come in and you have something like dental HQ, where now it's managing the billing a given and it's giving them more than just you got to buy into it.

Family of four is going to cost you 1000 up front today. And that's a barrier to entry for a lot of families to come up with the cash. So, the software allows you to provide payment plans that you no longer, and you no longer have to train your staff on how to manage and when to bill it and, and getting it all put into your own internal system.

That's where something like Dental HQ comes in very, very handy. But, I find that people will sign up for Dental HQ, they might pay a couple hundred dollars a month to start it, but they don't even have a few hundred patients in there or even a couple dozen patients in there to cash roll what they're paying for their software.

So they get over their skis a little bit by signing up for the software before they're even ready. So thinking through it. That's where the, the consultant comes into play and people who have done it before and your colleagues networking and asking them, how did you roll yours out? But then once you get to the point of knowing, okay, I've got the way to market it seven times and communicate it seven times, seven different ways, and I've got the infrastructure to hold it.

Now I want to go and find the software for those first, you know, a few dozen that I've now signed up and it's getting to a point where it's taking a little bit of time. Now, when you sign up for the software, it'll pay for itself because you already have people enrolled, you're plugging in and then you're building more around it so that you can scale it.

Michael: I like that. I like that. So have the impression. So then what should we have ready before signing up for a software? I know you said the seven ways you should market it and what are the things?

Jake: So the other thing that you typically want, you want to make sure that you've got somewhere on your website that is outlining what you're ready to publish on your website.

What is the program in layman's terms? do you have a monthly plan and a way to collect those payments? You know, does your processor allow you to plug in recurring payment plans? Is it integrated with your practice management system? A lot of times I have practices come to me and say, holy cow, we set it up, but our merchant processor does not integrate with our practice management system.

So, I have to set tasks on my calendar to go in and see who's enrolled and then I have to go over and make sure I set them up and I manually bill them if we offer them monthly payments. A lot of practices, they don't want to have to do that. It's too much work for the staff. And so that's why they opt into just offering an upfront annual plan.

Well, consumers, when it comes to insurance and benefits, and I know we can't call it insurance, but an in house plan in a consumer's mind is a, is an insurance plan. You have to be able to offer them a monthly, quarterly, or annual option, or you will never scale it. And so I'm yet to deal, you know, the thousands of practices over the past decade that I've consulted with on this very rarely.

I bet I can count on 1 hand. How many had more than 100 people enrolled where they had been doing it for a short period of time. They've been able to scale it successfully without offering. A monthly payment plan, if you don't have a way for people to get in on a monthly basis, that's a barrier to entry that can make it very difficult to scale.

And so, from an infrastructure standpoint, it's making sure that, you know, what are your current capabilities within your. It within your merchant processor within your website. If you have a patient portal, what do you want to be able to communicate? And what tools do you want to give your patients to know the benefits of their plan?

And if you don't have that in place, then yes, start with a consulting call. You might as well book yourself a demo with someone like dental HQ and or talk to your Marketing consultant who hopefully knows something about how to market one of these plans that will allow them to talk you through some of those components.

But the number one thing is you've got to have it outlined in a way where you then know, can my system support this? Or do I need to sign up? And yeah. And some of my clients, they do need to sign up for the software right away, but they have a plan structured and they know their UCR codes and they know exactly what they want to apply discounts to or what they want to charge.

So it's a lot easier to quickly plug into a software and scale it quickly. But if they don't have those other components in place outlining what they want their in house benefits plan to look like, then they'll sign up and they'll pay one or two or three or two. In some cases, six months of a service that they're not even able to utilize because they're still organizing it.

Michael: So have it all structured and organized way beforehand. Yeah,

Jake: and that's where the free demos come into play. Use the sales. Sharks out there and the sales energy that they're willing to share information, right? They're willing to go to bat and earn your business, make them earn your business, ask them those questions.

So how do I structure this? Show me how I would structure it in your software. When you ask that question in a sales demo, they're at the same time training you how to roll one out. How to build one and it gives you ideas that maybe you didn't think of before the first time I saw a demo from Dental HQ, I was blown away at how simple their screen was of plugging in UCR codes and determining what type do I want a perio maintenance plan?

Do I want a senior discount plan? Do I want? A family of four with additionals, or do I want just the family flat rate, regardless of how many people, which a family like mine would kill you because I grew up with 12 siblings, so it's like you better have a plan in place for those those different sized families and individuals.

And if you want to apply different types of discounts, but seeing a sales demo with those software tools will oftentimes give you a lot of the road map that you need. And you can tell them point blank, tell the salesman, I'm not ready. I know I need to do X, Y, and Z. A good salesman of one of these tools that are out there will tell you, we can help you build that the right way.

And we can do it in a way that by the time your second payment comes around, you'll already have tools that are getting some of your patients a record into this plan.

Michael: Okay. that's really good. That's really good to know, like utilize the salespeople, have this plan in place. And then once we have it in place, the ways to, the seven ways we should market, is it seven ways or seven times?

Jake: So, to your existing patient base, you need to do it seven times in seven different ways. So that's at check in, having a brochure right there on the counter that you can hand them. You know, I noticed you're with Delta Dental. We're coming up on the fourth quarter. When is your open enrollment to sign up for next year's plan?

Oh, I'm not sure. That's through my husband's work. Well, you may want to take this and chat with your husband because this new in house plan typically saves, families about, 200 a year, whatever. Do the math and the comparative analysis of, do you know what you're paying on your monthly premium for, for Delta?

No, I have no idea. You know, we've found the average patient has told us that it's this much. And ours is only this much, but you get all the benefits, not to mention there's no maximum benefit. So a lot of it is the education. So when you're checking people in having a brochure, when you're in the chair, and you know, your hygienist has just diagnosed, you know, that they're going to need a period maintenance plan, your insurance may have a benefit of covering X. Have you heard about our in house plan? Oh, yeah, they just gave me a brochure up front. I would definitely consider it based on what we just discussed today and what we just saw. So before you opt in to sign up another year for your group policy that you're getting through your employer, I think you'd probably not only save money on your insurance premiums every single month next year, but you'd probably save a little bit of money on the period maintenance plan because of what we offer.

So, People don't know about this, and consumers will, will jump on board. I've done this chair side with patients before and with doctors when I've been training them. And it's really interesting to watch as the hygienist walks out with you after and goes, Holy cow, you made that so easy to talk about.

And the reality is everybody hates insurance companies. So play that to your advantage, you know, insurance is great when you need it, but in dental, it's very different. There's a max benefit and with the work that we just talked about and the, the, you know, as you're walking them out, you should really consider that.

Give us a call. If you have any questions, so and so is our patient coordinator, have them introduced. Then that patient coordinator can follow up. There's three in one visit. Three ways that you just communicated to a patient of record that you have an in house plan. Now, do you also have a drip campaign that's going out in an email blast to your patients on a monthly basis, letting them know about it?

Do you have an SMS blast campaign going out to their cell phone with a link to your website with the page of your website that highlights what your in house plan is? Do you have a postcard that you're mailing out? Or an appreciation thank you card where you're inserting that from the hygienist where, you know, they're a good candidate, you know, are they writing a quick thank you card and stuffing that in there to send them as a follow up.

So that's what I mean by you've got to communicate 7 times in 7 different ways or people will not understand it. they won't be aware. Um, of what it is and how it's going to benefit them. So the other thing that I love more than anything else is when you get the software going in your favor, that's managing this plan, showing you your enrollees, what their discounts are.

When you find a partner like a dental HQ, they have this thing called business connect. And my favorite one is their community connected, because what you do is you can customize a plan. You can literally go to the call center. On the other side of town that, you know, I've got a client in Boston that actually did this, they found this call center that had like 1500 employees in it and they were offering a group dental plan and only about 30 percent of their employees were enrolled in their group policy.

Well, office manager, super ambitious, went in, said, hey, who's your, preferred provider for dental benefits for your employees? Oh, we go through so and so have you ever considered partnering with a dedicated private dentist that allows your employees to pay less and then you can offset the cost.

If you so choose as an employer, community connected business connect allows you to present your in house plan to other businesses and community groups and say, if you would like to offset 50 percent of their premium each month, yeah. You know, call it 40 a month to be part of our benefits plan or our in house plan.

If you cover 50%, you can just debit the other 50 percent out of the employee's payroll, and then we just bill you. And they can set that up all easily enough, not to mention you get all of the recent, all of the tools to create. Through Dental HQ's portal, the ability for patients to go and enroll and sign up with a dedicated link for their employer.

So, it's co branded. It looks like my employer is the one who negotiated this incredible deal. I had that client that was literally getting people enrolled before they even booked their first appointment to come in for a cleaning. Yeah. So, there's some really cool tools out there and if you leverage them and understand what they are, it's not as daunting to...

Both create and roll out and then maintain and scale your in house plan.

Michael: Yeah. No, nice, man. I love that. Awesome, Jake. I appreciate your time. And if anyone has any further questions, where can they reach out to

Jake: you? Uh, just gargle. com, uh, G A R G L E. com. Uh, you submit a form or you can call directly in and we'll get you on the phone.

I work more with the client strategy on the backend, but, utilize our sales team, ask them questions, see what else they can do to, to help connect the dots for you guys.

Michael: Awesome. Jake, I appreciate you. And thank you so much for being with me on this Monday morning marketing

Jake: episode. Thank you. It's awesome to be here.

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Today we're going to introduce a game changer in the dental practice management software world...
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Guest: Brad BillingsBusiness Name: Full ScheduleCheck out Brad's Media:

Website: https://dentalbilling.com/full-schedule/

Email: [email protected]

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Other Mentions and Links:

Pacific Dental Services

QSI Analytics

DOS

Abundant Dental Care

Dentrix

Dental Intel

Open Dental

eAssist

Weave

Forbes

Andrés Irlando Forbes top 40 under 40

Fortune 500

Microsoft

Microsoft Leadership Trainings

PracticeWorks

Eaglesoft

SQL database

Kois Center

Curve Dental

Dentrix Ascend

Dentrix Enterprise

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Host: Michael Arias‍Website: The Dental Marketer

Join my newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/‍

Join this podcast's Facebook Group: The Dental Marketer Society

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My Key Takeaways:

• Some of the core steps to an effective front office onboarding system are clinical and insurance fundamentals, understanding practice software, phone skills, and financial arrangements.
• Empowering your employees does not mean handing them a script. Give them some autonomy to make their own decisions under a certain dollar threshold.
• How should you handle mistakes by team members?
• Help team members be individually successful and they will make your practice successful.
• The top 4 metrics that contribute to high profitability are 1. continuing care growth, 2. open hours, 3. number of indirect restorations, and 4. percentage of firm financial arrangements.

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Please don't forget to share with us on Instagram when you are listening to the podcast AND if you are really wanting to show us love, then please leave a 5 star review on iTunes! [Click here to leave a review on iTunes]

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p.s. Some links are affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase, I will earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you. Please understand that we have experience with these products/ company, and I recommend them because they are helpful and useful, not because of the small commissions we make if you decide to buy something. Please do not spend any money unless you feel you need them or that they will help you with your goals.

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Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)

Michael: Alright, it's time to talk with our featured guest, Brad Billings. Brad, how's it going? Good.

Brad: Thanks for asking.

Michael: Awesome, man. We appreciate you coming on. If you can you kind of break it down to us? Tell us a little bit about your past, your present. How'd you get to where you are

Brad: today? Oh, that's a, that's an interesting one.

So actually worked at Verizon Wireless for a number of years. 15 years and made it to lower level executive status great leadership development program and I had a ton of really good leaders. think what was interesting there and probably what I'd translate into dental is, they just had every metric you could think of all the data that you'd ever want for any.

Situation out of every store, every phone, everything, they just had all the data and we use that to, you know, gauge and monitor performance. I was in the sales channel, that's kind of where I started and I'll be brief on that 1. and then I moved to, uh, Pacific dental services and that was my foray into dentistry.

And it's probably good that I went to a company like Pacific dental. Specifically because I didn't know anything about dentistry and they had a really good training program, which is obviously something that you need. If you're going to, if you're going to try to enter into a leadership role, within the dental industry, you have to know what you're talking about.

So, pretty extensive training in a very successful region. and that kind of was my entrance into the dental world. And then the other thing about Pacific Dental is they also had an exorbitant amount of data. They worked out of a system called QSI. There might be a few people on the station that, that know of QSI.

It's really archaic. It was written in DOS and, still running in DOS. You had to do. Manual um, command entries to get it to do anything. And, and then they had an overlay. I forget what the overlay was called for the doctors to enter their clinical notes charting and things like that.

But the reason that they had such a hard time transitioning to anything modern, was because of the amount of data that they were getting out of that. And that really was the foundation, That I think helped kind of springboard me into success outside and into, small DSO and, and starting up a private practice.

It was kind of that foundation and understanding that, metrics drive decisions. And, and if you're just making guesses about what you should do within the business, you're oftentimes going to, guess incorrectly without those metrics and data. Gotcha.

Michael: And so right now, what are you doing?

Brad: guess there's more background in all of that. I left for an opportunity to run a small DSO. In Utah, or to help run, I should say. So I got hired as the VP at Abundant Dental Care, a phenomenal DSO. I still have a great relationship with them. I entered in to that relationship.

They had about, I think they had four practices, so very small. they were doing about, probably about 500, 000 a month. So a decent amount of money. They were like many small organizations that I saw. They were running they had a really good foundation. So they had like a really good team, really good processes, really good.

Atmosphere. And this is kind of why I chose to go with them is because their foundation was so solid, really good clinical work. They had some of the best dentists out there with a really good clinical leader, which is stuff that I don't know. So I didn't want to try to tackle. solving clinical gaps along with solving operational gaps.

So that's why I kind of decided to go with them. And then they, this is going to be the most boring podcast you ever.

Anyway uh, they were operating off like, you know, sugar house dental care at gmail. com and they had, you know, four practices and they're just sharing documents across gmail platforms and, you know, they were careful not to share HIPAA information across those things, but that made communication super challenging.

So, I initially came on, you know, as operations to help with the, case acceptance, closure and, you know, operational performance. And there were just so many gaps everywhere else that did do that. And then I also started to, work on automated reporting is where I started.

They were doing these spreadsheets every night. It would take, you know, 45 minutes to an hour of. Office Manager's time. They tracked a lot. They tracked everything. How do they track everything? They, it just does a spreadsheet. And they would pull manual Dentrix reports. So they would, and I don't know if you've ever dealt with Dentrix at all, but say create this report, and then you can walk away.

Like you can, Yeah. Go to the bathroom and, eat dinner and then come back and it might be done. And you do that, but you have to do, you know, four or five different ones, and then you take all the data manually off of those. And manually enter them in this spreadsheet. They had four different spreadsheets, which was also really weird, four different spreadsheets.

And then they had another operator that would grab, from those four different spreadsheets that were filled out by office managers and manually enter them into this master spreadsheet that the owner would look at in the morning and decide what our day was like the previous day and try to take action, depending on that.

Right. far as execution is concerned, like. They did a pretty good job with what they were doing. Like they always filled that out. They always, you know what I mean? There's a lot of people that try to do processes like that and can't execute on it because it takes a whole lot of accountability and follow up to make sure that those numbers are right.

So they were doing a good job. But was manual and it took four hours at least each night, plus the hour that it took that other operator put it all together. So you're talking about five hours a day, you know, how many working hours a week. So it was an incredible amount of hours.

And then it was, it was often wrong because, human error. So I just, I got a wild hair and I went to the owner. I said, look I, want to make this automated. This is ridiculous. We're doing it this way. and he was like no, I'm not going to give you any resources. You can't do that. I don't believe that you can do that.

You don't have the skill set. I was like, sure. Yeah, I, okay. So I just went and did it on my own. Like at night I, I called a buddy of mine that I went to college with. And, at the time he was working for a data company, just basically doing what I was asking us to figure out. Right. And all the time I'm like researching all this stuff too.

Cause I there's dental Intel out there and there's, there's a few others, but I researched probably three or four and I found out that bad data in, bad data out. And to get access to that back, that backend of Dentrix was, very expensive. And I don't remember the exact dollar amount, but I already didn't have any funding approval to do what I was trying to do.

And so I'm trying to stand up on, this manual SQL backend. So what I did initially was I took this spreadsheet, put it into one, protected spreadsheet, and then had an auto pull from the spreadsheet into this database. so all I really did initially was remove That last hour of the combination from that other operator.

And you know, but I worked and I was like, Oh, this is, this can be powerful, but I'm not going to, I don't have the means. We didn't have the means that this is company we weren't profitable enough to go pay the amount of money needed to get under the back end of denture. Yeah. I started to research open dental was the first one that, cause everybody researches up though they start there cause free, right.

You have access to everything. You have access to all the tables. It's not an API. all the back end. So we just did like a demo account in this back end to Open Dental. And but I don't, I'm no longer employed by them. I, I ended up growing this big enough to contract with them and move on.

Michael: So what is it exactly? Like, if you don't mind me asking the you're doing right now,

Brad: I own two practices with a partner, a doctor, that's a partner in Utah. The laws don't make you you don't have to be a clinician to own. It's one of like three states in the US but we're set up as A D S O. So, I can own a portion of A D S O that owns practices. So we are set up legally for me to own in other states as well.

But we, right now we just have two practices. And then, I also own a company called Full Schedule, which is, I'm in strategic partnership with eAssist. I'm not a partner of eAssist, so I have to make that very clear. We're a separate company, but I am in a strategic partnership with eAssist, the dental billing company, and we essentially Some of their clients I own a company that has employees that call and fill their schedule essentially.

So instead of doing that automated faceless, nameless, kind of process with like the weaves of the world and whoever else we have, we put a face and a name to it, set targets to it and help them get treatment and hygiene scheduled and then, you know, we charge per office for

Michael: that. So is it more like, that part, full schedule, is it more like front office services in the sense of like, Hey, I only have one front office right now, I need someone to answer phones and, take care of stuff whenever that person's doing other things.

Brad: not yet. It is on the road map to have an answering service. so right now we just are filling schedule. So it's basically like, we're 2 years in our recare list is miles long, but for whatever reason, we're never full.

And our treatment is still out there and it's not getting closed. So employ only, Currently, I would say stateside, so that we have, experience that we have hygienists that have been doing this for years and years, scheduling appointments, know what clinically they need to be doing all of these.

So we have about 30 offices right now that we. Essentially, we just find out what they want to do, what they want scheduled how they want it scheduled, which operatories they want it scheduled in, what their treatment times are that they want scheduled. And then we follow those standard operating procedures for that office.

And we fill the needs of that office, eventually, you know, fill the schedule. if we don't reach our commitments to the office, we reduce our price per each schedule not fulfilled to our commitment. Okay,

Michael: man. That sounds legit. cause that is a humongous need, right?

as far as when it comes to front office and answering services and things like that. So. That'd be really good. real quick, Brad, if we can rewind a little bit. You mentioned that you worked for Verizon and that they had a great leadership program. What to you, because it made it great, and what takeaways from that program would you recommend someone in a dental practice, your dental practice owner, utilize?

Brad: That's a good question. think anytime you have a program at all no matter how good the curriculum is or anything else, it's dependent on the people that are in it. I was lucky. I, I had some of the, in my opinion, and granted, it's my humble opinion. I had some of the best leaders, even in Verizon.

I had a. The president of my region that I was in, Oh, Andres Irlando, he was Forbes top 40 under 40, just a amazing guy. He's running another tech company now. then I had a couple of other really, some of the smartest men that I've ever met.

I think that Fortune 5 companies draw those kinds of. And then I had another guy named DJ Leckwold and another guy named Shane Schwab. And these guys were just very focused on, you know, personal growth and leadership, what that actually looks like and how to communicate with your teams around performance.

Cadence and meetings large workload organization, which was very challenging for me. and that's what I would probably say Verizon had is, and what these leaders did is Verizon has a ton of resources. They have classes going on around the country all the time. Either run even by teams of Microsoft employees to teach you how to use Microsoft more effectively.

They have time management trainings. They have, communication trainings you know, trainings based on books like crucial conversations, and, they have all of these trainings going on. And what these leaders allowed their team to do, and a lot of leaders wouldn't because it would affect budgets.

They don't understand the, uh, return on investment that you're receiving, but they would allow us to fly around the country all over. I remember flying to, you know, Massachusetts from Arizona so that I could take a time management class for Microsoft and they're not cheap, but, I still use large majority of those practices today, or I wouldn't be able to do what I do.

and then on top of that, you know, obviously they modeled what a leader should, what a leader should do, what a leader should look like. So that's probably what I would say. I got, I got out of her eyes on this really good leader.

Michael: Gotcha. But how are you implementing that into the practice or how would you, if you were to tell me like, this is what you got to do, Mike, for your practice?

Brad: Around leadership specifically? Yeah. I think there's a Appropriate priority level leadership and leadership development. if you're an individual practice owner, we've purchased practices where there's this harsh separation between front hygiene and clinical, right? And your practice will never be successful if you're not running like you have a true leader to follow and that leader is engaged and helping the entire team be successful, and not just, the team being engaged to, make the practice successful, but also they need to feel like you're helping them be successful, whether that's in, you know, their goals and where they're headed, or.

In their skill sets in the practice, but you have to be engaged and know what your employees want and what they're trying to do every single day and help them get their goals. And if you do that they'll give it back to you and help you be successful and be happy working for you. And that's, I think a lot of what leadership really is, especially on an individual practice level.

From there, I mean, if you're going to go larger than that, then it, it comes to Having a an actual training process from soup to nuts. So from beginning to end, when you bring people on, you can't just assume they know exactly what you're going to talk about. And if you don't have defined training process, there's no way everybody's going to have that same training experience and everybody's going to deliver a different product to every patient that comes in and, and that creates uncontrollables that then create a lower performance.

And, so yeah, that, that's kind of the difference between private and as you grow, I think private is you could really just be a leader by. Being engaged with your team and helping them be successful in who they are. And then outside of that you've really got to start formalizing and structuring a training program, leadership training and development.

Michael: Do you have one of those for your, both of your practices,

Brad: I've only left Abundant. think I've been outside of Abundant for three months. We just bought our second practice. In August. So, do I have one? No. And, have I felt the pain of not having one?

Yes. Did I build one at Abundant? I did. We had a very robust training program with videos and tests and the onboarding processes. And I led that initiative and, and built that whole platform. And I also built a like a knowledge based platform so that, Yeah, after the training, they could go back and reference it.

So, I desperately need one here. I just, as I'm sure many of your listeners know when you buy that second practice, You're first standing it up, making sure everybody's reducing turnover and, you know, keeping production as high as you can through that transition.

Michael: Yeah.

And we'll dive into that right now. But when it comes to the robust training, if you can, Brad, could you make us one right now? Meaning like this is what from beginning. The steps you should be in initializing, you know what I mean? Like the, I guess more like the title headline and then the headings and that's it, you know what I mean?

Kind of thing. Like, how should it look?

Brad: mean, that's a pretty tough question because it you want to.

Michael: Could you give us like front office?

Brad: Yeah. So like front desk. Yeah. Sure. And also this depends on your structure too, because different people have front desk, do different things. But, it starts with, dental knowledge. You have to have a foundation in dental knowledge and normally.

When front desk, when you're hiring front desk because of the wages that they're in they really don't have foundational knowledge and I'm talking like, Keith numbers and surfaces and procedures and really just the basics because people are going to be talking to them about that stuff and they can't be just caught.

Blindly in the headlights there. And from there, it would probably be to like foundational again, very basic knowledge of insurances and those sorts of things. So really just foundational knowledge between clinical and insurances. If you're taking insurances, I should say, they should know all the insurances that you take. They should know all the um, leased networks that you take and how to check to see if they're in that leased network, so that they can answer those questions appropriately. And then, the 3rd foundational piece for their job should be a complete understanding of the system they're using.

So the PRM, that probably the first 3 foundational things, and then I would move very quickly to and I'm talking probably before they even have face to face interactions. They need to have those 3 things locked in and tested, or you're going to be every interaction that they have.

You're going to be deteriorating the integrity of your of the perception of your business, right? And then even before again, still before the 1st face to face interaction, you should set some very clear expectations on. Communication to patients, how to answer the phone, empower them to solve problems without passing the buck all the way till the end, even if they're going to make mistakes doing it.

And that takes some training too. We made a lot of videos at Abundant specifically how to answer questions when people say, I can't believe I'm on a 300 bill, let me say. You know, you very quickly say I'm, sorry that you're unaware of this bill. How can I help today? And then if they say, any anger at all, then it's okay, no problem.

We'll take care of that for you. If it's under 500 bucks, it doesn't matter. We'll take care of it for you because the value of a patient is way more valuable than 500 that they didn't know about that you're trying to wrangle out of their hands. So. Anyway, so those, that's probably the foundational training for them and then it gets into more I'd say more detailed actually, you know, doing, insurance coordination and entering that into the systems and you're getting more into the details of making sure patients are set up for success while they're there, how to check copays and how to collect money at the front, things like that.

Michael: So that's good, man. This is a good like process. And you mentioned something.

A lot of great stuff, but one thing you mentioned is, you empower the team to handle problems on their own. It's super huge. So how do you do that? Like how do we, do we just provide them like with scripts of like, what if scenarios or?

Brad: that's not empowerment enough you can't script everything.

It's literally Hey, I want you to take care of the patients any way you can. Anything that you think is right probably is treat them how you'd want to be treated. If you go outside of the bounds, then we'll have a discussion, but you won't be in trouble. And then it's really you know, you got to hire well.

you give them that, let them go. You can't micromanage true patient care. You really can't. And because every patient is going to be a bit, different and so you've got to have, the right front desk person with the right kind of empathy and communication skills to be able to make a lot of those decisions on their own.

And yeah, I mean, there's absolutely times where like, Hey, you probably shouldn't have given that. 500 credit because they actually did owe that, but at the end of the day, if they did a very good job and that patient stayed, it's worth more than 500 bucks. So, again, it's, I guess, continual coaching.

So that would be empowerment to me is you say, yeah go do it. You said very loose boundaries. Like if it goes over 500 bucks from grab us. But anything else you have full autonomy, just let us know when you're done and we'll talk about it. Yeah.

Michael: Interesting. Okay. So like having almost like full confidence in them to, yeah, you made a mistake.

And then almost to the point where it's like, well, let's just talk about the mistake. That way they're like, okay, it's cool to make mistakes. I mean, not huge ones, but I'll learn from them. You know what I mean?

Brad: I mean, there's been big ones, man, but I still think it's more valuable for someone to have that empowerment and make One big mistake, but have corrected 20 mistakes that the patient was feeling. maybe we got 1 big mistake where they went out of bounds, you know, and they shouldn't have done that. You're still saving those other 20 patients their empowerment. And then you do that correction.

And, and that is the attitude you take, like. We love mistakes you learn from it. That's great. I love that you did that. like that man. It's really good that's what empowerment is to me.

Michael: Okay, and have you ever gotten like pushback from so you mentioned something about a PRM, right?

So have you ever gotten people like hey, man We've been using Open Dental or practice works or Eagle software ever I know like the back of my hand like don't be switching it what happens

Brad: And yes, I mean, every practice that I've been a part of acquiring and switched off of all the mainstream archaic PRMs that are out there, clinicians, especially they, they all have just challenges with that change and change is hard, doesn't matter what it is, change is hard.

So I get it. And let me tell you the things that we can do after we make this change and why you're going to like this better. I mean, I think we mentioned it, but I use Oryx and all the practices that I've managed and that I own. I think that's the thing, as long as you are open about the challenges that are coming.

And then understanding about the challenges that those people are going to be facing through the change. And then also you can express and make sense logically as to why the change is needed. Then most of the time you can get through those transitions relatively easy. We started really early with Oryx, and.

It's a thousand times more robust than when we really, when we very first started. those first, you know, few months while I was learning and trying to teach it, I had to be the brand advocate and then I had to, get, one by one by one, these other to say, no, this is the PRM that we want to use and here's why.

And, and with that one by one by one, they just kind of starts to spread. And now I mean, I still go back and ask like, Hey, if you had a chance, there's still hiccups in every PRM, but also in works. And occasionally we get a hiccup and they submit to their help team. And, And you say, Hey, would you switch?

Like, even after this, would you switch? And every answer resoundingly, every time they'd never go back, there's no way to go back to a server based. Archaic DRM like that, there just isn't.

Michael: Why did you decide to go with Oryx?

Brad: So I was kind of getting into that before I stop, but it was that whole automated reporting thing.

It started with Open Dental, and we spent a lot of money training on Open Dental on a single office. We switched one office over to Open Dental. It was on an, it was on an acquisition that we, so it was a new acquisition that we were doing at Abundant, and decided rather than, you know, Just paying for a year of, because Dentrix charges you a year up front, figured that practice, you have to re sign a contract.

Rather than doing that, we were just like, let's just try Open Dental, see what happens. Super painful transition. They had good support. Open Dental was, good support, but just a painful transition. The conversion was rough. everything was pretty rough training. Everything was pretty rough.

Posting was rough. Everything was rough. It was just new to me. And it was, and I'm the one training, so I'm trying to learn it and train it. And they had good support and all of that. And then we, we actually stood up automated reporting. So we pulled their backend just straight out of their database.

Dumped it into a SQL database, and started running automated reports. And then I showed the owner and he was like, I want more of this. I want all of this. I want everything you can do with this. And so he was just fully body and like, when are we switching to open dental? So I started doing test conversions and all the other practices we had.

And at that point, I think we had seven. So I started doing these tests conversions and open dental. I've got a lot of experience in conversions now, and I wouldn't have done it the same way that I was doing it in that first office. But anyway, I had probably 4 test conversions done. I was about to pull the trigger and I had a buddy call me from.

Texas from PDS, a doctor buddy of mine. he had just got back from Coyce Institute. And he's like, just talk to me about his great experience with Coyce and comprehensive dentistry. And you know, his plan to make his practice just pop and dude, it was so exciting and he's a very engaging guy, just exciting guy to talk to.

So I'm like, that's rad, man. What else, What else did you learn? Tell me everything. And he's like, Hey man, there's this software that he talked about at the end. It looked amazing. Have you ever heard of it? Oh man, I've been, I've been researching and I, I researched everything like curve, open dental, Eaglesoft, Dentrix, Dentrix Ascend, Dentrix Enterprise.

you name it, I probably have done a test conversion during that time period for it. And I was still going with open dental after all of that. I was like, nah, man, I haven't heard of it, but. Man, I just don't see how anything this is. This has got to be the one I've looked at every other one.

He's like, dude, just check it out. I called him up and yeah, I was blown away. Like, it's simple. It's intuitive. And this again was, this was four years ago. So it was much less robust than it is now. I don't know how to explain that any other way, but it did not have all the features that it has now.

And so anyway I, it was really frustrating, but I remember calling the owner and I was like, Hey, look I, I hate more than anybody that I'm making this phone call right now. Like I've put months into this, I've put nights, evenings, weekends, just to even stand up our one office and open dental, but we got to do more.

And he was like, no. And I was like, all right, well you, and we, Abundant was a comprehensive dental model. Which kind of, it very closely aligned, like Oryx and our model very closely aligned. was like, look, I understand. Like I said, I hate this too, but you just get on the phone. I'll get Ronnie on the phone, Ronnie and and our owner got on the phone and kind of talked through, they actually knew each other, which was small world.

Yeah. But, yeah, it was very he eventually got, so he saw it and he was like, well, I could work. So we, you know, we decided to make the switch for all of them. So we switched all seven of our practices over to work.

Michael: Nice man, that's good. And right now are you going to transition to Oryx 2 with your two practices or already?

I do

Brad: it. I do it on day one. Yeah, I don't take over a practice with that. Yeah, I've got so many systems built through this now that It just has to be done. Like rather than trying to figure out how to remote in to a server with RDPs and then manually track things I, I already have prewritten programs that pull from works as APIs.

And so I, I've switched an office over day one and get API access and we're off to the races. So, man,

Michael: all right, good stuff, man. So, cool. Oryx is the winner for you then. That's what you like. Oh, by

Brad: far. Yeah. Yeah. and I would just, for anybody that's out there looking like, I am an Oryx fanboy, so I'll get that out of the way.

But, at the very least, like, Just stay away from server based platforms. It creates complication and expense. You just don't need, just don't need it. You have to pay an it team any break that you have, like, I have an it degree and it takes me hours to figure out. These complicated setups.

So, no, it's just not yeah, I would say stay away from those. Go online. Orcs is a great

Michael: base. Yeah. Gotcha, man. Awesome. Awesome. So then I know you've been talking a lot about data and metrics and I feel like that's, that's your thing, right? So it is. Yeah. If you were telling me right now, I'm telling you like, Hey man, I can't, yeah.

I'm struggling. struggling in the sense of like, Sometimes new patients are good. You know what I mean? looks like I'm growing, but my bottom line is also growing and all these things. What data or metrics would you say? Hey, these are the top metrics you need to hyper focus on.

Brad: Yeah. All right. So this is what and this is A correlation I learned through my extensive training, top 3 most correlated metrics to practice profitability. There's actually more. We talked about 5 or 6. I'll give you top 3 and then we can. expand a little more, but top three, number one is is actually continuing care growth year over year.

and it's super interesting because it tells you so many things, but care growth year over year is always the first place I focus. And the easiest way. To start that increase because you can't obviously that's you're waiting a year to see if so it's a very lag metric.

It's, you look at it after the fact. So you've got to do something up front and track a metric to make sure that you are even approaching that attainable year over year growth. quickest 1 for that is just reappointment rate. them while they're in the practice? And if you're not anywhere between 85 and 95 percent, then you're actually deteriorating your practice growth year over year.

And every practice that I've ever gone to is like, oh, we're killing that. We always reappoint our, then you go look at, they're always at 60 to 65 percent. I'm telling you, everybody right now on the things on your podcast is going to be saying, no dude, we're. We're at 80 percent easy if they had a number that actually pulled the data, I guarantee between 65 and 70, 60 to 70.

It's always

Michael: there. That causes it

Brad: to decrease. And there's statistics and I don't want to butcher them, but there's essentially there's a certain. recare patients that return and a certain percentage of new patients that return. And so if you're below 30 new patients a month, which majority of practices are, I mean, both of these practices that we just got are well above that, but a lot of practices are at that 30 to 50 new patient range.

If you're at 30 new patients are below and you're below I think it's 75 percent reappointment rate assuming they're going to come back, then you're going to have an actual deterioration of patients. unless you have obviously some sort of strategy to then reactivate them, but then you're doing double work on the backend rather than just doing it on the front end while they're in the practice.

All of a sudden, now you're employing my company full schedule to reappoint your patients for you, which then is another added expense, right? Um, Rather than just doing that job up front and tracking performance of that job, making sure your people are doing it. Gotcha.

Michael: Okay. So continuing care growth and then reappointment.

Brad: Well, yeah, so really continuing care growth year over year, all that other stuff was just about continuing care growth, but that's where I would focus. Initially the 2nd most correlated is Dr. Days, Dr. Hours, call it whatever you'd like. It's a very easy one to think about, but I mean, the less days that you're open, the less money you'll make.

and this is to profitability. I'm not talking revenue. So. There's a lot of practices that have this super concern of like, we don't have enough patients, so I'm not going to open another day. But the statistics show that you open another day, you're going to be more profitable. Even if you think you're not ready yet.

If you open another day, you're going to be more profitable. And it's just, you know, open it up on, Google and you advertise for it and you put marketing out for it. You may be down for a couple of months, but for the year, you will be more profitable just to open the day and be there and your people will figure out how to fill it.

That's number 2. Number 3 is, number of indirects, and this is a challenging one because you can't obviously set a quota on your doctors doing number of indirects, but it is just a very highly correlated metric. Doctors that do more indirects make more money.

Michael: So more indirects.

Brad: Yeah, indirect

Michael: restorations.

Yeah. Gotcha. Okay. The first one, reappointment rates. Man, that's pretty huge. So like when you come, when it goes to that, The system that you utilize that Brad utilizes for making sure reappointment rates happen is Hey, right when they're in the practice, we got to get them on the books for the next appointment Now what would happen and I'm sure you've experienced this many times, but like, you know how people complain like the no shows, right? What do you do for that?

Brad: so there's going to be no shows. A good no show rate is actually 15%, which is still a ton. And that's a good no show rate, right? Traditionally, I'd say most practices are probably in between 20 and 25%. Which is a huge slide. And yes, you need to work your very best to capitalize on bringing those patients back in.

doesn't really in my metric calculation, it doesn't go into reappointment rate. Because reappointment rate is if you came if you did a dollar of production, we counted as a completed appointment, and then we check for the next appointment schedule.

So, we don't count that into reappointment rate. But yeah, we have strategies around and we actually do you know, heavy confirmation, and then. And so if they don't show, we usually know why and then if they're not there within 5 minutes, we call them and text them. And then if they're not there all day, we, you know, we reach out to again, try to reschedule appointment.

But I think most practices do that. That's kind of like the easy low hanging fruit. you're not doing that as a practice, you've missed. That to me doesn't even have anything to do with metrics other than understanding your no show rate which brings me to my fourth metric, which is a percentage of firm financial arrangements, which is different than what I was taught historically, but in my data.

Now, it has changed and from financial arrangements, this means collect in full for any appointments you put on the schedule with the exception of obviously like hygiene exams and be patient. You can't collect before they're there. But if you're going to put a root canal and a crown on your schedule, have it paid in full before you put it on there.

Michael: Okay. Is there a specific script you kind of like mentioned when you're like, Hey, you got to pay us in full.

Brad: You know, surprisingly, it's not super challenging. You just say we do collect in full for our procedures. Before we put you on the schedule and then you basically just say, how did you want to pay for that today?

And then if they ask questions you just say well our doctor's time is valuable so we really have to make sure that the people are going to show up that say they're going to be here and usually when people pay that means they're going to be here and people really understand it They're not turned off by it at all. Like if they're really planning on being there They're going to pay for it. Anyway, the only thing that we do is If a patient's like, you know, I don't get paid till Friday can you collect for me on Friday? Then we'll say, yeah, and Norix has a great tool.

You just send a text link. So you put a little reminder and, in a calendar, and then you send them a text link on that day and they pay over that. And if they don't, then you have to pull them off the schedule because. you can assume

Michael: that they're not going to be there if they haven't paid. Yeah, that's true.

So then these are like the four main metrics we want to keep looking at. What are, in your experience, what are the numbers or the data that you notice or you see like in the forums or on Facebook or something where practice owners are talking about it, they're looking at it, but in your mind, Brad's mind is like, man, that ain't even that important.

Brad: Interestingly enough, new patient count, it is important. get me wrong. You have to have a new patient count to grow your business. But there's so many clinicians that come out of school that are, they don't even care. You're continuing care patient depth. They just care. Like if they're coming on as an associate in your practice, they want to know how many new patients.

a crazy skewed metrics. 70 percent of practices established over two years. Their revenue comes from continuing care patients. 70 percent of the revenue. So 30 percent of your revenue only comes from your patients after two years. So if you're in your first two years, yeah, hit the marketing hard.

Make sure you're doing your reappointment rate. But after that second year, you should be focusing very heavily on your exams what's going on there.

Michael: then, Right now, one of the questions I wanted to ask you is what can a dentist do today, practice owner, to improve their marketing or their business?

Brad: marketing honestly.

Michael: Or their business, or their business in general. I'll

Brad: give you, I'll give you my basic marketing rundown and we're, averaging about.

Anywhere from 60 to 80 new patients a month at both of our practices, and it's super basic, and there's plenty of practice out there that can do much more than this, like Abundant was, really approaching 100 new patients a month, but they spent, you know, a ton of time on marketing. This is like me in my spare time while I'm also not managing operations.

And helping, you know, look for new practices, but this is, it's super basic. You need, Google ads and you need a really high Google score. and that's it. If you have Google ads a low Google score, you're just torturing yourself. So make sure you have a ton of reviews. Make sure as many of them are as five stars.

Don't do anything shady. Give them the experience that they want. And if you have those two things in place, patients just find you and they come. At least that's in my experience. And then we also have strategies that we're on, certain streets with 20, 000 cars passing with high visibility.

Like obviously those things matter. But outside of that, that and sandwich boards and the new patient special, we don't do much.

Michael: With your Google ads budget, what's the budget look like for there?

Brad: 35 an office, we try to stay below 1. 5 percent of revenue. And really right now, we're at like, 0.

8 percent of revenue because. We just don't need to keep spending it. So 3500 a month is what we. What we were doing and then we just never really upped it and we don't really have to

Michael: you're doing pretty good like 60, new patients and everything like that. So that's really good, man.

Awesome, Brad Thank you so much for your time, man I truly appreciate it But before we say goodbye if anybody wanted to reach out to you for questions or anything like that, where can they find you?

Brad: man, I got I got a ton of email addresses. Let's do a Brad at MountainWest. Healthcare. Alright,

Michael: Brad at MountainWest. Healthcare, you said? Alright, so that's going to be in the show notes below for anybody who wants to to Brad. And Brad, thank you so much for being with us, man. It's been a pleasure. Thanks for having me on.

Brad: talk soon. Bye.

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Unlock the future of your dental practice with Kleer, the ultimate membership platform trusted by thousands of dentists for unprecedented growth and patient care.

For a 1 on 1 demo with Kleer, visit our special link! https://www.kleer.com/partner/the-dental-marketer

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In today's Monday Morning Marketing episode, join us as we dive into the world of dental membership plans with Eli Salls from Kleer, the cutting-edge cloud-based membership platform trusted by thousands of dentists for growth. Eli unpacks the critical topic of "team buy-in" and emphasizes the paramount importance of securing your team's trust and enthusiasm when implementing a membership plan. With data showing that a staggering 70% of business initiatives fall flat, having the team in full support is of utmost importance. Eli walks us through the five essential ingredients for achieving a successful team buy-in for your membership plan, so yours reaches maximum effectiveness. Discover how to identify strengths and weaknesses within your team, effectively train them on the plan, and craft enticing incentives that make embracing the membership plan a joyful experience. We'll learn the art of assigning champions for streamlined system implementation and how to take your dental practice to new heights.

Don't miss this episode for invaluable insights into creating a thriving dental membership plan with your whole team on board!

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You can reach out to Eli Salls here:

Website: https://www.kleer.com/

Email: [email protected]

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eli-salls-a6280b186

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Other Mentions and Links:

Inc5000

McKinsey & Company

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

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

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

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Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)

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Michael: Hey, what's up Eli. So talk to us about membership plans. What can we do? What advice or suggestions do you have

Eli: to grow it? Yeah, definitely. First and foremost, thank you, Michael, for having me on. I appreciate it. But yeah, membership plans. So I think a lot of the content we see.

Existing out there right now discusses the benefits of having one, the why around that, also the house. So how to build one, how to market one, how to effectively manage it on that day to day. But what we, I think miss a lot of times is that bigger question. And I think it's, one of the biggest and most important things, with any system that you're going to implement in a practice, but.

Definitely with a membership plan. And that's, how do you get that team buy in? So how do you get people excited about this? How do you get everyone from whether that be the front desk, office manager, hygienist, all the way back to the doctor, talking about this. And that's how we see the most effective practices operate is when everyone's on the same page.

You've got a good culture. You've got that team buy in. We have data from McKinsey and company that says about 70 percent of business initiatives whether it be a dental practice or any business tries often fail. So 70 percent of those, and when we look at this, it's not because people are doing these for the wrong intentions.

I mean, you're always trying to improve your business, Whether that be enhancing patient care, up brand awareness, improving profitability, driving case acceptance, you name it. These initiatives exist for some reason, but they often fall flat. And the reason we see a lot of times is just because, the leaders that are implementing them again, they're seeing big picture.

It's all for the right reason, but they're not necessarily looking at the day to day work and the people that are going to be boots on the ground, actually implementing this and really working with them and having their hands on it every day. And there's a lack of buy in from those people that are actually responsible with maintaining and making sure that this is, you know, an effective system in place.

Once that initiative is set up, we often see that it just falls to be another task that the office has to perform. And it can be kind of. thrown to the wayside and people forget about it. There's really 5 different things we look at when, trying to get that buy in from our offices we coach our doctors and office managers on how to really get that excitement up there and make sure that.

It stays there so that we have that long term success with these plans. And again, these are things that can be applied to most systems within a practice, but going to be looking at it mostly on the lens the membership plan because that's my specialty. um, the five things, first one is. Kind of Like a bottom up approach. So looking at your team and, as the leader, the strengths and the weaknesses of each one of your team members. So really leveraging those strengths and being aware of those weaknesses to be able to put people in the right positions when dealing with a system, a membership plan So you want to set people up for success and you want to make sure that you're implementing this in a way. That people can execute on it. You also want that collaboration from the bottom, from the people that are going to be touching it every day, to make sure that it is something that they can do, that they understand how to do.

And again, that they're just set up for success. This also comes down to role modeling, right? So the leader. As the leader, whether that's the dentist, the office manager, whoever's the champion of the membership plan in your office, you need to make sure that they're role modeling that behavior.

So you want your team to be excited about it. You need to be excited about it. That energy is contagious. So just making sure that, if you're asking your team, Hey, why aren't we talking about this? And you as a leader haven't been talking about it at all. Maybe it's time to do some self reflection on that.

So really leading with purpose and being that role model that you want. so it's kind of a bottom up, making sure that you're, taking those people that are going to be touching it into account, but it's also, top down from the role modeling perspective. So the second thing that we preach as far as making sure that we have that buy in is, educating or training and then making sure that you're retraining.

the education and training is, really around everything, membership plan associated. So that might be the value around it. So why? Are we offering this to our patients? Why is this better than pushing them into the PPO marketplace? And why is this easier for us than having to deal with those PPOs?

as far as efficiency and ease of use and everything. But really your team needs to understand that and needs to understand why you as the leader have decided to go this route. So educating them around that value, and then also educating them on the actual.

Admin of this, the actual, implementation. So how do I sign up patients? How do I talk to patients about this? How do I present it? Where are the resources I need to be able to do so? and that, again, that's all the education and training, and that's the front loading.

You need to make sure at the beginning, everyone has this, but it's not a set it and forget it thing. Dental practices. No, they have a million and one different initiatives happening and you need to circle back on them. I mean, maybe it's been a month, two, three months since you've gone over all of this with your team.

you got to circle back and make sure that everyone's still on the same page and everyone still has that knowledge and knows how to present this and how to really implement it on the day to day. As well as with that retraining having those resources readily available.

On demand or however it may be, to be able to reference them when necessary

Michael: when it comes to real quick, the retraining. Let's just say we sign up with clear We get to know the admin. at the same time. do we get someone that teaches us when we sign up with Clear?

Eli: Yeah. Let's just say real quick from day

Michael: one, someone's teaching us, we're learning where the team's learning to their training. So the retraining part would be what it's more like, Hey guys. Every month we talk about it. We're like this is the scripts We should be using to present it into people or is that

Eli: what you mean?

Yeah, so I mean I can't really put a one size fits all, but yes, pretty much So whatever cadence you think your team needs the other thing is too is we're seeing a lot of turnover in dental teams as well. So making sure that if someone new joins the team, are they getting trained?

You know a lot of times you'll be like, oh went through that we signed up with clear Everyone knows that you get new staff members. Let's make sure we're training them. But yeah, and whatever cadence you feel is effective and good for your team, that's monthly, if that's quarterly, maybe it's yearly.

going back and making sure if you have scripts that you're recommending. That everyone still has those scripts and is up to date on those and just running back through the plans. You might be selling these plans as a front desk person, but you might not have looked at them in a while.

Do you know what's on those plans? Just look back, make sure that uh, you're referencing that stuff that you went over when you first implemented it. awesome. Okay. I like that. All

Michael: right. So number

Eli: three, number three and four kind of blend together. So the number three is make it simple.

That just makes it easier on everyone, one of the big benefits of a membership plan, everything's there in black and white for both your staff and for the patients. I'm paying this much a month or a year and I'm getting this and this much off of additional treatment.

You don't have to worry about, oh, if I hit this much or, you know, your waiting periods or, you know, all maximums, all that. Membership plans just because of how they're set up are simple to begin with, don't over complicate that process and make it simple for a your staff to be able to present and be for that patient to understand what they're getting out of it.

And like I said, I mean, This is for any system. I think you've got to try to make it as simple as possible. Membership plans conveniently kind of lend themselves to that because it is such a simple kind of concept and simple plan for patient and practice to be able to talk about.

And then number four is. Make it easy. make those systems that your people, your office team are going to have to use on a daily basis. Make it as easy as possible for them. How are we tracking this?

Do we have auto renewals on so that we don't have to go back and check every time a patient comes in? Hey, are they up to date? Do we have a portal I That is tracking their benefit status is tracking whether, like I said, whether they've made their payments, things like that. And is it an easy process for them to sign up?

Do they have to fill out like a huge long paper form? Or is it just a quick portal where they just throw in some information? Do you have integration with your practice management software to be able to do that even quicker? These are all things that clear can offer. But just if you're looking things.

Overall, I mean, just make it as easy as possible. If you want something to stick, you need it to be simple and easy for that team or else it becomes another chore. It becomes another task and people are going to prioritize the things that are easiest path of least resistance, So make it as simple and easy as possible for that team. and you'll see a lot, better buy in. And then number five, I think this is probably my favorite of them incentivize or gamify this whole thing. Run fun competitions within the office. It doesn't have to be anything crazy.

So our platform allows, it's a fun little feature we added recently, it allows you to attribute which staff members signed up patients. it gives you like a little gold, silver and bronze trophy for those people that have signed it up and you can run different reports to see between which dates and things.

So what we like to recommend to our offices is, hey, do a sprint or just do a quick competition. Whoever signs up the most this week. Gets a free 5, 10 Starbucks gift card. So they get, coffee. Or maybe it's something bigger. You know, If the team hits X amount of signups, we throw an office party.

Whatever works for your team is going to move the needle for your team. You know, Your team, then that's something that you can put in place. have a way to track those signups and have fun little competitions. I mean, People are going to be more receptive to something they can see.

They can hold. And that is, right there for them, instead of, Hey, bigger picture. This is going to be great for our, patient care, patient acceptance, revenue. Uh, These are things that are great, but your office team might be like, okay well, I've got. A million other things to do.

You say, Hey, we're having a fun competition. Now you're, you're upping that culture. You're having a more fun time, just overall in the office and it gives them something to strive for, right? Everyone wants to be great. Give a fun competition. And I think that can really help with that buy in and the culture piece that so many offices struggle with.

I like that,

Michael: man. The gamify, I like the sprints. Throughout this process, you mentioned it in number four, make it easy. Where do you guys from your research, because I know you guys have a lot of data, right? Where do you mainly see people drop

Eli: the ball?

Michael: because I feel like people spend time like okay, you know To hop is visit to pro fees all these things, right? then they get excited. They're like all these people are gonna somewhere The ball drops within that year of like, what

Eli: happens?

that's a great question. And I think it really, a lot of it does come down to this, buy in piece. So it's just the leadership or whoever's making the decision to implement this are like, this is going to be great for our office. We were going to be able to increase revenue, increase treatment acceptance, but somewhere along the lines there, the people that are actually using it, either, they don't understand the value of it or you know, People are prewired in dental to be like, okay, PPOs. If I have an insurance plan, I go to the dentist. If I don't, I don't So the whole mentality around membership plans I think it's beginning to shift and people are understanding it more, but it can be a little bit of a retraining of how you think about coverage.

And making sure that everyone, whether that be the patients or whether that be the staff have had that little bit of a rewiring and understand, Hey, this is another option that is just as good, if not better than my employer funded insurance plan, and it's going to provide great treatment for people that may not otherwise have that access.

So being able to Build that value, I think, is where a lot of people, it's a lack of understanding on both staff and patient side or sometimes it's the other way. Maybe the staff understand and the doctors just like, don't really get it. The PPO thing has been working for me and they don't look into the advantages of having that membership plan.

And then they don't role model that behavior. And again, it's just another initiative that falls by the wayside. lack of understanding is where we usually see the ball dropped. Yeah,

Michael: I like how you guys mentioned you have to have a champion for this, right?

Cause they're the ones who are gonna take the lead, hold each other accountable. Cause if everybody's feeling like they're accountable, nobody's really gonna be accountable, right? But if you put one person to champion it, you can even give them the, lead way to be like, You're in charge of starting like four competitions whenever and during the year, right?

But it can be sprints or there's so

Eli: much. Oh, man. There's so much. Yeah. building that accountability is huge.

Michael: I know you guys mentioned that you increased production by 172 percent with the membership plans. How you do that?

Eli: Yeah, so I mean, really what it boils down to, and I always tell doctors when I'm talking to them about this is the recurring revenue.

It's great. Obviously, you get that coming in. It increases valuation. You have just passive income, from the subscription, but really where doctors are going to be making their money here is that increased production from increased Absolutely. Absolutely. case acceptance. And the reason that happens is because when those members come in to get their pro fees done, normal checkups, that gives you the ability to a build a better relationship with those patients, which then makes it easier for them to say yes to that treatment because you've, created that trust.

And you also have more opportunities to be able to diagnose them for more treatment. Just getting them in the door that's the big thing here. Getting them in the door for those pro fees, they're going to come in two to three times as often. It gives you more opportunity to a build trust and be get them to accept more treatment.

And that's where we see that huge you know, boon and, both production case acceptance. All right,

Michael: man.

And I know we talked about this before a little bit in the episode, but you guys have someone Directed to me, right? Like a point of contact who teaches me, who will help me market it and stuff

Eli: like that.

I don't know. when you start off you're assigned an onboarding specialist, who's going to help you set up those plans initially give you all the best practices, around. Marketing the plan, talking to patients about the plan. And also we'll do those training. So, And we'll hop on as many calls as we need to with an office.

If you need to set up 234 million, we'll do as many as you need. Just make sure that everyone's on the same page. So that's our onboarding specialist. And then after you get through that initial hurdle of implementation, you're going to sign a dedicated account manager, which will then be your point person.

And we also do have support. That is based right here in Philadelphia where, the whole team is. So you're not going to be talking to anyone overseas or in a call center. They'll field all those questions and they actually field questions for both the patient and the practice. So if patients have questions around the clear, membership plan, want to change payment methods update passwords, stuff like that.

Our support team will take that off the front desk so they don't have to worry about it as well. So we're big on the people, the implementation piece, making it as easy as possible for the office to be able to implement these plans.

Michael: Nice man. Awesome. And also congrats on making it to the Inc 5, 000, man.

That's

Eli: really good. We're very proud of that and hopefully we'll be back again next year.

Michael: Yeah, man. Awesome. So if anyone has any questions or concerns, where can they reach out to you?

Eli: Yeah. So you can definitely reach out to me um, either on LinkedIn. It's just Eli Salls L I S A L L S, or you can email me Eli, E L I at clear K L E E R.

com. And then if you're interested in hearing a little bit more, we actually have a landing page set up for the show. So it's going to be clear. com slash partner slash the dash dental dash marketer. And you can just go there and, and, uh, request a demo and we'll give you a little more information, but anytime, feel free to reach out to me.

I'd love to be a resource.

Michael: Awesome. So guys, that's going to be in the show notes below, reach out to him. And at the same time, Eli, thank you so much for being with us. It's been a pleasure and we'll hear

Eli: from you soon. Yes. Thank you, Michael.

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Ready to supercharge your patient influx? Click the link below to grab your FREE e-book now: "10000 Patients | Tested and Proven Methods to Bring in New Patients This Week!" Don't miss out on these game-changing strategies for your practice! 👇[Click here to download your FREE e-book]

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Guest: Michelle AffanatoBusiness Name: Affinity ManagementCheck out Michelle's Media:

Website: http://affinitymanagement.co/

Email: [email protected]‍

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michelle.affinitymanagement

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

Michelle's Podcast: https://accelerateyourdentalpractice.podbean.com/

Other Mentions and Links:

Ideal practices

Open Dental

Oryx

Modento

Next Health

Netflix

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Host: Michael Arias‍Website: The Dental Marketer

Join my newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/‍

Join this podcast's Facebook Group: The Dental Marketer Society

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My Key Takeaways:

• How do you find the perfect amount of experience in your new hires?
• When to hire, and how many people should you look to hire before your opening day?
• What training is essential before opening your doors? It's not about the quantity of patients coming through your door day one, it's about the quality.
• The is no such thing as down time in a startup practice - your open slots can be used for marketing!
• How to get your team comfortable with asking for deposits, and how effective are these?

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Please don't forget to share with us on Instagram when you are listening to the podcast AND if you are really wanting to show us love, then please leave a 5 star review on iTunes! [Click here to leave a review on iTunes]

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p.s. Some links are affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase, I will earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you. Please understand that we have experience with these products/ company, and I recommend them because they are helpful and useful, not because of the small commissions we make if you decide to buy something. Please do not spend any money unless you feel you need them or that they will help you with your goals.

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Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)

Michael: All right. It's time to talk with our featured guest, Michelle Afanato. Michelle, how's it going?

Michelle: going great. It's going great.

Michael: Wonderful. Wonderful. Massachusetts. It's about to get real beautiful out there pretty soon

Michelle: here It is I love fall in Massachusetts. Probably like my favorite season.

Michael: Yeah. Yeah, it's really good It's like, you know, not too hot not too cold or anything. Just perfect.

Michelle: Perfect and very colorful.

Michael: Nice. Awesome. So Michelle, let's dive into a little bit of your area expertise But before we get into that, can you tell us how you? Cut to where you are right now.

Michelle: Yeah, I've been in dentistry since I was 15.

Ironically, like my mom was like, you need a job. So she just called the local dentist and I went in and I started pulling and filing charts on the weekends, then kind of learned the front desk, worked my way up, went to school to be a dental assistant, but was cross trained. So I knew the front, I knew the clinical, um, and I kind of like worked my way up and out of an office.

So I was office manager. I've done a lot of things. And finally, I was like, I think there's more for me. I need to to branch out and help people, not just 1 office, but multiple offices. So I did consulting for a little while, just here in New England with existing practices and acquisitions. But I was really drawn to the startups.

and so I left that for a little while, and then I went to work at a local bank and did the, um, financing for startups. I was kind of the person inside that was making sure they could repay the loan, kind of tracking the metrics for them. and then I went to a company, uh, I'm sure a lot of people know Ideal Practices, uh, that just worked with startups.

So I worked there for a while and got really, in tune with what the startup doctors are looking for, what they need to have a successful practice. And then most recently, about two years ago, I went out on my own. So now I can serve not just startups, but anybody looking to be like a first time practice owner, whether it's a startup or an acquisition.

Michael: So you've been in dentistry for Oh, wow. A lot

Michelle: of, a lot of years.

Michael: Yeah. For a minute now. Awesome. So then you are now working specifically as a consultant for startups and acquisitions or?

Michelle: That is correct. I mean, I, I do a lot of, team training too for, That I do for like a two week boot camp that I do to get them on boarded so they have a good foundation when they get into the practice. So

Michael: then Michelle, what's your area of expertise?

Michelle: My area of expertise is working with the dentist to help them. Understand the business side of the practice, right?

They go to school to be clinicians and great clinicians, but all of a sudden they want to own their own practice and that's a whole other world for them. Mm hmm.

Michael: Yeah, it's super different. And I remember when, um, I went out there one time to, with Ideal Practices to speak a little bit. You knew a lot. You can do a lot. Yeah. I can do a lot. So if you don't mind me asking, What specifically were you doing? Uh, that was it like just, uh, building their analytics or, or the team training that you were doing or.

Michelle: When I was with idle practices, I did a little bit of, of everything, like the training, helping them, you know, hire the right staff, discussion with like marketing, internal, external, ground marketing, setting up the systems and protocols, training the staff to make sure that everybody.

New what they were doing on opening day, right? It's not just about opening those doors and seeing patients on the first day. You want to have an excellent patient experience. As well as like, you know, some solid systems. You want them raving about you and writing that five star review. Like, wow, I can't believe this was their first day.

So, and then working with the doctor too to understand the metrics of the practice. You know, a startup is, is unique. And every startup is different. So, working with idle practices, I probably opened close to 200 startups. And I can tell you there were not two that were alike. Every doctor's vision is different.

They want to do things a little bit differently. You know, their philosophy is different. So, you know, you have to be able to adapt to that and help them support their vision.

Michael: Can you break it down for us and tell us what do we need to have in place for opening

Michelle: day? Yes. I think it's really important that you're hiring, team members and it's the appropriate amount of team members.

Uh, you can't overstaff.

so having staff, uh, team members that have experience, but not too much experience. I kind of like the 1, 1 to 5 years of experience because they have a little bit of knowledge, but they're also willing to adapt to your way. I'm not saying that somebody with 10 or 20 years of experience isn't going to be great for your practice, but they tend to like to do things their way.

And a lot of times what I have found with the younger doctors is they try to run the practice and it's not the doctor's practice. So making sure you have the right people on board and taking the time to make sure everybody is trained. Before you start seeing patients, a lot of times you, you know, you get that certificate of occupancy and you're really excited.

You're like, I got rent that I got to pay. I have bills that are coming in. I got to start seeing patients. But if you don't take the time to properly train your team. You know, it's not going to be a great patient experience and you could be losing money if they're not billing correctly. If they're not answering the phones correctly, and you're not getting the patient scheduled.

So I typically say, take 2 weeks, and it doesn't have to be 14 days, but if your office is going to be open 3 days a week to start, it's 6 days to train them, the clinical side and the administrative side, so that when you open your doors It doesn't feel like it's the first day.

Michael: So then, let's, let's rewind a little bit.

I just got the certificate of occupancy, and then I'm like, okay, now I need to start, I got like one person that I just hired that I think they're fantastic and everything. How far out should I start, like, okay, so opening day is, you know, rent's coming up, my, the contractor had so many delays, I'm already starting, my free rent's almost over, right, kind of thing.

How far out? Should we say, okay, opening day is this, I have one team member right now, who's learning open dental or Oryx, right? how do we do this now?

Michelle: I always go backwards from your anticipated opening day, right? You get the construction timeline, and I, you know, you want to make sure that you're staying constant, contact with them to make sure that there's no delays or whatever.

But we go with the anticipated opening day, and then I go back. Eight weeks. That's when you should start hiring because it takes probably a month, maybe a little bit longer to get somebody on board. They got to give two weeks notice if they're working somewhere else. You want them hired and ready to work for you two weeks before you're ready to start seeing patients.

That way you can get trained. You're answering the phones. You're getting patients scheduled. They're learning everything like the software, the phone system, you know, insurance stuff, they're getting that all ready for you. So I have seen, you know, I do, I do watch the Facebook groups. I watch a lot of this and, and I do see some doctors panic.

I'm opening next week and I don't have my staff. What am I supposed to do? it's better to start sooner. Eight weeks or so. And even if you're delayed, usually if you're in good communication with this employee, you can let them know and then they can even delay giving their notice if needed.

Michael: Gotcha. Okay. So then can you give us like a checklist? What needs to be trained? What needs to be, let's just say, okay, I want to be super confident or at least 90 percent confident tomorrow opening day. What needs to be on that checklist?

Michelle: Yeah, absolutely. Um, you definitely need software training and I require that for everybody, even if they've used the software before, because chances are they never got properly trained by your trainer and have learned like some bad habits along the way.

So everybody gets software training. you want them trained on telephone skills, how you want the phones answered, what information to be collected. You want them trained on scheduling, presenting your financial protocols. case presentation, if you're working with any third party financing companies.

You want them to have training on that. You want them to have training on the insurances. What are you in network with? Are you going to be using a company to outsource eligibility and benefits? If so, they're part of the team too. And you guys have to talk about like, how are you going to communicate and get the information over to them back and forth?

you also have to be trained like clinically, they need to know how to use the sterilization area, how to do maintenance. On the units on on the mechanical equipment, you want to make sure that your x rays are working. Nothing worse than day 1 going to take an x ray and like, nothing is set up properly and I usually recommend that you bring in a patient.

A close friend or family member to come in and that you can practice this all on. You check them in. You go through the flow. You know, if you're using Modento or next health or any of those like 3rd party ones, like, how can they fill out the forms? What is the ease of use for the patients? You check them in.

You do, an office tour. If you want to, you can get them seated. You do. Like an exam x rays and if you want to do a pro fee, make sure the handpiece works, go ahead and do a pro fee, but you're not going to go do an implant on them. You're going to do something simple to make sure you have everything you need.

And that all of your equipment is working, you check them out, you collect a payment from them, uh, you do everything that you would do with a regular patient. So you've kind of got the like first aid jitters out of the way when you're seeing this patient.

Michael: Okay, so like a rehearsal, right? Yeah, exactly.

Gotcha. So it's. Software, telephone, scheduling, case presentation, insurances, clinically, x rays, right, making sure all the tech is in the clinical side doing good, then you want to practice all of that with a new patient. Do we do any type of, also we're going to rehearse, like, internal marketing, like how to ask for reviews and things like that, or?

Michelle: Yes. Yes. I mean, there's so many things to, uh, to name off. Like, yes, definitely asking for reviews, extremely important. And one other thing I stress, is when they're answering that phone. They need to get that referral source. How did that patient hear about us? Because you're doing a lot of different marketing things when you're opening your practice and we need to know what's working a lot of the marketing agencies.

They have great tracking in their dashboards, but they really only track until the patient makes the phone call. They don't know like if the patient showed up or what your treatment plan is for them. So it's really important that every single new patient comes in the referral sources entered. Into the software.

Michael: So you put in the referral source, like let's just say, Oh, I heard you from like Michelle, right? My friend of mine who works downstairs from you or whatever and then do you also track how much treatment they? Put down.

Michelle: Yes, absolutely Okay, why? Uh, because you want to see, like, especially if it's word of mouth, that's one thing, but if you're paying marketing dollars or you're taking the time to do some of this ground marketing things, you want to see what's working.

So for example, I had an office a long time ago that before opening day, she had over 200 patients on her schedule, but she was sending out postcards offering, you know, a 59 new patient special. And what we found was a lot of those patients. They were coming in for the first visit, but they weren't scheduling their recare appointments and they weren't scheduling treatment.

They were kind of bouncing to the next office that had a special for them. So great that you had 200 patients when you opened the door, but you weren't able to retain them. Now, I also had another office that sent out postcards and said to me, Michelle, I think it was a failure. I think the campaign was a failure.

I only got six patients, but I looked at it and I said, from those six patients, you've got 35, 000 worth of treatment. So they were patients that came in and actually needed something and came back for that work. So you have to look at it both ways. You've got to track and say, like, it's not just the quantity of patients that are coming through the door, but it It's the, um, the quality of that patient.

Mm hmm.

Michael: Yeah, me personally, I'd rather have like, less but more, you know what I mean? Like, less patients, less stress, but like, they care and the quality, then a ton of them and they're like, why discounts and stuff like that. So, okay. This is a good checklist then. Now, If we were to, if we were to say, Michelle, I need you to hire the people for this.

How many people do we need for this? let's just say one has like, I need you to hire as minimal as possible. And then one's like, I don't care. There's the, hire as many as you need.

Michelle: So I always look, and I talk to the doctor about their vision too, because I ask a lot of them, are you willing to do any hygiene in the beginning, if it's a general practice or a pedo practice, right?

Are you willing to do hygiene? I have some doctors that say, yeah, I'm totally willing to do it. And I have other doctors that say like, absolutely not. So that doctor there is going to have to hire more people. Like you're probably going to need a hygienist in there. but a doctor that's willing to do some hygiene, even if it's for a couple months, you're going to save a Now, there's a big debate on this.

So, could you hire a hygienist and maybe have more production coming from the hygienist and, you know, be able to do more same day dentistry? Yes. Right now, hygienists are commanding a very large salary. And as a startup, your budget is very tight in the beginning. Working capital is, is very lean. So, that is a really personal choice on the hygienists that I would have with the doctor.

But typically, it would be one front office person and one assistant to start. I would also... Again, it depends on the doctor. Uh, what are they doing for marketing right now? I'm working with a pediatric dentist in Colorado. She's not opening until, January, like end of December, beginning of January. She had a very unique situation and people are flocking to her.

She already has 200 people on her list. She's going to events. she's not open until January. She's doing events. She's already going to pediatricians and general dentists and everything. So, in her case, we're going to need more than one front office and one assistant because we already know. And these people, they're holding out.

They know she's not opening. And they're like, we don't want to go anywhere else. We want you. Kind of followed her from a previous location. So you have to hear the story of the doctor and what they're willing to put in ahead of time to ensure that they have good patients, but a rule of thumb would be one front office person and one assistant.

And if they were both cross trained, that's a bonus.

Michael: Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha. So one front, one office. Yeah. So one can worry about the clinical side. One can worry about the front, like the telephone, the scheduling, case presentation, right? And then, so forth. Now, people listening to this, not all everybody, some, we have some listeners, right?

We have a lot of listeners. But one that, let's just say, they're listening and then they're like, Ah, opening day has passed. Can you do this on like a random, like, hey, open house day, kind of thing?

Michelle: Absolutely. any of this. So if you opened your office and you didn't do all this training or you didn't do all this marketing, most startups have time in their schedule.

Most startups are not completely full. So we have time and you block it in your schedule. So there's no such thing as like downtime in a startup. If you have open time in your schedule, you're going to do marketing. You're going to get out there. You're going to see what events you can do. You're going to make TikToks and stuff for social media.

You have to use that time to do that. In addition, if you didn't have the time to spend with your team in training, you utilize that too. It's never too late to start to do that, but you have to do it.

Michael: Gotcha, gotcha. So you're kind of setting yourself on the right foot when we have the first day, right? But if the first day has already passed and we're listening to this episode now, It would be like an open house kind of day, right?

We can kind of set it up for that. So then, how would you recommend, once we're open and we're listening to this, and we want to do this, would we follow the same protocols, or how would we change it?

Michelle: Um, I would follow, like, the same checklist, but it might be a little bit different because now you're open.

So some of the things would have to be a little bit modified, a bit. But you could use that checklist as a guide to make sure that you felt solid in each of those areas.

Michael: Gotcha. What things would have to be

Michelle: modified? so ahead of time, right? We don't always know. We think something should go a certain way.

Financial protocols, for example. a lot of people now are asking for deposits. To schedule an appointment. So maybe in the beginning, we said we're gonna ask for a $200 deposit for somebody to schedule for us. But now you've been open for two weeks and you're kind of finding like, oh, well people aren't scheduling treatment 'cause we're asking for this $200.

So now you have to reevaluate that system and say like, okay, maybe a hundred dollars is better. Maybe we need to, you know, change this or, you know, this is how we're answering the phone. we thought that would work from the beginning, but we're noticing a lot of people are saying, Oh, well, let me call you back instead of actually scheduling.

We'd want to modify that. Hmm.

Michael: Okay. So little adjustments here and there that can work for you when it comes to that, the deposit. It's interesting. You brought that up. Have you seen that work? Like where it's like, Hey, we need a 200 deposit first or.

Michelle: it's a little bit tough with new patients. But new patients are the ones you probably need it the most from, because they have the highest no show rates.

so, but definitely, I have offices that, like, it's mandatory, if they want to schedule a restorative appointment and reserve time in a doctor's schedule, they have to put a deposit down. And that deposit's non refundable. So if they don't show up, it's like their cancellation fee. If they do show up, it gets applied to whatever their out of pocket expense would be.

Michael: Interesting. you, did you notice like declined, but the quality of the patient showed, or was it more like nothing changed?

Michelle: No, it definitely helps. So there's a couple of ways you can go about it. Uh, and there's probably like a whole episode that we could talk about just that. Uh, because A lot of startups, when they open, are, you know, they take a lot of insurances, right?

We want butts in the chair, so we, we do take, you know, more insurances where, than an established practice that might be trying to phase out of insurance. So if they're doing that, a hygiene appointment is typically going to be covered 100 percent by insurance. So it's hard to get a patient to put a deposit down for something that is supposed to be covered 100 percent from insurance.

So I tell everyone, start with... The restorative start with the restore or scaling and replanting because they would have a copayment for that. and you'll notice the people that put money down. They're less likely to no show unless it's something really, really major. the people that don't put anything down.

Those are the ones that, like, they just don't see that value in it, and you do see a higher no show rate with them.

Michael: How much do you recommend

Michelle: we charge? Um, it depends on the area. Uh, I have some offices I would not do less than 50. I have some offices, the majority of them do, like, 100 or 150. Um, but I do know of a few offices that I've worked with that ask for 20 percent of the procedure.

So, like, if you're doing an implant or, like, you know, a bunch of treatment, It could be a couple hundred dollars that they have to put down.

Michael: How can we deal with the, I guess the, not conflicts, but the people who are like, are you serious? I have to, I didn't do it last time. What do I have to do at this time?

Like, what's going on? How do

Michelle: we do? Well, that's why it's great. A lot of startup doctors will say, I don't want to do it because I don't want to like, you know, upset any patients. No, you have to do it from the beginning because you're setting the rules and the tone, but people have to put deposits down.

Like, When I go to get a massage, I have to put a deposit down to reserve my time with her, or like hair salons, like it's becoming more common now. So I don't see much pushback from patients. Um, the only pushback would be like, I see some people saying like, Oh, maybe we are charging too much. So let's reduce it a little bit, but people are willing to do it because they have to pay it anyways.

And then it helps the office know if somebody can't put down a hundred dollar deposit for this crown. Are they really going to follow through or be able to pay for this crowd?

Michael: Yeah, I mean, are they serious or are they just like, yeah, I'll do it right now. Right. Gotcha. Okay. That's very interesting. So then there is no script really, right?

When it comes to someone who's holding back and be like, wait, hold up. I don't want to do that. I don't want to put a deposit. I'm going to show up, but I'm not going to put a deposit down. Shouldn't my insurance cover it? Right? Like, don't they? Is there a script for that

Michelle: stuff or no? I usually just let them know we are reserving 90 minutes, two hours in the doctor's schedule.

and yes, you do have some insurance benefits to help you towards that, but it won't cover 100 percent for this type of procedure. So we do require that you pay, you know, 100 deposit, which will go towards that out of pocket expense. So when you come in next visit, like you only have to bring for that visit. Most people are fine with it. but It does take, like, if you have a staff member that's worked in an office previously that never had to ask for it, it does take a lot of training and, roleplaying it out for them to be comfortable

Michael: with it. Yeah, I would totally want to roleplay, because I can totally see a staff member being like, let's just say Michelle came in, said to do this, they do it, but you know, the staff member maybe feels like uncomfortable saying that or doing it, asking for money up front.

Yeah. And then they kind of put themselves in the shoes and they're like, I would never do that. I would never pay. You know what I mean? So I don't know why we're making them pay when, and then they tell the doctor that, and then the doctor's like, well, you know, she's a good staff member. He's a good staff member.

So how do that?

Michelle: Well, I try, I try to head that off, uh, during the interview process. Kind of talk to them about it. You know, how do you feel like we do some high end dentistry? How do you feel about collecting money from people? we're going to be asking for deposits. Is that something that you would feel comfortable with?

I'd make it part of the interview process so you know ahead of time if they're going to be, because I have run across. quite a few front office people that will say like, you know, they have a hard time selling treatment or getting the deposit because they know themselves they could never afford it or wouldn't do that.

So you have to hire people that, have the right mindset towards it. Okay. What

Michael: if they've already been, what if they're working already? They're working and everything like that. And then we're, you know, they're listening to this episode and we're going to implement the deposit. We try, but then they're like, doctor, I would never pay.

I don't know why we're making, uh, where we're doing this, you know, how do we deal with it then?

Michelle: yeah, it's a little bit of a challenge. And because if they're a good employee, like all around, and this is the one thing I think if you sit down and really explain to them why, right, a lot of employees, they have no idea why we're implementing things.

We just tell them we need to do this. So if we explain to them why and help them overcome that doubt that they have, most likely they're going to do it. When they understand, you

Michael: know, yeah, so it's kind of like be patient, take the time to talk to them.

Michelle: Cause like I said, a lot of times in dentistry, I've noticed this, like working in an office and even, you know, working with doctors, the doctors, you know, we'll just come in and say like, we're changing our policy and this is what we're doing.

And the staff just is like, oh, okay, I guess, but they don't understand why. So if we explain to them like, hey, our no shows are up a lot. Like whenever somebody doesn't show up for this appointment, we lose, you know, four or five hundred dollars. Like we want people to come in here that are going to be serious about the treatment.

Because there is a lot of people that do want to get in. And if this person isn't serious, they're holding up a spot for somebody else that could get in. When you start explaining it like that to the team members, then they're kind of like, I get it. And it's also. To charge 100 or 50 cancellation fee, like that's hard to collect.

A lot of people won't pay it and a lot of doctors just end up writing it off anyways. This way we already know that patient is serious.

Michael: Oh, so instead of charging the cancellation fee, yeah, you know what I mean? Do you believe in that or no? Do you say like, no, don't ever charge a cancellation

Michelle: fee? Um, I feel like in some circumstances it's warranted, but to me, a 50 cancellation fee is not going to deter somebody, most, most patients from it.

for me, I would rather say, like, I'm really sorry that you can't make the appointment today because our next availability isn't until December. Them not being able to get in right away hurts more than them paying 50.

Michael: Hmm. Interesting. Okay. But that, the deposit... Pulls that back a

Michelle: lot. Exactly. Exactly.

Because we say to them, like, if you don't show up or you don't give, you know, 48 hours notice, you do forfeit that deposit and you'd have to put another deposit to come in.

Michael: Oh, so double deposit. Interesting. It works. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. I like that better than the cancellation policy. Interesting. Okay. So then Michelle, what can a dentist or practice owner do today to improve their marketing or business?

Michelle: Marketing, as you know, what works for one doctor does not work for every doctor. So you have to, you have to be willing to try. You have to be willing to step outside of your comfort zone. In order to do it.

And the biggest thing that I tell doctors is when you start doing something and you see it's working and all of a sudden you have an influx of patients. Every doctor tends to do this. So, like, I'm gonna take my foot off the gas pedal and I'm gonna stop doing marketing because I have too many patients right now.

And then I get a phone call. My schedule is sparse. Like, I don't have any patients. So when you find something that works. You know, whether it be sending out mailers, maybe it's going to an event at a, like a senior center or, or an apartment complex or going to the schools, whatever it is that works for you, keep doing it, just keep doing it and don't take your foot off the gas pedal because once you do that, especially in that first year of a startup, or even a first year of acquiring a practice, the second you do that, you will see it slow down.

So you need to make sure that you, you stay on top of it.

Michael: Interesting. Okay. And now these next questions are just to get into the head of someone who isn't totally involved on the clinical side of dentistry, right? What would you like to see more from a dentist? Oh,

Michelle: that's a good question. From a, from a staff perspective and being somebody that, worked both clinical and administrative when I was in there, I would love for the dentist to try to understand the administrative staff a little better, right?

They, they click with the clinical staff, the assistants, the hygienist, they know what they're supposed to be doing all day, but they don't always know what the front office team, what that administrative team is doing. So, I think, like, their tendency is to kind of hang out with the clinical team more. I think they need to hang out with the administrative team more and learn more about what goes on up there.

Michael: Hmm. Do you feel like there's a disconnect? Or something like that? A lot

Michelle: of times, you know, the, the complaint that I hear, I swear I hear from every single office or front office person, the office manager will be, he always picks on us. Like we're working so hard all day long and the phones have been ringing.

We've got patients checking in and out. We're calling insurance companies. And we literally took five minutes for us to just talk for five minutes. And they came up here and said, like, what are you doing? Why isn't my schedule full? Like, and they pick on them then. So I want them to understand, like, they are busy for the majority of the day.

Like, and everybody gets, should have a chance to take a break. But really understanding what they're doing up there. going back a little bit to the training, I truly believe that every doctor that owns their own practice should know how to schedule appointments, should know how to submit insurance claims, check benefits, post payments, because it gives them a better appreciation for what is happening up front, but also, you know, with the way, the staffing is right now, you could be left by yourself, and you should know how to do all of that stuff.

Thank you.

Michael: Yeah, that's true. That's true. Interesting. Okay. So a better appreciation for and how do you suggest we can do that? Like, do we have front office team meetings only or let's just say the practice has been running already. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, how do we, how do you recommend we get a closer, I guess, understanding

Michelle: of that?

Yeah, I actually kind of like for the whole team to do something like, uh, You know, walk a day in my shoes kind of thing like sit up here with me so that you can see what I'm doing and just like I say to administrative team members like a lot of them don't have a clinical background. So when they're talking about treatment or understanding of schedule, they don't really know what's going on.

So I tell them, like, go in the back. Watch them do a crown prep. Watch them do an extraction. Watch them do this so you have a better understanding of it. So yes, administrative team meetings or just like if there's downtime for the doctor to sit up there and kind of get an understanding, ask them, ask the team, show me how you check benefits or show me how you, enter the insurance in there or show me how you post a payment.

Michael: Gotcha. So day in the shoe. I like that. I like that a lot. And then right now. What do you hate or dislike about dentistry?

Michelle: Honestly, the thing that I hate about dentistry or dislike the most is, and I know our listeners might be some actual like staff members, so I don't want to offend anybody, but I feel like the doctors are being like held hostage.

By the team, they're demanding very high salaries and there's so many people looking for staff members that like they're poaching people or like they're willing to offer the world and these startup practices, these small private practices are like, I can't afford these people or I'm just gonna have to keep paying them and sacrifice something else because I need good team members.

I don't like that that has happened in this industry.

Michael: Yeah. Well, how are you seeing, I guess, like your clients or you yourself, like, how are they kind of combating this?

Michelle: It depends on the situation. Every doctor is, is different. You know, I was with somebody earlier this week. That's like whatever they asked for.

I'm just going to give it to them because they're really good and I can't afford to lose them. And then I have another doctor that's like. I can't afford it. So I'm probably going to lose them and I'm going to have to hire somebody that has like little to no experience and train them because I can't afford the higher salaries.

So, it just depends on the situation.

Michael: So some people would just bite the bullet and do it. Yeah. And some people have to still stick with it. Because I've seen that. I've seen that in some practices where they're like, yeah, it's just, we're so tight. I have nobody who can do anything else, right? Like, there's nothing left.

It's a real tight team. Yeah. So yeah, I understand that. And then right now, what do you love about dentistry?

Michelle: Um, I think it's what I've loved like always about dentistry is just like, I love how caring The doctors are, they have the biggest, kindest hearts. They want to do everything for their teams. They want to do everything for the patients.

And I feel like it's a little bit to a fault sometimes, right? But I just feel like everything that is going on in the industry, like the challenges that we're facing, doctors, at least the ones that I've been working with, the passion that they have to make sure that they take great care of their patients and their team.

That's what I love. about it. It's why, like, I feel like I never work a day in my life because I just, I talk to these doctors and it makes me happy every time I get off the phone with them.

Michael: That's good. And then what needs to change in your opinion for people, the general population, to be more open to dentistry?

Michelle: Yeah, they need to get out of this insurance, dental insurance mindset because it is not, it is not insurance, right? It's a, it's a coupon or something with a lot of restrictions. It's there to help them towards the cost of treatment, not cover everything like medical insurance does or car insurance. And the patients, if the public were better educated on that, I think it would help a lot in dentistry.

We'd be able to sell more treatment to patients, uh, we'd be, you know, less stressed out about it because the doctors wouldn't be stressing about, I have to stay in network or else I'll lose all these patients. They could go out of network and get reimbursed higher. So I wish that there was something out there to educate the patients a little bit more on what the dental benefit really is.

Michael: Yeah, yeah, you're right. It's like a forever coupon, right? As long as the patient has it, it's always gonna continue to... How do you think we can start doing that then, in your opinion? How can we start? Educating the patients just like every patient that comes in. We talked to them about it or

Michelle: you can talk to the patients. A lot of offices do that, especially when they offer like a membership plan because they can say they can compare it. you're paying this much because patients don't know how much they're paying for their dental insurance because right if it gets automatically deducted from your paycheck, you don't know really.

How much you're paying towards it and showing them like, well, but this is what you're getting for benefits, but. You can only have 2 of these a year, or like this, you can only have done once every 5 years, or, the frequency limits. There's a lot of limitations there. the other thing, that offices do are, I have some offices do is like some of the larger employers in the area.

If they connect with the HR department, they can go in and talk to the team and start, like, explaining, like, this is the plans that you're being offered. By your employer. Let me explain it a little bit more in detail how it would work in a dental office for you.

Michael: Yeah, that's true. I think whenever we do like a lunch and learn or like, you know, the senior citizen home strategy or a lot of these other strategies where we're talking with even like a hotels, right?

We're talking to employees. And we get to the Q and a section of it, right of the presentation or whatever, like any questions or concerns, right? Sometimes the whole presentation is just questions. 90 percent of all of them are just like about insurance. It's all insurance. So the doctor's even like, why am I here?

I should have like, I was ready to talk about implants, but my front office should have came right and talked about this. So it's uh, it's interesting. Interesting how many of them, you know what I mean, are like, does my insurance cover this? What if I have this? Last time I tried to go in here and it didn't cover it.

So it's more of that stuff.

Michelle: Yeah. And for the patients to understand, like, just because a doctor is not in network does not mean they can't go to that doctor. 99 percent of the PPO dental plans allow you to see an out of network provider. And they just need to understand, like, what that means. so I think it's really like, I wish we could, you know, put something together for like all patients out there, like a news thing, a documentary, like something, a Netflix original , just , like dental insurance.

It's great because it will help you towards the cost of treatment, but it's not there. Like medical insurance, you don't pay your $50 copayment and they cover everything else.

Michael: Yeah, it's a whole different, different type of insurance. It's coupon. Like you said, Yeah. Alrighty, Michelle, thank you so much for being with us.

It's been a pleasure, but before we say goodbye, can you tell our listeners where they can find you?

Michelle: Sure. You can check out my website, which is, uh, affinity management. com. or you can email me directly, michelle at affinity management. com. And they can also find me on social media, Instagram, and Facebook.

Uh, just look at Michelle Affinity Management.

Michael: Okay, affinity. Is it affinity because of Afanato? Oh, a little bit,

Michelle: yes. Okay, okay. And an affinity for my love of dentistry.

Michael: Yeah, I gotcha. Okay, okay. Because I was thinking that right now when you said that.

Michelle: Well, and the AM, the Affinity Management, Michelle Afanato.

The AM reversed.

Michael: Oh, yeah. Okay, there was some thought into it then. Interesting. Interesting. Awesome, Michelle. Thank you so much. And guys, that's going to be in the show notes below. So definitely check it out. And thank you so much, Michelle, for being with us. It's been a pleasure. And we'll hear from you soon.

Michelle: Thank you for having me.

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If you do want to work with Patient News, they offer a free demographic analysis to help you find the PERFECT patients in your area by targeting your top consumer. Click the link here to get started! https://patientnews.com/market-analysis/‍

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In this week's Monday Morning Marketing episode, join us as we sit down with Karen Galley, a marketing expert from Patient News, a company that has played a pivotal role in guiding over 7,500 healthcare professionals through more than 75,000 successful marketing campaigns. Today, we delve into the world of Membership Plans and explore their remarkable impact on patient value. Karen shares a fascinating statistic: Membership plan patients are 73% more valuable than their non-member counterparts. We also dissect the critical issue of patient retention, pinpointing the feeling of indifference towards them as the number one reason patients leave practices. Furthermore, Karen emphasizes the significance of answering every call by revealing that missing more than even 5% of incoming calls could cost you dearly. Lastly, we delve deep into psychographics, unraveling the intricacies of understanding your potential patients' psychological profiles and crafting marketing strategies that resonate with them.

For an insightful discussion that could revolutionize your membership plan marketing game, don't miss this episode!

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You can reach out to Karen Galley here:

Website: https://patientnews.com/

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Other Mentions and Links:

Practice Zebra

Delta Dental

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

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

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

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Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)

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Michael: Hey Karen, so talk to us about membership plans. How can we utilize this or what advice, suggestions, or methods can you give us that will help actually attract new

Karen: patients with our membership plans? All right. Membership plans. That's a big topic and it works differently for every different practice.

You know, it all starts with the data and it starts with your practice location and your geography. Every single practice is different. So patient news. We've been in 30 years. We're actually celebrating our 30th anniversary. And we specialize in direct mail marketing. We also have, the whole web and little bit of the social side as well.

But the cornerstone, the backbone of our operation is practice zebra. And this is where the data is pulled from. So we've worked with 7500 on. More than 75, 000 campaigns, but this is where the data speaks to your marketing programs. I know we want to focus in on dental membership plans, so I did pull some interesting data for us. each practice is different, but on the whole, dental membership plan patients are more valuable. than your uninsured patients.

So just looking at the overarching data, it can be quite significant. You know, one practice, for example, their uninsured patients have an annual value of 985. Their dental membership plan patients are 3, 528. So if you can convert more uninsured patients To your dental membership plan patients, 73 percent of the time, not 100 percent of the time, but 73 percent of the time you will generate more practice.

revenue practice production. And those are the stats too. So it doesn't work that way for every practice. In some instances, the uninsured patients are actually more valuable. So the whole conversation about whether you want to push and promote the plan is really specific to your data, your metrics, your market area.

And unless you have that data, You might be pushing something that is actually not helping you to achieve higher productivity, higher production. So you really have to, you know, sort of understand those metrics. Once you know that your dental membership plan patients are more valuable, then you look at ways to attract them.

And that's where marketing comes in. Advertising, marketing, educating your community about your dental membership plan program is the first step in attracting those higher value new patients to your practice. So that can include direct mail marketing. It can include paid media strategies.

Obviously, your website is the. Core cornerstone of your marketing operation. A lot of patients, end up on line doing further research. So it's obviously critical to have an excellent presence with your online marketing as well. But certainly with your direct mail efforts. When we talk about offer strategy, promotion of that dental membership plan is really important.

Incidentally, dental membership plan patients are also on the whole more valuable than your average patient. you have Delta, whatever other networks that you're involved with. Your average patient value for patient news, it's about 1, 000 an average patient value annually, and your average patient value tends to be less than your dental membership plan patients too.

There's uninsured, there's dental membership plan, and there's other plans and 73 percent of the time, the dental membership plan patients are actually. You're most valuable. It's very interesting. So very important to promote those patients if that's the way your numbers and your metrics work.

Michael: Gotcha. So then from the experience you have, where do you see like, okay, they're converting insurance patients really well because they're doing this besides like educating, what are they saying to their patients to convert opposed to someone who's like, Oh, we're not really getting these numbers anymore.

Remember your plan is here if you want to sign up.

Karen: what happens in the practice is less our area of focus. Our area of focus is getting those dental membership plan patients in the door and actually talking to your uninsured patients in between appointments to interest them in coming to your dental membership plan.

So it's really important to be communicating with your active patient base on a regular basis, patient newsletters. Talking to your patients in between appointments. The number one reason patients attrite, by the way, or leave a practice is they perceive that the practice is indifferent to them.

So they're attracted away by other offers and, other opportunities. So showing your patients that you care in between appointments, not just with a transactional message. Or bill pay or whatever, but an actual communication of value to those patients and maybe even about your plan, especially those uninsured patients.

So a physical patient newsletter in the mail delivers tremendous value as well as your automated patient communication. Practice Zebra, which is our data platform, has a module specific to dental membership plan patients. It only speaks to those uninsured patients on a cadence in between appointments to remind them about this great opportunity that you have.

So you want to have some automated communications. You want to deliver value in between those patient appointments. those are the best ways to reach your existing patients. And as far as the outreach to community, again, it comes back to every practice is different. I hear people come on these programs and say, this is what I did.

This worked. This is amazing. This is what you need to do. And that might be the case, but every single market area is different, every practice is different, the mix of services is different, so you really have to dig in deep into those demographics and those purchasing behaviors, what is the ideal target within your community, do those patients live in your community?

And then look at all of this data, including the value of your dental membership plan patients, if you already have a plan, and then decide what makes sense to be promoting in community. Should I be promoting a second opinion opportunity? Should I be promoting a special offer opportunity? And again, what's happening competitively in your market area?

So I would love to just give broad strokes on what you should do. What I can tell you, you should do is know the metrics have a deep understanding of your market area. And, look to that expertise and experience to help you then craft the plan. That's going to work the best for your practice in your location.

Does that make sense?

Michael: A hundred percent, because I feel like a lot of the times we ask other ones like, what's your promotion? What are you doing? And then they're like, Oh, this works the best for us. And then they try it. And then it kind of does it. it goes a different way. And so Karen, how do we even go about doing step one?

If we're listening right now and we're like, we want to do step one, know the metrics or the demographics. So we know what promotion to tailor to our, community. How would we go about doing that?

Karen: you know, I certainly don't want to deliver shameless self promotion, but we are offering a complimentary deep demographic analysis, so any of your listeners can contact Patient News.

We will take a deep dive on the community in terms of age, income, homeowners versus renters, demographics, psychographics, purchasing. We even look at drive times. We look at barriers. Does somebody have to do a U turn on the highway to get to your location? We... Do the connection to zebra. We look at how valuable are your dental membership plan patients compared to your uninsured compared to your average patient value.

Should you be aggressively promoting that plan or institute a plan at your location? If you don't already have 1, we actually do a patient plotting geographically. So we take all of your active patients and you may know who your high value patients are. You may be able to pull a list like these are my high value patients.

But can you pinpoint where they live within your community? you want more patients like your most valuable patients. And there could be like audiences in the community that you're not even aware of. So we do that connection to Zebra. We look at your patient data and your metrics. And then we do that deep demographic analysis.

And with all this information, hopefully you can improve upon your existing marketing plans. Of course, for patient news, we would love to be helpful in executing the actual marketing program, whether it's direct mail outreach to the community or to your existing patients of record to increase the value within the practice.

The last thing I want to touch on, it does relate to Dental Membership Plan but effectiveness of marketing, and I know everyone's heard it before, is call handling. And how you manage those incoming calls to the practice. So Zebra does have call tracking, call scoring, and a team training component.

I pulled our latest metrics. The average practice answers 73 percent of the calls live. So they're missing more than 25 percent of all incoming calls. Top performing practices answer 95 percent or more. So just answering those calls live, patients don't wait around, especially if they're uninsured or they're in pain and they're looking, for an immediate solution, whatever the case, they don't wait, they'll move on to the next opportunity.

In terms of conversion, when they do call in, 56 percent is the average conversion rate from a call in to an appointment. Top performing practices are at 83 percent conversion. So there's a massive delta in phone performance, in call performance, which I can't, understate the value to the practice in terms of production.

we've seen it in the hundreds of thousands. of dollars in variants for live call answer and conversion rates. So even when you're talking dental membership plan patients or any others, focusing on that call handling is critical and utilizing, tools and artificial intelligence the way we do in Zebra to help you identify those opportunities and missed calls is really critical in this day and age.

You can't be behind the times when it comes to technology in your. practice.

Michael: Yeah. No, that's fantastic. In the deep dive that you guys do, real quick, I just want to ask, you mentioned something called

Karen: yeah, that has to do with, who is your patient?

for example, what are they, buying? Are they purchasing healthcare? What are their purchasing habits? What activities, are they involved in? Are we talking soccer moms? Do they have busy schedules? It's more than just the demographics. It's more than just their age, their income, ethnicity.

It dives deeper into behaviors. And purchasing, patterns. It's really interesting. And of course, the female head of household at the end of the day does make, the lion's share of healthcare decisions for the family. I don't want to discount the guys and they do more, you know, a little bit more activity online.

But when it comes to traditional family environment, that female head of household is really, in charge of those health care decisions. So we talk about the marriage between the demographic and the practice services. You also have to make sure that your profile of services within practice are going to marry who is in your community and what their interest levels are.

So again, when it circles back to content and offer strategy, those things need to be in sync. in order to be the most effective new patient draw. I should talk too about format. When we talk about direct mail, again, we've delivered more than 75, the 30 years, 75, 000 distinct campaigns, and we have the data.

There's various formats. There's postcards. There's three panel formats. There's newsletter formats. They all have a place in market. If you're talking advertising, versus education and promotion and awareness building, but In all of our analysis, newsletters outperform postcards.

Not in every single market, but in most markets. And we've mailed millions and millions of pieces. Obviously, A B testing is very important. and if a of our clients use it for a quick... Promotion, you've got an open house, or you have a discounted offer. God forbid, nobody likes discount.

But if you're looking to very quickly build volume, maybe it's a little lesser value patient than postcards have a place. The newsletter, which has much more real estate. Is the educational piece that helps to elevate you within your community as an expert and gives you the platform to share your expertise and it gives that female head of household the confidence level she needs information to make an informed decision and when you send something regularly in community like that, it's just a very effective.

Program for our clients.

Michael: awesome Karen, I appreciate your time and if anyone has further questions, you can definitely find her in the Dental Marketer Society Facebook group or where can they reach out to you directly?

Karen: They can definitely reach out to patientnews. com. And I'm happy to speak with anyone directly as well, who would want to reach out to me. They can message me through the group. And anyway, Michael, it's been great and nice to meet you. I'll look forward to being on again sometime. Awesome.

Michael: So Karen, thank you for being with me on this Monday morning marketing episode.

Thank you, Michael.

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Guest: Conor PerrinPractice Name: The Tooth Co.Check out Conor's Media:

Website: https://thetoothco.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.tooth.co/

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Other Mentions and Links:

Meta Ads

PowerPoint

Bank of America

Provide

Wells Fargo

Invisalign

Ground Marketing Course

Indeed

Curve

Windows 95

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Host: Michael Arias‍Website: The Dental Marketer

Join my newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/‍

Join this podcast's Facebook Group: The Dental Marketer Society

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My Key Takeaways:

• When starting a practice always follow HOW you want to practice first. Other peers may have great suggestions, but if you have to make the final call in the end!
• Open ended questions are ideal for getting to know patients and adding a personal touch. If you are asking all yes or no questions, it will be difficult to be engaging and relate to them.
• In school, if you study hard, you should be guaranteed a good grade. In business, working hard is important, but doesn't mean you'll be successful.
• To attract a premium price demographic, be sure your brand reflects high quality more than discounts to get potential patients in!
• Making an emotional connection to patients is essential for successful treatment acceptance.

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Please don't forget to share with us on Instagram when you are listening to the podcast AND if you are really wanting to show us love, then please leave a 5 star review on iTunes! [Click here to leave a review on iTunes]

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p.s. Some links are affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase, I will earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you. Please understand that we have experience with these products/ company, and I recommend them because they are helpful and useful, not because of the small commissions we make if you decide to buy something. Please do not spend any money unless you feel you need them or that they will help you with your goals.

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Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)

Michael: all right, it's time to talk with our featured guest, Dr. Connor Perrin or Perron, how's it going, man?

Conor: How are you going? Did I say

Michael: it okay or no?

Conor: technically, yeah, if you're saying it in the French way, it is Peron, but uh, American way, just Peron.

Michael: Nice. Have you ever been to France? Is that where you're

Conor: from? Did a trip once a couple of years back to Paris and then uh, South of France. Beautiful. Oh, man.

Michael: Yeah. That's a spot out there. South of France. Awesome, man. So tell us a little bit about where you came from. You're past, you're present.

What

Conor: are you doing right now? So right now, I'm at my personal office right now. We just opened up a couple months ago, but I was born and raised in Orange County and I went to school at USC for undergrad and dental school finished up there and then stayed in L. A. For a couple years after I finished up and I knew that I always wanted to come back down this way.

It's just always been home to me. when I got started with this process, I looked around in Newport Beach, Irvine. And decided upon this building. I felt like it was in a very easy to access area for a lot of people from different parts of Orange County. And yeah, the entire build out, getting the loan set up process wise probably took a little bit over a year.

This is actually decently quick, considering I've heard some people take. Sometimes multiple years, but yeah, and then I've been associating part time and now I'm officially in my own practice full time, five days a week as of this week.

Michael: Nice, man. So rewind a little bit. Why did you decide to do a

Conor: startup?

So for me, I was actually not originally thinking that I was going to do a startup. I had a couple of friends who recommended one, but I was thinking, you know, I might want to just go and buy a practice because it might be a little bit easier to deal with. But, there were a couple of things that I noticed when I was, looking around I didn't have a ton of connections with people who are close to getting ready to sell.

And so I feel like a lot of sales that did happen tended to be passed around by word of mouth. Sometimes they wouldn't be listed and. I think maybe just because I am on the younger side, when I was asking, you know, some of these, brokers for information about potential listings, I feel like they maybe didn't take me seriously.

I was looking around a little bit more and some of the practices that I did see, I wanted to change so much of. The way that they practice dentistry, maybe the interiors, the equipment that they had, and it made me think, I'm going to spend so much money wanting to redo this immediately when I get it.

Why not just start from scratch and have everything in my vision from day one?

Michael: Okay, so you were looking for acquisitions at the beginning.

Conor: I was yes, but to find like a good one, it can be tough to find if you don't really have personally have not really had a true mentor So I haven't been able to use that to leapfrog to find a potential acquisition Gotcha.

Michael: Okay. You mentioned they didn't take you seriously Because of maybe they saw you like you were on the younger side and stuff like that. How'd you know? How'd you know they weren't taking you seriously?

Conor: for example, I would see a practice that I thought I was interested in and immediately I would reach out and they would text me and just be like, yeah sure, sure, sure. And I would want to set up a time immediately to meet either the head doctor or to check out the office and then I would get ghosted. And then about a week later, they're like, Oh, were you still interested in seeing the privacy? And I'm just like, Oh, I'm so sorry for your first choices, rejecting it.

And now you're trying to come back to me. I had very much got that impression from at least four different people. And I'm just like,

Michael: yeah, you're like, I'm your, I'm your second option.

Conor: You know? And so again, I think it is because they just heard, the year that I graduated and they probably thought that I wasn't truly serious about wanting to take that step into ownership.

What year did

Michael: you graduate? 21. Oh, 21. Oh, okay, man. So you're like, you said, I'm going to do

Conor: this. Yeah, I know. Exactly. Yeah. I just, I can be, I guess not picky the wrong word, but I just say, Yeah. I like to practice the way exactly I want to practice I think it's very important to associate you learn a ton of stuff, you pick up your speed, efficiency, how to talk to people, most importantly, but I just really wanted to be able to do everything the way that I wanted to, rather than the owner,

Michael: so then how exactly do you want to practice?

Conor: you know, there's like so many different ways that you can practice chemistry, but for me, I really value, deeper personal relationships and being able to spend a lot of individual time with each of my patients. I don't want to feel like also I'm having to hop between a lot of different rooms.

So when I book a patient here, I tell them, they're going to be here for X amount of time, and that's going to be completely undisturbed attention between me and them where I am treating them. I'm also really big on conservative dentistry. So I try not to, treatment plan any crowns unless I'm replacing a current one that might be defective.

And I'm really big on adhesive dentistry.

Michael: Gotcha. Gotcha. So building that relationship with the patient and then obviously the clinical side is what you wanted to, how'd you figure that out? What bad stuff were you experiencing? Like, I guess, incorporate or other stuff where you're like, I never want to do this.

And then some things where you're like, I can take this into my own practice.

Conor: We were very fortunate at USC. We got taught by Dr. Pascal Monnier and he is really big on biomimetic dentistry, very minimally invasive, conservative adhesive based dentistry. And so that's the way that me and my classmates all learned from the get go.

you take that for granted because then when you graduate. It's not like that at all in any offices. You're doing a lot of crown work. You're not really using a lot of the nice bonding materials that you're used to when we were at USC. And so when I hopped into my 1st position, started to see a lot of things like, more post op sensitivity maybe restorations not lasting as long as they should.

And I also, you I mean, everyone's very different, but I really don't like hopping around from chair to chair. It doesn't allow me to really be present with each person. And that's something, when I was in that first position that I did not like.

Michael: Gotcha. Okay. So that carried out and you're like, I'm not going to ever do that in my practice.

What were some of the things you decided you, you took away from other, you know what I mean? Like associates and you're

Conor: like, I'm going to do this. definitely systems, for example, they would contact patients when it would come to confirming their appointments different things that they wanted me, I guess, to say during an exam that would cause a patient to ask.

prompt them to be more open ended rather than just giving me a yes or no answer. So a lot of little things like that. And then also I've worked in offices that were more insurance based and then some offices that were you know, just filling them out for the patients.

So technically they were feed for service and and seeing the differences between the two, it made me realize. I wanted to be fee for service and just on behalf of the patient.

Michael: So right now, you're not with any insurance.

Conor: I'm not, which is terrifying.

You know, like the first week I saw friends and family and then I realized, Oh no, I have like no people on my schedule. And immediately I'm just like, I made a huge mistake. I have a consultant and so I'm talking with her. I'm just like, oh, I shouldn't have done this.

Give me all the information on someone, to get credential. And I also have another kind of scary phone call with a friend of a friend and he's just like, oh, you're making a huge mistake. You should definitely get credential. But, you know, after having, you know, a couple mild panic attacks that first week, I realized, this is not what I want to do.

It's not true to my vision. And this is not how I built this office. Unfortunately, just by advertising, mailers seem to be working a little bit of you know, direct person to person interaction. And Instagram stuff, I started to get a couple of people to come through the door in seeing just a few people and, having them pay out of pocket, you're still able to do just as well as you could be if you're seeing quite a few more patients and taking insurance and you're able to practice the way you want to and spend individual attention with them.

Again, different ways to practice, but I definitely realized, stay true to what you wanted to do and you're going to be happier that way.

Michael: Yeah, how many weeks or months have you been open

Conor: today or actually yesterday is officially three months

Michael: Okay, man. Do you think you're going to eventually hit that where you're like, okay, I'm panicking again.

I should probably get credentialed

Conor: I'm very lucky to have two other friends who are kind of in their startup journeys and they're right around the year mark. There's definitely ups and downs with months July and August are really good. I feel like this month we're maybe not doing quite as well as those two months.

But everything is slowly on an upward trend like that and there's still not a day that goes by right now where I'm just like, hey I took out this monster loan. Maybe I shouldn't have spent this much money to do all this stuff. I have a huge debt service at the end of the month, but it's natural.

I was able to get my tenant improvement check from my landlord recently, and so that's able to help pay some of the bills right now until things stabilize a little bit more so.

Michael: Okay. Got you, man. talked to a lot of people who are like, yeah, I eventually had to get credentialed.

and then eventually they try to phase it out. I don't know how easy it is to phase it out. You know what I mean? Because then they have to deal with I'm losing half my patients type of deal. You know what I mean?

Conor: Yeah. And the other thing is too, since you are a startup, I mean, realistically do they ask?

are you a network? I think we've gotten only 1 of those type of phone calls. Usually they will ask, do you take insurance? And I mean, the answer still is technically. Yes, we are very happy to build, but we explain that we still require up front payment, they will get reimbursed by their insurance company via check in around 2 to 3 weeks.

And as long as you explain things very clearly to each patient. Okay. They usually actually don't have a problem with that.

Michael: Gotcha. So it's communication. Exactly. Gotcha. Something you mentioned a little bit before I want to rewind, you said you learned some things that you would say to patients that would give them an open answer instead of like a yes or no.

What were some of those things?

Conor: When I'm starting out with a consultation, one of the things that I always like to ask a patient is what brought you here? And to tell me a little bit more about yourself, your journey, et cetera, rather than just, did you have braces?

Do you have popping or clicking? You know, immediately just yes, no, yes, no. I want them to open up more so. and that definitely carries it out into like a cosmetic consultation more so because you Really connect with the patient and try to get their emotions to say yes to what you're trying to offer them essentially, because you want to ask them like, Oh, how will this make you feel?

Or what are some of the things that you're wanting to get out of treatment that have brought you here? And so the more that they're starting to think about it, the more they almost realize. Hey, I really want to have this done.

Michael: Gotcha. How long is your new patient visits? Your first visit?

Conor: If the patient is really easy they're quick and they don't talk a lot, I can have them in and out of here in about, an hour and 20 minutes if they've not had a cleaning or if they're not doing a cleaning. Standard though, without a cleaning is an hour and a half.

If we get the cleaning in there and the patient's willing to stay, then maybe like two hours, two hours, 10 minutes.

Michael: Okay. Will it ever like go lower, less or anything as you get busier or you're like, no, I like that two hour

Conor: mark. I like it quite frankly, because I take lot of like DSLR photos and I like to use them to talk to the patient about what I'm seeing.

So by the time that I upload them into the computer, crop them, upload them into Oryx. My assistant takes the x ray, the scan, I'm like going as quickly as I can. I don't foresee it getting a little bit shorter. Okay.

Michael: Yeah. Okay. But the patient, how do they feel? Usually,

Conor: they don't have an issue with the length.

Sometimes they will have wanted a cleaning, but by the time that we're done, they go ahead and postpone the cleaning for like a week or two afterwards and we'll usually attach a little bit of treatment onto that cleaning appointment. Okay, gotcha. Because they're happy to come back anyway.

Michael: Yeah. I don't know.

That makes sense. That's nice though, man. You know what I mean? Like you're doing all that, the work behind it. You know what I mean? To

Conor: make sure. Oh, yeah. Thank you. And I feel taking better photos with the patient, know, intraoral and then also some portrait photography in case they do want to do aesthetic work or, you're using it to communicate with Invisalign or Ceramis.

I think the patient really sees the value in a lot of that. And again, when they see a very clear photo right in front of them cause we have a monitor right in front of our consultation room it becomes a lot more real to them rather than you just putting an instrument in there being like, Oh, I feel like a stick right there.

Michael: Yeah. That does feel a lot better. So then let's dive into a little bit about your build out process and your business here. first and foremost, who'd you go with for your loan?

Conor: think America. Why'd you pick them? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. oddly enough, they were the 1st bank that I talked to.

I was talking to another bank that I have a good relationship with, but they don't really do a lot of dental specific stuff. And so I wanted to go with 1 that had a dental specific component. I know Wells Fargo used to, I don't think they do currently, but then another good 1 is Provide. But, I talked to Ali, great guy, he's in charge, I think, of all the startup dental loans with, Bank of America, and when I looked at, what the interest rates were, and how the repayment is done, it seemed like a really, really good offer, and that's what I ended up deciding to go with.

Michael: Okay. And then how much was the loan for?

Conor: So regarding the loans, they'll kind of give you a different amount based off of what you're, trying to do. I started off with 600 and then I don't know if I'm supposed to be saying this or not, but then when the project went over budget, then I asked for a little bit more and I got a little bit more.

Michael: They were to give you a little bit more. Yeah.

Conor: how? Just later on when the project was close to completion, I'm just like, we need to up this

Michael: just pretty quick or not that quick?

Conor: Reasonably quick. Yeah, I was going to say, especially post COVID, it seems like construction costs have gone through the roof.

I was talking to my contractor about that. everything costs more. So that's why I feel like a lot of banks now they usually have a hard cut off, but then further on, if you need a little bit more, sometimes they will be generous and be willing to give you a little bit extra.

Michael: Gotcha. Okay. So then how much was your build out?

Conor: It was like close to a million.

Michael: Really? Yeah. Man. Like, why?

Conor: I put every amount of personal money that I had into this thing I maxed out everything that I could with the bank I'm still in the process of paying my dad back for, you know, a little bit that he loaned to me I'm not the type of person who's going to want to hop from a place similar to, the way that I want to treat patients, but I don't want to hop from office to office and continually try to go on to the next thing. I wanted this to be my life practice. And so I didn't want to cut any corners with, trying to, you not do a certain thing or the other.

I wanted everything to be good from the get go. So I wouldn't have to change it. Okay.

Michael: So then touching around a million. What type of practice do you have? how many ops?

Conor: it's still not complete technically two of the ops they don't have chairs or anything like that in them or like monitors.

So we have a consultation room I'm able to do Invisalign type stuff in there also and then we have If it were to be completely built out by other ops,

Michael: okay, so then working right now, how many

Conor: that you're in, including consultation room, it would be. four.

Michael: And then the type of practice you have it's fee for service general or are you Oh, no, we want to just focus on families or only cosmetics or fee for

Conor: service general.

And so like my overall goal is obviously this is going to be general practice. I want to have a lot of people just come in for routine dental care. But I eventually want to get to the, position where I'm just doing cosmetic cases. And then I have maybe an associate working under me who's doing a lot of the other bread and butter type general dentistry.

And then

Michael: cause you're located

Conor: where? I'm in Irvine. So I'm like close to the Irvine spectrum about 15 minutes from Newport Beach, 10 minutes from Laguna Beach.

Oh, that's right.

Michael: That's

Conor: right. I did. It's a good feeder for a lot of different

Michael: areas. So whenever somebody signs up to the ground marketing course, I do like a little community research and I was like, Irvine spectrum has so much around there.

Conor: Yeah. the Irvine company has built a ton of housing around here. I think they have something called the great park. Where they're putting in still a ton of other houses, and yeah, it's a good area to be in. So you

Michael: guys got a lot, yeah. Okay, so then, do you ever plan to say like, Well, you know what, I have one here, maybe one in Manhattan Beach, or one like, you know what I mean, would be nice.

Conor: I think so. I haven't put a lot of thought into it, or if it would be... Reasonably nearby, or maybe if I would even consider putting it in like a different state too, but yeah, I think that would be something I would definitely want to revisit maybe, eight or so years after this is fully developed because, you know, I heard it can take almost.

Six to seven years for your startup to reach the full size of a normal, operating office.

Michael: Yeah, gotcha. Okay. So then this kind of but technically isn't like the end goal, right?

Conor: No, but I don't want to just sell this off or leave this office. I will always want to have this office at least as a part of a brand potentially.

Michael: Yeah. Okay, cool. Cool. And then how many employees do you have right now?

Conor: So right now I have two. I have Katie. She's like our front desk concierge. She'll help patients out with insurance, checking them in, calling, scheduling, you name it. And then I have Jasmine. She's my assistant in the back. But one of the great things about Jasmine is she's also front office trained, and Katie had no dental experience, so the first couple weeks when Katie was trying to learn stuff, she was able to pick Jasmine's brain, and Jasmine was able to fill in kind of the gaps there.

Michael: Uh Huh. How'd you find them?

Conor: Not easy. I was going to say, I looked around a lot and I happened to find both of them on Indeed. I want to say, but even a lot of people on Indeed, people who reach out to you and you'll go to schedule an interview with them.

They look promising. And then all of a sudden, they'll ghost you I have a theory that a lot of it has to do with maybe them potentially wanting to collect And so they want to show proof that they've been looking for a job but that's a different story.

I happened to find both of them on a deed.

Michael: Gotcha. Okay. how do you craft your, ad? Is do you ask for?

Conor: I wrote it completely myself. I think I put the philosophy of my practice and how I'm going to be different than your standard dental office there.

one of the things I really pointed out was I'm not really hiring so much on skill. I'm really hiring on personality because I feel like skill can always be taught and it can be trained, but you cannot change a person's personality, obviously. one of the things that really struck out is they had really nice smiles they were very personable, bubbly, and I'm just like, this is great.

We can work with this. Nice,

Michael: man. I like that. what is the philosophy of your practice?

Conor: So my philosophy is, one on one personalized attention and just elevating a person's overall experience when they come in here. not trying to sell a patient anything. I'm just trying to provide what they need and also do it in as minimally invasive of a way as possible.

Michael: Gotcha. So then, you've been up and running for three months now. Yes. What's production and collections looking like?

Conor: I was going to say, haven't looked at August's data quite yet, but I think June was a wash. I was also on vacation the last month of June. It couldn't have been worse timing, but I think in July we did almost 40, 000 in collection.

Michael: Okay, and then your, break even point. Is where

Conor: not paying myself. And this is a scary number. It is around 26,000.

Michael: Okay. Paying yourself, how

Conor: much, if I'm giving myself not a great salary in bare bones, let's just say like in 30. Okay. No, I can't. Cause I can, I can live with that. I haven't paid myself at all so far. I just know that it's going to be a little short term pain for longterm gain.

So I have to put it back into the business. Gotcha.

Michael: And then how many days are you open

Conor: now? Officially open five days a week and we are open Monday through Thursdays. Fridays from eight to four and then Fridays from seven to

Michael: three. Okay. Did you create those hours because you saw that there was a need for that time

Conor: or?

No. I'm really big on a routine. I like being able to come home and I mean, this is also stressful. Dentistry itself is stressful. So I need a personal life when I'm done at the end of the day. been in a couple of offices where I did like a 10 to seven o'clock. And you're just like a zombie towards the end of the day.

And I just knew, even though it might be, I guess, a little bit more convenient for some people, I didn't want to do it. And so I'll come in on Saturdays sometimes. I'm willing to do that for patients who might not be able to make these normal hours. But I just wanted to set it that way from the get go. And by opening a little bit Earlier on Fridays, I can make time for some patients who might not want to miss work.

And also I feel like a lot of patients also cancel on a Friday afternoon. So by ending a little bit earlier, we try to avoid that.

Michael: Gotcha. What are the demographics in Irvine where you're at? Like, how'd you figure out the demographics? And then how are you like putting that with your marketing and everything like that?

Conor: It's tricky. There are. A lot of different demographics in this area. So 1st and foremost, I would say Irvine itself is very upper middle class or affluent in some different parts of it. Very safe community, but then there's also a really large immigrant community to heavily, I would say like, Chinese and then there's also a large Arab population.

So 1 of the things that I was looking for originally when I was trying to find, you know, a team is maybe someone who also spoke a little bit of Mandarin, which also that ended up proving to be a little bit more difficult than I thought. I didn't really get a lot of people who applied who spoke it.

But there's also Newport Beach close by, which is a little bit older. Also very affluent. And so I guess when I'm running different ads, I'm trying to attract a lot of general patients from this immediate area, but then for more higher end cases, heavily focusing it on South County, looking into Gal and then also Newport Beach too.

Michael: What have you seen difficulty wise when it comes to working with those type of patients, like from Laguna, from Newport, or maybe marketing to them when they call and ask you questions and I think we're like, Oh my, how many years have you been practicing? Oh, you know what I

Conor: mean? It's hard and I need to not let that get to me, but it's like a huge pet peeve of mine. I'll walk into a room, sometimes they'll be like, Oh, how old are you? And I'm just like, I did just turn 30 this year, so I definitely am on the young side. I get it. But no, I was gonna say that's probably the number one issue I have when I'm first meeting someone.

Obviously when I get to know 'em, it's not so much of a problem then, but yeah. How are

Michael: you

Conor: combating. I learned this and being in my last practice also you never want to get defensive because when a person says that they're just, testing you they want to see what your reaction is.

So if you get defensive, it shows that they're winning. You just have to laugh it off. Yeah, in a very professional polite way.

Michael: Yeah, not like an evil laugh just like so then what systems would you say are unique in your practice right now that you're like, you know what man I'm proud of this that we've created.

Conor: A place where a patient walks in and they're immediately telling a lot of their friends and family about what a cool experience it was. So, you know, When a patient 1st sits down and maybe they're filling out some forms, I have Katie go ahead and grab them an espresso. We have sparkling water, some other cool beverages, and she'll bring that over.

We'll give them like a personal tour of the office too. I feel like that builds value in showing what we do, what makes us different before they actually sit down in the chair. I also through the company who did my branding, I got these off of Alibaba, but they're like these little like travel kits that have our logo on them, a bamboo toothbrush with the logo on them.

And then also these cool custom flosses. they get to take those home then towards the end of the new patient experience with Oryx, you're also able to give the patient a personalized handout showing them, what their different risk levels for different things are.

There's explanations for different conditions and they really, really like that educational value. you, utilize

Michael: Oryx then for your new patient visitation, right?

Conor: You said? I, I utilize the Oryx for everything. It's our practice software, but they have a lot of really cool features that a lot of other softwares out there don't have.

And that's what attracts me to them.

Michael: were you deciding between Oryx and another

Conor: thing? I was looking at Curve also. I was wanting something cloud based, you know, to where you could access it from anywhere. I don't have to dis on a lot of other softwares out there, but I also, since I'm building like a brand new modern office, I don't want a software that looks like, Microsoft 95

, So , yeah,

Michael: I get you man. I get you. So you felt like Orex checked that part out, right? I

Conor: mean, yeah. But that's, the surface level. But, I haven't taken any Coist courses yet. I'm taking my first one in May of next year. But I've heard amazing things about Kois, and I like how systematized.

Or access when it comes to doing that new patient exam. So you're doing the exact same thing with every patient because, in dentistry, we get so distracted with so many little things and sometimes we'll do something for no rhyme or reason, and it can influence the standardization of how you conduct that new exam.

So by keeping you on tasks. You're always able to put together a nice comprehensive treatment plan for the patient.

Michael: I know I'm going ask you an excruciating detail right now, but like, how do they do that in the sense of walk me through like a new patient exam?

Conor: Oryx, it's like super patient guided.

I don't even know how to describe it. Like the software itself guides you throughout your journey with the patient. So say patient folks online with you again through Oryx, they give you a plugin to put on their website. You're going to get a pop up. when you get the pop up, you're going to be able to send a patient all of their forms and information that they need.

And then when that's done, that patient is going to have their appointment time ready to go. And you're going to have a pre checklist of everything the patient should have done or will need to do before you bring them back. you know, You can easily see that in the corner there, you'll get them seated in the chair on their appointment day and then has.

a section just for, clinical. And so what happens there is you have your radiograph section, TMJ section, you have an oral cancer screening section, you have a tooth morphology section, you have your probing imperio section, and then something on the appearance of the patient's teeth.

And so you follow each one of those steps throughout every exam. And then that way you're hitting every box that needs to happen. And sometimes, by having conversations with the patient regarding aesthetics, the appearance of their teeth, they might talk themselves into doing something that they didn't originally plan on coming in for.

Michael: Can you present it that way?

Conor: So what I do is Obviously I kind of discussed what I'm seeing, but I like to compartmentalize everything into four different sections. So I'll talk about the patient's overall smile. That's the first thing. I'll talk about the patients gum and supporting bone.

I'll talk about their bite, and then I'll also talk about overall condition of each individual tooth. And I make my own, PowerPoint presentation based off of the photos that I took, and the findings that I'm seeing, and then we look at them together on a TV that I have on my computer. Consultation

Michael: room.

Gotcha, man. So, Aurix kind of helps you out with all that?

Conor: Very much so.

Michael: nice, man. Okay, so that's like just one little

Conor: feature, right? I will say Aurix's forms are long. been told by a lot of patients hey this is taking me a long time.

I'm just like, just fill it out, please. But, it really gets them thinking about different conditions that they're having. And I love how it allows me to ask open ended questions about what they've been experiencing. Questions regarding food getting caught in between their teeth.

By bringing that into the conversation so early, it makes talking about why they might need a new crown further on easier.

Michael: Nice, man. 200 active patients or no?

Conor: No, not there yet. I'd have to check. I want to say that we're like at maybe 60 to 70, something like that.

Michael: Okay. is it free for you right now or no?

Conor: to double check. I had like a free period. I don't know if it's free currently, but I also have a couple of friends who are going through the startup journey right now. So they've put me as their referral. So I've gotten a couple of free months.

Michael: Okay. Nice. Nice. I know like right now they're doing that. free until you reach 200 active patients. So that's what I was wondering, bring it up to them and be like, Hey man, Michael said it's free, but awesome, man. So then how many new patients are you getting

Conor: monthly? It depends. I think last month we saw close to 20 new patients.

And just because we are a little bit more of a cosmetically oriented office, I will get patients who come in here sometimes who are not looking to have me as a general dentist. They are only wanting to have maybe a little bit of veneer work done. They might also just want to do clear aligners with me.

they're going to just stick at their other general dentist. And that's fine. Obviously I asked them if they're looking for someone new. But even though it's around 20, sometimes that full number is not exactly patients who are going to be coming back consistently.

Michael: Yeah, because if you look at your, social media, right?

It's nice. So it doesn't really look like a general practice, you know what I mean? To me, it kind of looks like, uh, he's doing something elevated here,

Conor: Well, thank you. And I mean, I will say like, I was talking to my assistant, about this. I am going to try to At least just add a little bit more content showing things maybe aren't as stiff as they appear maybe on Instagram.

I want to make myself a little bit more, I guess, like approachable and then also show more general dentistry type stuff rather than only cosmetic don't want people to get confused and think that I'm only doing veneers or bonding at this office.

Michael: But Connor, let me ask you, would you want to just do that?

Conor: only do cosmetic work?

Michael: Yeah, like in the end where you're like, that'd be the goal if I can just

Conor: do that. Absolutely. Yeah. That's my, completely my end goal. I'm young, I still have a large portfolio to develop before I am only seeing that kind of patient consistently.

Michael: Yeah. It's different what you're doing. So it's attracting, I think when they get there, they're like, Oh, you also do, you know what I mean?

yeah,

Conor: exactly.

Michael: that's my thought, but I don't know. It's up to you. I know right now, like you said, you're young and you want to build your portfolio. So what are you doing for marketing and advertising?

Conor: a loaded question. Um, so I first started off, I found a company through a friend and some of the things that they were suggesting, I just really didn't like at all. And I ended up firing before I even used them really at all. And then I found someone who did some freelance stuff and, basically running a lot of digital ads and, talk to vision with her.

But, the office opened and I. realized that I was having to constantly remind her to do different things. She was also in charge of my social media at the time too. So I'm just like, why wasn't this posted? We talked about this or, what happened to tagging these different accounts with this.

And so realized since I was basically having to double check and do everything else myself at that point. Why am I keeping her? And on top of that too, a lot of the search terms that she was using Didn't make any sense at all, there were no exclusions for different things that were being done for example, like I don't do full mouth implants of this office I had a ton of people looking for cheap full mouth implants for seniors So a lot of those terms should have been excluded from the get go and then while I was doing that you know obviously I looked into some direct marketing trying to contact like different apartments to put my Information may be in new resident flyers, that sort of a thing, but bringing it up to today.

I worked with my cousin. He's a jack of all trades guy. He helped me run some Google ads after I let that last freelance person go. Had a little bit of success with that. I've had a lot of success with direct mailers that my cousin and I did. But I also just brought in a new marketing company.

They seem to be doing a good job so far. I really liked their philosophy and different things that they suggested for me. And so we'll see how that works out.

Michael: Gotcha, man. Okay. So direct mailers is it right

Conor: now? I would have never thought that. I've had a lot of people say that they don't work at all.

But. I released my first round of them in early July, and I think I got at least 10 to 15 patients out of it.

Michael: What'd you put on it?

Conor: It was a picture of me, the office, we had a couple incentives on it. But I tried to use a slightly thicker paper, when I was sending it out, and I just wanted it to have like a little bit of pop to it.

So I made sure that the colors... Everything that I did on it was very on brand.

Michael: what was the incentives, and then what were the colors?

Conor: my brand colors are like a, it's almost like a navy blue, a gold, and a cream. I incorporated those, but then the incentives were, a new patient special, a free veneer consultation. And then also a discount on new design thinking about it now, though, obviously, I've already sent these 1st 2 rounds out. I would probably change the way that I do. And sometimes I would probably offer something that I would give a patient.

After they pay full price rather than offering an incentive itself right off the bat, because sometimes when you send that out, patients are always looking for a discount to some degree. hey, like, if you come in, we'll give you, a cool whitening pen. I think that's like a better way to do a lot of those incentives rather than saying, oh, hey, we're going to completely discount your services because.

When I thought about it more, so I'm just like, am I potentially also cheapening my brand by doing this? But sometimes you have to do what you have to do in order to get people to share in the beginning.

Michael: could I ask what were the type of patients that came in from the mailers?

And then what was the incentive that people were like, this is the one I want?

Conor: I've had people come in for all three categories from completely different walks of life. I will say that the usual veneer consultation, people tend to skew older. that's why I decided I want to target, more so like Newport beach, those types of areas, because I tended to grab the attention of older, maybe 60 to 70 year olds in those areas wanting to come in for that kind of stuff.

Invisalign discount has brought in more young people. for a lot of people out there who are maybe thinking about adding that to a mailer, I would probably get rid of it because you have a lot of people who are just price shopping, and even though you say that it's going to be X amount off, they still have an unrealistic expectation as to what the final price is going to be.

But I still wouldn't put that final price on your mailer. And then I've gotten a lot of people also just wanting to do the new patient special. How much

Michael: do you charge for the new patient special?

Conor: So right now it's heavily discounted for x rays and exam itself. It's like around 150.

Michael: That's good, man. Okay. So then mailers is what's working, bringing the best ROI right now. Yeah,

Conor: so hopefully now with some more different... Meta ads. I have this marketing company now working on doing a really nice job Google ads. Also, we'll see some more people come in from that and they've even run like some ads on YouTube And I actually got a patient through YouTube last week.

Really? Yeah, I'm just I would have never expected that. What's

Michael: the ad on YouTube? I've been hearing that a little bit more from people. They're like, oh, yeah, YouTube is getting

kind of...

Conor: so I think beyond people just watching YouTube videos or like channels A lot of people use YouTube for TV itself, like a cable.

Your ads can sometimes be put on people's TVs in the same way that you would see 10 years ago, like a medication ad. Yeah.

Michael: What is the ad that you have on there

Conor: though? To be honest? I have no idea which one I should know. So I just had a meeting with them this morning. I forget which one that they chose, but

Michael: Yeah. Gotcha. Okay. I was just wondering if it has like an incentive

Conor: none of the ones that they're running right now have incentives on. Oh, nice.

Michael: that's good then. And then right now, what would you say from the moment you thought Hey, I'm gonna do this to right now today.

What's been your biggest, or some of your biggest fails, pitfalls, or struggles?

Conor: I think it's just keeping my expectations in check. I've always been the type of guy where if I worked hard, I would get what I wanted. You know what I mean? Like, say, studied really hard. I would get a good grade. This is not like that. no matter how hard I try, getting patients through the door is not easy.

it's been an interesting year like, first dealing with personal problems with my parents long distance relationship, getting this office open there's been like a million and one things that have kind of happened. And so now adding on the stress of all this monthly debt service and making it all happen, it's tough.

And not only that, because you're a business owner too, you have employees under you. You want to make sure that you're able to take care of them, too, because they're relying on you for themselves.

Michael: Yeah, and that is tough. So how is this all affecting your personal life?

Conor: definitely was an adjustment.

I was never really an anxious person before this year. But now, as you're getting close to opening. You're trying to put out so many holes. There's always such a long reminder list, and I think it's so important that you do stay organized or else you're going to always be short circuiting.

They're like a pinball machine trying to figure out exactly what you forgot to do. because I am in a long distance relationship, even though it's like harder, it would be nice to have like support that's like a little bit closer. Like a lot of people, go through when they're opening up an office like this.

It's actually worked to my benefit, I would say, to some degree, because I've been able to Devote more of my own personal time into this.

Michael: So if you know what I'm asking, the longest relationship is how long?

East coast of Canada. Oh man. Yeah. That's

kind of

Conor: hard. So it's not easy.

Michael: Three hour difference. Four. Four? Four.

Conor: Yeah, he's in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

So.

Michael: So then from that right, the personal life, all this happening, how do you stay organized?

Conor: one of the biggest things that I do is every week I have a project forward that. I work on with my team, and so we'll have the issue that we're having, what we're going to do about it, and then a regrouping date, for when I want to have resolution for it. Whether it's ordering a supply, making sure we have all of the food ready to go for our open house. It just keeps everyone really accountable. And then for me personally, Apple Notes and the Apple Reminders app, I have a nice laundry list of everything organized by when I need to have a certain thing done.

And I'm constantly looking at it and making sure that I'm just trying to take as many as I can when I get home each day.

Michael: It's like a to do list, like a checklist. Exactly,

Conor: a nice little to do list. things are a little bit more stable now that I've been open three months, but if you don't have one of those when you're close to opening or right in your first month, I don't understand how you survive,

Michael: yeah, no, definitely. And you mentioned you had two consultants, right?

Conor: have one consultant. I brought her aboard in May. Her name is Patty. She's been fantastic and we're starting to get more so into the operation size of things and analyze reports, making sure that all of our metrics are clearly put into the system.

But in the beginning, she was fantastic with getting Katie trained up. Making sure that we have a call strip that we're following the new patient experience, our bringing patients and how we're talking to them on the phone again. It's just that high level that we want to, you basically provide in this practice here.

Michael: Gotcha. Okay. So that's like a mentor, right? I guess you can say

Conor: she really is like a mentor. Yeah. She's been super, super helpful with everything.

Michael: Yeah. Awesome, man. So then one of the last questions I want to ask you is, say we're one of your patients coming in and we walk out and I'm talking to my friend and I just went to the, my dentist, he is, or they are, what do you want them to start saying about you

Conor: or your practice?

I really want them to say that it was like no office that I've been to before. It was very comfortable. It didn't feel scary. And they really went above and beyond to make me feel special. I don't want a patient to feel like they're just a number in here or that again.

I'm like. Cornering them in a room, trying to get them to sign off on a care credit statement, just to try to force them into treatment immediately. want them to. feel that. They got educational value out of things and received personalized care.

Michael: Received personalized care. They didn't pressure me. Uh Huh. Anything about like the style or anything like that or no?

Conor: that's

probably the first thing that... A lot of people comment on when they come in here. Um, you know, we tried to make the interior of this place look like a, hipster, boutique New York hotel.

Greg from Design Wise, my designer, he did a fantastic job with the artwork furniture. flooring. And so obviously, yeah, I want a patient to be like, wow, this is like nothing I've ever seen.

Michael: Yeah, it is. becoming like that, man. It looks nice. Thank you so much.

Yeah. Awesome, Connor. Awesome. We appreciate your time, man. Thank you so much for being a part of the podcast. We really appreciate it. If anybody wants to reach out to you, where can they find you?

Conor: I think easiest is via Instagram. My business account is the. tooth. just reach me there and I'm usually pretty quick with getting back to direct messages.

Michael: Awesome. So that's going to be in the show notes below and thank you for being with us. It's been a pleasure and we'll hear from you

Conor: soon. Michael, thank you so much.

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