The Dental Marketer

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Hey guys, welcome to this week's Monday Morning Marketing episode! Join us as we sit down with the brilliant Dr. Andrew Vallo to dive into the world of startups and the pivotal role of cultivating an abundance mindset. In this conversation, we explore why you may be searching too hard for the "right" type of patient, when patients in general are what you need. Dr. Vallo sheds light on the strategic importance of patient reviews in propelling you forward and advocates for the integration of shiny offers in your ads like free whitening or raffles. From the diversity of marketing on different social platforms to the art of optimization, Dr. Vallo offers actionable steps that will redefine your startup's marketing playbook.

To dive more into startups and the best practices for a successful future, listen in to my conversation with Dr. Andrew Vallo!

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You can reach out to Dr. Andrew Vallo here:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr.andrewvallo

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheDentalBoutiqueWestchase‍

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BestValueDentures

Website: https://www.westchasedentalboutique.com/‍

Website: https://www.bestvaluedentures.com/

Email: [email protected]

Dr. Vallo Podcast (Dental Unfiltered): ‍Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dental-unfiltered/id1703086409‍

‍Spotify ‍https://open.spotify.com/show/2MJiFMqa0gkZ7Pm1tATVMO

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Other Mentions and Links:

Itero

Swell

Opalescence Go Mini Kits

Dr. Chris Phelps

Facebook Ads

Google Ads

Invisalign

Canva

Dental Unfiltered Podcast

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For more helpful tips, strategies, ideas, and marketing advice:

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

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

Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041

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Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)

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Andrew: Hey, Andrew. So

Michael: talk to us about your startup. What advice, suggestions, or methods can you give us that will

Andrew: actually help us with our startup? Hey, Michael. Yeah, I'm a big fan of startups and so we were just talking about, I'm really excited to share some of the stuff that's worked well for me.

So, you know, just quick background. I've done two startups. I'm actually preparing to open two more simultaneously here. Uh, within the next month or two we're, we're hoping to open. So, uh, it's not my first rodeo with it. I've, definitely learned some things along the way and some things the hard way.

I would say the biggest thing for me, my biggest advice to the listeners as far as what can you do to help your startup grow as quickly as possible? Is to have an abundance mindset and to lower barriers for new patients. if you get on these Facebook groups and read a lot of these posts and you see docs that are saying, oh, you know, we don't offer specials, we don't offer free whitening.

I don't wanna offer dental membership plans 'cause I don't wanna discount my services. Fee for service is the only way to go. Uh, you can't make money with, with dental insurance. I mean, you, you see all this stuff throughout the groups. my response to that is, There's a time and a place for everything.

if you have an established practice that's been around for years, you've got a recall system that's, you know, hygiene's booked out for months, doctor's schedules booked out. You know, those are the times to be picky. Those are the times to look at, where am I not making money?

Or where am I, losing money? Where I can be making money? and that's maybe the time to start looking at maybe putting some barriers up. If you're a startup and you have zero patients and you have nothing filled on the hygiene schedule, nothing filled on the doctor's schedule. You don't wanna put barriers up for patients.

you want to be as readily available for people to come in the door as possible. And when I say that, you know, I don't necessarily mean be open seven days a week 'cause I know that there's some startups that do that. all my startups start at three days a week. As soon as we get busy we, we had a fourth day.

We've got a little bit of extended hours. We do like one evening a week, one early morning a week. So I think those are nice for patients. I don't really ever go in on the weekends. 99% of the time it's not a true emergency and the patient can wait until we're open the next week. So you know, when I say be available, I don't mean in that sense, but I mean, don't create barriers by.

Not offering specials, not accepting insurance, trying to go fee for service off the bat. You know, trying to be super selective with the type of patients that you're bringing in the door. 'cause when you're first opening a startup, if you want to grow quickly, you need people and, you know, may, maybe they're not the right long-term patient.

That's, That's everything I hear too. 'cause you know, I run a lot of ads for like free whitening for new patients and you know, we used to run a lot of $98 special ads. I'll be doing those at the new startups as well. I always hear people say, like, don't those bring in the wrong kinds of patients?

When you're a startup, there's no wrong kind of patients. They're all the right kind of patients because, they're patients they're people. They're keeping you busy. They're, They're adding production to your schedule. and as the practice grows, maybe they won't be long-term patients.

Maybe they won't stick around. Maybe they're looking for the best deal and they'll go to another office later. But for the time being, they helped you grow. They served the purpose, and if, you gave them a great experience. Then, you know, hopefully they're gonna refer other people who maybe are better fits for your practice as well.

So I, I think that's probably my biggest piece of advice. kind of going off of that is getting Google reviews. Google Reviews is like the best type of free marketing that's out there. When I say free, like I guess maybe you pay for the review software. I recommend it. I, I use Swell.

I know there's different softwares, different people like, but I mean, it's like 149 bucks a month. That's basically all, all we pay for the Google reviews. And then, We just try to provide a five star experience. We, you know, ask for reviews. We have a whole system. I actually did a podcast episode all about Google reviews, where I dive in exactly how we go step by step to get all these reviews.

But my flagship office, we got 1500 Google reviews in our first two years. So that's been a huge part of our growth as well.

MMM Andrew Vallo (Startups) DRAFT-cm: Nice

Michael: man. So if we rewind a little bit. You mentioned when you're fully booked out, that's the time to make the barriers, right?

So a lot of the times we, I hear a lot of things, Andrew, sometimes people are like, you gotta start making your brand E right now, what you say no to. So make sure, you know, start off fee for service. 'cause eventually, and then I hear the opposite too, like what you're saying, right? Like, nah man, like you gotta be open and then I like your.

concept of where, be open, accept things, and then start making your berries and see what you don't like. And do, like, for example, the free whitening right, that you mentioned. How do you make that work? Like is it bleach trays or what do you do?

Andrew: so we do the opalescent go, um, like mini kits.

It costs about $20 per kit. So basically ev every new patient that comes in, they have to get a comp exam, X-rays, dental cleaning. if they get all those things, they get a free whitening kit that costs us about $20. and we're still doing that. So even, you know, we've been open over two years.

You know, this year we're on track to do like 2.75 million. we're a big practice. We're growing. We've got three full-time hygienists, hygiene recalls finally starting to kind of book out a little bit. but we still offer that as a gift to new patients. I, I think it's, it's nice to give patients a gift.

I think whitening is something that most people want. I. what we did is, you know, as the office got busier instead of getting rid of the free whitening, which has worked so well for us and is very easy to advertise, we just raised the price of our new patient special. we used to do a new patient special that included x-rays, comp exam, cleaning, and the free whitening for $98.

At that point in time, it was, pretty much a loss leader. When you think about payroll the cost of the whitening I, I use a call center, they're great, but I mean, it's $40 for every new patient that actually shows up for an appointment. So if that patient called to book the appointment, $40, they did the whitening, $20 whatever you're paying your hygienist, you add all that stuff up, I probably spent more than $98 for that patient to come in the door.

So at that point in time, it was a lost leader. But you know, the way that you're profitable is by that patient actually doing treatment, coming back for other appointments, signing up for your membership plan leaving Google reviews, what, whatever it might be, referring patients. at this point in time, we've gotten rid of our $98 special at the flagship office.

'cause that one's grown so much. we almost doubled it. And, you know, this was at the uh, advice of Dr. Chris Phelps, but, you know, I had talked to him about kind of where I was at and he said, you know, at this point in time I, think you need to increase the new patient special.

So we did. So our new patient specialist now, $188 instead of 98.

Michael: Okay. And you haven't seen any dipped 'cause of the increase or No, it's

Andrew: still the same. mean, I would say it dipped, but at the same time, we don't need as many new patients. So, you know, for a while we were seeing 250 new patients a month.

that's that point where I'm saying, Hey, barriers were as low as possible, free consultations, $98 specials, free whitening tons of ad dollars. I mean, I, I would spend up to like 20 grand a month in ad spend to get 250 new patients a month. So we were spending a lot of money to do that.

We were also, you know, a new startup practice that had months where we were doing well over $200,000 a month. So at that point in time it, it made sense to do it. at this point we only need about a hundred new patients a month to continue to grow at the pace that we're at because of our established patient base.

So I was able to cut our marketing budget down significantly, and we increased the cost of the new patient special. So we are attracting a different type of patient at this point in time. but if, I still needed 250 new patients or if things change and all of a sudden I, I needed more new patients, I would be happy to go back to that $98 special uh, to fill the schedule if we needed to.

Michael: So, real quick, how many startups do you, or how many practices do you have

Andrew: right now? two active they've both been open two years, a little bit over two years. And then I've got two more that we're simultaneously getting ready to open here in the, in the next month or two. Gotcha. And

Michael: you're doing the same type of content, like the free whitening, all that stuff in

Andrew: those I.

So I, I've got like a general dentistry brand dental boutique brand, and then I've got a dental implant brand, which is best valued dentures and implants. So they're like two totally different models. You know, obviously for patients that need dental implants, the whitenings not really a, a gimmick, so we offer free consultations, free C B C T.

We actually offer a best price guarantee. So if someone brings in uh, pricing for implants in the area, that's better, you know, we'll beat it. and we do offer, we run specials sometimes, like I'll do like $500 in implant credit if you come in for a free consultation during this time period.

And then, you know, there's stipulations. It has to be, you know, so many dollars in implant services in order to spend that $500 credit and things like that. But you need something like, like a shiny toaster in the advertise. You need something that's gonna catch the attention. That's gonna get people to actually take action to, you know, to click on that button.

And most of our advertising has been Facebook. we do a lot of Facebook Messenger ads. That's been by far the best. R o i, those ads work the best. When you do have something that you're giving, like the free whitening or the $500 in implant credit or whatever it is, we do some Google ads.

Google ads are great too. It's just it's different. the cost per new patient acquisition on Google is much higher than Facebook. but you can run different types of ads. You know, you don't have to necessarily do the specials as much with Google as you do for Facebook. So it's just, it's two totally different things.

Um, and then even I use like Instagram for like our Invisalign parties, so we do those like once every six months and, we'll sometimes close 15 to 20 cases in one afternoon of Invisalign from these Invisalign parties. and I just have found that Instagram seemed to be the best avenue for that.

So we, we advertise on different mediums for different purposes, for different offices, but yeah. What's

Michael: an Instagram party like? Break that down for me. How do you run that? The

Andrew: Invisalign parties? Yeah. Invisalign party. Yeah. basically we hype it up like it's a big event. We have like champagne and mimosas and all that.

It's free Invisalign consultation, free panoramic, X-ray, free iTero scan. And then the big way that we're bringing people in is that I actually give away a free Invisalign case every time we have a party. So basically I, you know, we attract people, we say, Hey, come to the party, have a chance to win free Invisalign treatment.

Um, and then everyone who doesn't win the Invisalign treatment gets a draw from the raffle. Um, and if they don't win that, then they're winning, like discounts on Invisalign and things like that. So we're like, Hey, you're here. You wanna do Invisalign? You just won $1,500 off Invisalign.

You wanna get started? That type of a thing. And so, it's all a, a volume game, a numbers game. So like I will typically schedule over a hundred. Invisalign consulta and we'll actually schedule 'em like real appointments. We don't just say, Hey, come between this time and this time.

Like we set them up as consultations, we'll be open like six to seven hours that day. Um, and we'll just run all of our treatment rooms. I got all hands on deck. A lot of times I'll even hire like a temp or two to help us out. We've got, you know, two or three iTeros running back and forth. but we schedule over a hundred people.

We typically have like 50 to 60 show up. 'cause even when you offer free Invisalign, people just don't show up for stuff. And then from those 50 to 60 people, you know, we've been typically closing 15 to 20 cases. So, you know, for giving away one case, some advertising dollars, payroll.

but typically our, our best day of the year is when we do these Invisalign parties as far as production goes. So how do you market

Michael: the Invisalign party? So you say you decided you want to do all this stuff now, how do you get that people to

Andrew: come on in? Yeah, so, uh, basically I, I use Canva for a lot of my advertisements, so, I, I do some of my own ads.

I, I use marketing company, they do some of their own ads, so it's a little bit I'm probably more hands-on client that I like to do some stuff myself too. Um, but like I get on Canva, I make just this quick little ad. It's usually got like, just a picture of like someone holding an Invisalign tray or something like that.

And then it says like, whatever, second annual, third annual Invisalign party chance to win free Invisalign treatment. And then it says like, all the stuff about the event. It has like the date, the, you know, the time. And then we usually put some kind of, you know, scarcity thing on there where it's like, Hey, we only have 15 guest spots left or something like that, hurry and sign up now. It's free to sign up or whatever. So we just, you know, I make like a little template, post it on Instagram and then I'll, I'll do like an Instagram, like boost post thing. I'll usually start advertising the misalign party about six weeks before.

we're doing one in late October, so pretty soon here. We'll start getting ads up for that. Start filling the schedule for it. Nice. I

Michael: like this man. So you, have you ever gotten, so when you offer free whitening and things like that, have you ever gotten people who come on in and they're like, oh, I thought this was free.

I have to do an exam and X-ray and nevermind, right. Kind of thing,

Andrew: or No. I mean, once in a while you know, at that point in time they've heard from either the call center or you know, the agent that's booking them on Facebook or whatever it is, they've talked to somebody who's explained to them, Hey, Are you planning to use insurance?

No. We've got these options. You know, right now it's $188 new patient special, or. We've got our dental membership program. It's only a dollar a day 365 per the year, and it covers you for the full year of services like cleanings, x-rays, exams, emergency visits you get discounts on treatment, things like that.

So, if someone comes in and they say, oh, I thought everything was free. They just really weren't listening, or, you know, they were trying to pull fast one or whatever it is. Over like two years of doing this free whitening, maybe a handful of times. It's like people have come in and gotten mad about it.

And then there's other times where, you know, people come in and that's like literally all they want. they don't care about anything that we find they don't want to come back for any other treatment. They just want their free whitening and, and that's it. so again, you know, to people's points, is it a perfect system?

No. But does it bring in a lot of new patients for, Pretty reasonable. R o i. Yeah, it absolutely does. So, yeah.

Michael: Yeah. And so when I ground market, that's one of the main things we utilize the free whitening. some people kind of always combat that, where they're like, well, we, to me, I'm like, you're focusing too much on that one person compared to all the other,

Andrew: you know what I mean?

People that you're bringing in. So, I like it. I talk to my team about that all the time. So, you know, I feel like if any system you do, It's never gonna have a hundred percent success. There's, There's always gonna be, you know, certain instances where something doesn't work out that way. and I think people get too hung up on those outliers, you know, like, hey if we did this free whitening, and like every other patient who came in was like, thrown a fit because they thought it was in office whitening, or, you know, they just basically came in, got the whitening left, never came back, never referred anybody.

At that point in time, it's probably not a good system, but if 90% of the time they're coming in, they're actually, you know, being a good patient, joining our practice, sticking around, doing treatment those 10% of the time it's, not worth getting hung up on that,

Michael: Awesome. Andrew, I appreciate your time and if anyone has further questions, you can definitely find 'em on the Dental Market Society Facebook group, or where can they reach out to you

Andrew: directly? Yeah. So you can find me on Facebook, Instagram, and Dr. Andrew Vallow. feel free to send me an email, doc vallow [email protected].

And I am actually, we are releasing my own podcast here in just a week or two. It's called Dental Unfiltered, so feel free to check that out as well.

Michael: Nice. Well guys, that's all gonna be in the show notes below. Definitely check out his podcast. Much more information In that podcast, you gonna be talking about

Andrew: the reviews.

Oh yeah. Yeah. So we've recorded the first three episodes. The first one is just all about my story, you know, zero to four startups in just over two years. Second episode is all about how I got 1500 Google reviews in two years. And the third episode is all about our Invisalign party and exactly like step-by-step, how we do that stuff.

So Nice.

Michael: Okay. Yeah, so we look forward to that, man. Awesome. So Andrew, thank you so much for being with me on this Monday morning marketing episode. Thanks, Michael.

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Guest: Dannica BrennanPractice Name: FlossologieCheck out Dannica's Media:‍

Website: https://www.flossologie.com/

Flossologie Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/flossologie/

Dannica Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drdannica/

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Other Mentions and Links:

HPSP Scholarship

MacDill Air Force Base

360 Aroma

Ocean Eyes

Cerec

Dentagraphics

Working Women of Tampa Bay Facebook Group

West Coast Swing Dance

Deep Work - Cal Newport

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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:

• You CAN open up full fee for service, just don't expect potential patients to come in without good marketing.
• Try a scented AC diffuser to add a non-dental scent to your office that patients will love!
• Take the time to research your demographics and form a customer avatar to find your perfect patients.
• With influencer marketing, targeting accounts with 5-15k followers can be more beneficial than the larger influencers!
• When the patient sits down, tell them exactly what is owed for the day so it's not looming in their mind.
• Be sure to start building your social media before your open your practice to get momentum.

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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, Dr. Danica Brennan. Danica, how's it going? Good, how

Dannica: are you?

Michael: I'm doing pretty good. Thanks for asking. If you don't mind me asking, where are you located?

Dannica: I'm in Tampa,

Michael: Florida. Oh my gosh. Blue water's out there.

Dannica: Yeah. Yeah, it's really nice. Super blue.

Been kind of hot actually, so it's been

Michael: nice. What is hot out there?

Dannica: It's been like the eighties. Oh yeah. Yeah. High eighties. It's real sunny, so Yeah, it is hot. Yeah.

Michael: Especially for right now. What's, what's it like in winter?

Dannica: I guess it depends what time of winter. I think the cold it'll dip down to like the thirties sometimes.

Very rarely but average in the winter's, like fifties and sixties, maybe in the seventies if it's sunny,

Michael: so. Okay. Interesting, Interesting. Awesome. Danica, so if you can tell us a little bit about your past, your present. How'd you get to where you are today?

Dannica: So, uh, see, I'm from Montana originally, and then um, I swam in college, kind of moved around a couple different colleges.

Ended up in Las Vegas where I went to dental school. And then I joined the Air Force. So I got the H P S P program scholarship. And so I did my one year A E G D residency with them at Nellis in Las Vegas, and then moved out here with my husband to Tampa and he was stationed here at McDill Air Force Base for about three and a half years.

And then um, separated, back in December of 2021 and then opened up my own office.

Michael: So, Outta the Air Force in 2021? Yes. Uh, okay. Okay. So rewind a little bit. When was the moment or the time where you decided I wanna do my own practice?

Dannica: Don't get me wrong, I loved being a dentist in the military, but um, when Covid kind of hit, it was.

Not so great it was just a lot of like show face, like, hey, we're still part of the mission and everybody has to show up and be around each other. And keep in mind our flight, which is like the whole dental group was like a hundred and some people cramm in like one office. And so they just wanted us all there just in case.

People deployed, which only needs one dentist, not 12. And it was very like, very unorganized and very not patient centered. And I am very like, let's have the patient have a good experience and make things make sense and organized and they just, We're not about that.

And so I was like, you know, I initially thought I was gonna buy an office 'cause I had listened to another podcast that kind of got me like, wow, other, if other people can own their own offices, I can do it too. And so I initially thought about buying an office. I went through all the due diligence processes and then just decided it just wasn't what I wanted.

And so, I decided to do a startup.

Michael: Gotcha. Where was it where you hit a lot of road bumps in the acquisition process?

Dannica: It really wasn't road bumps. It was more so I just didn't like the offices. If you've seen my office, it's very unlike any other office, and that's kind of what I had envisioned from the beginning.

And I finally just realized I would have to put so much money and time and effort into changing everything. No matter what I bought, I might as well just do it from the beginning to the way.

Michael: Gotcha. Got. So what is your office like?

Dannica: Well, so it's called ology and we have, so a couple like cool things about it.

We're right on the water, which like a little manmade lake. So all my operatories have this big, gorgeous window that looks out into the lake with like gators and turtles my mom was my interior designer, so it's very Uh, how would you say, I guess, mid-century modern, unique, and then the really cool part Tampa is really known for their, like, street artists.

And so I hired a street artist and five of my walls, the one main wall in one of the hallways, and then one wall in each operatory is just like this huge street art mural. Nothing to do with dentistry except for one has like big. teeth and my dogs and, and everything. So it's very different vibe.

Like very instagramy, very street arty. very different. Yeah.

Michael: Where did the vision come from?

Dannica: so in the military I ended up getting a lot of the patients who kind of had high anxiety, which I really enjoyed working on them. for some reason I just am good with those patients and like helping them calm down and like kind of changing their ideas on how I.

It is to go to the dentist. And I didn't want to have this sterile white wall, boring, plain environment. And so I kind of started off with like a med spa sort of idea with the uppity, boutiquey. And then I just thought to myself, that just doesn't really sound super inviting to everybody.

Like I want everyone to be able to feel invited to come to my office. And so, the other thing about like the street art was, I love it and no matter how crappy of a day am having like it sort of inspires me, like seeing it around and it's just like a cool different thing to have. That's how it sort of progressed into what it's been.

Michael: Gotcha. How do you help these patients calm down?

Dannica: So we've got a couple things. So if you ever gone to like Las Vegas in those big hotels and they smell really nice. They have those scents in the ac we have the same, so I ordered that machine to hook into my ac so it smells really good in there.

The murals, the artwork, the whole goal is to not look, smell, or feel like a dental office. So we've got the heat massage and the chairs, the TVs, you know, right above your head with the Bluetooth headphones. And then we're fully fee for service, so we. do a really good job, Lisa, I think I do, of taking my time, explaining everything to patient, answering all their questions, and because we're fee for service, we have the time and the resources to be able to do that.

And so we get a lot of people who travel pretty far to like come see our office and we haven't had anybody upset yet, so they seem to like it.

Michael: Real quick, what is the scent machine? Like? Where do we get that? What is that?

Dannica: It's called 360 Aroma they have different levels, but, I bought the, like fancy one. It's a few hundred bucks a month to rent it and then you get scent with it. And so it basically is this big machine that has this hose that hooks into your your AC system, like the actual.

The handler. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And then, like a hose and then a scent hooks into it and you get those scents sent to you so you can change 'em out each month if you want, or keep the same one. And it basically just diffuses through all your A system. But it's called 360 Aroma. That's one I use.

There's a bunch of different ones, but that's a popular one.

Michael: Yeah. And people, your patients are like, oh my gosh, it smells different. Did they say so?

Dannica: I have not had a single person walk into my office and not mention how good it smells in there. Not a single person. That's the first thing that comes outta their mouth is, wow, it smells so good in here.

And you can turn it up or down. So like we have two air handlers, the front and the back. And so in the back it's turned down a little bit and in the front it's turned up a little bit. Like you can do percentages. the one that I use is called Ocean Eyes and highly recommend everybody.

Michael: Yeah. And interesting. Okay. That, That's something that, uh, never heard of really, you know what I mean? Until, uh, you hear but rewind a little bit. You said sometimes when you have crappy days, you look at your murals, Your walls. What are crappy days?

Dannica: Oh, so, I'm pregnant right now and just for example, congrat, so I'm still in my first trimester and I'm, I feel so sick.

Yeah. So like, usually I love coming to the office, but some mornings I wake up and I just don't feel good. And so, I get there and used to have the patient sitting in the chair and I, do a lot of cosmetic stuff. Uh, a lot of like non-invasive Veneers and things like that that I really like doing.

And so it's a lot of like artistic type of dentistry. The biomimetic stuff as well, where it's all like custom partial coverage with the machine and everything. So I get in and I kind of like just look at like what I built and the murals and the art and it just sort of, I feel better when I'm at work.

Michael: Yeah. Yeah. It's like your place, you know what I mean? The place you created Yeah. To make you feel. Exactly. Now, man, so you, your first trimester, is this your first? Yeah. And you've been open for two years? Five months. Five months. Five months. Oh my gosh. Five months. Yeah. And you're, how you

Dannica: feeling? In terms of what?

Just

Michael: with everything, everything happening like right now. Good.

Dannica: I mean, I can't complain. Like I was a little worried and thinking back on it, maybe a little bit ambitious to like start a startup fully fee for service office with zero patients because I was military beforehand. Mm-hmm. So like, I had no patience. But we're doing great. So I, I really can't complain. marketing wise, we do a lot of different types of marketing and a lot of ground marketing and I just am exhausted. But it's fun. I like it 'cause it's mine.

Michael: Yeah. Interesting. Okay we'll dive into the marketing. but before that, did anybody try talking to you or talking you out of like, you wanna do p p O a little bit?

Like at least take some on right now and then drop it. That happened.

Dannica: Everybody, every single person that I talked to told me to do that. And uh, with the type of dentistry that I do and the type of dentistry that I want to do in the office and the atmosphere that I want, it just wasn't something that I was willing to risk.

To not risk, but like, I just said, no, I've always been that way my whole life though. Ask my mom, someone tells me not to do something and I'll go and do it anyways and succeed. So I just figured that's alright.

Michael: Yeah. So then fee for service from day one. No insurances. How what are you doing to make it scale, I guess?

Like what are you doing internally? Also to make, tell yourself like everything's gonna be okay, right. Kind of thing. But also externally, what are you doing?

Dannica: So I'm really particular about how every single thing in my office flows from, you know, the highest technology. The minimally invasive stuff is big.

People really like that. They like the holistic, functional type of approach to dentistry. And so that's really big here in Tampa in general. I did a really good demographic study. I'm in a really nice area in Tampa, so that helps as well. But again, we do like, you know, the.

Sented warm towels afterwards to how our phone conversations go. We have a good script for if someone is a little bit wary about it, there's ways that I train my staff and myself on how to kind of convert those patients and explain to them and give them idea of why they should come and see us instead of a.

And then on top of that, like it's motivating that every single patient that is there in my office wants to be there and wants to be there for me also my hygienist is amazing and that helps. I will say that. Find an amazing hygienist like she is my. Clinical partner, you know, and just my patients love her too.

But no one's there saying I only wanna do it if insurance does it. Everyone is very open and just appreciates our work and that is really nice environment to work in. So that's been really motivating for myself. It is. I enjoy going to work and I enjoy all my patients and I know that they appreciate me.

We kind of weed those other ones out over the phone.

Michael: Let me ask you about that, the phone part. Um, mm-hmm. Real quick, what's the script that you use to convert these patients?

Dannica: So your typical phone conversation is, hi, do you accept my insurance? And we say, yes, we accept all insurances. We just work a little bit different with them.

You pay our full fee up front and then we file that claim for you. And then within a few weeks you receive a reimbursement check from your insurance company. And based on how they respond to that, a lot of the times it's, oh, okay, great. No big deal. Schedule. Sometimes it's, oh, that's kind of weird, or oh y so then we sort of, Move into like, I kind of feel it out.

So I have a couple different ways I can go, but some of the main ones are either asking them Hey, do you mind if I ask why you're looking for a new dentist? Because that's just brings up the, no, I haven't had a single person be like, no, screw you. They're like, let me tell you why I hate my other.

And so that's like a time for us to shine and it's usually not listened to too rough. Aggressive treatment plans, things like that. So that's when I can be like, Hey, let me tell you why my office is different and why you're gonna love it here. Uh, another reason, another thing that I say is, Hey, I know that this is a little bit non-traditional, the way we work with insurances, but that's on purpose.

We are a non-traditional office and we shine because we're non-traditional. And so then that kind of gets them asking questions, well, like, why are you so, but I found like the biggest thing is finding out what they're looking for by just the minute they start hesitating, I'm like, Hey, can I ask like, what are you looking for in a new dentist or with a new dental office?

And you get that conversation started and I can usually convert them and at the end I say, Hey. We usually tell our patients, just come try us out and if you love us, great and if not, no sweat. You know, just come see how it works. And we've kept every patient so far. So it's very few that I can't personally convert over the phone

Michael: that way.

Nice. Okay, so when you say try us out, just try us out. Is that like a free consultation or No, you're still gonna have to pay, but. No. Yeah,

Dannica: I mean we make them pay. We do offer to make it easier for their first appointment. We always tell 'em this like, Hey, when was the last time you saw a dentist So we require either a pano or an F M X. Personally, I prefer pano. It's just my preference, but a pano or F M X within five years and then bite wings within a year. And so if they've had those at another dental office, we will call on their behalf and request it. Part of our new patient forms. is a waiver for them to have that.

So we just have that on our system already and we request those x-rays. So it's one less thing that they have to pay for upfront to begin with, just to make it easier for them to come in and Yes. So it's not like $500 for a new patient exam and cleaning, you know? We also do offer cleaning same day as their new patient exam if they want it.

'cause I find a lot of patients that's like, one of their main concerns is, well I really just wanted to switch 'cause I'm due for a cleaning. And so we sort of have, Hey, how long has it been? If it's been, you know, less than three years, we will usually offer that same day cleaning for them.

Michael: Gotcha.

Okay. Dan, are you the one in the front answering phones

Dannica: or, I do a lot of the times. Yeah. I mean, my staff or my hygienist, I will let her as well. My assistants have been on and off with, like one moved and then I'm in the process of firing one and then hiring two new. So I've sort of been up there doing a lot of that phone conversation just 'cause it's so new and I know I can convert patients, so I would rather be the one to take calls.

Michael: Yeah. Also really good for you to make those like. Scripts, right. S o p systems, right. Already ahead of time. You're like, I know how they're gonna react

Dannica: and Yes. You know what I mean? So I'm learning too, what works and what doesn't, so I can train new staff. Yeah. As well.

Michael: You said you're in the process of firing someone.

Talk to me about that.

Dannica: I started off with two assistants and a hygienist. My one assistant, uh, ended up leaving 'cause he was moving. So I loved having him. He was great. And the girl that I had to start off with had some like family issues. So I don't know what happened.

I don't know, whatever, but, so I hired a new girl back in January and she's really young and she seems super motivated and I personally like training and I like teaching and. All this stuff, but she's been a little bit more than I can handle emotionally. we listen to conversations that are recorded and if there's issues with them, I try to train and teach or if there's been issues with the patient, I try to go over things so that way it's not just left unresolved.

And, she cries every single. Try to talk to her. And I try to do it real, really nice way, but I think it's just like an emotional maturity kind of thing. And I just, I'm to the point where like, I just can't, like Yeah. Emotionally keep doing that, you know? So I found I was going to just replace the one, and I found two amazing girls.

And so I, I think I'm just gonna,

Michael: yeah. And the first time that happened, were you like, oh, no, no, no, it's, everything's fine. And then, And then now like, it's like, oh, it's happening again. You're crying.

Dannica: Yeah, the first time I was like, she literally threw up Ah. I was like, we, how do you know? Because I heard her in the bathroom.

Like we were practicing phone conversations together as a team. Yeah. And we would like, somebody would go outside and call in and one person would answer the phone and then we would listen to it and go over it together. And yeah, she like one criticism and She's very young and like really wants to be good and like I know she's gonna be such a great assistant. It's just taking that time to like build up to it. You can get the confidence. So

Michael: yeah. Poor her. Yeah, there's something there. Something there and she needs to figure out. But anyways, so that's the process of firing right now.

I know run a little bit. You said you did a demographic study before you even opened up. What'd you do?

Dannica: I used demographics. So I paid probably like, I think like 700 bucks or a thousand some, somewhere around there. Well worth it. Loved it. That's how I decided which areas to like drive around and look for places to rent.

Michael: Build in. And this was the first spot where you're like, I love it. This is the first one I'm gonna be here. Or this was not the first one?

Dannica: No, I had found another place and started negotiating a lease and the tenants ended up not wanting to move out, so that ended up not working out.

So then in that scramble, I sort of, oh, I can't even, I skipped work and I was still military, so. I would be like, Hey, I'm sick. And I'd go and I'd drive all day and like look around and, uh, I finally found this place. So they, the people just happened to be like leaving and there was a sign and I was like the first one to like figure out, because it's a really good spot and it was a really good deal and I locked that down real quick.

Michael: So. Nice. So you were, you were already over your other job, right? Like your other associateship at the.

Dannica: I mean, I was active duty military, just a dentist on base. So, yeah, I think I was doing administrative work at the time, so it wasn't like I was calling, I wasn't seeing patients at the time. Yeah, I was just doing like front desk stuff, so,

Michael: yeah.

Interesting. Yeah. No, no, No, I get you. Okay, so then fast forward to now, marketing's way different for fee for service, right? Than, well, actually technically, like P P O or any insurances is a marketing expense, right? If you think about it, 'cause. Yeah, to come to you. So what are you doing for marketing?

Dannica: We, I mean, I throw a bunch of things out there.

I'm still in the process of like figuring out what consistently works. One of the big things that I do that really works is I'm part of a lot of Facebook groups, like meetup groups. One's called like Working Women of Tampa Bay. So it's a lot of women who like own their own businesses and I go to their monthly, weekly meetings and I meet these women and I make connections and I get a lot of people from that.

They come in, they love it, they post about it, they tell other people about it. So a lot of referrals that way. We do, I think I heard actually on, on your podcast from somebody else about influencer marketing and so I started doing that as well where you bring in the influencers. My office is. Perfect for it.

And that was part of the design as well, was to be able to bring in like a. Population too. So we do influence your marketing giveaway, free teeth cleaning or teeth whitening or whatever in exchange for like a reel in stories, and they help promote certain promotions at our office. I do a lot of social media, so I do all my own social media, myself, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, things like that.

That's actually worked really well too, like boosting those posts, doing ads on Facebook. And then I did have a marketing person for a while, and I was spending like four grand a month on like Google and ss e o and I finally just quit that because I wasn't getting anything, not a single thing. So, we ask everybody on the forms where they found us and every single one was either social media or verbal referral.

Michael: Mm-hmm. The person who was doing your marketing, how long did you stick it out with them?

Dannica: Like four, five months.

Michael: Oh

Dannica: man. So five times four. Yeah. It was recently that I just decided not to continue. Yeah.

Michael: To let that person go.

That's been, that was a lot of, that was like almost 20,000 right there if it was 4,000 a month. Right. Like, what was their, can you give us like, what was their reasoning

Dannica: So they also did my website, which, uh, technically I did my website, also against like, so if you look at my website, it's also very non-traditional.

And that was on purpose too. And they bought, and bought with me. 'cause I sent them design, like my mom and I built a website and sent it to them and then they built it based off that on their own platform. Mm-hmm. Um, But I was just like, Hey, this is what I wanna see in my ads. These are the things I wanna push out.

And they would say no. And then I said, okay, well show me what you're putting out. And then they couldn't show me. And then when they did, I was like, that's not correct. I would have to constantly be like, I don't do Zoom whitening. There's no light. I do core, no light. Please don't say in my ads that there's gonna be light.

So it was just constantly, like, they're great. They're such a wonderful company for like somebody who just isn't picky about things and is like, just somebody do it for me. I don't want anything to do with it. But for somebody who's really particular, yeah, it just isn't a great fit.

Michael: So, I mean, even if they got that information wrong in the ad, I mean, somebody's gonna come in and be like, where's the light kind of thing.

You know what I mean? Right.

Dannica: So I had somebody call and be like, Hey who's the other dentist? And I was like, No other dentist. They're like, oh, office, this ad, it says that there's multiple dentists and you would get to pick who you saw. And I was like, what ad are you talking about? Yeah. So just little things like that.

Ah,

Michael: kind of sounds cookie cutter then, right? Like they would just copy paste uhhuh. Yeah. It was time to drop. I'm like, oh, while ago. Yeah. You know what I mean? Kind of thing. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. So when it comes to the influencer marketing or the Facebook groups as well, the ones that you're a part of, Do you offer anything like a specific incentive or anything like that or,

Dannica: The Facebook, like the meetups and stuff?

Mm-hmm. No, not really. I get plenty of people who are looking for a dentist anyways. A lot of these people in these groups have just moved here and they're looking for other networking opportunities. So a lot of them meet a new dentist and a lot of them really Really appreciate the, like functional type of, like I said, non-invasive, cosmetic type of office.

Like just a different feel, especially here in Florida 'cause there's a lot of older dentists here, so, I don't really have to offer anything for those ones. And then the influencers, I do, like I said, the free teeth whitening or free teeth cleaning in exchange. So that's the only thing I really offer.

A lot of 'em end up actually becoming patients of mine though afterwards. Mm-hmm. Pay for treatment.

Michael: Yeah, you just message them on Instagram or Hey, come on in like that.

Dannica: Yeah, we have like a script written up. I have found that you sort of do have to be pretty detail oriented on it because like there was one influencer we brought in and our whitening isn't cheap, you know, and we usually do it on a day off where like they can film and video.

And this girl like did like one story and it was the crappiest story, didn't even put in our name on it. And then when I messaged her she was like, oh, I'm sorry, that's. That's reserved for paid collaborations. And I was like, shut the, you know? Yeah, yeah, Yeah. So we're now we're like clear like, hey, this is an exchange for this, this, and this. Mm-hmm. And like then if they agree,

Michael: oh man, normally what do you target? Do you target like a hundred thousand follower people or.

Dannica: I actually target like five to 15,000. Okay. because the people who have more than that, a lot of the times it's More than just Tampa followers, right?

The ones that are like five to 15 are still growing their accounts. So they're more likely to agree, more, likely to do more for you, for less. And then their circle is big enough here in Tampa. They have a lot of Tampa friends that they can tell you about the ones that are like hundreds of thousands.

It's like there's no. Really big benefit. We found the best with the ones from five to 15. So far they've been the nicest, the most like appreciative of it. They become patients, they tell all their friends, they do the best reels, the best stories. And that's kind of what I don't get a lot of sass of like, well, it's not a paid collaboration.

Yeah,

Michael: that'd be, I don't know. I feel like, oh my gosh, what a wait. You know what I mean? Kind of thing. But uh, no, I get you that, that makes a lot of sense. Awesome. So then how many new patients are you getting right now? Mostly.

Dannica: We averaged like 35 to 45. Um, wow. from that. So a lot of friends come and see me, which is nice, but that's about what I'm averaging. So dance community. I do a dance called West Coast Swing, so I do it socially and competitively.

Mm-hmm. And it's, it's, yeah, it's global. And so I go twice a week and do like social dancing and then I go monthly to like competition type of thing. there's a huge community here for it. And it's very well off people, not a cheap hobby. Kind of a nice thing to all those people have been wanting to be patient.

Michael: Interesting. Okay. Okay. We're gonna have to Google somebody, one of the listeners, Google Danica and be like, swing dancing and Yeah.

Dannica: Yeah, I think I'm on. I'm not like that. Good. I've known it for like five, six years though. I'm like advanced level, but that's like level three of five, But um, it's fun. It's a really good like stress reliever and I really like just kind of moving and grooving. Yeah. Also my husband like super social and. He's my little social butterfly. I'm a little bit more introverted and he will like, no kidding, go to these women's group events and just thrive and like make best friends and be like, all right, I got you like He's been a great referral source as well. Yeah.

Michael: You tell him Go fly. Go fly, go. Yeah. That's awesome. So then what systems right now? Would you say are unique in your practice that you're like, I love the systems we've created so far.

Dannica: Just the whole, everybody is on the same page with everything. So we do morning huddles every morning about every single patient.

So there's never a point where a patient leaves the back office to come up to the front to see someone new, and that person does not know what we just did and what we plan on doing next. so everyone is very, think with that. At least that's the idea. We're doing pretty good at it.

We're still getting there. Yeah. That's one thing that I feel like is unique and patients really appreciate. Trying to think of other things unique wise. I think we just, we do a really good job of like, Because we're not insurance driven. It's not like, okay, every new patient it has to be this, or this.

We're very accommodating to what patients are looking for and just price things different based off of that. So we can be a little bit more selective and flexible with how we bring new patients in if that

Michael: makes Yeah, makes a sense. Yeah. I mean, you can.

Customize everything basically, right?

Dannica: Yes. Which patients just so appreciate and They're really not frustrated coming in. They're not frustrated leaving, I will say, because we're fee for service. One thing that we do that I feel like has been really important that my hygienist thought of that I'm really happy she did is every patient, the minute they're sat back in the room is told exactly how much is owed for the day.

So that way there's never any surprises. You always go over treatment plans, but those get forgotten and then they schedule treatment. And so one thing we do is we have these routes slip that are morning huddles we go through and then it follows the patient throughout the office. so there's never any question about anything.

And the patient's always told, this is how much you're gonna owe for today. And so there's never any awkwardness after the appointment. It's just, oh, I didn't expect that. Then guess what? We just don't do as much that day. That has helped tremendously with patients feeling comfortable throughout treatment and after treatment.

Michael: So you let them know beforehand.

Dannica: Yep. Yeah. Ah. Um, We also, like my staff is trained to, you know, if we're doing a lower left tooth and there's another tooth next to it that needs it mentioning to the patient, Hey, also while you're numb and isolated with rubber dam on, do you wanna just do this tooth, it this much money as well?

And so, they're also trained to like mention that at the beginning in case the patient ends up like they forgot and they're like, oh, well yeah, let's just do that then as

Michael: well. Yeah, that's good. That's like a little mini, I mean, not a mini, but like it's an upsell kind of thing, but at the same time it needs to be done.

Right, right, right. Okay. Interesting, interesting. So I like that mentioning at the beginning of the, the whole appointment, you know what I mean? That way they're not caught off guard or they're like, you're trying to, I knew, you know, they're at more at ease and then you can overdeliver at the same time.

Yeah. Interesting. Okay. So then right now, I guess from the moment you decided, let's talk about from the moment you decided to leave, right? The Air force and then all the way till today. What's been some of your biggest struggles or fails? Your pitfalls?

Dannica: Building the office for sure. The construction legally, per my settlement, I'm not allowed to talk about my construction company, but that should be a good enough statement alone.

Yeah. Let's just say I was the gc, so my mom, my mom and I designed the office. She like moved down here for like six months and helped me design it. It went from a three month build out to like a seven month build out. That was a big struggle, honestly, like just trying to make sure everything was built the way we wanted it.

I think that I felt so, like I needed to be so in charge and so on top of everything, and as much as I loved doing that, that was really hard for me. So, I mean, it turned out exactly the way I wanted it, which is good. But being that involved in it was very difficult without having the proper help for that.

I think that part of my, like, downfall with things is just stress and I, I really can't take my mind off of work. I come home and my poor husband has to listen to everything about work. Luckily he's super supportive, but like if I had somebody different, they'd be like, can you just like stop talking about work.

I wish I would've taken like a little bit more time for myself to like help do stress relief. And didn't do a lot of that and I had a, like lot of medical complications last year because of stress and so, that's kind of been like the biggest thing, but honestly it's all been worth it and I'm happy now and

Michael: yeah, no.

So man, Danika, it sounds like there was a ton of stress, was a lot of the stress 'cause of the. The construction part or?

Dannica: percent.

Michael: Yeah. I know we can't really talk about the settlement, but can you I guess give us a range of like, well, we got what we wanted kind of thing, or more of what we wanted, or you guys did. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Dannica: I got a cheap build out, let's just say that.

Yeah.

Michael: Wow. So there was a bunch of headache going on with that then. Yeah. So a hundred percent that was the stress right

Dannica: there. Yes, a hundred percent. So like for example I guess I, I think this is okay to say, but like, plans, right? So from architecture to design to then here's one good example.

We designed our cabinets to all be floating. So plumbing into cabinets needs to come up through the walls, right? And For about two months. 'cause I didn't notice this two months when my mom was gone for her anniversary. And then she came back and right before the walls and the floors were gonna go in, she walked into the office and immediately was like, why is the plumbing coming up from the floor?

And it had been like that forever. And so, then timelines got pushed back. We had asked multiple times like, Hey, you sure you have the updated floor plan? You sure you have the updated floor plan? Yes, yes, yes. And then all of a sudden, and I got told I'd get walkthroughs, never got walkthroughs framing went up all wrong.

They had the wrong floor plan. Like it was just a lot of like delay because nothing was. Going that way. There was no site manager. So the people, the subs were just doing whatever the heck they wanted. Yeah. Yeah, so, so my mom moved down here with me and we took over doing there every day.

We did all of our own tiling. We did all of the, my front wall, the wings, coat wall. We did, my mom is an interior designer and does tiling, and so we have like, Two huge walls of tile plus two huge half walls of tile, like complicated tile that took us weeks to do. And so we did all that ourselves. We built, some of the walls.

I learned a drywall, I learned frame, I learned to put up, and paint and all this stuff. And so I helped the subs move things along. It's kind of fun. I learned to do a lot of things, but, um, I was there every single day for. Six, seven months.

Michael: Wow, man. Halfway through the tile process. Were you like, I don't even care anymore.

I just put up a wall. It doesn't matter. Or were you still dedicated to it? I

Dannica: was still dedicated to it, but yeah, there's just a lot of like, mom, can you just like be quiet.

Michael: Just leave it alone, mom. Just like, no, I get you. But you know what? Throughout this whole, I guess time, we've been talking, your mom's been coming up a lot, and so she really wants you to, you know what I mean?

Like, I'm here for you. I'm here for you. I'm. And it's so good to be like, even I know a hundred percent you can do it right. But it's so good to be like, just in case my mom,

Dannica: you know? Yeah. There was a lot of times where like my marketing, my gc everybody, I'd be like, Hey, my mom's gonna join in on this conversation and join in on this Zoom call.

And they were like, what the heck? And then by the end of it, like she knew that design and now she designed every cabinet every. Floor, paint, color, everything. She designed my office from the ground up, other than the murals I had designed. But so she was in on that project and knew, let me tell you what, we know how to build a dental office.

Yeah, It would not be anywhere near what it looks like or what it is like without her. So I was really thankful for her to help me out.

Michael: Awesome. Danika. So one of the last questions I wanna ask you is, What's a piece of advice that you've received that you'd like to give to our listeners who maybe are in the process going through the process or thinking about that process?

Dannica: so if you're, if you're thinking about like a fee for service startup, it's definitely doable. There's a lot of people who can tell you it's not. But a couple like pieces of advice would be don't just expect patients to come in. You're gonna have to do some ground marketing yourself. You know, walking around with fires, meeting people, doing all the things, get social build up your social media first.

Don't do it when you're open. Like build up your social media first. Such a great marketing tool, and if you have more followers, people are more likely to come see you and see your reels and see your ads. So do that first. Build it up. Don't be scared to look a little silly on Instagram. Kind of fun actually.

And know like what your vision is, what type of patience you want. Like I had two specific. Patients in mind that I were my ideal patients and I built a whole story around them. And that's how I sort of built my office was around that. And it's been consistently showing that it's working. I mean, I was in the black, is that what it's called?

In the black, where you start making money month two. So like I, did very well just from having these Ideas and plans beforehand and being so hands-on, and so it's not an easy thing to do, but it's definitely doable.

Michael: Nice. Awesome. Danica, 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?

Dannica: Yeah, so, Instagram's a good one. Ology with an ie. Or Dr. Danica is my personal one. I don't have as many followers, but still find more from my personal life. anybody can reach out to me through, um, Instagram or email or our website, ology com, or I'm happy to give my cell number too, if anyone has.

Michael: Awesome. So guys, that's all gonna be in the show notes below. And Danica, thank you so much for being with us. It's been a pleasure and we'll hear from you soon. Thank you.

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Hey guys, welcome to this week's episode of Monday Morning Marketing! In today's installment, Dr. Parthiv Mehta and I are diving headfirst into the dynamic world of dental startups, uncovering savvy strategies to save big bucks and keep overhead at bay during those crucial initial stages. We kick off by debunking the location attachment myth, urging you to explore multiple landlords' quotes to find the golden ratio of affordability and accessibility. We also uncover the fact that non-dental contractors could be your ticket to savings of up to $150,000! Additionally, Dr. Mehta shares his advice on embracing mistakes as inevitable stepping stones on your startup journey.

Get ready to rethink, re-strategize, and reignite your dental startup dreams in this conversation with Dr. Parthiv Mehta!

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You can reach out to Dr. Parthiv Mehta here:

Website: https://www.charmdentalcare.com/

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

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Other Mentions and Links:

Nomad

Chick-fil-A

Sirona Dental Chairs

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For more helpful tips, strategies, ideas, and marketing advice:

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

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

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 Parif. So talk to us about startups. What advice, suggestions, or methods can you give us that will help actually with our startup?

Parthiv: So one of the, the biggest advice I could give anybody that is wanting to do a startup is before you actually do it, do as much homework as you can.

Don't fall in the trap of, oh, you gotta do this billion dollar, you know, beautiful wall out there. Or like, oh, you gotta have all these top of the line equipments. Do your homework. listen to people who have done it. Maybe ask every person you don't know that has done a successful startup. What would be the one thing that you would change if you had to redo it again?

And that probably will give you enough To pick up from their mistakes and, and that will, that will help you a lot. keep your overheads low. I cannot stress on that. I like my sleep at night and I've done three startups and every startup I do, my goal is to make sure from the very first month, I'm not stressed about how much bills I have to pay.

And that will only happen if you keep your overheads low and not just be like, okay, I want to have that. $50,000 Sierra chair in there, or I want to have the C B C T with $150,000, whatever the top of the line stuff. I mean, if you can provide that service and if you're confident, for sure, go for it.

But there's a lot of secondary market out there. There's a lot of other options out there that, that could help you save a lot.

Michael: Gotcha. So then how did you do it pr, how did you keep your overhead low from the beginning phases all the way till where you're at now?

Parthiv: So my first practice when I started, I had, I had no money.

So what I did was I negotiated with my landlord. So I went heavy on it. And what I did is I picked five locations that I liked, to the point where I wouldn't regret if I didn't get any of those. And then I went with all the four or five landlords and I said, this is what I'm getting. I put them against each other and said, who's, whoever's giving me the high best deal, I'm going with them.

I got my best offer. I started with them. What I did is I had the space for five chairs, but instead I just started with three chairs. got those running offered services that, that patient wanted. Customer service was absolutely something that I believe in a lot. So that helped a lot.

And I'm in a very high saturation area and it works out great because there's so every half a mile and I have every D S O possible in Texas around me, and it worked out great because there's always patients that are upset about it and that just helped me with my building, my clientele in there.

Mm-hmm. That's how.

other than the chairs that I bought, everything else that I bought was used. Um, my CT was used, my, x-rays. Um, nomad was new. My sterilizer was a, a refurbished one. So everything else, pretty much, other than the chairs and the, in the, and the nomad were pretty much used in there.

And then second practice that I. Was even lower because now I don't even buy brand new chairs. Mm-hmm. Now I buy used chairs as well. So, another thing that I learned in my second startup was dental contractors versus non-dental. So what I did in my second startup was I made my plan, and that's something I learned from my first startup mistake.

I made my plans first. I hired an architect, paid them out of my pocket. They charged $3 a square foot to make a. Give them the money. Get your meps done, mechanical, electrical, plumbing. Pick your color, pick your, flooring. Pick your, it doesn't have to be the final one, but at least if you tell somebody that I want, let's say, call it a sandwich From, from, mm-hmm. Chick-fil-A. If you say, I want combo number four, now, it doesn't matter. With wherever you go, the price is the same. So pick your flooring and say, I want this company's and this finish and this model number.

I want this paint from Sherman Williams. And that's the model number. Put all of those details in there and then give your plans. Bidding to different contractors. And what I did is I gave it to seven different contractors, three dental, four non-dental. Mm-hmm. And there was a difference of $150,000 plus between dental and non-dental.

And I said to myself, and I said, is that worth it? And, and the dental contractors I gave them and showed them, look, I'm getting these. And they're like, well, they're non dental. They don't know what they're doing. Is it really worth your time? And I said, I'm like, hold on. 150,000 for two months. I think it's worth my time.

I, I said, jobless and stay right there. Doing nothing. If I can save $150,000 in two months is worth my time. And. I didn't have any issues with non-dental contractors. We pay a big amount of, because of the fear. Hmm.

Michael: Yeah, that is true. I feel like a, there's like a price tag sometimes, right? Like, uh oh, there's a dental price tag and then there's a contract price tag.

That's a huge difference. $150,000.

Parthiv: And, and that's, that was significant difference to me at least. Um, And, you know, obviously this was my second practice, so I get it. It was my second startup. So I do understand that, uh, you know, it did give me that additional leeway where I was, I knew part of it because I was a part of my first startup from the, from scratch.

Mm-hmm. but that's one thing. If I had to redo my first startup, I would not go with the dental contractor.

Michael: Gotcha. So your third one, you didn't go with the

Parthiv: dental contractor? No, no, not even when I expanded my first one. When I expanded my first one from five chairs to nine chairs, three years later, I did not go with the dental contractor.

I went with I got five chairs set up with mechanical, electrical, plumbing, AC in an expansion demo, mowing the older place, and I got everything done under a hundred k. Wow.

Michael: Without going. Yeah. Yeah. That's good advice then. Okay. So just the fear is what makes us wanna go with like, okay, they know what they're doing, they know what they're talking about, things like that.

Right. But

Parthiv: probably not. Yeah. That's just, that's just been my experience. I mean, I've had people who love going with dental contractors and that's great. Mm-hmm. You know? Mm-hmm.

Michael: and then I wanted to ask when it came to your team, 'cause this is the overhead of like equipment, right? Pretty much.

Mm-hmm. Uh, chairs. How do you keep overhead low with the team?

Parthiv: So what I did was when I started, we started with. Three employees. One was an experienced dental assistant that had worked with me in the past, knew exactly what we needed to do, what I did, what was my strength. I had a front desk who, knew what to do.

Obviously it was a good learning curve for me because I didn't know what to do. Coming from a corporate background, I thought I knew it all, but it is a whole different animal when it's your own baby. Mm-hmm. So I had to sit with, Different people learned the process, establish my protocols, what I wanted to do, what I wanted my staff to do.

And then I hired an entry-level person who I really enjoyed her conversation and customer service. I'm like, if I really enjoyed that customer service, I'm sure the patients will appreciate it. I just hired her at a base salary, like the lowest possible salary. I'm not even gonna say the salary, but.

She was young. She just wanted to get into dentistry, and I was like, all right, we'll give you a job. Come on over. She stayed hang. She stayed around for like six months. Personality was great. It was kind of like a floater in between, helping turn her around the rooms, picking up the phone calls, learning whatever needed to be done.

And as in when I got time, I continued to train her more and more on what I exactly needed. So that's how I kept my overhead low. And then as we started getting busier, we started adding more and more staff to it.

Michael: Mm-hmm. When it came to any of your other practices, did you follow the same concept? And did anybody like leave like halfway, you're like, oh man, I was just training you and then, you know what I mean?

Parthiv: Well, you know, it, it would be foolish of us as dentists to expect that any of these staff members are gonna stay forever. Mm-hmm. And it's a reality. There's several factors for that, and the most important one being, just the instability in the lives. they don't have, and at least in Texas, they don't have, the same amount of years they need to put into earn a degree that you or I did.

They don't have the same amount of efforts they put into going to school to get the degree. So it's easy for them to switch careers and, and I mean, literally Ch Chick-fil-A probably offers more than what you offer in Texas for dental assistance. Mm-hmm. Or for staff, So it's, a big part is about, being prepared for that.

And if you have your systems and protocols in there, it doesn't matter who comes in and who goes your systems and protocols. You establish them and you tell them, this is what I need you to do. And at that point, anybody comes in and anybody leaves, it is pretty straightforward. This is my protocol. This is what I want you to do in the interview itself.

Can you do this? I'll train you, but can you do this? Mm-hmm. They say yes. Train them. They go on, they leave. That's fine. Get somebody else in the same protocol. Don't get disheartened by the fact and don't expect people to stay here forever. I. Yeah.

Michael: So follow your protocols that you're making pretty much, right?

Parthiv: Right, right. Follow your protocols. Uh, you set your rules. It's your baby. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You decide what they eat, what they, you know, where they play, what they wear. that's your call when you just, you make, that's why you're making your own practice. Right. That's why you're starting your own practice.

'cause you want to be in charge. You may not be right Every time you may learn that, oh, you know what? Crap, I made a mistake. I should have done it this way. But that's, that's the whole point. That's the, that's the whole part that I love about startups and, and that's what I enjoy about it. That you make your mistakes, you learn from it, and you grow out of it.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Michael: That's true. Okay, so then besides the dental contractors, what would be the one thing that you would change?

Parthiv: So now I have four locations. You know, everybody wants to run the race. Oh, how many locations? Uh, we're private practice, so we're not just associate driven. I work in all four locations.

I work currently six days a week, and if I had to redo everything, I would probably get $1 million building in the center of Houston and just have like 30 chairs down there. But again, that's just me saying because Right. We're because of where we're at today, but no. Yeah. Um, that'd be nice. That'd be nice.

That'd be, yeah. Yeah. the more you grow, the more you realize, I wish we had done it this way.

Michael: why,

why do you feel like you are like, oh man, instead of having multiple, just one big one.

Parthiv: Doing dentistry is a piece of cake. Mm-hmm. Managing people. is the biggest headache and nobody's gonna take care of your baby the way you would, you would.

So getting a manager, you could get the most experienced manager, you could get every somebody to do, take entire thing off of you. But at least I haven't met those that, take all the burden off of you and still treat it like if it's their baby and can be on the same level as. She. Mm-hmm.

Michael: Yeah. So you

Parthiv: feel like I haven't met those managers.

Michael: You feel like right now with the, the four that you have, if you had one, you'd be there and you'd give it. You're like, I can oversee, Hey guys, I'm here. You know what I mean? Like, I'm here, don't pull any crap on me, kind of thing. Like, we're here owners here, but with four, it's like, he's not here today.

Yeah. So we, we tried our best partie, but this is what happened. You're like, did you, is that how it feels?

Parthiv: Exactly. And sometimes it's like some of those things where, you are like, Come on. really, but anyways, I mean, you know, that's, that's a part of our job and that's a part of the challenge of, owning a practice whether you have one or you have four, um, we're gonna come across those situations.

Mm-hmm. So that's, that's definitely, uh, one of the situations. And probably another one would be, you know, I bought a brand, three brand new chairs. When I did my first startup and then I added two brand new after to match them all five. but that would be something that I would change. I would not have brand new chairs at all.

I would buy used chairs, spend $500 to just change the upholstery on it get them going. I mean, it's, yeah, it's just not worth it. You know, spending $15,000 on a chair is just not worth it when you can get the same stuff for less than. Gotcha.

Michael: So that's what you think, like the, the good number is like 5,000 or less on a chair, especially if it's used a good quality.

Parthiv: Yeah, it's a good quality chair with all the belts and whistles, with the, uh, good l e d, light, couple stools, delivery doctors, doctor, and assistant delivery packages. and I'm exaggerating when I say five K. Typically they, cost around 3,500 on an average, a good quality one, and they come with one year warranty.

And a lot of times, but, you know, if you buy directly from a doctor to doctor, it's even better. The biggest problem that I see amongst us, Dennis, is that we trust the sales people more than we trust each other. Mm-hmm. That's true. You know? So that's good if, if a doctor comes and says he, he wants to sell this to you, you're gonna be like, Hmm.

But what if there's something wrong? But the same thing, a sales guy comes and sells you the exact same thing. You're like, but this guy is, is warrantying it. So we're essentially saying, I'll take a word off a sales guy, over a doctor. I

Michael: don't know. Ah, I never thought about that. Interesting. Interesting.

Okay. Good insight. Good insight part. I appreciate it man. Thank you much so much for your timely, and if anyone has further questions, you can definitely find 'em on the Dental Marketers Society Facebook group, or where can they reach out to you directly?

Parthiv: You know, I am pretty available on my Instagram.

It is Charm Dental Care. that's our company's Instagram that I manage. And also, if anybody has questions and wants to talk to me, I'm happy to get on the phone. that's absolutely available there too. the two probably the easiest ways to, to get me Instagram and phone.

Michael: Awesome. All righty guys, so that's gonna be in the show notes as always. And pif, thank you so much for being with me on this Monday morning marketing episode. Hey,

Parthiv: absolute pleasure. And Michael, I'll tell you this though, every time I hire somebody new that is in the forefront of it, or that's somebody who's helping me with marketing.

I tell them to go up on the, on YouTube and listen to Michael Arias and, and learn from them. And I personally have learned a lot from your startup groups, even though my first startup was before you guys started the group, but I still, I'm a part of it and it's, it's an ongoing journey and you learn a lot.

So thank you so much for whatever you guys are doing and, and supporting Dennis and, and we're, I'm happy if I could help anybody. I'm happy to help. Awesome, man.

Michael: I appreciate your time. Thank you so

Parthiv: much. Yes, thank you again. Take care.

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Guest: Dalton HandyBusiness Name: TempMeeCheck out Dalton's Media:‍

Website: http://tempmee.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tempmeeapp/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tempmee/

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

Twitter: https://twitter.com/tempmeeapp‍

Dalton Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dalton-handy

Email: [email protected]

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Other Mentions and Links:

HubSpot

Marketo

Salesforce

Pardot

Slack

Google Ads

Yelp

Capterra

Hannible Barca - "We will either find a way, or make one"

Steve Jobs

Cary Gahm, Edward Thomas, and Debra Simmons

Uber

The Infinite Game - Simon Sinek

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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:

• Making sure potential patients can find you online and optimizing your website is an often overlooked essential first step.
• Utilizing a CRM like Hubspot can help keep all of your patient communication and followup in one place.
• Sending out email newsletters to remind the community that your office is up to date and spreading helpful information is a great way to stay in touch. Be sure not to overwhelm your email list though!
• Try to make your office and website have a unique twist, ensuring an office across the country couldn't directly copy you.
• Always provide options for contacting your office. Making it hard for patients to call, text, or email will be a big point of friction.
• If you're running a private practice, think about how you can set yourself apart from DSOs! You may be able to add more of a personal touch than most dental organizations.

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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, Dalton Handy. Dalton, how's it going? Uh, pretty good.

Dalton: Michael, how about you?

Michael: I'm doing pretty good, man. Thanks for asking. If you could tell us a little bit about your past, your present, how'd you get to where you

Dalton: are today? I. Yeah, so I've been in marketing for eight years now.

I started my career coming out of the University of Denver in, in a slightly lesser known field of marketing operations. So it's all like the systems and processes that make marketing work, right, to be able to prove value and to get a feel for everything. So I started my career there. Um, I'm now here at Tempe, which is my third startup where I, I really think that I thrive, right?

This is where I am able to build, I'm able to really see the impacts of my efforts, um, and I'm more connected with, with our users as well than I have been at a much larger corporation. So this is the second time that I've built a marketing department within, within a startup, and so far it's been going really well.

Gotcha.

Michael: So, real quick temp me

Dalton: is what? Temi is a dental staffing community, so we help offices find placement with assistance as well as hygienists for both temporary, multi-day and permanent placement services as well. Gotcha.

Michael: So before the other two startups that you worked at, was it in the industry, dental industry,

Dalton: or No.

Great question. Not in the slightest. I've spent a lot of time in cybersecurity and then the other startup that I was at was actually a highly verticalized software company. So they specialized in software for, um, portable toilet vendors, roll off dumpsters and septic pumpers. So it was very specific.

Really cool company there, and that's where I really discovered my passion for startup marketing and being able to have that a lot bigger connection with, with your customers and have a lot more fun with what you're doing as a marketer too. That's where I really found my passion for it. And so even though it's kind of a funky industry, I'll, always be forever, but grateful.

Yeah. Nice

Michael: man. So you've been in marketing for a minute now, right? And it's cool that you're working in a company that like, you know, is revolved around our industry, right? The dental industry, of course. But when it comes to, you said you created systems and processes that make marketing work down to us.

Okay, cool. What

Dalton: is that? Yeah. So one of the key things that you'll note, uh, as particularly as you get into bigger companies, bigger corporations, you're gonna have a lot of different systems. But from a marketing perspective, one that's gonna be crucial is your marketing automation platform, right? So you're gonna do a lot of things outta this platform.

One's gonna be sending your emails, you can build landing pages, you keep track of all your contacts and your database in that, and then you can also, you know, implement. Uh, all of your website tracking so you can see who's on your site when, what pages they're engaging with, collect data via forms, and then connect all of those activities together, right?

So as soon as somebody fills out a form, cool. Now we're going to direct them over to the right sales representative, but also we're gonna send them. A text, an email, you know, whatever that might be that is in line with their previous action and then make sure that they've got the right communications going their way.

So that's really the hub of, uh, any marketing operations person is going to be focused heavily on that system. But then they're also gonna be working with all of the other arms of marketing. So whether you've got, you know, your trade show, people that are sending leads one way, great. You're gonna be working with them to make sure that they can prove R o I.

On their adventures. Uh, you're gonna be working with the paid media folks. Obviously, all, all your branding people, your email marketers, you really help tie everything together. So it's a, it's a really cool way to start your career, I think, because you get so much exposure to all of those different types of marketing.

Ah,

Michael: okay. So then how can we, I guess, funnel that into, Practice, right? Meaning like we got our front office, we have our dentist, our practice, and I know you said that's one of your area of expertise is where you build a marketing department. So could you in this real quick amount of time, like build us a marketing department for the practice?

Dalton: Yeah, I think so. You know, even as somebody who hasn't done that specific niche, I think there are quite a few things that you can do right off the bat, right? And there are varying levels of automation platforms that I would start with, right? If you've got the platform and you've got access to the right tools, then you can start to build from there.

So that's always kind of my step one. In fact, when I started at temp me, even during the interview process, I made it abundantly clear. Hey guys, when I start, we're gonna buy HubSpot. That's gonna be like the first thing that we're gonna do, and then we'll go from there. so, you know, looking at those, those tiers, right?

So on, on the very top, like enterprise end, you've got things like Marketo. You know, Salesforce has Pardot, part O, whatever you wanna call it. and then HubSpot is great. It scales up and down as you want. so that's, that's usually a go-to start, or a starter kind of, um, automation package. So, Getting that system in first, right?

Making sure that you've got everything centralized and you're gonna need one person that's dedicated to this, right? Typically, it's not gonna be somebody that is already an office manager that already has, you know, their, their plate is entirely full. But what this person should be able to come in and do is, number one, let's work with an agency.

Make sure that your website is well optimized, right? Anybody who's looking for you, is gonna be able to find you, whether that's from an s e o perspective or from a pay-per-click perspective at, you know, at minimum on Google, those are the low hanging fruit. Making sure that the people who are looking are able to find you.

Then what you do is you can take all that information, process it through your platform, and make sure that you're following up with people appropriately. Right? Everybody hates it. If you submit a contact form, you know you're interested in the business, you're potentially gonna buy something, spend money, and then you don't hear back.

You know, it's a bit of a slap in the face, right? So that's one of the nice things about these platforms is you schedule those. Automatically to, to go out. As soon as somebody submits the form, you know, you're gonna set a reminder for maybe the marketing person, maybe the office manager to put in a call, Hey, let's get you on the schedule.

You know, what does, what does that really look like? So that would be kind of my, my beginning of that. In addition to, I. You know, putting together some simple things, a newsletter, some content pieces, just to, just to really show people that your practice is at the forefront of dentistry. Um, that you're really staying up to date, you know, obviously on all your CE and things like that.

but that they're not going to somebody who is I. Posting, right? Mm-hmm. I, I don't, that, that's not the practice that I want to go to. I want to go to somebody who is, who's really on top of their game, and I think that you can really highlight all of that through your various marketing efforts. Email is a great one because it's free, right?

You can, you can always email. there's a bunch out there. My, my recommended cadence on email too is typically gonna be two to three times a week at absolute max. I would probably, for a practice. Once every two weeks. Something like that would be more of the max that I would go to. Just to stay in touch, stay in front of people, make sure that they're getting useful information, but not overwhelm 'em with any, any information that you've got going on.

Michael: Yeah, interesting. So HubSpot and Pardo or Pardot you said, right? if I just got it, I'm listening to this episode. Okay, I got HubSpot now what do I do? Right. Kind of thing.

Dalton: Yeah, for sure.

Okay. So there's quite a few sections within, I'll use HubSpot, the As the example. That's what we use now. I think it's, it is great for, Many levels of business. So there's gonna be your marketing hub and there's a sales hub For our perspective, you know, obviously a lot more, uh, focused on the marketing hub.

So you've got a few different sections. One's gonna be all your contacts, so this is gonna be people that are already in your system, existing patients, things like that. Uh, and then it's also gonna collect the new folks that as they come in, so you'll wanna set up a few normal fields just to track the things that are relevant to you, right?

So, Uh, you know, for example, when somebody hits our website and fills out a form, we wanna figure out are you representing a practice? Are you a hygienist? Are you an assistant? You know exactly who are you? So you set up a few custom fields to get that right information so that you can speak to people as they want to be spoken to.

Right? That's always gonna be any, uh, goal with any marketing effort. So you set up, you know, your foundations there and you can build some basic workflows, right? So if you've got your website, you put a form on the website. Okay, cool. As soon as that form is filled out, you can create what's called a workflow to say, great, I'm gonna shoot them a text saying exactly this.

I'm gonna shoot them an email saying exactly this. You can use some customization tokens as well. So basically what that'll do is if they give you their first and last name, great. Let's use that in the email just to show that you know, we're listening and, and we care. Uh, and then you've got, you know, default values.

Then you can also connect that to any other, many other systems that you've got. So, for example, if you use Slack, internally or something like that, you can send an alert to say your office manager to follow up with that person and, and place a call so you can place all their information there.

Those would be my, my number one steps, and then you'd start to build out some email templates, probably some landing page templates, things that you can reuse time and time again as you launch different initiatives. Gotcha.

Michael: Okay. So it's a lot we can do with that, right?

Dalton: Yeah. It's, it's really, we use it certainly as like our, our centralized hub for all things marketing.

and then, you know, as you get all of that data coming in, then you can say, okay, cool. How much are we really getting out of our Google ads? Right. And you can start to kind of go deeper and dive into how successful, uh, all of your channels are, are so far.

Michael: Hmm. Gotcha. Okay. Okay. So it's really good for like tracking as well and everything like that.

Dalton: Yeah, most definitely. And particularly, you know, on the email side, it's great. You can take a look at any email, you're gonna see your open rate, bounce rate, click rate, click through rate. You can see what links are being clicked on, what isn't all, all that good stuff, um, just baked right there into the app.

Michael: Gotcha man. Awesome. Okay, so then let's talk a little bit more about, business when it comes to dentists. So like, what can a practice owner, a dentist do today to improve their marketing or their business?

Dalton: I think number one is always gonna start with the website, right? That's an area where people are always gonna pop to anytime they're considering, you know, joining or coming to your practice, as a patient.

So that's, that's always where I wanna start, number one, making sure that it's at least up to date, you know, with the right information, hours, all that good stuff, but also that it has a welcoming atmosphere. I think. one thing that is, Always a little bit tricky is overusing stock imagery, right? Mm-hmm.

I think that that can be something that's a little tricky. It's not gonna necessarily give people the feeling of safety and comfortability, uh, as they come in and check out your practice. And then you also wanna make sure I. Every conversion point is optimized, right? So if I'm coming to your website as somebody who's considering, being a patient at your practice, I wanna make sure that once I decide, cool, this looks great, that I can get in touch with you as quickly as possible, I.

Whether I wanna pick up the phone now, I'm 30, that's never the answer for me, right? I wanna ha have multiple options. So, uh, you know, whether it's a text line, incorporating chat onto the website or just filling out a form, Hey, this is what I'm looking for, this is when I'd like to come in, that type of thing.

And then even if somebody gives me a call back, I'm, you know, that understand about that. but making sure that people can really get ahold of you is something that. Is absolutely essential and is often actually overlooked. Right? We, we put so much time and effort into making a beautiful site that really speaks to the core of who we are, what makes us special, all those things.

And then it's easy to forget, oh wait, we're here to generate business From this site. Yeah.

Michael: For you personally, right now, let's just say you got on Delton, got on the website, practice looking for somebody, some pops up right on Google. Would you search on Google or how would you look? Go about?

Dalton: Yeah, absolutely. That'd be, that'd be my first go-to. I'm gonna look at dental practices around me, right? 'cause I want something that's, you know, close proximity. So we moved two years ago to, to this specific area of Denver that we live in. And so it's exactly what I did was I hopped on Google Maps, actually is is another thing.

And that's, its home, it's own whole area of ss e o. Um, but yes, Google and Google Maps are gonna be the primary way that I would try to find a new practice.

Michael: Okay, so you went on Google Maps, and then you clicked on the first one or the first couple, right? And then how would you want it to go from that point on?

Would you, what is the first things you're looking at? What are the things where you're like, all right, I'm gonna contact now, or I'm gonna save it for later. Lemme look at somebody else. What made you wanna save it for later? And look it for

Dalton: somebody else? I'm looking for a little bit of familiarity, right?

I wanna hit your site and understand, a practice halfway across the country couldn't have this exact same website, right? So actually one of the things that stuck out to me about the practice that I go to. They had this really cool, uh, initial picture on their homepage of, I think it was everybody that works at the office just decked out in their Bronco gear, right.

They'd say, you know, they're, they're all about the Broncos there. Yeah. And, uh, so I was like, okay, cool. I get, I get, you know, a little bit of something about who they are without even having to read anything. And so I think, you know, being able to put, put out who you are, and that's something that we're trying to do.

Temp me too is, is highlight some of the things that culturally make us special because there's inherent familiarity and comfortability that lies within that. Um, but I, I think that be personal, show who you are, show what makes you special, those are absolutely something. There are things that anybody can do and can tap into to make people feel comfortable and, and excited about, you know, coming to your practice.

Gotcha. So

Michael: you got on that website and immediately you booked something or were you like, let me look, let me look at. Other stuff.

Dalton: I checked a couple others around just to, you know, do my due diligence. I'm the kind of person who, if I'm going on vacation, I'm gonna make a spreadsheet that has all of the different options and then rank on different variables.

Right? That's, that's how I do my decision making. It's never one and done. Um, but that one really stood out to me, right? I, I felt like I understood what they were about and so I circled back after maybe looking at three or four more. Also, obviously checked the reviews, right? That's always a huge thing, uh, making sure that primarily your Google reviews are in good shape.

Uh, there are a num number of ways that you can incentivize people to get those reviews, but also responded to is a good thing to look at, right? That's, that's somebody that to me is on top of their business and really caress, right? Negative reviews will happen. There's always gonna be, you know, some.

Patient that you can never make happy, right? Mm-hmm. But responding to those reviews in a kind way that shows compassion, understanding, and that you're just caring about your business is, is always a great look.

Michael: Yeah. And so the three to four that you were checking out that you're like, nah, they don't fit, but this is like your due diligence, what was the things where you were like, actually, what was the one outta the, the four that you were looking at where you were like, And you know what I mean?

Like the bounce rate was super fast where you're just like, nah, I don't want to

Dalton: get on this one. Yeah. I think the ones that I would've pointed to like that were ones that looked like something I could have made, you know, in a week. I exclusively stock imagery. There's nothing that points to this office being special.

it is really cut and dry. And then certainly anybody that had less than like 4.4, 4.5 stars on Google with the, with their reviews at a good volume, that was always gonna be a huge concern.

Michael: Do you check more on Yelp or on Google?

Dalton: I check more on Google personally. Yeah. Okay, gotcha.

Interesting. Yelp is always interesting, right? There's, uh, different components to basically any rating or review site, whether it's Capterra for software or Yelp for, you know, basically anything. there's always a pay to play component, so I'm naturally a little, little skeptical, right? I think the overall rating is usually gonna be in good shape, but I also understand that the order in which things are presented to me isn't necessarily gonna be, I.

In the order of quality, uh mm-hmm. You know, the one through 10 isn't gonna necessarily be reflective of that quality.

Michael: Yeah, that's true. That's true. And so then on the, on the website that you went with the Broncos, everybody, right? Like in the ones that you decided to, that's it. How did you contact

Dalton: them?

Ooh, that's a good question. I'm not sure I remember. Uh, I believe that I filled out their contact us form. Okay. And that's what

Michael: you like?

Dalton: Yeah, that's, that's what I like. 'cause then I can, you know, drop a line, particularly if I'm, you know, buying software or something like that, I can drop a line to multiple different options.

See how they get back to me. To me, that's gonna be indicative of their performance as a business. And then go from there. Right. Maybe some, some offices weren't gonna be, Weren't going to be accepting new patients, anything like that. Of course, if that's the case, you'd expect a notice, you know, on the website that Hey, don't waste your time here, we're full.

Um, but then go from there in terms of, you know, responding to any emails that they send me, they expect a phone call, that type of thing.

Michael: Gotcha. Because sometimes, like when, I remember when I was working in the practice, like we would get a form filled out and they told us they wanted us. To call you guys.

Yeah, and I don't know if that was the best thing. Would you prefer that or would you prefer like a text message or an email? What would you prefer

Dalton: as an individual? I would prefer a text. I. As a marketer, my recommendation would be to hit 'em with everything you know, is, is an automated email, an automated text, and then a phone call after a little while.

Right. Just to, just to give people the options with the understanding of, Hey, I'm not gonna overwhelm this person over the course of a period, but I'm gonna make sure that as they get their information that they're hearing back from me through whatever channel they might be, uh, most accessible via.

Michael: What would be like the time period? So let's just say you hit 'em back with an email first. You don't hear from them and I don't know specific Then do we hit them back like the next day with a text and then if we don't hear them the third day, we hit them with a call? Or is it more like all in a 24

Dalton: hour period?

Uh, typically I'd get all of them within a 24 hour period, and then that'll kick off usually a sequence. So, A good example is right now, if you come to the Temp Me website and you fill out the form there, say, say you're a hygienist and, uh, you're interested in that number one within five minutes, actually it's, it's much closer to one minute, which is the target.

you'll get a text and you'll get an email just saying like, Hey, here's the link to download the app. And also here is an opportunity to speak with one of our onboarding representatives if you have questions about it. Here's, here's where you go to download or to schedule that. Then we'll, uh, we'll wait a day and then we'll send you, Hey, just checking in.

We saw you had the interest, you know, is now a good time to chat? Anything like that. And we'll also have a call or two placed at that point from our onboarding representatives. And so that's sequence, we'll, we'll spread out a couple texts, a couple emails across about a week. There are a lot of studies that show particularly on more of the outbound, right?

So it's not somebody coming into your website and filling out a form. But on the outbound side, it takes anywhere from like seven to 12 touches really to get somebody to pick up the phone or to accept that call, right? It, it takes time. It takes. Persistence as well. So I would encourage people to not give up.

Right. There's a good reason that somebody filled out that form in the first place. Maybe they found something else, maybe they haven't. But, a flurry of touches almost immediately is great. And then some persistent touches as well.

Michael: I like that. Okay, good. And then you mentioned make yourself culturally different, and then you mentioned temp me.

So what culturally makes temp me

Dalton: special? I. That's, that's my favorite question. are a super values driven culture, and by that I don't mean that we have anything just like plastered on the walls. Granted, we do have our values on the walls, but but the current space that we're in, we actually took over from a bank that had, the slogans put on the walls right there.

like an owner, you know, be empowered. You know, these really kind of vague things. ours. We're developed when our company was like five people, and they sat down and said, Hey, what makes us special? And so they came up with this list of five core values. And so those are things that we incorporate into everything that we do.

Uh, we hire by them if we ever need to part ways with somebody. We do that, buy the core values, right? So we go through and, and analyze is this person a fit based on our core values? And then we ensure that, all of the actions that we're taking are in alignment with those values. That serves as such a strong, guidepost, north Star, you know, whatever you want to call it.

And then our, our founders are extremely invested in those values and making sure that, you know, everybody else is as well. Um, so between that and then setting extremely high goals and, you know, giving a, a direct pathway toward reaching those goals is a great start for building the culture that you, that you want to see.

Michael: Gotcha. Okay. So what are Temp me's core values?

Dalton: Yeah, so number one is called it's your ship. Uh, what this really means is, Hey, we put a lot of faith in our hiring efforts. You've joined our team. We feel like you are the absolute best person to do exactly what you do. Go run with it. You don't need to ask for, for permission, uh, even when things don't go, uh, as perfectly as you'd think.

Learn from it, move on. Right? We want people to be empowered to make their own decisions. Of course, in a practice, you know, sometimes that can, I could see that going a little sideways, but for most of the day-to-day stuff, right? You're trained, you know what to do, go make it happen. Second one. Uh, hard work doesn't have to be serious for me.

This is super different than work hard, play hard, right? Mm-hmm. To me, in like a tech setting, work hard, play hard is going to be, you know, you're going to really kind of hate what you do from like eight to six, but then we might throw a killer happy hour where everybody just gets super messed up, right?

Like That's what work hard, play hard sounds like to me. Uh, don't get me wrong, we have great happy hours. Uh, that's, that's all fun too. But, For me, this is, Hey, we spend so much of our lives working, we should enjoy what we're doing. Both the output that you have as an individual, as well as the people that you're working with, right?

You're spending so much more time with your coworkers than you are, you know, even some of your best friends in a lot of cases. That they should be people that you enjoy. So if you're not enjoying those things, number one is, is that a you thing or do we need some to make some changes at, at a cultural structural level?

So that's one of my favorites honestly. number three is, is leave it better. So this one's I. Super practical. Hey, you walk into our kitchen at the office, uh, if you see a paper towel or something out, even if it's not yours, throw it away. Right? There's a, there's a percentage of people that make the world worse than they found it.

There's a large percentage of people that leave it about the same, which is cool too, right? You know, you're not, you're not leaving a negative impact or anything. But then there's a small percentage of people that actually leave the world better than they found it. And I like to apply this to conversations, you know, and, and any type of interaction in addition to the actual, like physical cleaning of any space.

I hope that your day is two to 5% better 'cause we have this conversation, right? I, I hope that I can bring a little bit of, uh, something interesting, something fun, you know, make your day just a little bit better because we've had this conversation and I think that that's really consistent throughout our organization as well.

number four is gonna be find a way or make one. So this comes from kind of the Hannibal Barka quote of, uh, taking the elephants, uh, over the Alps to Sack Rome. I could not say the Latin version. Uh, it's out there. It's, you know, if, if you're really curious, I'm sure you can Google it, but for this is, Hey, we, we don't give up at the first thing.

Right? You know, there are a lot of cool things about our platform just from a tech perspective that, you know, took multiple iterations and somebody saying, you know what? I'm not gonna give up on this until I find it. that is able to really help you achieve that next level of success, right? So we wanna make sure that people are diligent, that they're not easily dissuaded, that type of thing.

And then the last one is true believer. So, we want people to be on our team that really believe that we can achieve our goals, right? We want to change the way the world works, uh, not just for dentistry, but for for other verticals as well. And. That doesn't happen if you don't believe that it can.

Right. So this kind of ties into a lot of like Steve Jobs philosophy in quotes. but yeah, you have to believe to be able to succeed. So those are the five.

Michael: Okay, good. That's real. I like that. I like that a lot, especially, um, I like all of 'em, but I like to leave it better than or leave it better. Right.

Dalton: Yeah. And actually that one comes from a really cool story. So, um, one of our co-founders, Kerry, he grew up, well, actually both of our co-founders grew up in northern Michigan, but, uh, Kerry spent a lot of time traveling around the country with his mom in like a, an old station wagon. so Carrie and his mom and family would take a lot of these road trips and one time at a gas station.

Kerry goes to throw his water bottle away, you know, physically throw it at a few yards or whatever. He misses and tries to get in the car. His mom says, no, Kerry, what are you doing? Go pick it up. And so he's said, fine, mom, you know, whatever. He goes, picks up the water bottle, puts it in there, and he comes back to the car and his mom says, no.

Carrie, you're not done yet. There were, you know, a half dozen other pieces of trash right there while you're picking up your water bottle. You could have done that and you could have made the world a better place. Uh, you know, even if so slightly. And that's the kind of people that we are. So that's exactly where this core value comes from, is, is Carrie's mom and being, you know, one of those people that really strives for better and that, you know, leaving no impact isn't good enough.

We have to leave a good impact.

Michael: Yeah, I like that man, real quick, who's the founders of Tempe?

Dalton: Yeah, so Carrie Game and Ed Thomas are the, uh, are the partners that are now running things, but we also were founded by a 30 year hygienist, Debra Simmons, who actually came to them with the idea, right? She's like, Hey, this system isn't working.

You know, she, she was a hygienist as well as an office manager, and so she is like, man, I, I see the need for this. You guys, you know, are, are entrepreneurs. You've built businesses before. There's gotta be something here. Right? And so they, they worked it all out from there. Ed took it to Carrie. Carrie thought it was a terrible idea at first, actually.

And then, uh, they sat down and I think they, they stayed on the phone for like eight hours that night. Just hashing it out, you know, talking about, well, what if we did it this way? 'cause I think the original idea was I. More of a scheduling app, right? Mm-hmm. Of like, you can have one shared schedule that a bunch of people hop on, that type of thing.

And, uh, that, that wasn't gonna necessarily be the way, but now they settled on, you know, our, our current concept and really just have run with it from there. So, Deb isn't as involved in our business currently, but I, I know that she retained her stake and is, uh, still invested in the business, which is, which is really cool.

Michael: Gotcha. So currently, what is it right now? Temp me. Yeah,

Dalton: so a easy way to think about it is Uber for dental staffing, right? Uh, if you're in office, you go on, you post a shift that you've got coming up. Say, you know, your hygienist is taking a long weekend. She's gonna be out Thursday. It's Monday. Cool. I'm gonna post that, and it's gonna go automatically out to all of the relevant hygienists in your area.

So, they'll get notified via their phone. It's all through the app. They get notified, they can either accept it, they can counter offer, which is a pretty cool feature, or they can just leave it be, we don't have any minimums or anything like that that they need to meet to operate through our platform.

All the payments handled through the platform and, and everything like that. So it's really a quick, easy way to find the people that you need to keep your practice moving along. Is this

Michael: like available everywhere, everywhere right now or is it more, you know what I mean, like rural Texas?

Yeah.

Dalton: So right now we're doing, uh, good amounts of shifts in 22 states, uh, every week. and then, you know, some rural areas have great coverage. Others not so much, right? It's always gonna be dependent on whether or not there are enough people to build a marketplace there. So if there's. Three offices and 10 hygienists in, you know, 25 mile radius.

That's probably realistically not gonna be something that we can have a huge solve for unless, you know, people are really willing to expand their radius within the app and you know, they're driving 50, 75 miles, whatever that might be, to pick up shifts at an office. So we definitely do have much easier success in the metro areas, but it's not exclusive to the metro areas by any means.

You guys

Michael: vet like everybody or like what is the vetting process? So when it comes to all this,

Dalton: Yeah, great question. So every person that's on our platform, every professional that's on our platform has been vetted. So from a hygienist perspective, uh, to sign up, you're gonna need to enter, you know, all your basic information, you're gonna enter your licensure information.

So we'll check that, make sure there are no derogatory marks on the record, that everything's up to date, current, all that good stuff. And then we'll also require a picture of the state id. to, you know, make sure that you are, who you say you are. All, all things match up between kind of the three main areas there.

Then for the assistance, it's super similar except for, licensure for assistance varies wildly state by state. So we take that on a state by state basis. You know, I think Minnesota and Texas are great examples of, they operate super similarly to hygienists for the most part. If you're gonna have, you know, a license, we can pop on, check it out, all that good stuff.

Florida, our home state is super different. It's, there are three routes. You can have six months of on-the-job training, you can graduate from a program or you can pass a certification course. Right? So in those, different ways, we have to evaluate each of them. So you may have to submit some additional documentation, things like that.

And then we do ongoing verification as well. So at the end of every shift, that's worked through our platform, both parties. So the office and the professional are gonna rate one, another, one to five and include comments, right? So anybody who is consistently receiving poor remarks, uh, poor scores, you know, hey, they really don't know what they're doing, anything like that.

We'll have conversations with that person. Try to really get to the bottom. Is this an unreasonable ask from the office or is this person, you know, not really cut out to, be utilizing our platform? In which case, you know, we do have to restrict their access. Hmm. How often does that

Michael: happen, Dalton? Like where you're like, ah, you, I don't know how you even got on this platform.

Dalton: It's pretty rare. to the, I don't even know how you got on this platform. Never happens. The, that's, you know, that, that'd be the super extreme end of it. But I think the, Hey, your, your skills aren't quite up to where they need to be is probably less than one to 2% of our platform. So, you know, sometimes things come up, right.

We're all humans, they're, life is hard. There's gonna be. All these external things that can impact somebody's ability to do their job, but ultimately we, we have to, you know, prioritize patient care and making sure that patients are well taken care of, regardless of who, who's in the office that day.

Mm-hmm. So when it comes down to make those tough decisions, that's, what we signed up for, honestly.

Michael: Yeah. Okay. And this is for all like associates, hygienists, assistants, and everything? Or is it just right

Dalton: now? We've got hygienists and assistance currently, and then we should actually be rolling out associates in kind of, uh, we'll call 'em beta states here in the next 30 to 60 days, we'll call it.

So there are other considerations on the associate side, right? So you've gotta have matching. I. insurance. Right? So that's, that's one whole thing that has to be in place. We're expanding our background checks as well for that side, and then ensuring, you know, that we're, we've got all of the malpractice insurance and everything that's rolled up to the associates before we roll that out.

'cause, you know, missing some of those things would be, yeah, really rough. That's, that's not what we're trying to do. So that's the only reason that we haven't rolled those out already. But we're super excited to bring that functionality. We do permanent placement services for all three of those groups already, though.

Michael: I was gonna ask you that, like has it ever happened to where it's like, man, I love this person and they love us. Like, can we just keep them or

Dalton: all the time. Yeah, all the time. I mean, it's, we're, we exist because there's a staffing shortage, right? Mm-hmm. a lot of the time, uh, that's going to happen.

And so we just ask for our buyout fee, which is typically a couple thousand dollars. If you compare it to when I have to go hire somebody from my team, if I work with an external agency or anything like that, I'm gonna pay 20% of their salary. Our fee is significantly less than that. You know, it's, it's, you know, three grand or whatever.

it's, it's gonna be a much easier burden, but then it's all free and clear that office, that professional, uh, they're gonna be tied to one another. That's a W two employee moving forward and they're good to

Michael: go. Yeah. Nice. So what, what are, if I can ask, what are like the major, maybe top three major cities that are utilizing Tempe right

Dalton: now?

Tampa is a huge one for us. So that's, you know, we're born and raised in South Florida, so that one makes a ton of sense. Uh, and then there are quite a few others that are spread throughout the country. Atlanta is also very big for us, New York there I. Honestly, quite a few where we're doing really great business.

You know, I think people have really latched onto the concept and understood, hey, this is a new way to really get into what we call skill sharing, right? Mm-hmm. So, uh, even though the concept is very similar to gig work, we really shy away from that term because to, to us, that is somebody that is not necessarily specialized in the field that they're working, I could take my car, sign up for Uber, join kind of gig work right now. Uh, if, if that's something that I wanted to do, I could not start practicing hygiene or become an assistant, nor should I, but, uh, you know, we wanna recognize that these people have very specific skill sets that they have worked for.

years to develop. And so in, in utilizing our platform, they are truly sharing those skills with the greater marketplace. And we wanna be very cognizant of that. So I think people understand that, um, they're excited to have a little bit more freedom with how they work, uh, ability to gain extra income, things like that.

And then of course, offices need their staff to keep going. And as we've seen post covid, they're just. Quite frankly aren't enough dental staff to go around. So this type of skill sharing model I think is a great way to help bridge those gaps.

Michael: Gotcha. Okay. Nice. I like that. And then how does this kind of compare, or what would you say is like the, ' cause there's others, right?

Competitors, yeah. So well, what makes it different, I guess?

Dalton: Yeah, great question. I think we can break it up into both sides of the marketplace. Right? So which side are you more curious about? Offices or professionals? Ooh, both. I. Okay, uh, let's start with offices. One cool thing about our platform is offices don't have to pay to sign up and there's no monthly fee.

We only pay on the, or we only charge on the temp side when we actually help you get a fill. So we only charge after that connection has been made. That individual has confirmed that they're gonna work at your office, all that good stuff. So, From an office perspective, it's a great additional tool to have in case you ever need any type of staffing.

we also process all the payment through our platform, so certainly as opposed to, some competitors, but primarily, you know, more old school ways of like cutting a check or anything like that. You don't have to worry about any of that, which is obviously a huge positive for our professionals as well.

They get their money via direct deposit. In the latest at like four days, they also have the option to get express pay. So as soon as the hours are confirmed by both parties, they get paid out. They have to pay a small fee, you know, to tell the banks to hurry up is essentially what that fee is. that's a huge perk there.

another perk for our offices is that they can post up to five shifts without having to pay anything. You don't even have to enter your credit card information. So, You can really get a feel for if this is gonna be something that's gonna be beneficial for us as well as, you know, the, the provider quality is extremely high, particularly as compared to, you know, more traditional temp agencies where, you know, most of the, most of our providers do have a current full-time job.

There are people that are at the absolute peak of their profession that are just looking to pick up a little bit of extra work around the sides. So with that, you know, you're getting somebody who can come in, who's gonna take great care of your patients, who's gonna be, you know, more than likely a joy to work with around the office and is the epitome of a professional.

So those are kind of the, a few of the key areas that we offer for the offices. You know, there's tons of ancillary stuff like it's. Extremely easy to use, right? Mm-hmm. It takes about 45 seconds to post a shift that, that you've got open. as well as we've got some market rate guidance baked into that.

So based on your area, we're gonna kind of suggest are you at a hundred percent of the market value rate? Are you under, are you over? That type of thing, which really, you know, is a nice little coaching tool for offices to know what they really should be posting yet. 'cause sometimes it doesn't feel like it should be that high or that low, it's a great way to keep people in line.

On the professional side, it's, it's all about freedom, right? Mm-hmm. So we don't mm-hmm. Have any restrictions or anything like that, uh, baked into our platform. Professionals can use us, they can use other apps where whatever's gonna make the most sense for them is highly encouraged by us. Right? There's no minimum.

So if you want to work a shift that pops up on your phone, then great. Grab it. That's amazing. We're excited. We'd love to have you. Uh, but if it doesn't make sense for you to not work or to pick up any temp shifts for six months, a year, whatever that might be, then cool. Don't you know that we, we don't feel like we have, uh, any foot to stand on to tell people what to do.

And so we, we really want people to be able to make their own way in life, and we really like to break it down into more solid terms around the money that they can make. So, Across the nation. You know, a temporary hygienist full day shift is gonna net you 400 to four 50 bucks. So hey, you pick up one shift a month.

Cool. That's a car payment. You know, that's saving up for a vacation. These are really tangible things that we believe and see make a big impact on people's lives, and that's part of the reason why we do what we do is to see that impact and, and to see them be able to live a little bit better life.

Just because they work through our platform is, is really cool.

Michael: Yeah. Nice man. Okay. Awesome. So really, really great benefits. Features too. But benefits, right when it comes to professionals and also the office.

Dalton: Absolutely. And I should add one more thing is we put a huge emphasis on high touch with high tech.

So, you know, the platform is high tech. It's easy to use, it's great it operates, you know, as, as it intended, all that good stuff. But we've got a ton of real people that make temp me work. So whether that's. Uh, professional that's coming on. There's a team of onboarders that are just dedicated to making sure that all of their questions are answered, right?

We understand that this, you're using us full-time, part-time, whatever, this is still employment, right? This is where your money is coming from. We understand that that's not always gonna be the most comfortable thing to just sign up for an app and start accepting shifts. Right this, there's a lot at stake.

It feels like there's a lot at stake, so we wanna make sure that you hear from real people, that you have the opportunity to voice Any questions, concerns, anything like that? I. And then it's also very much true of our customer success team. It's a large team of some of the kindest, most helpful human beings that you've ever encountered in your life, so you can access them.

We've got very expanded hours, even though we're on the east coast. Uh, typically, you know, you can, you can reach us from seven to seven is, is typically what we say. And then, you're gonna be able to reach them by text, by email, by phone. There's a bunch of ways to make sure that you get what you need.

And I think that that's actually a huge differentiator for us in the marketplace.

Michael: So I like that, man. Yeah. it does come down to that like, we want convenience, we wanna reach out to people, we wanna be able to fill out that form. Text, you know what I mean? But when it comes to us wanting to complain or do or find somebody, we're like, I wanna speak to a human.

give me, you know what I mean, kind of thing. And so, or when we're having a hard time with something, sometimes we're not all tech savvy, right? Yeah, absolutely. So we do wanna speak to, to a human right instead of like, um, zero now and then talk. So I like that, man. Interesting. Now these next questions are just to get into the head of someone who isn't totally involved on the clinical side of dentistry, uh, every day.

What would you ton like to see more from a dentist?

Dalton: You mean just from a, a business perspective or specifically if I'm visiting the dentist, things like that. Let's do both. Okay. from a business perspective, I think that I'd like to see. More particularly private practice owners, really tapping into that sense of community that, I think a lot of us grew up with. Right. You know, I think about the dentist's office that I went to, growing up. I grew up in a small town, and so I went to the same dentist for basically my entire, you know, childhood life, you know, from three to 18 or or whatever it age it is.

You start going to the dentist, I don't even know. Really tapping into that from a marketing perspective, I think is extremely powerful. And I think that that's one of the areas that private practices can win in a market, you know, that we're all aware is, is largely being consolidated by, by DSOs. So that's one thing from a business perspective that I would absolutely love to see.

from a, you know, patient perspective, I really don't have any complaints, man. I, I think about, you know, all my, all my experiences. I walk in. Everybody at the front desk is extremely happy, welcoming, friendly. The booking process is smooth. You know, there's so many tools out there. If you go to a trade show these days and just wander the exhibit hall for a little bit, you're gonna just be inundated by all these platforms, tools, whatever, to make your business run more smoothly.

And I think. Plenty of offices are taking care of that. And then, you know, I, I hop in the chair and there's all this new equipment and tech and things, uh, not to mention, hygienists are just some of the most lovely people you've ever met in your life, right? Mm-hmm. It's, it's always gonna be somebody that, uh, Remembers my name, remembers my story is, is chatting with me even if I can't, you know, actually verbally respond.

So maybe that's, maybe that's one thing is better understanding of, uh, patients not being able to respond. Right. But I think that's pretty much a common joke in the, in the dental industry at this point. So, yeah, no, I really have no complaints. I, I think that dentistry is in a, is in a really interesting, uh, challenging place, right?

With, I think there are a lot of market factors that are making this. Industry tougher to be really successful in than it has historically been, but in my personal experience, that hasn't dissuaded anybody from doing right by their patients and treating people exceptionally well. Gotcha. Okay.

Michael: And then right now this can be, you can answer from either right, general population, patient perspective, or business, but pick one right now.

What do you dislike or hate about dentistry?

Dalton: Right now, I, I, I honestly hate that there aren't enough people in it to maintain the existing model that we've had. Right? I think there's a lot of discussions too. Increase the number of schools and increase the output in terms of dental staff as we move forward. But that's gonna take a while to really get to that point. So I think that's one of the things that's most frustrating for me is that this essential service isn't well enough staffed. Obviously that's, that's why we're here. But, uh, I think on a more personal level, that's frustrating to me to see. I see it in education as well.

Right. My, my wife has been a teacher now she's working on her PhD in education, so I, I see those very similarly of this group of really good people that are giving services that help us as a community, as as a country, you know, however you want to expand that haven't. Had the experience that's necessary for them to stay in that profession.

And so to see, you know, a large exodus for whatever those reasons may be is really sad to me. And, and I hope that, you know, we can kind of right this ship there through, I. Models like ours through getting more people into the profession, things like that. So that not only, is it easier to be in dentistry, but also it remains, possible for people to own small private practices.

Right. Because I think from, you know, just my personal experience that. Was something that made the whole dental experience way better for me, even as somebody who had expanders, retainers, braces, you know, all these really not fun things as a teenager, knowing that I was with Dr. Doherty and Carbondale, uh, and you know that I knew him and I knew the family.

All of that good stuff. I, knowing that I was in good hands was very reassuring to me. So, you know, I really wanna see that that model be sustainable and you know, people to be able to get into owning their own, you know, family practice.

Michael: Yeah. Interesting. Okay. And then, right now, what do you love about dentistry?

Dalton: Oh, the people. I mean, honestly, that's one of my favorite things about, dentistry. Absolutely. Anytime that we go to a trade show, the vast majority of people that we speak to are just some of the most pleasant, welcoming, friendly people you've ever met in your life. They seem to, you know, be.

Enthusiastic and just all of these really positive traits. It's amazing. And certainly speaking to our users, I get the exact same impression that these are people that care deeply about other people. Uh, these are people that want to make a positive impact and are also just really passionate about what they do.

I think all of those speak wonders to this particular group of people.

Michael: Nice. Awesome. Dalton, 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? Yeah,

Dalton: for sure. You can find me on LinkedIn primarily is gonna be, you know, the most business one.

You can find me on Instagram. I don't post much, but uh, you know, if that's something that you're really into, I think my handle is handy Dalton. So, uh, you can find me there or if you have any questions about dental staffing or you know, wanna continue any of this conversation, you can certainly reach out to me directly via.

[email protected]. Temp me is T e M P m E E. So, uh, always happy to, you know, reach out and connect with people in the, in the dental space though. Awesome.

Michael: So guys, that's all gonna be in the show notes below. And Dalton, thank you so much for being with us. It's been a pleasure and we'll hear from

Dalton: you soon.

Awesome. Thank you Michael. I really appreciate it.

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Hey guys, welcome to this week's Monday Morning Marketing episode! On today's episode we're sitting down with the brilliant Dr. Pejman Moghbeli, who unveils an ingenious array of marketing strategies that have been propelling his startup to success. Dr. Moghbeli delves into the intricacies of crafting personalized connections through Facebook, website, and Messenger ads. We also cover the essentials for your Google My Business profiles, call tracking techniques, and the art of impactful mailers. As the episode unfolds, Dr. Moghbeli also imparts invaluable insights into the realm of DIY approaches for thriving as a startup owner.

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Whether you're an aspiring practice owner or a seasoned business enthusiast, listen to Dr. Moghbeli's startup journey to boost your marketing game!

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You can reach out to Pejman Moghbeli here:

Website: https://risingsmilesdentistry.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pejman.moghbeli

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thegame2388/

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Other Mentions and Links:

Google My Business

Google Keyword Planner

Flex

Facebook Ads

Fiverr

Alibaba

CallRail

Google Local Services

Dr. Deangelo Webster

Open Dental

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For more helpful tips, strategies, ideas, and marketing advice:

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

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

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 Paige. So talk to us about your startup. what advice would you give us suggestions or methods that will actually help us with our startup

Pejman: process? So in my case, uh, I opened late February. I didn't know when I was gonna open because I didn't know when I was gonna get my c o, but.

If I had to go back in time, I would've probably started marketing maybe a month before which I'm doing right now anyway, so I'll just tell you what I'm doing right now and I would've just kind of backtracked it a month earlier and done the same exact stuff.

Mm-hmm. for one, Facebook marketing, I do all my own Facebook marketing, so I run ads, campaign ads. I have one ad that's running Basically I have five photos. I have one of me with the staff. I have one with the assistants holding a little whitening thing.

I have me and, a patient shaking hands. I have another one, um, with me and my IT guy who's been a total lifesaver in this journey of mine. holding hands and for each blurb. I don't talk about dentistry, so I kind of say, Hey, this is, you know, Dan, my IT guy, you know, he's super nice and he doesn't like going to the dentist, but he's helping me out and call us if you need anything.

I don't advertise free whitening. I don't do any of that stuff. Um, the guy with me holding his hand, shaking his hand, um, kind of the same thing. Um, it doesn't look like an ad per se, um, which works. Uh, and then the best performing ad is the one where, My assistants went business to business, holding our brochures, shaking hands, and taking a selfie that way.

And once you put these ads out, you can put your own blurb into each different one, and then Facebook will allocate your daily budget to the best performing ad. And by far, my best performing ad is the one I just said, is the one where the assistants are shaking hands, um, with a bunch of business owners saying, Hey, we're a small business.

You know, we know it's important to help each other out and come visit us if you want. Here's our number and website. So Facebook allocates like 80% of my daily budget to that ad alone, which is, it's getting the most clicks, awareness, engagement, all that stuff. there's ads where they'll click it and they'll, it'll go to my website and that's it.

On the website, there's a book now button and the phone number, which is all being tracked. one set of ads with five of those pictures. The other set of ads is it goes directly to the scheduling website, which is flex in my case. Um, it goes directly to that. No website goes directly to that, and they can Facebook.

And the third ad is Facebook Messenger ads. And when they reply to those ads to any of the following, five, I just, or the five photos. It opens up a Facebook Messenger conversation with me. I have it automated, so when they reply, my blurb says, Hey, this is us. What demo needs do you have question mark.

They'll respond, I need a tooth pulled. I'll say, do you have insurance? They'll say, yes, and then it's all automated. They don't, no, they're talking to a robot for the first couple lines, and then I jump in to get more. Detailed information. And then I used to also do a fourth type ad ad, which was leads, which is, they click on it and all it says is, okay, great, you wanna be a patient?

What's your name and number? That's all we want from you, and we'll call you and we'll figure everything out. I got very few leads and the ones I did get every time we called them, they didn't pick up it went to voicemail, or they never showed. So without a doubt, I would say The website

Michael: ads, the scheduling

Pejman: ad, and the messenger ads all worked.

Michael: Gotcha. Uhhuh. So that's like the first thing you'd say. You'd backtrack, right? You're like, I'm gonna start pushing that. Yeah. I would do all this. I would do all this

Pejman: one month before I opened. I, I

Michael: wish

Pejman: I would've done it, but in my case, since I didn't know when I was gonna open because I had a c o issue, I didn't know when I was gonna open.

I didn't know when I was gonna hire. So maybe a month before. another thing I tried, and this was kind of so-so was instead of going through these companies, To get mailers at, you know, 40 cents a mailer, postage included. I said, you know what, I'm just gonna go to fiverr.com. I'm gonna get some person to design my postcard.

I had her use one of these images that I just talked about. Put 'em in the ad. Say put our membership logo, tracking phone number, website map, make it look nice and glossy. She sent me a P D F, both sides and my bio on the other page and you know, a little blurb there. She made it I think eight and a half by 11.

So I took up that P D F I went to Alibaba and then I found a bunch of these, um, Chinese, uh, postcard makers and I got a few that could do it for like 3 cents to print it. But then shipping was a pain because it takes a month from, go from Hong Kong, China to, you know, from Shanghai to mm-hmm. Phoenix. but all in all, it was $700 for 20,000 postcards.

Wow. So I got 20,000 postcards is a. I have a nice contact at Alibaba, so I trusted her. I paid it. It's all like verified and authenticated. Everything's legit. So yeah, the cards came from the design I made from the other lady. I had 20,000 cards here, but now the only thing I can't cheap out on is the actual postage.

I can't mm-hmm. Manipulate that. So then every week I would take 5,000 of these cards to PS them in the, and they would also bundle 'em in hundreds for, um, every day, every door direct mail. I would pick the routes, you know, income, whatever, whatever I would go to. And I would also have a tracking number there.

And then I would go to u ss p s with a cart of 5,000, which is, it wasn't too bad, but it was hot, so I had to like carry it. And then, yeah, and then every, every week I would hit 5,000, uh, addresses a week. I could either do 20,000 at once. You know, one, one person 20,000 times where I can be the same person four times in a month.

I did it that way and I got maybe like five, six patients that way, which is not great, which in my opinion was not a success. Now all in all, it ended up being like 21 cents a card, which is the absolute cheapest you can make it, and this is was amazing quality. Maybe I'll. Maybe I'll change up a few things, but I can't change postage.

Postage is still like $900 for 5,000? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Cards every week. So that's like $4,000 for 20,000 postcards. Did it work? Not really.

Michael: Gotcha. So the postcard, you wouldn't, you wouldn't hit again. Or maybe like down the line, you're like, yeah, maybe down the line. Down the line. I can't make the postage.

The postage

Pejman: is the, expensive part.

Michael: The

Pejman: Alibaba on the design, that was super cheap. Shipping was cheap, but it's the postage I can't change. Yeah, but that, that, because the postage right now is, if you just go right now, it's 18 cents. Plus the cost of printing plus all that is like another three 4 cents and that's 22 cents a cart, which is as cheap as you can almost make it.

then I did Google ads and I had someone run 'em for a couple months, you know, people searching for terms and ad word. Google keyword planner, excluding certain words like Medicaid and putting certain other words, filling out the description, headline, all that phone number being tracked.

I use CallRail for tracking almost everything. CallRail. I use it for website, tracking, Google my business page tracking, Google ad tracking, Facebook tracking, postcard tracking. that's like. 10 bucks a month there. That's not, it's not a big deal. I also use Google Local Services ads.

They just figured this out a couple months ago where, as of January you can advertise with Google Local Services. So basically what this is, is you search dentists near me, and the first thing that pops up at the top, it

Michael: says like, Google Verify dentists, and this is above the ad. This is above all the other

Pejman: sponsored ads.

It's like, it's literally the first thing you'll ever see. So if you type like Plumber near me, you'll see at the very top. So I, but those are $110 every time someone calls. And you have to be kind of tricky with like, exclude certain insurances or Medicaid or whatever that you don't accept Leads that aren't there. And every time it's a nonsense lead, I get my money back. So it's actually kind of nice. but I've had people say, Hey, I just saw you. And they're like, oh, I saw you on the little thing. And the Google local services goes above sponsored as it goes above, even the map pack on the Google, it goes way up there.

It's, it's literally the first thing. and they just started that for dentistry in, January. And then just verifying your Google My Business page, optimizing it, filling it out. With nice keywords, nice map photos, updating with Google postings, optimizing it, and there's nothing else you can do. And anyone that says you can do more is full of it.

and then you can put like a tracking number there. and then yeah, Facebook, Google, Google Ads. I would've done all this, but a month before I opened it.

Michael: So basically like all this right here, You, you learned it on like the Facebook marketing. You did it, you learned it on your own, or did somebody help you or what?

Pejman: I did it on my own. Um, I also watched, I'm sure you guys know Dr. DeAngelo Webster. He had he has his own like startup. He's like my, mentor, you can say. Um, he doesn't walk me through it, but he has a class and I, he only has it where his goes to the website. and that's it.

You can customize an audience. You can make a lookalike audience. You can, mm-hmm. Basically, I can take my patient list. I can say, Hey, Facebook, only market to people who look like this. Not physically look, but who are demographically like this person and Facebook will automatically target.

women above this and income on that and searching this and their behavior, and only on the mobile feed, not on desktop. Nobody really is on the desktop or only between this hour and this hour. So

Michael: I did it

Pejman: I had Facebook take my existing patient list and I said, make a 1% lookalike audience, which is what that means is.

And I'll say, within a 10 miles it'll say, pick the 1% of people.

Michael: Who look the

Pejman: most, like the list I provided make a identical 1% copy of

Michael: this. And so these are highly targeted people who look just like my patient list. Not only that, the 1% of my patient list the 1% of the people who've already interacted

Pejman: with my Facebook already

Michael: called me, get me more people who look like these people.

Mm-hmm. And then I put

Pejman: all the, all of them in the ads. So all the Messenger ads and the click ads and the website ads are all 1%. It is not just, oh, here's 10 miles, hit everybody. I used to only target women, because men don't really, aren't very engaged in their healthcare. Mm-hmm. So I, I thought it was a waste of dollar

Michael: to do that.

Pejman: I still think it's a waste of dollar to do that. However, with the 1% it's so targeted that I think it overcomes even that obstacle. So right now Facebook is determining. Who those best people are. I have no idea if it's hitting only women or men or you know, above 25 moms or you know, whatever. So I did Instagram.

Instagram I wasn't a fan of. It's too young. Even with the 1%. I said, just forget, let's just do Facebook only. So right now I do a thousand dollars a month of Facebook ads, another like 1500 in Google ads, and that's it.

Michael: And so how many new patients are you getting right now? A month. Uh, may. I had 25. June

Pejman: I had 25.

and again, I'm, I'm a startup, so yeah. And then July I have like, I have no idea. I could start, I just, I dunno, maybe 15 or something.

Michael: Yeah, no, no, it's good man. It's good, especially if your budget's like, you know what I mean? We're just honing in on, on Facebook and you're getting the patients you want, right?

Pejman: yeah. You know, p p o and cash and even the ones who don't have insurance, I kind of, uh, navigate them towards our, uh, membership plan and, kind of that stuff. And it's just, it's the way you present. It matters more than, if you confuse them with too much information, it's not gonna work.

So on the Facebook, I say, we have a membership, you get 25% off, you get two free cleanings and blah, blah, blah. And then they say, how much is it? Okay, whatever. And then I book 'em. And I also use a remote software. I remote in. from my house or from my cell phone to our open dental, and I'll put 'em in then like five minutes and then that's it.

And that's it. And then how many people are on your team?

Michael: Just me and two assistants. Okay. Do they do that too? Like if they need it, do they know how to do all that or No,

Pejman: they know how to, once they call the office, they know how to do that. But if it's outside office hours, I do all that.

Michael: Oh, okay. Gotcha, gotcha.

Pejman: Like the messenger stuff is all me. And everything else, uh, they can do it when they're at the office.

Michael: Oh, nice man. Awesome. So then any other piece of advice you'd like to give or suggestions to our listeners?

Pejman: Um, yeah, learn to do it yourself because only you care about it as much as you do. Nobody else cares more than you do and don't fall for.

scare tactics from, people who don't have your best interest or are charging some ludicrous amount of money. Or just do it yourself. Learn it yourself. Go in a corner, watch some YouTube videos, ask questions. If you have any questions, you know, ask me. I learned it all my own. I also, you know, don't have that much, obligations in life.

So I do have a lot of time. It's a startup. I have a lot of time and I tweak everything. Every, I almost, I put a new picture in the ads every week. I say, oh, let's try this ad, or let's try that ad. Let, let me take away the ads that are wasting money and let me give all the budget to the good ads. And lemme take a photo of the whitening thing and maybe this will turn into an ad.

Lemme take a photo of this patient. I always tweak, I always look at it week to week. Which ads are doing well, what's the cost per click, cost per conversion, all that stuff.

Michael: Nice. Awesome. Paige, Matt, I appreciate your time and if anyone has further questions you can definitely find 'em on the dental market or society Facebook group or where can they reach out to you directly?

Facebook.

Pejman: they can message me or Instagram or just anywhere on social media. It's Okay.

Michael: Awesome man. So guys, that's gonna be in the show notes below. Hey man, I appreciate you. Thank you so much for this time and we will talk to you soon. Thank you.

Pejman: Thank you so much.

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Do you want to attract new patients immediately, increase your brand awareness, and be seen as the "Go To" practice in your community? Then start doing Ground Marketing today! Our Ground Marketing course offers a range of actionable strategies that will help you attract patients from your local restaurants, gyms, corporate locations, and small businesses in your area! With step-by-step scripts, foolproof plans, and real-time video demonstrations, you'll master the art of effectively engaging with your local community to attract new patients effortlessly.

Click this link to begin your transformative journey with our Ground Marketing Course now! https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/the-ground-marketing-course-open-enrollment/

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Guest: Syed ShahabuddinPractice Name: 311 DentalCheck out Sundar's Media:

Website: http://www.311dental.com

Email: [email protected]

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Other Mentions and Links:

Venmo

Studio8e8

Heartland Dental

Kool-Aid

Ferrari

Toyota Corolla

Maserati

Dr. Farhan Momin

Joe Ross and Associates - Real Estate Broker

UPS

A-dec Chair

Spear Education

CareStack

CMOShare Marketing

MVP Mailhouse

Contagious - Jonah Berger

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For more helpful tips, strategies, ideas, and marketing advice:

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

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

Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041

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My Key Takeaways:

• Performing a happiness exercise can be a great way to find what's really important in your life and align your values for the future!
• It is a privilege for us to see patients every day, so show them that they matter with a warm greeting and recognition!
• You do NOT need the most fancy piece of dental gear to impress patients. Get something they will actually talk about like a massage chair!
• All team members need to buy into the vision of the practice. When everyone brings their ideas and support to the practice, that's where it really shines.
• Personal touch can be lost in the fast-paced lifestyle of corporate dentistry. Honing in on one practice can really nurture and develop quality relationships with patients.

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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. Saed Shaha. Budin. Saed. How's it going?

Syed: It's going well, man. I'm blessed. Blessed to be here. Thanks for having me,

Michael: man. What do we gotta do to get one of them shirts?

Syed: It's a tough uh, a tough ask man.

That's where I got 'em from. Oh,

Michael: nice man.

Syed: Nice. I like that bunch brand new materials, man. This is just the beginning. This is, this is just the beginning. Yeah. Studio

Michael: 88 made that for you, right?

Syed: Studio 88 did the logo for me. Yeah. So I can't take any credit. I chose it. So I guess that takes some work, but yeah.

Michael: Yeah. That's a big decision. Yeah, no, that's true. But also say, can you tell us a little bit about your past, your present, how'd you get to where you are today?

Syed: Sure man. I'd love to. So, I grew up in Chicago land, Chicago land area, about 40 minutes west of city of Chicago. In the suburbs. You know, one of the only brown kids in my entire class.

Always had a little bit of a chip on my shoulder, always had some prove, you know, grew up. I wanted to always be I wanted to be a psychiatrist. Weird thing for a kid to want to be, but my uncle was a psychiatrist and I just saw the kind of respect that people gave him. He had his own business and I knew that he talked to, you know, his business was dealing with people and talking to people, and I loved that.

And that's really kind of what I wanted. Started a little, learn a little bit more about that and decided, nah, actually that's not what I wanna do. The field isn't what I thought it was. You know, you're kind of just pushing pills more than anything. But I, I can say that my sister's like psychiatrist have, at the same time that I was like, you know, late high school I was getting braces.

My orthodontist, I don't know how, what kind of language I could use on this. But he wasn't a very, like, he wasn't, he was nice, but he was kind of like full himself. So he I mean, I would go in and I'm a 16 year old kid, and this guy was just your typical uh, like Indian guy who always wishes that he wasn't Indian, he wishes he was white, you know, one of those guys.

So I have vivid memories of going in there and him just bragging about his life and where he is and where, how he got there. You see that girl up front? That white girl, that's my wife. And I'm like, okay. he pulled out his appointment book. He goes, look at all these patients. They all pay me $200 a month.

And I'm like, okay. He's like, see that car up there? That's mine anyway. Full of himself. Right? And I was like, man, this guy, I never wanna, I don't wanna be this guy. But when he would talk to me about why my mouth was the way that it was, I had some crazy issues. You know, I looked like a vampire canine teeth coming in weird ways.

He would talk to me about why my mouth did that, how my teeth got to where they were. And I just thought it was like, I thought that was so cool. And I was fascinated. So I was like, I wanna do this butt be this guy. So, that started my fascination with dentistry, man. You know, fast forward through college, I thought about nothing else.

I didn't have any backup plans. If I didn't get to dental school, I was gonna be a hand model in California or something. I didn't have anything. I had nothing planned. So, yeah, man. Went to dental school in Indiana. I feel weird just talking this long by myself, man, by the way. But

Michael: you're like, I've never done.

You feel like you're orthodontist guy. Yeah,

Syed: man, man, we're going full circle here. That's crazy that

Michael: he was like that though, that he was real quick. Backspace a little bit though. Psychiatry. When was the pivoting point where you're like, Nope, nevermind.

Syed: Good question. I, I just started to learn more about it and it was late.

And I just like, sat with my uncle and asked him like, what's, you know, what's like your life? Like, what's the day in the life like for you? And it's a lot less, I mean, what I realized is that I wanted to be something more of like a counselor or like a psychologist rather than a psychiatrist, because you spend like a couple minutes with the patient, I would hear him on phone calls and a phone call goes like this.

You know, this is Dr. Whatever. Dr. S. Yeah. What's going on? Okay. That medication's not working for you. Okay, let's try this other medication. I'll call it in for you. That's like mainly your conversation with patients. Sometimes it's like, okay, and they're very like, just deadpan. Okay. Yeah. You're thinking about hurting yourself.

Okay, let me get you started on this other medication. And that's all it is. It's a lot less of like, you know, Tell what, what's your, how are you feeling and what all that kind of stuff. I dunno, the, the connection isn't really there the way that I thought it would be, at least not for adult psych. Mm-hmm.

You know? that was the pivot when I was just like, it's kinda, you know, it's not what I thought. Yeah. It's not what, so you've always kind of had like any psychiatrist out there. If you're a psychiatrist, man, do your thing. I can't do it.

Michael: I can't, you know, you've always kind been, or it sounds like, I dunno if you've always, but like, You wanted to help, but more like on the internal, you know what I'm talking about?

Syed: Yeah.

Michael: Yeah. So why, why did, why did dentistry

Syed: have, how did that happen? I was fascinated by the science of it. My parents were typical Indian parents. We barely went to the dentist, like barely ever. But I just was like, I know I wanna do something, help. Because I wanted to make people feel better.

But I also wanted to have that connection. So like general medicine was kind of in the back of my mind, but then I started looking into dentistry as well. And I dunno, there, I think there was a website or something that I saw and it's talked about pros and cons of being a dentist and all that jazz.

So I was looking into this, you know, looking into, started looking into it and I was like, this is it. Own your own business, which is a big thing as well. I wanted to do. Big, huge part of wanting, wanting to be a dentist, and you build connections with people and you can make them feel better pretty easily.

So yeah, man.

Michael: Okay, nice man. So then fast forward and then you decided to open up your practice. How long were you an associate or working for an

Syed: associateship? Yeah, good question, man. There's a story there, but Graduated in 2017. I worked for Heartland Dental, big Corporate.

Mm-hmm. Dentistry they're like almost double the size I feel like, than they were when I started working with them. Worked with them for four years and then moved back to Chicagoland area. When I was working for them, the first, I really only had a plan to work with them for like a year, and I'm like, I'm just gonna work with them for a year, maybe learn some things, get my speed up, and then I'm go do my own thing somewhere.

I lost track of the vision. the vision was I wanna have my own business. I wanna be a leader. I wanna have my own practice throughout dental school. This is what I was thinking. And I'm like, you know, everything that I was learning at dental school, additional CE and stuff that I was doing in dental school, additional leadership, things I was learning was all to set me up for that.

But when you work for a place like like Heartland, again, I'm not trying to throw shade, but you drink the Heartland Kool-Aid, everybody tells you there's no way out of this corporate thing. You gotta work with us and this is the best option. All these people who have practices, they're gonna be gone.

We're gonna buy them all out, all that jazz. And it was just, you know, I was just listening to it and I should have paid no money to it, you know? So I lost track of the vision, when I was working for them.

Michael: Okay, so when did you snap back into reality, I guess you can say, and been like, nah, man, like, I'm gonna do my own thing.

Syed: That's a good question, man. You're a good interviewer. Can we just take a second? Appreciate

Michael: that'll. I'll Venmo you somebody later. Yeah, yeah. Cool, cool, cool.

Syed: Corny, I did a happiness exercise. My wife and I did a happiness exercise. This is what the exercise is, and I always advise everyone to do this Wherever you are in life, whether you've already started working, or you haven't started working, you haven't even thought of your profession yet, here's the exercise.

Sit down, think very, very deeply about everything that you need in life to be happy. Everything that. Money, what kind of money you wanna make? What kind of material things do you wanna do? You want a Ferrari? Are you okay with a Corolla? What kind of house do you want? What kind of life do you want? Do you wanna have free time?

Do you wanna go and travel? Do you wanna have time with your family? You wanna live close to family? All of that jazz, literally everything. And take like a full day and just do that. And then you have a vision. You have a life that you've built out for yourself in the future. You've decided these are the things that are gonna make me happy and just never compromise on those things. What happens is you get caught up in the chase. I'm sure that you know, you can sympathize. I'm sure that a lot of you guys can sympathize.

You get caught up. This other person, this other, this friend that I went to dental school with is now they have three practices and I'm still here as an associate or whatever it is. You know, my friend who was went into, didn't even go to college, is driving a freaking Maserati and I'm out here with my whatever, it's, the chase clouds you here and it's it's dangerous because it keeps you from again, You lose track of your vision.

What's gonna keep me happy? What do I need to be happy? So, in that list that I wrote up was living close to my family. I didn't live close family when I was working with Heartland, having my own thing, I would, that wasn't the case for me. So just a whole list of things,

Michael: you know. That's interesting. besides that, besides owning your business and living close to family?

What were some of the things that you needed or you need to be happy?

Syed: I need to be fulfilled in what I'm doing, and part of that involves just providing like a great patient experience that, I can only do if I'm doing my own thing. So that's one thing is being fulfilled, you know, in my job, I'm not even gonna mention the the money thing because I'm making my less money right now and probably will be for a year than when I was working with Heartland, probably for the next three years, to be honest with you.

But I had a number in mind and it's actually, it doesn't cost that much to, to keep me happy. Personally. I wanted to be stress free and be able to spend time with my wife, like a lot of time with my wife and not just like two, three hours in a day. I needed to be close to my parents.

there's a lot on the list, but Yeah, I dunno. Okay,

Michael: man. No, it's good. Its good now. No, it's good. It's good. Like, uh, right now, does your wife work with you or no? Yeah. Okay. So you're close, right? Yeah. Like it's good. Yeah. And then so the other stuff is I can't get away from her, you know?

You don't want to either, man. It's nice like, yeah. Yeah. That's good. It's good that you're, you know what I mean? You did a happiness test and like realized and pivoted. How easy has this process been? So let me ask you like, When did you start looking for locations?

Syed: I started looking for locations. It would've been around like May, June last year. Officially started like, kind of like looking at locations and turning off the idea of buying a practice and then turned to the idea of starting out my own. Oh, so you were looking

Michael: for an acquisition first?

I was. did you not find one that you were looking for or?

Syed: yeah, partly that is part of the thing. For the longest time. So I'm really risk averse. I mean, this is the biggest risk I've ever taken in my life. I really try to make calculated decisions and I play it safe.

Like I play it really safe. So my first thought was if I'm gonna have, if I'm gonna buy, if I'm gonna get a, have a practice of my own, I want something that's already established where I already know it's gonna be successful. I already know there's a guaranteed income already coming in. There's patients already there.

So, I started looking into different brokers and talking to them about what kind of practice did they had and nothing was it, you know? and then I started realizing, as I talked to like more and more people outside of brokers, the way that the dental market is the, for offices, there's a couple of people, especially if you're in a big city like I am, Chicagoland.

There's a couple of people who have, the brokers have them on speed dial because they're gonna offer the best price. And Heartland Dental's one of them, all these corporate places, you hard to compete with those people. If you don't have that kinda capital, you don't have anything to really show for it, you know?

So, the only other option really was to then hit up dentists who are gonna retire or people practices that I liked, and then tell them, Hey, when you retire, would you be open to me buying this practice? Okay, when are you gonna retire? Two, three years? Two outside of my time zone, you know, it was like it was gonna take too long.

Had a conversation with a friend of Farhan. I'm gonna shout. He was gonna start up a practice and I was gonna buy a practice. We had that conversation and we flipped. He bought a practice and then I started up my own practice. Mm-hmm. Cause he was just like, these are the, here's the pearls for having a practice, start a practice.

Like you can set everything. That sounds really good. That sounds awesome. It's gonna take some time, but it's my own thing and I made every decision and it's a startup and it's something I'm always, I mean, it's sounds like it's a lot of fun. And he just realized like, I don't think I wanna do that. I think I just wanna buy something more established.

It was weird. We did this 180 thing, both of us, but

Michael: So then you found the location, you, was it immediately the first location you found, or were you like,

Syed: no.

Yeah, I worked with I worked with a couple of real estate brokers here. Dental real estate brokers. Mm-hmm. Actually not just dental, but health. Joe Ross and Associates. I gotta give him a shout out. They gave me kind of like a list of all the places that were sort of available and I went and checked out a bunch and I was like, okay, sure.

Yeah. Maybe this one. Maybe this one. They checked some of the boxes. They weren't checking all of them, but I was like, I have to. And then I just went on a drive one day and I just found this spot here and it's the perfect size widthwise that I wanted. And it looked nice. Like it relatively new built like 10 years ago, I think, 19 years ago in the location that I wanted.

before we scouted locations, my wife and I made dental appointments at a bunch of offices. Like in the area, and I was like, okay, I know what my competition is now. Yeah. Hold on, hold on.

Michael: Why'd you do that? Why'd, why'd you, what was the point of that?

Syed: The point of it was to, I'm always trying to learn.

I'm always trying to improve. I picked up little things here and there from some of these places. Like, a little thing that I put into the patient experience here, but mostly to see, okay, what is my real competition care if I open up? Is there somebody down the street who's gonna do a better job than I'm?

And if that's the case, I can't have confidence in myself and if I can't have confidence in myself, how is anybody else? But, so that's, that was kinda the reason why I did that. did you go,

Michael: you went to these locations and got the,

Syed: my wife and I did. Yeah. What were some of the things you

Michael: picked up?

Syed: One of the places that I went to wasn't even in the areas that I was looking at, but they're a huge name in Chicago, land area. I won't say their name. Mm-hmm. But they're a huge name here and you've probably heard of them and everybody probably has. their design was incredible. It was impeccable.

Whoever is designing those offices, freaking kudos to you. And there was a lot of stuff like, they're really like one of. Cool offices, you know, so they had little, little things that I was like, that's, that's a thing that I'm gonna try to put incorporate later on, you know? But then there was things about the patient experience that I didn't enjoy.

And the sad reality is that, single location practices are kind of few and far in between. That I have found, at least in the big city like Chicagoland, even that place that I'm talking about has like seven locations. They're opening their seventh and eighth location, and when that happens, man, the patient experience just falls by the wayside because the owner of the practice, the, the person who has the most stake in that business is not in the practice.

And when that's not the case, then who's overseeing this? Somebody that you just pay. An office manager or somebody, they don't have the same stake in the practice as you do as a practice owner. So yeah, that stuff just falls by the wayside. And then you, you know, because the patient experience is suffering, now you gotta, now you've gotta compromise on cost for things.

You gotta compromise on the time you spend with patients. It's all related. Mm-hmm. It's all related. So then you gotta change the vision for your whole practice and. I'm just gonna start thinking now mold seven, eight locations and just getting my profit that way versus just honing in on that one practice and providing the best experience.

That's just kind of what I have seen working with the corporate places that working with Heartland that I, you know, I did for four years and then just kind of looking around and being like, look, there's a practice here quarter of a mile down the way, literally two minutes you turn here and there's another practice there.

Three on the street over here. There's like so many practices that are around here, and every single one of them is one of X locations, and the patient experience is not there, you know? Mm-hmm. So that was my vision now then was to, I'm just going to hone in on that and that's what's gonna be, that's what's gonna be our shake.

It's gonna take us a little time to get there. In terms of, success, let's call it. But if my patient experience is the way that I have envisioned it and the way that my team has envisioned it, we've come up with it together, people will be happy So then

Michael: when it came to the specific things like the design, what was it like? You're like, I'm gonna, what was it, what was it and the design that you're like, I'm gonna take that, and what was it where you're like, dang, they're patient experience cause of this specific thing sucks.

Syed: Design was the way that they engaged, like social media was a thing.

Mm. I was like, I wanna do that. Cause people want that. People would love for their dentist to have that. So this is the way that they engaged with their audience was good. Like, there were hashtags things, there were QR codes everywhere. Why are my teeth bleeding? QR code? It takes it to a video of theirs.

You know, it was like that kind of stuff. Mm-hmm. So that's down the line. That's where I'm going. That's where I would like, I would love to have that kinda thing. The list of things that I picked up that were negative is way longer. as simple as when you walk in, are people even noticing you?

Mm-hmm. Are they taking you for granted as a patient? Do they appreciate you as a patient or are they just like, yeah. we're here and it's a priv, it's your privilege to be here and have an appointment with us. It's really the opposite. I mean, our field has changed. It's more customer service oriented and you have to have the mindset because it's true that it's our privilege to treat any of these people.

It's our privilege. So that they let the, that they let us put our hands in their mouths and, for even to have 'em sit in the chair, we spend the money to get them in. so you have to realize that it's a privilege to see patients. And I didn't treat, I didn't, I wasn't treated that way when I was at these places.

Like I walk in nice. Two gals at the front, none of them acknowledged me. I went up and I'm like, Hey, they're like looking up to me bored and not fulfilled with their jobs. So they're just like, yeah, can I help you? I'm like, yeah, I got an appointment. what do you mean? What do you think I'm doing over here?

selling you watches? Like what do you think is happening I have an appointment. My name looks like it might beha. Just do your little research, you know? Little things like that, There was just no clarity on who's gonna even see me and who's gonna do my cleaning.

Like Mm. Just it was clear that it was the male, you know? And then after I come in, there were like 10 people who came in after me. People were waiting. Wow.

Michael: so then you mentioned something you're like, I'm gonna keep doing, I want to hone in on this, which is the patient experience, right.

Until you reach success, what's success look like to you?

Syed: Great question. Success for me is we are able to provide care for a lot of people and not compromise on our patient experience. That's success to me. And I pay my bills. pay my bills and I keep myself happy and my wife happy. and that's really it.

That's success to me is being able to provide patient experience, enough that I am happy and my staff is happy and my patients are happy. That's vague. I know. And I'm sorry, but, I don't know if I have a number in mind, you know, but what's your, what's your breakeven number? there's some things that I spent a lot of money on.

There's some things I did not spend a lot of money on, but, per month it's around like $35,000 would be breakeven.

Michael: Okay. Okay. So

Syed: it's for a seven operatory location, 2200 square feet. Uh, Around there, you know, that's including, that's the loan, that's everybody's salary and included, excluding mine, Which, yeah, I mean, I saved up some money. I'm not paying myself really a lot. Yeah. I pay myself a little bit, but I'm not paying myself a lot. Yeah. I'm paying myself, my wife and I on the same salary.

Michael: Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha. When it comes to, uh, what you spent a lot on, in little on, what was that?

Syed: I don't even say a lot.

I spend money on things that when people come into the office, it's the things that they talk about. I got a massage chair. Mm-hmm. Um, It's not a lot. It's $1,600. One of my, one of my chairs is $7,000. My dental chair at $7,000. So like what's $1,600? Anybody who comes in? The UPS guy. Anybody who delivers anything.

My cleaning people when they come in, Patients when they walk in, they walk when we're giving them the tour, I don't even point out to massage chair. They walk by and they, they walk like this and then they go, what is that? And they do a double take I'm like, well massage. What is that about?

I'm like, if you have to wait a long time, I don't want you to have a bad experience. You can sit in the massage chair or even after today. Why don't you sit right now? And I give 15 minutes in massage chair and walk out and. where do I sign up? It's small things like, dude, I, I have sat in my chair, massage chair like once, but and it's a great one, but it was just an Amazon massage chair.

It's nothing special. But one of the things I learned is that if you just go, if patients expect this, you just gotta be just right, just right above that and they're gonna be minds blown minds. Mm-hmm. You know? Thousands of dollars on 3D printers and all of this stuff. Some of it to market to patients.

I mean, if you're gonna use it, do your thing. I mean, I'm probably gonna get one too eventually. But they just like spend all this money on things that, for the patient experience that patients never pick up on. Like if ate a chair. Mm-hmm. Chair, it's not me. If you do it, that's cool. A deck. No shade, but I just didn't feel like patients ever cared.

I've been in offices where there were eight egg chairs and patients never mentioned it once, but my cheap chair has a $500 massage in it. And patients comment on that all the time. Yeah, just like these little balloons that rise and fall behind you, like right here. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. They just love it.

They love it, man. So, the things I spent a lot of money on were, I didn't even, I negotiated. Tenant improvement. I didn't even negotiate rent. I was like, whatever your rent number is, that's fine. I'm probably paying a lot for this area. It's gonna be like rent and my maintenance stuff in by close to $9,000.

Mm-hmm. So I don't know if that's a lot or not, but I I feel like it's,

Michael: yeah. $9,000. Yeah. Yeah it is. Okay. So then these are some of the things I like that the, the cook for marketing, the massage chair. Right. Like, you know what I mean? Yeah. It's really, really interesting. Yeah. When it comes to um, the, well, actually, let me rewind a little bit.

How much was your build out?

Syed: Build out was, I just wrote the check yesterday, the build out, the final one. 300, like 34, 30 5,000.

Michael: So it was three around $335,000. How was the construction process?

Syed: You know what, man? I hear some horror stories out there.

I did not have that. Thank God. you know, the guy that I went to, he builds a bunch of offices around here. I know several people who, he was definitely quick. But he was quick, but I had no idea when he was gonna do what, like there was no schedule. So it was kind of like unpredictable.

But I'm grateful to be where I'm, where I am. We started, we broke around in October and then we were built out mostly February. like, I had equipment and it people come in. So, you know, like four or five months I hear some horror stories where it takes people a year, I think if you're gonna go through that process, that's an important question to ask of contractors is how many projects do you have going on right now?

How long does it usually take for you to build out an office from where it is right now to the final, you know, thing? So that's a question I asked everybody. He was like, I take four months, just write, like, just right off the bat. And I was like, oh, okay. Other people were like, ah, it depends, you know, this, this, so he took four months.

He did a great job. There were small things that I wish I had more input in. It definitely wasn't a thing where we sat down and came up with the vision for the practice. He is like, yeah, okay, we gotta layout together. He just started doing it and I was like, wait, wait, wait. What about uh, this? He's like, okay, I guess we can do that if you wanna do that.

And I'm like, well, you already did the whole other thing. Let's just go that route.

Michael: Yeah. Yeah. What were some things that you wish you had more input on?

Syed: Man. Design stuff. It's all just finishes mostly. Mostly finishes. The floor plan I had input on, we sat, we, we did as something. We sat together and were like, this is where I want these ops and all that jazz.

I want them this big. But design stuff like, you know, we have a sink in the hallway and he just put up this blue tile and this ugly gold little border. And I was like, dude, this looks like my mom designed it, but. I mean, yeah, it would've been nicer if I could have found a better thing. To be fair though, now that everything's built, it actually looks pretty nice, so, ok.

He knows what he's doing. I don't, but, you know, no, that makes,

Michael: makes sense. Right Now, how many employees do you have?

Syed: Four, including myself. When did you open this week?

Michael: wow. Wow.

Syed: Okay. Okay. Technically this week. So we I mean we had a soft opening. we've been technically seeing patients for like two weeks.

That's just been friends and family. We started seeing our outside patients this week. Technically Thursday actually, but last Thursday. Okay. Okay. It was an accident, but yeah.

Michael: Lemme ask you, lemme ask you what, are you open? Did you feel like. At the end of the day, once your first opening day or once this weekend, would you like we were prepped, we were prepared, or were you like, I forgot this, I forgot that.

Or I should have thought about this, or We should have done this.

Syed: Yeah, no, I mean, we're prepared. Okay. We're good. I don't, we're not like, we're not crazy. Busy, busy. So there are things that I wish I had done earlier, which is where a schedule would have, I think helped. You know, a schedule for my contractor, but I wish, I wish I started marketing efforts earlier.

I wish I started ground marketing earlier. I wish I did all these things earlier, but, it is what it is. So, like, you know, that first day we saw, like we saw three patients, the appointments, there's I do something called a tour appointment that I got from spear. Education. basically it's like a 90 minute appointment and I take them on a tour of their mouth.

I take photos of my DSLR camera, we take an interoral scan, we do a bunch of stuff. so that's like a 90 minute appointment. And we had three of those first day. And then the next day it was like, you know, a couple, this has been a couple every day. It's not like I'm packed. No, I get, we have the time.

I to also just sort of. It's not like we're slammed and we're like burnt out, I'm still going home at six every day. We close at six, we go home at like six 15 every day. But it's because I put in a lot of prep work. We started training like I hired in January and for the first week, We were just at home just learning stuff for the software.

We, we use Cares Stack. Mm-hmm. So we were just learning Carest Stack for a full week and then we spent a good month training outside of the office on our vision. We spent two days just getting to know each other, learning new personality types and all that stuff. We went an escape room together. But basically just coming up with the vision for the practice together.

I needed my everybody to buy into the vision of the practice, to buy into the experience, to buy into what kind of things we're gonna be doing for people. And they really did. I'm so grateful we, I did that because now anything that's going up on our social media is them. Anything that, any new ideas that we have, marketing wise, it's them.

It's not me. I'm not great at that stuff, you know? Mm-hmm. So, they really bought in and made it theirs. It's been awesome to see. I'm proud of them. Nice man.

Michael: That's good. What are you guys doing for marketing and advertising then?

Syed: Good question. We so Studio a, d a, you would mentioned them. So they built out my website.

I have SEMO share doing my online marketing, SEO and ads and stuff like that. We just started like maybe a month ago with that stuff, ask me in a couple months how it's going. But and then we've got MVP mail house. We're using them for print marketing and your ground marketing course.

Have you started ground marketing or no? Yeah, so we did. We did, but so many people were asking, are you guys open yet? And we're like, we have to say like, no, we're not yet, but in a month, check this out. Ha ha. They're like, oh, ok ha. And then you can see them just the interest just weighing down. And part of that is to us, we probably could have done better things during the, during our scripts, but now, like next week, we're gonna hit it very hard.

You know, we're gonna hit ground marketing very hard every day. We're going as we have a couple hours planned. Yeah. And we're just gonna be on the community. We're doing a couple of things here and there. Like next week we have a middle school, we're going to a career fair, so we're gonna have a spin wheel.

I think it's gonna be cool. We've done a couple of daycares and sent home some stuff with the kids, you know, being like, Hey, we're three 11 dental to their parents. So we've done a couple of things here and there. We're gonna be at farmer's markets and all that stuff. So yeah, we had meetings where we decided this, we're gonna hit up this event, we're gonna be at this event, we're gonna be at this event.

That's what we wanna be. We wanna be that office that is very active in the community and that like, you know, you're a little annoyed with because of how much they, they're in your face. Yeah. We're not gonna do a billboard or anything, but I wanna be out there, you know?

Michael: Yeah. No, that's good. So hold up real quick.

Rewind. You didn't get their information when they're like, are you open yet?

Syed: We did. And then some of those people when we called back, we got some people scheduled. It's not like, yeah, half the people that we have scheduled were from those lists. But a lot of them were like, oh no, I need to find somebody like right now.

And I was like, you can't just wait. They can't wait like a month. You can't wait. Well, you know, two months actually. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Some of them are like, yeah, you know what uh, call me back at this time. You know, call me back in a couple months where you guys are. So we have called those people back. We're gonna hit up those businesses again.

Yeah. It's not a big deal. We're gonna get it again. You know? Yeah. Now that everything is built out, now that this place is like, it looks so nice. I'm trying to be aggressive with getting people into the office and meeting us. Cause we're on conversion there. Who much and us. it's good.

So we're trying to be aggressive. So, at first I was like, I don't know if I should offer free whitening. Sounds like it's gonna cost a lot per patient, but now I'm like, yeah, whatever. I mean, whatever gets people in I'm confident that they'll stay. Yeah.

Michael: Okay man. Yeah, I mean, remember like as long as you're following up and calling them right and following up or, you know, you can text too.

They feel like people reply faster with text now, but however you wanna do it, like keep it up man. You know what I mean? When it comes to these leads. Cause they, they were interested in you. They're like, yeah, gimme my information. They already do that first transaction,

Syed: you know? Right, right. Yeah.

Michael: So do you have, are you doing that or is it your, somebody in your team doing that or?

Syed: It was me and my team. My wife would be answering calls. Sh she wouldn't be with me. She's also not like a crazy people person, but my front desk assistant and my dental assistant, they don't think they are, but they are. Yeah. So, I take them with me and we go, and sometimes I just send them, you know, they have different conversations that they had, they can have with people when I'm not even there.

Sometimes I just send

Syed Shahabuddin DRAFT-cm: them

Michael: out. Okay, man. That's good. So then, sorry, throughout this process, I guess from the moment you decided I'm gonna do my own practice, right? Maybe you were still in Heartland, but you decided it. Right. So today, what's been some of your biggest struggles or fails or pitfalls?

Syed: From the moment that I decided, just believing. In myself. And like I said, I'm risk averse. I don't take big risks. So overcoming that and being like, if you have a set vision and if you believe in yourself, you believe in the experience that you provide, what's gonna stop you?

Sure. It'll take a little time, but you'll be good. You know? Mm-hmm. That's just, just having confidence. That's kinda the biggest thing. I mean, I'm confident in my clinical ability, and I'm confident when I talk to people and case acceptance wise, that kind of stuff, I'm confident there.

But, you know, as far as like the business goes and then going out into the community and getting people and. Having a brand of your own to be proud of and to be confident in is kind of a different thing. So, it didn't take me long though, to be honest with you. Mm-hmm. It took a couple, it took just some, some time just to think about myself and my wife and just talking about it and what really sped that up was going to these other offices and being like, okay, you know what, nah, I think we're fine.

Yeah. You know, That was my biggest pitfall, I would say. But I mean, it's just small things here and there. Every day there's a new pitfall, there's little things every single time, you know? Yeah. Like, you know, we, we, we had got these hip out bins for organization and putting those things together was like a freaking pain and a half.

It took whole day, went back and forth to Menards, got the wrong thing, those stupid little things like that. I'm grateful. It's been nothing big. Yeah. Getting was an issue. That was kind of a big issue, but you know, I don't know if you want me to talk about that, but Yeah,

Michael: no, we, we, we can dive into that a little bit.

I just wanna back to the confidence thing. Yeah. You still feel like you struggle

Syed: with that?

I'm gonna sound like a douche bag. No, I don't. Yeah. I don't, I'm

Michael: what helped. What helped? Because it sounds like maybe you don't struggle with that part of the confidence, but when it comes to like, I dunno, ground marketing or anything else, you're a hundred percent confident or Now I am.

Syed: Okay. Why? Because I've seen what's out there.

I've seen what's out there. I've gotten a couple of patients in and they're, I, I see what they enjoy and I just see the look on their faces when they walk into an operatory and it says, Hey, Saed. And there's a customized thing to them based off of a menu that they filled out, you know? Mm-hmm. And I just hear the comments from people, things like I walked in and I didn't, I thought I was in the wrong place.

I didn't know it was a dental office. That inspires confidence. people who are like, okay, for instance, like my, one of my assistant's moms with my, my first patients here has been a little afraid to go to the dentist for years. Came in, met me, saw the place. She needs some extensive treatment and she's excited about the treatment.

Now after having gone through this whole experience here. So that inspires confidence. I mean, it's just little things like that, you know? I think the lack of confidence was, are people going to enjoy it? Are I spent so much time building up this vision, building up this experience, picking little tiny things, you know, I spent all this damn money on this place.

Are people gonna enjoy it enough to. am I gonna be able to pay these bills? So, seeing how people come in and seeing what's out there, what's around me in terms of like, you know, the other offices that are here, they're all corporate. That inspires confidence. The phone calls that we get, listen to them and then people being like, I just came from this other office and bike.

I don't know what they're doing, but that's they, the whole thing just went downhill. I was a patient with theirs for years, and now I feel like I'm a number, Yeah. I mean, I'm kind of being kinda redundant, but all of that expires confidence for me.

Michael: honestly say, I feel like you kind of had always, or you've had that hope, and then once you met it here halfway, they were like, Yes.

They, they confirmed your hope, right? They confirmed your faith or your, or whatever you wanna call it, confidence, right? And then boom, right. Confidence. You're like, I thought this was gonna happen. This is happening, right. Kind of thing. Yeah. That's a good,

Syed: yeah. You should be a psychiatrist, dude.

You needed

Michael: medicine. And uh, yeah. So then one of the last questions I wanna ask you is, throughout this process, how is it affecting your personal life?

Syed: You know what? My wife works with me. It's not, if anything, it's improving our relationship, honestly. I mean, like I said, we talked about the happiness, my happiness I dunno what you wanna call it.

That dude the exercise, the happiness exercise. Mm-hmm. She was a big part of it. We went through that together, so, it's improved my personal life as far as my wife is go. I don't see friends. Yeah. Like at all anymore. I haven't met up with friends for a long time. I used to meet up with them on the weekly, you know, and I, we used to be fairly social, but in the past six months, Yeah, I can count on my hands the number of times I've hung out with people.

Family, you know, I try to see family on the weekly. I see my parents at least, but I definitely see them a lot less. But I know that that's temporary and that's right now, but my wife was the biggest part of my life. Mm-hmm. I see her every day. That's great. I mean, I see her for hours. I see her every single second pretty much.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, which I advise if you can make that happen and you like the person that you were married to.

You? Yeah. Good. Cause this sucks, man. When I started working and when you first get outta dental school, you know nothing. So I spent, I would come home from work and you'd already be burnt out. And then I spent three hours on spirit online education, just learning stuff for like five months. I did that and then, you know, and my, my wife is just, She's working as well.

But then, you know, there, we didn't spend much time together and we were relatively young in our marriage. Like three years in when I, that was happening. I spent five months doing that. And then even still, I come home after that and it's three hours and two, three hours. I'm burnt out, I'm tired. It's like, are we gonna talk about now?

It's just watch TV and go to sleep and just repeat. Mm. You know? And so I just didn't like that. Yeah, I don't

Michael: at all. Yeah, it's not a good way to, you know what I mean? There's no

Syed: communication. Yeah, but that's the average, that's your average marriage, right? I mean, think about it nowadays, but nowadays people are working from home and maybe it's different, but um, this is before Covid, so I mean, that's just your average marriage and it's just you have the weekend and you have some evenings to each other if you're not burnt out, and then that's when communication fails and all of that stuff, Yeah, we're really getting into more marriage counseling here, but,

Michael: No, no, but it's good man. It's good. It's, that's why I asked the question about how it affects your personal life, right? It's of course cause um, yeah. It's a good thing. But some, I guess some people are like, oh man, you know, it, I'm, I spend less time with my family.

All this does cause my startup, but it's also a good side to it, right? it doesn't have to be that way where you spend less time with people, right? Yeah. You can be spending more time with people. Yeah. So it's really, really good. Awesome side, man. Yeah. If you can, can you tell our listeners where they can find you if they have any questions or they wanna reach out to you or anything like that?

Syed: Sure. Well, if you're in Chicago land, just come, just come check me out, dude. I'm at Bowling Brook Southwest Chicago Land. Come check with the office. That'd be awesome. I'd love, I'd love to show people I take pride in it. You can tell. you can just reach out to me by email three 11 Dental fam like family gmail.com.

If you have any questions, I'd be so happy to help.

Michael: Awesome. So like guys, that's gonna be in the show notes below. And sai, thank you so much man, for being with us. Before we sign off, any last piece of advice or favorite quotes you wanna share with us?

Syed: Any last pieces of advice? Man, I've been talking for a long time.

The biggest piece of advice I have is do that happiness exercise. If you have not done that, when people give you advice, take it with a grain of salt. Even when I give you advice, take it with a grain of salt.

Do your own research. Learn things on your own and take a little bit from everyone and never just take just one person's word for everything. I've had to do that.

Michael: Awesome. Awesome. So thank you so much for being with us. It's been a pleasure. Yeah. And we'll hear from you soon.

Syed: Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

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Hey guys, welcome to this week's Monday Morning Marketing episode! As another episode on focusing on SEO, we sit down with the expert, Josh Hampson, from hmpsn Studio, to uncover the secrets to improving your website's search ranking, and equally important, patient experience on your website. Did you know that a staggering 75% of people never venture past the first page of Google? Well, we're going to show how you can optimize your site's user experience before flooding it with traffic, and help push you to that front page of Google with SEO tactics! Timing is everything in the competitive SEO landscape – the longer you delay, the tougher it gets to rank. So we're going to list out some steps you can take TODAY to get headed in the right direction. Plus, Josh gets into some valuable tips like using patient-friendly language rather than complex jargon, and how to keep close tabs on your SEO progress. Before you go all in on a comprehensive marketing system, get the practices from this episode down to see maximum results!

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Tune in to this episode to learn more on how to make your website a destination patients want to interact on!

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You can reach out to Josh Hampson here:

Website: https://www.hmpsn.studio/

Blog Post: 4 Ways to Increase Appointment Bookings on Your Dental Practice Website

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-hampson-webflow-developer/

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Other Mentions and Links:

Invisalign

Semrush

Google Search Console

Google Analytics

Google My Business

Yelp

Yellow Pages

WebMD

ZocDoc

Ahrefs

Google Keyword Planner

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For more helpful tips, strategies, ideas, and marketing advice:

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

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

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, Joshua, talk to us about s e l. How can we utilize this, or what advice, suggestions, or methods can you give us that will actually help us attract new patients through SEO?

Josh: well first, thanks so much for having me back on Michael. for the listeners that didn't catch our previous Monday Morning Marketing episode, my name is Josh Hanson.

I'm the founder of SSON Studio, and we are a creative studio that helps dental practices build long-term brand equity and increase appointment bookings through branding, messaging, website design and development. so today I. what is SS e o? Why is it important for your dental practice? The steps to take before getting started with your s e O project, some S e O fundamentals and how to maximize your local visibility.

The importance of consistently creating relevant content in maybe if we have time, uh, how to track your progress of your ss e o campaigns. Awesome. All right. Man's step. So yeah, to get started, um, what is SS e o really in the simplest terms, it is the process of optimizing your practices website so that you can improve its visibility on search engines.

Nine times out of 10, we're referring to Google here. and the goal is to place number one or close to that number one spot on Google, in your local area so the patients can learn more about you, your practice, the services that you do at your practice, and then ultimately book an appointment with you.

a lot of people ask. why is ss e o important for my practice? once again, at its core, ss e o is about getting found. When searching for a new dentist online, um, 75% of people will never go past that first page of Google search results. So it's super important that you place at the top or near the top.

Otherwise, patients in your area may never even know that you exist. And, um, even in that, 10 to 20 spot. As I said, people may never go past that first page, so we wanna make sure that we're ranking as high as possible, for as many keywords as possible so that we can get found by, potential patients so they can book with us.

one interesting little stat is for one of our dental clients, search makes up more than half of their appointment bookings. So super, super important to have a solid, search profile. Mm-hmm. And a lot of folks think ss e o can seem a little bit scary to start, right? Mm-hmm. But really when you boil it down, Good Ss e o is good user experience.

And so we'll talk a little bit more about this, uh, in a few minutes. But, this includes things like quick page load speeds, answering common questions that your patients have with compelling and relevant content that speaks to them. And, finally, Making it easy for patients and Google robots to find the right information about your practice, what it is that you do, and, ultimately, once again, how to book with you.

And the big elephant in the room is other dental practices in your area are already implementing ss e o practices in their day-to-day marketing activities. So it's important that you do the same. the longer that you put off your s e o project, the harder it will be to compete. So extremely important that you, at the very minimum, are taking care of the fundamentals.

And then as your practice grows and you become more established, have more of that marketing budget to spend, important that you start to hit, you know, that second, third tier of, ss e o and making sure that you're. It can seem like a costly investment at first, but like I said, there's a reason people spend money on SS e o what I've found not true for everyone, but, generally your return on any S E O will be greater than you see with paid ads. So just a nice little stat there as well. Hmm. Real quick,

Michael: I have a quick question on the client.

What exactly are they doing or you're doing for them to,

Josh: you know what I mean? With SS e O. Yeah, so we're doing quite a few different things with them. Um, we'll chat about some of these fundamentals. It's, it's really been, for the most part, locking in the fundamentals first. but making sure that they're registered on all local business directories.

These are Google My Business, um, Yelp. Yellow pages, believe it or not. WebMD, Zocdoc, all of these places where folks are generally looking for, um, you know, where they're gonna make, find their dental home. and then kind of next step would be really keying in on keywords, making sure that we're, you know, in the dental world There are more clinical names and there are the names that people are actually searching for a specific service. And lining up those two is super important. So, um, you know, just to say, I think a lot of folks would call, you know, the full math reconstruction, veneers, that sort of thing. Uh, in the clinical realm, it is a full math reconstruction.

But what are your patients calling that when they search in Google? Mm-hmm. Typically they're calling it smile makeover. Maybe they're calling it, full set of veneers, that sort of thing. So important that we're aligning our. Practices names with what our, our patients are calling, those specific services.

Gotcha. Okay. Awesome. a lot of folks see SS e o is that golden city in the distance that it's gonna solve all of their problems and it can be. Mm-hmm. But there are a few items that you need to dial in before you invest large sums of money into creating, Tons and tons of content.

So I always recommend don't put the cart before the horse. Um, before you think about diving into a large scale ss e o project first, make sure that you've taken care of the basics. first step in that is making sure that you're providing a really good user experience for, patients and potential patients when they come to your, uh, to your website.

So does your website load quickly? one really actionable step here and probably the most overlooked step is simply compressing all of your images to reduce their file sizes before you put them on your website. this will. Maintain the resolution of your image. So it's still nice, crisp, beautiful image, but it reduces the file size.

So, when folks are browsing on your site, they're not having really long page load times. Uh, the longer you make people wait. The quicker it is that they may, uh, they may bounce. So, one free image compression software that I use is called Optum. Mozilla. Um, website is www.imagecompressor.com. Really easy to remember.

and like I said, that is the most overlooked, piece of, websites today is just reducing your, your media content file size as much as possible.

Michael: That's true because then we like, you know what I mean? If it takes forever, we just bounce, bounce back. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Josh: Interesting. Okay. Yeah, you've got like 300 milliseconds I think is the number.

before people potentially start bouncing. If your page takes a long time to load, they're out of there. Yeah,

Michael: that makes sense. I do that. So I get it. I get it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Josh: Interesting. Okay. And then. does your website feel fresh and modern? I think we've all been to those dental websites that, look like they were built 10, 15, 20 years ago.

Mm-hmm. Um, so if you were a patient, would you stick around to learn more about your practice? and does it look like it was built and updated recently? I. Folks, my, your age, Michael, millennials, are really looking for that, you know, fresh and modern feel. And we are beginning to take out more and more of the market share as, we become more established.

Mm-hmm. So it's important that you're speaking to the folks that will ultimately be walking through your doors, um, hitting them not only with compelling content, but with compelling visuals as well. next step is your website, mobile friendly. this seems like a gimme, but it's not always the case. I know we've all been to websites that aren't really mobile optimized or they don't give the best mobile experience.

another one of our, our dental clients, I. Their site is trafficked by roughly 60% on mobile. So mm-hmm. More often than not for them, uh, users are browsing on their phones, maybe on a tablet. and so it's important that that same experience they would get on desktop is modified, for a mobile experience so that they can book directly from their phone.

You know, we're always kind of out on the go. need to be able to book directly from our phone. Maybe even on the couch. Yeah. No, that's

Michael: interesting. Yeah, mobile, I feel like I'm always on, like for me, I think it's 50 50, but like for a lot of other people it's more higher up there, you know what I mean?

Josh: Definitely. Mm-hmm. are you speaking to your patients, uh, or potential patients'? Pain points? And really big one. Do you have broken links or 4 0 4 pages? you know, I think we've all been to those sites, not necessarily just dental websites, but sites in general where you click thinking you're gonna go somewhere and it ends up popping up with a 4 0 4, oops, this page does not exist.

I mean, usually the first thing I do at that point, Go somewhere else, so, mm-hmm. Um, those are like super, super basic. But, um, what those are going to do is not only improve your patient experience, but validate to Google that you have taken care of the basics so that it can then, move your domain authority up, give you that opportunity to rank because it knows you have, taken care of the basics to, uh, provide a good user experience.

Michael: Okay, this is good. So these are the basic steps we need to take the foundations that you were talking about, right. With the client, um, that they need to implement and then just build upon that.

Josh: Yeah. So next step, we're still very much in the basics. Okay. Um, I always like to make sure that we're locking in that foundation before we move on to the next step.

And it's. Really very simple, but are you your patients able to find the information that they need? So we talked a little bit about this on, um, the Monday morning marketing episode, but talking about the very specific dental services that you offer. So calling out, exams and cleanings. Calling out, restorative services, whether that's fillings, crowns, those sorts of things.

Invisalign, if that is a service that you offer. and then I think another opportunity is depending on your practice, if you also do pediatric dentistry, say that, um, if you're a full service, full family, dental practice, Let folks know because then you know, you've not only got mom and dad through the door, but you also have their children because they know they can come one stop shop and have all of their dental needs taken care of.

this is where we start to get into some of our ss e o, is this allows you to rank for some of those keywords. So if I'm in Austin, Texas and I say, I need a, a dental exam or, um, teeth cleaning in Austin, Texas, you're going to then begin to rank for those keywords because you've included them on your site.

next step. Uh, let them know how to book an appointment or how to get in touch to do so. if they can't figure out how to book or they can't figure out how to get in touch, I can guarantee that your competition has made it easy for them to do so and they will schedule with them. Because it's, it's, it's easier.

And last but not least, once again, a throwback to our last episode is, just letting folks know what insurance types you accept. So this positions you as the expert that you're answering the questions that they have, so that you can minimize that friction as mu much as possible. really at the end of the day, you can drive all the traffic in the world to your website with ss e o but if your website doesn't function at a basic level, or it's clunky user experience is not good, that traffic is ultimately lost.

And that marketing budget that you spent, was all in Bain. So that's why I always recommend take care of the fundamentals up top, and then you can dial in everything else from there. Gotcha.

Michael: Okay. Quick question. I have, with all this, let's just say we're we're all listening. We're like, okay, I have these fundamentals on check.

I think I do, I let my agency know. And then they're like, yeah, you do, right? All these things. Where do we start dropping the ball? Where, where it's like, well, why am I still on page number seven or eight, or, you know what I mean, kind of thing.

Josh: I mean that is really gonna be very specific for each individual site, you know, you have to look at things like, where's my domain authority rating?

Where is my competition at, in my local market? So are we ranking for the same keywords? are we looking at totally different keywords? Do they have more or less content than I do? That sort of thing. But something that's become increasingly more important is something called backlinks. So it is when you think about hanging out with, people that are in the know or, that have a solid authority, whether it's in real life or on the internet, what we're trying to do is get. Our authority in line with them. So how you can do that is get, links from other websites that do have that authority, which we'll talk about a little bit more in a few minutes, but getting registered on, local business registries, Google My Business, Yelp, your Facebook profile.

So getting as much traction, as much inbound traffic. Back to your website as possible from other sources is key. And that's, um, becoming more and more important for the Google algorithm is, um, backlinks and domain authority.

Michael: Gotcha. All right, man. Sounds good. So, any final pieces of

Josh: advice for this? not on the basics.

Now we can dive into the fundamentals of s e o. What do you think? Alright. Yeah, let's dive into it. So we've taken care of the basics. So what does Google look for in order to rank your website and move you further up on the search rankings? We've talked a little bit about page load speed, mobile optimization, simple and easy navigation.

the next items on your list should be, Tracking and analytics. So first step, before you do anything else, register your site with Google Search Console. most agencies, most studios that you're working with will take care of this for you automatically. But if you're building your site yourself, definitely wanna make sure that you do this, on your own.

You can do this by going to search google.com and registering your site with Google Search Console. This. Essentially, let's Google know. This is a real site. You can, um, send your Google robots over here and comb our content. and most web builders make this super, super easy. So all it'll do is just spit out a code that you need to drop into your, website builder settings so that you can, Essentially activate that. we'll chat a little bit maybe about analytics and that sort of thing, but this will also be your hub for tracking your search performance down the road. Okay. next up, once again, tracking analytics. Make sure that you have set your site up with Google Analytics. This is [email protected].

and this will allow you to track what your users are doing on your website, that you can then make informed decisions on how to improve it. Next step, we've kind of addressed this a little bit, but make sure you register your dental practice, with your Google Business page and complete all relevant information.

So make sure you've got a practice logo, you've added your address, you've added the hours that you're open, and then a few images. So. Do not use stock images here. Make sure you're using, um, shots of, you know, your gentle, like inside of your studio. potentially if you have any, some shots with patients, shots of your, uh, your doctors on staff, maybe your hygienist as well.

Make sure they're fun, exciting, engaging. this will really. Validate your website as well as your practice with Google so that you can then begin moving up those search rankings, set up your Facebook business page with all the, uh, the items that we spoke about, and then a really big one. And honestly, something that even I had overlooked until recently is making sure that you're registering with all of the local directories.

so Yelp. WebMD, Zocdoc, anywhere that folks might go to look for, you know, finding a dental home, you wanna make sure that you're registered there because it's all about. Getting your name out there as much as possible so that you can get that traffic back to your site. this can be done fairly easily through a tool called s e m, rush Simr.

they have a listing management tool. I think it's around $20 a month per individual location. you drop in all your information there, literally, it's just a form that you fill out and they'll push you out to. I believe it's like 65, 68 directories that will help build those backlinks that we were just talking about.

but then also put you on the directories that folks are typically poking around on for their dental services. All right, man. Sounds

Michael: good. So deeper that we need to dive into when it comes to that?

Josh: Nothing on that side. Okay. But now we get into the fun part of keyword optimization planning, that sort of thing.

So, you can use once again, tools like simr, ah refs, Google Keyword Planner. Uh, To define, relevant dental keywords in your market. and you can also examine the keywords that your competition is also placing for, so that you can then begin building these keywords into your content, so that you can of course compete with, uh, the folks who are ranking higher than you are.

compile this list and then begin planning your content and Adding those keywords in where you can. once again, I always recommend to do this on your core site before you really think about building out blog content because you wanna make sure that your core site, homepage, services page, contact about those are solid before you really start building out tons of content.

But it's extremely important that you have keyword planning built into your core site. And, Why do I kind of recommend getting the core piece of your site done? If you have a ton of blog content, but your key patients can't figure out, what they need to on your individual services or homepage, kind of goes back to, you can drive a ton of traffic, but, ultimately it will be lost, so.

Gotcha, gotcha.

Michael: Okay. So these. Are the things we need to start looking at and implementing when it comes to ss e o, right. Especially if you want to build that, that basic, the layout formula, and then from that point on kind of continue to build and build and build, with the agency or with you right.

Whoever, uh, we can utilize because that takes up a lot of time. I feel like if it was just one person alone trying to do all that, or the practice owner working on the teeth and then and doing it right. So. Awesome, man. Any final words or advice you'd like to give our

Josh: listeners? Note, just make sure that you are tracking and analyzing all of your, um, all of your work.

As we talked about search, console and analytics. Really, really valuable for, tracking all of your, work that you're doing. So make sure to, to benchmark your performance.

Michael: Awesome, Josh, I appreciate your time and if anyone has further questions, you can definitely find 'em in the Dental Marketer Society Facebook group, or where can they reach

Josh: out to you directly?

So our website is www dot psn studio. so just my last name with no vows and um, we have got an upcoming blog post about all things dental, ss e o. So keep your eyes peeled for that.

Michael: Awesome. Thank you Josh for being with me on this Monday morning marketing episode.

Josh: Thanks so much, Michael.

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

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Guest: Noel LiuPractice Name: Secure Dental GroupCheck out Noel's Media:‍

Websites:

Secure Dental - www.secure-dental.com

Secure Dental Group - www.securedentalgroup.com

Noel Liu DDS - www.noelliudds.com/

DentVia - https://dentvia.com/

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Social Media:

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/noelliudds

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/drnoelliu/?hl=en

Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/drnoelliu

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/drnoelliu.

Twitter - https://twitter.com/DrNoelLiu

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Phone: 815-670-2923

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Other Mentions and Links:

Wells Fargo

EBITDA - Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization

Levin Group - Dr. Roger Levin

Scheduling Institute

DEO - Dental Entrepreneur Organization

Dr. Marc Cooper

Cardone Ventures

Brandon Dawson

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For more helpful tips, strategies, ideas, and marketing advice:

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

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

Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041

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My Key Takeaways:

• If you're thinking about practice 2 and beyond, be sure to maximize your primary practice first!
• Plan out your revenue breakpoints and what you will do when you reach them. Without a plan, you will lose progress while growing!
• Know the numbers! KPIs, P and Ls, and Productions and Collections are essential to keep close tabs on for improvement of your practice.
• Expanding to a new practice is 80% mindset and 20% strategy. Don't get too bogged down in strategizing!
• Emotional and logical decision making BOTH have a place in business. If your decisions are too logical, it will be hard to take action. If your decisions are too emotional, you may lack to planning and strategy needed for success.
• Try getting to know your team and their individual goals, values, and aspirations. This will help when aligning with the practice's values and ensure a sustainable culture!

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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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Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)

Michael: Alright, it's time to talk with our featured guest, Dr. Noel Liu. Noel, how's it going? I'm doing very well, Michael. Thanks for having me. No, thank you for coming on and being a part of the podcast. We truly appreciate it. If you don't mind me asking, tell us a little bit about your past, your present, how'd you get to where you

Noel: are today?

No, it's a great question. You know, it's like, um, when they say, when you climb the ladder, it's, it's this way. So this is how I, my, my whole journey with the whole career has been, so we started, I, I graduated back in 2007 from N Y U College of Dentistry and, uh, I was working for a corporate and I think I lasted about four and a half years.

Stuck to one job, just stuck it out. Didn't quit, just, just kept going. And then we opened our first practice in 2012 in Peor, Illinois, and that's where we are based. So from there, we just, uh, my wife and I, so we are both dentists. She graduated in about, you know, 2011 ish. So, you know, I was in 2007, she was 2011.

And then we just started, you know, our own little operation. And, uh, since then, I think it's been a, it's been a journey. Lots of ups and downs, lots of mistakes. And uh, right now we, we are, we are a few locations here in the Midwest. Nice. How many locations? So we're currently, we are operating out 11 locations.

Wow.

Michael: 11 locations then. Okay, man. So, real quick, rewind a little bit. You were working for corporate and you said you stuck it out for four years. What were you having to.

Noel: Deal with. Yeah. Great. Great question. Because right now, when I look at some of the forums and I see some of the new guys coming out, they're like, in know, job hopping.

They just, if they don't like something, they just quit. Mm-hmm. Right. For me, it was more about sticking it out my own principles, my own, uh, moral and ethical value and like, you know, whatever it is, we just take the most, extract the most out of it and, uh, just take it and, and just take it as a learning experience.

I always saw positivity in whatever situation I was put in, so I. That was, you know, like one of those things. And the reason I emphasize on that part is because that is what I've been, the feedback I've been getting, they're like, oh wow, you stayed for five years. You know, you didn't, you didn't wanna quit, you didn't wanna go somewhere else.

Because all my, most of my colleagues, I wanna say all, but most of my colleagues, they actually, they kind of like, you know, went from job to job.

Michael: Got you. So what were the things you had to deal with?

Noel: I mean, it was like, you know, when you come out of school, you are looking for mentorship. Mm-hmm.

You're looking for somebody who you can hook onto and, and take your first year or two, maybe like, just write it out in a sense that under an umbrella, under somebody's wing, like you're not making any kind of mistakes, especially with the state boards, with the chart writing, with, you know, all the codes that we have for our dental, Time after time, I've seen like a lot of people make those same mistakes again and again with procedures and how efficient you need to be, what your KPI's supposed to be.

So it's like none of those metrics were like, you know, like laid out. So we just went in and just gunned it down and just, just learned and just, you know, learn how to swim yourself. So that was a good experience. I think I, I took it as a positive thing for myself because it gave me lots of insights.

Mm-hmm. You know, about like what kind of person you are and, and how do you withstand stress and, and multitasking.

Michael: Hmm, that's true. From, from that corporate position, what were some systems that you decided like, oh, I like this, I'm gonna take it into my practice. And then what were some systems where you're like, I never wanna do this, to my team, to my own

Noel: practice?

Well, the system that I really loved about that place was, um, scaling and growing, all about the numbers production, And all the good aspects that would help you propel to the next level. That's what I liked about that place. And on the same token, if you look at what I did not like about the place was at what cost do you get that production at?

What cost do you get that elevation? how are your staff treated? is like almost like a weighing kind of like a scale, if I were to say that way, because in order for you to do this, You gotta sacrifice this. So my whole mindset was, how do I do this without doing this?

Right? So how do I get the good out of it without doing, without having to carry the baggage of the bad stuff? So that was the whole idea, and that's how when we found a secure nl, we wanted to make sure that our staff and our team are well recognized and they are well deserved, that they are there like, you know, for a reason.

Michael: Mm-hmm. When was it where you were like, okay, I wanna start my own practice? Was that in dental school? Was that before or was that during

Noel: corporate? Great, great question was way before, way before dental school. So I come from a family of dentists. my dad is a dentist from back home and I wanted to make sure that, you know, I carry on his legacy because he, we are four siblings, right?

Mm-hmm. So he wanted one of us to be a dentist. And unfortunately, uh, three of my siblings, they, they hate dentistry. So they didn't, they don't want anything to do with dentist training to know where the mouth, right. So mm-hmm. I was like, all right, cool. I'll take the torch and I'll run with it. so I went to dental school and that's how I decided that I will, I will need my own practice because that is the, the mindset that was instilled when we were kids that you gotta have your own business and you know, with a lot of Asian people, they always want to make sure that you always have your own business, right?

So, mm-hmm. So I always wanted to make sure, like, Hey, this is what I want to do during school. It just got even stronger. And then once when I got outta school, then that, that was like my mission there to get get, get my own.

Michael: Get your own. How fast did you wanna, were you trying to get it like as soon as possible?

Or did you know, like, no, I need to have some years

Noel: under me? At first, yeah. I needed to, I needed to have some years under me. But you know, like when I graduated, I, it was like right before the financial crisis. So, long story short, I wasn't getting a loan. So I wasn't getting a loan.

Everybody kept rejecting the banks kept stating that, no, you, you're not good enough. You, you, we can't, we can't lend you. So then we had to scale down our little idea of business plan, and then we had to go like, Hey, how, what do I need to start off with just two, two ops or maybe even three ops. So that's when we, uh, I came across Wells Fargo and that's where we got a first loan for de Novo from scratch.

And uh, we just took it and run. that place, the first office that we did was, it was equipped for six ops, so we equipped the first three. So my wife and I, she joined us and, uh, you know, we became pretty busy. So then little did we know that we needed more space, so I borrowed money from my dad, and then I got the other three ops, to get going.

So it was, it was a nice rollercoaster ride, but, you know, it was, it was good. It was good.

Michael: Yeah. So your first practice, it was three ops.

Noel: Plum four, six, but we started with three because that was the only allowance we got for in terms of budgeting from the bank.

Michael: Okay. Okay. And so when it came to growing that, how was your marketing and advertising, how did that look?

Noel: radio, tv, you know, like all the basic stuff, direct mail. handing off flyers myself, going out to parking lots. I even got thrown out, I think from one of the parking lots. They were like, Hey, no soliciting kind of deal. Okay. mean, you name it, Michael, I mean, we, we did almost anything and everything.

Community, churches handing out, like sending a lot of boots and a table. All the organic stuff. Okay. You still do all that today or no? Oh, no, no, no. Things have changed quite a bit in marketing, you know? Yeah. just like dentistry. Right.

Michael: Yeah. Today, normally, what are you kind of honed in on or focusing on when it comes to marketing?

Noel: So, as far as marketing, we have our own in-house marketing manager right now. She does all the organic leads and, uh, we do like, you know, like those, uh, Facebook funnels that, that comes in, we are targeting, uh, basically on demographics, on age and uh, buying habits. And we are also doing like psycho demographics as well as the regular demographics.

And, uh, just seeing like, you know, like personas from our own database. Who are, and then we are just mimicking out there in the market. a lot of ai, a lot of, you know, things have changed, evolved. I mean, what I used to do was, was at dinosaur time, you know?

Michael: yeah. No, no, I get you. So a lot of it is more you delegating that to somebody specific in your team, right?

Noel: Right, right, right. Absolutely. So my wife is really hands-on involved with her in terms of marketing. But, if you were to ask me, like, how do you do this? Uh, you know, I'm the wrong person, let's put it that way. Okay.

Michael: Gotcha. Gotcha, man. But so Noel, you've, scaled a lot from the three ops to where you're at now, right?

You have 11 locations. Are they all the same secure dental?

Noel: Correct. They're all, they're all in the same name. Okay.

Michael: So I feel like sometimes there's a couple things. First of all, it's hard to do your own startup, right? Especially like, like you mentioned, right from the ground up. And then sometimes we think, okay, I'm gonna do a startup.

It's successful. I'm just gonna copy and paste and do the, the same thing on the second one. And we figure out, oh my gosh, that's not the way it's handled. Right? Yeah. So then how did you do this? How did you do, let's go with the first one. How did, what were some of the struggles, mistakes and everything from making your startup to trying to grow to

Noel: number two?

Oh, that's a great question. Because, you know, here's the thing. When, when I was, when we started off, I was looking at my ex-employer, I. And he still has about like 90 plus locations, right? So he is scaling like, like still pretty fast. Now. I wasn't in the mindset that, you know, once you open your first one, then jump to the second, and you could do the same and then jump to the third.

You could do the same. Little did we know that it doesn't work like that because once when you open the second office, you have to split your time. So we were like, all right, cool. So we will split time. So she will work in one practice and I'll work in the other practice. Then we hired a, uh, an associate, uh, for the first time as a part-timer.

And little did we know that how to handle associates, how to have the structure in place, the onboarding, we, we, we had none of that stuff there. doctor came in, we just gave them patience and, you know, here you go and, and start working. So that, that was a hit or miss, but I can tell you that much we learned a lot, you know, after the first and the second.

So my mindset was all about. How do I open more locations? Just more locations And, and that's all it was in, in my head. And then sooner or later, like, you know, we found out we were on a third of the fourth location I think. you know, we all of a sudden, like, you know, the nuts bolts, everything of the organization started coming off because all of a sudden become cashflow negative because all of them were de Novos, all of them were startups.

So, you know, if doctor a leaves from one practice, you need to make sure you staff doctor a mm-hmm. Is a replacement. Then you have all these startups coming up. So we need to staff all those offices. So Michael, you know, long story short, it was a lot, lot of ups and downs, a lot of sleepless nights, let's put it that way.

we did not have any kind of like metrics to measure, like when do we open, where do we open? So it was just, you know, like going up and down there. today things are a lot more different. Talking about that is we, we needed to have some, what do you call it? Those guys? consultants. Consultants, we had actually a couple of consultants, but you know, some of them were good, some of them were not. the end of the day, those consultants will tell you what to do, but we gotta be the person that have to execute a plan, otherwise it's not gonna work.

So when we, when we started scaling and we started to add more employees, we started to expand more, operation wise. As those offices started maturing, it started to get better and better because then the cash flow was like from negative to break even, and then slowly going into profit side. But the downside would've been if a, if a doctor left, then everything goes back to ground zero.

How often did that happen when a doctor would leave? if they were like one at a time, that's not a problem. the problem was when we, in, when we had four doctors leave in 2019, so we were at location number six we actually did two denovos and we just acquired one more, which is not a Denovo, but more like an acquisition shell, let's put it that way.

It was a dental office from before. It was all plumb. No patients though. But we just went in and we just took over. So when we had that, we had four doctors leave and then we had to supply these three offices. Cashflow dipped down. I mean, we were like literally down to our knees at that time. So no systems, again, no processes, no backup, none of that stuff.

So I think that was a huge learning curve for myself and uh, you know, at that time I just told my wife that this is not gonna happen again. we need to make sure that, you know, we have, we understand where the market is, where is it expanding, and what kind of resources do we have, where our doctors are standing, where our team standing, and where are we standing in this way that we can all move as one.

Mm-hmm. So are there gonna be challenges in the future? Absolutely. Absolutely. And I can see that I, I see the rough waters coming up again. Really? Yeah. Oh yeah. So then

Michael: what systems specifically did you create to kind of get back up?

Noel: it's a whole round, I call it a 360.

So it, comprises of, let's say, your process and systems, so all the SOPs, everything else. let's put it this way. In business, there are different break points, right? So when you hit a certain revenue target, you hit a break point. You gotta know exactly what you have to do at that break point, even before it, you hit it.

So system, you know, once you hit the first break point, the second break point, let's say revenue size from, you know, a hundred thousand to 1 million, that's break point number one. We gotta make sure, like the system in place would be all the standard operating procedures. Everybody follows the same script, everyone's there.

And then once when we are ready for break point number two, which is like the $5 million mark, then you gotta know, like, you know, who are you working with. So the team dynamic becomes very important. So that's when the hr, People, culture, core values, all those kind of kicks in. Mm-hmm. And then we have the finances, then the financials.

I mean, I can't stress enough like how ignorant I was with financials. I never used to look at p and Ls. But now everything is based on what happens at the end of the month and where are we standing week after week in terms of KPIs and production numbers. that metrics need to be factored in as well in in the whole circle.

Of course then we need to have our, uh, the last one is marketing. Marketing is, is one of those biggest tool that can drive, you know, like any organization up or down. And depending on, you know, marketing. So like with marketing, we used to play marketing by how we feel. Right?

Alright. You know this, I think this audience, this target is gonna be good. Let's, let's do this zip code, let's do that zip code. But, uh, at the end of the day, you know, there's gotta be a strategy in place. You gotta know what is your acquisition cost. You gotta know what is the lead cost. You have to know all this stuff before you even spend a single dollar on, on marketing.

as business owners, as dentists, we are always looking at our, patients. Right? But we are not paying attention to any of the other stuff. And that's what I think drives a lot of people. out of control, like worries and sleepless nights. Yeah.

Michael: I like what you mentioned.

Once you hit a goal, you need to know what to do after. I feel like a lot of the times what I do is like, okay, I hit this goal hoo. And then Oh, oh wait, go back down. You know what I mean? And we're like, okay, we're here now what do we do? Kind of thing. So it's interesting, once you hit that benchmark,

Noel: systems in place.

'cause what happens is once you hit that break point and you're not prepared for it, you will roll back to the first, the previous break point. And God forbid, I mean, if you roll back two break points or three break points, you're out of business. So those are some of the parameters that, you know, one should always keep out for when they're running a business.

what revenue break point are you on? Yeah.

Michael: I feel like sometimes when a startup, right, you're like, okay, I wanna make a million in, let's just say a million in collections, right? you hit that. What should be the next system for that? Should, okay, let's go to 2 million or Or open another practice or, or what do you think?

Noel: No, I would, I, I believe that one need to maximize their, their location, their office and the systems before jumping into location number two, because if you're not maximizing it, the only reason I can think out outside of that would be if there is a market opportunity where you really want to be in, and there is a great way you can add it to the bottom line, the EBITDA or the revenue of that current practice.

Absolutely, by all means, but. If you're just gonna go out there and just say, Hey, I'm gonna shop for a new, new location, then I think the first location needs to be maximized. Yeah. Okay.

Michael: Yeah. 'cause I feel like sometimes it looks like, okay, we've maximized it with ops, we're, we're scheduling patients out way until like three months, five months.

Right. New patients. But would it be considered maximizing it if you're like, okay, well I, I still, I'm accepting all insurances, should I. Go down on that, that means I'm gonna lose patients, but I'm also gonna, you know, have more room now and have better,

Noel: I guess better fees. Yeah, that's a very individualized kind of question because it all depends on the operator's goal.

So let's say if I'm a dentist and I want to just have one location, and I do not want to take, my goal is not to take any more PPOs, my goal is to go fee for service, right? Mm-hmm. Then my maximizing, my definition of maximizing it would be if I have six ops, eight ops, depending on how many ops. If I can fill all those ops and those ops are producing, let's say, you know, like 30 to 35 grand a month in terms of production, and you times that by six and you're really killing it, and now you've got like 40 mil, uh, 40,000 to $45,000 a, a chair a month.

I think that is where, where you're maximizing it. But in case of, you know, if you're trying to scale and grow to locations and revenue, once you hit a certain mark, we need to get an associate in there. and that time maybe you can talk to the associate about some equity in the, in the, in the deal where they can kind of hang around there so that they have some skin in the game as well.

I think everyone has their own, metrics for what it means by maximizing. Gotcha. Okay.

Michael: And Noel, you've mentored a lot of people, right? Uh, to do startups and, and Yeah. Also, and, and dentistry. Especially

Noel: my, my associate doctors. Yeah. Okay.

Michael: You, you mentor them mainly to, to own their own practice or just to, okay.

Have you ever had to walk or, or run into a situation when you're, tell them

Noel: you're not ready? most of the times. Yeah.

Michael: So how does that look like, how does that look like when you, or if somebody's not ready? What, what does that

Noel: mean? No, I mean, I'm not gonna stop them from leaving and, and opening their own.

Absolutely not. But you know, if they came to me for advice to go like, Hey, Dr. Liu, you know, I got this here. How do I do it? You know, I got this location, where do I start first? And you know, I'll guide them. Absolutely I'll guide them. But you know, at the end of the day we'll just have a open conversation.

Like, Hey, where is your mindset at? Because I always like, since from day one, from onboarding, I mean, the only thing that I discussed with these guys is 80% is mindset, right? It's all psychological. 20% is strategy. People tend to focus more on strategy than their, the psychological aspect.

And that's where I feel a lot of people that struggle when they open up the practice because you know, they have to be true to themselves. Like, where do you stand in terms of work-life balance? Where is your wife gonna be? Where is the kids gonna be? Right? Or if you're single, how much effort and how much work hours are you gonna be able to put in?

So those are all the questions. Are you gonna do a startup or an acquisition? We need to see like where they at with us. So in terms of the production, the metrics, like where, how much do they produce per hour, per month, and how many employees per production? So for us, a good metric would be like 200 K per, employee per year.

So if they are anywhere north of 200 k, it's a profitable business. But if they are anywhere like a hundred with their production and the amount of, you know, the staff that's in the, in the building. I'll be upfront with 'em that you are probably not gonna make it with that numbers. and then of course then they're a clinical skill.

And then if they're gonna be doing an acquisition, then the old doctor stays or they leave. So there, there's a lot of, you know, parameters. A lot of factors. Yeah.

Michael: When, when you're talking with them. So it's really getting to know them as a, as a person. Right. Individual. I like what you said, like your mindset, because.

I do feel like sometimes we're like, oh yeah, I want to have my own hours, do my own thing, be able to take off whenever I want. But at the beginning it's not like that Uhhuh. Yeah. So the mindset

Noel: that they have. Yeah. Especially if there are doctors who wants to enjoy, you know, on weekends, weeknights, they wanna go on vacations, they want to spend time with their families, uh, I'll just be upfront with them.

If you do that on your own practice, you might run in the red. Yeah. Initially at least you could do that later on, but not initially,

Michael: Yeah. So then the mindset that they have to have is kinda like grit, right?

Noel: Oh, yeah. But in the warrior. Exactly, exactly. Get that warrior mindset.

I mean, he, they, they, they gotta treat like it, like they're in a battle. I mean, just go and get it done. Mm-hmm. Or for a better, uh,

Michael: outcome Right Now, Noelle, I wanted to ask you, when it comes to your, 11 locations. What are some systems that are unique that you feel like you and your wife or you created mm-hmm.

That each practice has, and whether it's maybe the patient, the back office, front office handoff, or the patient experience, like what are some of the unique systems?

Noel: You know, we just stick by one thing, which is our core values. And our core values are, it's it's short form. We call it adapter. And adapter is, it's just basically nothing more than just a few words.

Right. But they can say the core values, but they gotta believe in it. I mean, we make our team understand what the core value is. I mean, they need to understand that they're gonna be hired based on that. They'll be reviewed based on that. They'll get a raise based on that, and they'll get fired based on that.

So they'll need to understand that, you know, what, where do we stand? So it's very simple. Alignment is one of them. disciplined. Disciplined in all aspects of dentistry. Not only like, you know, like for the doctors, but also like what these guys are doing. Then they need to be accountable.

I mean, anything they do, they gotta be accountable, and then P is production. So we need to make sure we are always scaling this way and not flat, because anything flat, you know, gravity pulls you down later on, you know, as we've seen over the years, like what happens in the, in the past.

then we have the T, which is transparent. Every single one's gotta be transparent, including ourselves. I mean, there's no such thing as, you know, we're operating without transparency. So we, we gotta let 'em know, you know, it's like, for example, if we are letting anybody go, just go in a room, just let 'em know, Hey, what's happening?

You know? The sooner they let 'em know, the faster it is and easier it is. It's like none of the stuff that we do have been invented by us, by the way. Mm-hmm. It's all from learning, it's all from mistakes and it's all from consultants that we had in the past. And sometimes with these consultants, it's not only the dental specific, you sometimes we know we may have to go outside the industry to grasp ideas.

What, what are other companies doing out there besides dentistry? Because dentistry is such a small niche, you may not get the whole thing. But once we explore outside, then you see a whole different world. And I think that's my message to a lot of dentists out there. And just don't look at dental consult, uh, consultants definitely look at outside the industry as well.

And then, uh, yeah, I mean those are some of the things. And lastly, it's results oriented. It's gotta be results oriented. It's not like because you are, you are a manager or you are a front desk for X amount of years. You got, you got raised, you know, automatically we see results. You smash results, you got my attention.

Hmm.

Michael: I like that a lot. What are some of the consultants you've had in the past where you're like, they're, they've been amazing.

Noel: let's start with the first one we had was, Levin group.

Dr. Roger Levin. I mean, he is, he is a great guy. We learned a lot of stuff with them, especially when we started off. of course, you know, there's a, there's a substantial investment, but at the end of the day, like I was saying, beginning in, in the beginning of this podcast was.

You gotta implement it. If you don't implement it, your team's not on board. It's not gonna happen. with a lot of these consultants, we have to ensure that, number one, our teams are involved, that our team has some skin in the game, and the way we have to work with a team is not by just top down order.

We have to work with these guys to align them with our goals. Right. And how do you do that? Is basically you have to find out what your team's. Personal goal is what their professional goal is and what's their financial goal. We gotta find out what ticks for them. Right? Once we find out what ticks for them, then we have a conversation on how do we help you so that you can help me?

And that's where I feel like that's where the mindset and everybody is on board on the same page at that time. Because when we were running our show before, I mean, we were like, Hey, this is how we, this is what we did with the consultants, now this is how it's gonna be like, you know, starting Monday morning.

Doesn't work. Doesn't work. Gotcha. Okay.

Michael: So the, the 11

Noel: group was one, right? Levin Group was one. Si institute, um, I'm sure you guys heard of that one, right? SI Institute or Scheduling Institute, I don't know what, whatever it's called, right? Mm-hmm. So that was the second one. That was a brief one. I mean, we literally lasted for like a couple of months and we are out.

these are all in

Michael: the dental industry. These are all

Noel: in the dental industry. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. These all in the dental industry, I think. Uh, then once we started having a few locations, then I was with, uh, d e o Dental.

Oh, okay. Entrepreneur.

Michael: Organization.

Noel: Organization, yeah. Uhhuh. Uhhuh, yeah. Yeah. It, it's run by Jake. When I joined, it was, uh, Dr. Mark Cooper. So he retired and then he, then, then Jake, uh, Jake, uh, took over. So I joined that. They were pretty good. the only thing I didn't like about them was because I was always being put with practices.

That was one or two and they were, all they were discussing was like assistant problems, up front desk problems. Hmm. So I wanted to see like, how can I scale and grow rather than just having those kind of like discussions going on. So yeah. But that lasted about a year. Okay. And, uh, the latest one that we just came out of is Cardone Ventures.

it's a pretty substantial investment. Mm-hmm. But, uh, I think it kind of got our groundwork set up pretty good. Card

Michael: owned ventures. That's what is that all about?

Noel: So they have, so some of the stuff that I was telling you, the 360, it's all been from, Brandon Dawson. So this guy.

he was operating a A D S O or maybe a, a dental group called Stratus or something in his past life before he came on to card ventures. So they scale businesses and basically, you know, with Grand Cardone it's like all about 10 x, right? So he takes a business, works on a system, get everything in place, and get, gets the revenue up.

So he works with that aspect. So that is what the whole, 360 and then we went through a whole platform and then we went through the whole, strategic business unit, you know, like the whole consulting thing. Great guys. Great guys, you know, I mean, you know, but for us, we were looking at something else, so we kind of like, you know, faded away last year and now we are with Polaris.

Michael: Okay, gotcha. Hilarious. And there, how

Noel: long have you been with them for? Oh, we just started, so Polaris, so this guy, what do you call it, the founders, Perrin and the Walker, they were guys from, uh, what's that company called? Ts Partners. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So, yeah, so TSS partners, but they, they used to work with Kevin and then they, they separated and now they have their own stuff going on.

Pretty much the same model, but, you know, it's just, I kind of like these guys because they're more down to earth in the sense that they understand numbers really, really well. And, uh, you know, my whole model is gonna be like around de novo. So that's what, that's what attracted me to them. So it's like, you know, you, before you even break ground, you know what your projections are gonna be, you know, what your numbers are gonna be, how much you need to spend on marketing.

So, that's why we, we went with these guys. so yeah. So it's only been like about what, a month and a half I think, or two months. Mm-hmm. So we'll see how this plays out.

Michael: Okay. Noelle, man, it sounds like you really. See this as like an, an investment, right? Where you're like, okay, I really need to find guidance all the time, right?

Kind of thing. You don't know what you don't know kind

Noel: of thing, right? Oh, you don't know what you don't know, right? Yeah. And, and it's like anytime when you have somebody who's on your side and they can see it from outside the box, because a lot of times when we are in the picture, we can see ourselves, right?

Mm-hmm. So I treat my coaches, my consultants as they're outside of Boston, they can see a lot more.

Michael: Mm Gotcha. Okay. And I like that. I like, so when is it then? 'cause I feel like you're scaling, you know what I mean? You have 11 locations. So to you, when is it like, alright, I don't think I need another one to scale anymore?

A coach, consultant, or what are you thinking?

Noel: For me, it's not about the location anymore, like how I used to be in the past. You know, more locations means more headache, more problems, more issues, right. For me now, it's all about the growth in a sense that how do we take care of the revenue or location?

How do we maximize it? And that is, that is my new mantra on moving forward. And when I, I feel like, you know, we've grown wide, but now we need to grow vertical, grow deep, and once when we start growing deep, we can get quality people, we can get quality executives, we can get quality managers, regionals. I mean, that's where it all is.

Because once when they're running a little bit, you know, wide and thin, That's how we were when we started. I mean, there's not a lot of room down there. So I mean, you're not getting quality people, but once when you start going deep and you grow wide, I mean that's where everything starts. Scaling. Yeah.

Michael: To grow.

Right. Growing like in your roots. I like that a lot because you're right, you can add more locations, but it's more headaches too sometimes, you know?

Noel: Yeah. And, and for all the people out there who's thinking like more locations, like, you know, out of three to four or five, you know, they want to grow out.

While it's good, but just have a reason and a purpose and a goal that why you wanna do it. If the why is bigger than, than, the, uh, actual reasoning, I mean, I think that it will always outlast any problems that, you know, one may have or any kind of like issues one may have once they start growing.

The growing pains, I call it.

Michael: Mm-hmm. Yeah, you're right. Growing pains, what have been, let me ask you that Throughout the time, from your first de novo to all the way to right now, today, right? Yeah. What have been some of your. Biggest struggles or, or, or fails or pitfalls that

Noel: you've encountered? Not seeing the numbers.

You know, not seeing the numbers, just going everything with an emotional mindset and going with a gut feeling. Well, as an entrepreneur, you need to have that gut feeling. You didn't have that instinct for sure. A hundred percent. I agree. But there are certain things and certain times where you need to look at the facts and numbers, because numbers don't lie.

Right. So, If your numbers under red and you wanna open up a second location or a fourth location, whatever it is, it's probably not a good idea, even though the gut is telling you to do it. Mm-hmm. Right. So if I were to go back and do a lot of things, I would probably, number one, is to go invest in myself, get this right first, you know, once when this is right, then everything else follow.

Okay.

Michael: So, Be logical, right, when it comes to the numbers. Continue to always

Noel: look at them logical. Okay. You know, we got two sides, right? We wanna be logical on one side, and then we want to be, I would call it like illogical or maybe like, you know, you go with your gut feeling kind of deal. So it has to have a compromise because if you're too logical then you never take any action, Then you become paralyzed with all analysis. But if you're too, like, you know, on the other side, then. It's like, you know, like myself, right? You're just a visionary without, without any kind of actual steps or actual concrete, uh, way how to get there. Mm-hmm. So I think both should go hand in hand. If, for me, if I'm not the way, if I'm not that like logical person, I need somebody on my team to kind of like, you know, put a check on me, let's put it that way.

Yeah.

Michael: No, it's good. It's good. It's good to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So then that's one of the biggest, uh, struggles that you've had. Numbers, right? What else? Mm-hmm. What else? Can you recall where you're like, man, that's been, that was a headache.

Noel: not having this thriving culture.

Because for me, it's all about people. Having the right people on the team, I think that is the utmost important because people make business. I always thought the other way around, and I think that was like, I had it backwards. You know, I was thinking like, Hey, let's, I'm the business and then we worry about the people.

But it's actually, you take care of the people, the business goes up. that is one of the biggest mistakes that I did or we did in the past. So we learned quite a bit from there. Mm-hmm. Now, for us, it's all about how do we have this winning culture in, in, in, within our organization, and How do we model it? Mm-hmm. So me and my wife, we'll model it. How do we mimic it in terms in our, in our team members? All right. And then how do we master it? Because it's easy to know everything. Like you know it all, but how do you train another person to do it?

that's the key to success for scaling because you can't just have it all up here. You have to pass it on. Yeah,

Michael: that's true. So then your culture mm-hmm. You can tell us what does that look like

Noel: in your team? So it's all about like, how do we pay them more by increasing the production.

How do we all win together? so we have like a lot of like different bonus systems and then we have a lot of payoffs for these guys. We have a lot of team, uh, Cohesion. Kind of like, you know, games that goes on, events that goes on. And every Wednesday we have something called Wednesday, so it's called Win.

Mm-hmm. So everybody wins. Everybody tells them about the wins. so we get all, get on a Zoom call and we are all sharing our wins for that that week. What do we do? And even something personal, like a personal stuff. So I'm on it, my wife's on it, and we are like, you know, participating in it. So we'll tell, share some personal stories.

They'll share something personal so they know like, Hey, that guy, there is not just a figure who just comes in the office and wants every six months, right? Mm-hmm. So they can actually see us and, you know, they have interaction with us. So we, so we have a pretty good time. So it's all about, it's all about like, how do we have a cohesion kind of relationship with everybody and knowing everyone.

Michael: And you do that normally, like the win Wednesdays, right? Is that like a morning huddle or team meeting

Noel: or, yeah, you can call it a morning huddle. You can call it a morning huddle. You know, with, especially right now with like, you know, about 95 employees, I mean, it's hard to keep a, keep a tab with every single one.

Mm-hmm. So we wanna make sure that we are in touch, that they see us the whole time. Gotcha.

Michael: Okay. That's interesting. And you mentioned something about your bonus systems. How does your bonus system work? Because that's a thing we're all trying to like, you know what I mean? Structure. So how do you

Noel: structure it?

So our bonus system for our manager is pretty simple. It's quarterly goals that they have to meet. So there, there's a certain production number that they have to meet and of course they have to keep their employee count to a check. So we kind of strive for 200 to 250,000 per employee kind of deal.

Mm-hmm. And these are all like metrics from card ventures by the way. It's not like I created those. Mm-hmm. So once we have those checks, then and you know, they have to meet those two metrics. And then of course the K P I, whatever they produced, it has to make sure, like what's in account, the actual account.

Those are the three metrics that we look at. And then of course, then the last thing we look at is the p and l. are the numbers as high and are the expenses catching up? Or do we have another net profit? So those are for our, our managers. for the team members, it's very, very simple. we have something called bonus leave.

It's pretty cool. It's like they have a little app and anytime, let's say they talk to a patient about a fluoride treatment where the patient pays out of pocket or if they have a. clear aligner case where the patient accepted treatment, they get a lot of kickback in that Bonusly app.

So the app will show that, hey, they got so much, you know, like money in there and it's all tax free by the way. Because we, we, we carry the taxes for 'em, right. So they'll get like, let's say a $200 bonus or a $300 bonus right there just for, you know, like for a case acceptance, for a clear aligner or maybe for an implant.

You know, they had like a big implant case, you know, there's gonna be like a five to $700, right? So they look at that and they love it. So, you know, that's like, you know, kind of a motivational thing for them to keep applying the same principles like how they did with this patient. A yeah, like, it's

Michael: a good incentive.

How do you determine the, the value of it or the money? So for example, like, oh hey, your implant case, here's 500 bucks. Or

Noel: do they know? Oh, it's all on a dollar value? It's all on a dollar. Oh, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. It's on a dollar value. It's a certain percentage and, uh, yeah, these guys, we started, actually, we started this thing pretty cool.

We started in January. So before that, it was like all haphazard. It was all going up like in payroll and, and it was like, by the time they see it, they're like, oh, I don't care. You know, whatever it is. But since we started this, everybody's on a, on a, on a roll. Yeah. 'cause it's

Michael: like right there, right? Like on their, it's right there and it's on their phone.

So they immediately, they're just like, oh, okay, fluoride, I, I sold it. Boom. Right? And then they can, yeah. The office manager's job is to make sure that's, Kind of true at the same time, right. They're like, are they

Noel: doing it? So there are two checks going on, so mm-hmm. Our office manager will check that patient and then, you know, our, our bookkeeper, they'll go back and say, okay, fine.

This has been entered, this patient made that payment approved, and approval is usually within 24 hours. So we don't make sure we, we don't make them wait for too long.

Michael: Yeah. And then they get that they can cash in that bonus whenever

Noel: or whenever. So, you know, the, the app is pretty cool. I mean, you can actually get cash, you can use it at Starbucks, you can use it at Target.

I mean, you can use it anywhere.

Michael: Interesting. Interesting. Okay. Yeah, that's good. That's good motivation right there, man. That's awesome. Yeah.

Noel: Awesome. I mean, think about it this way, right? If in a day they, they collected, let's say a hundred to 300 bucks. Now if you do the math, whatever hourly they get, you just break it down by eight hours.

That $300 or $200, I mean, that's like additional boost in the per hour without paying Uncle Sam. yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. That's like strictly cash bonus. and what we do on the backend is we make sure like whatever bonuses went out, we'll cover the taxes for them.

Michael: Okay. So that's good, man. That's really, really good.

Oh yeah. Nice. So then one of the last questions I wanna ask you is, throughout this time, how is this affecting your

Noel: personal life? So we have three kids, eight, seven, and two. my wife spends most of the time with them. I'm home like probably Sundays, you know, like depends Sundays or Saturdays. But we understand like, you know, she has this one thing you need to be out there.

She tells me you need to be out there creating stuff, making stuff happen. Because at the end of the day, we may be sacrificing now, like I may be sacrificing now, like with a lot of times with my kids, but I know for a fact that as long as I'm present for the events for the little birthday parties, right.

for their, like, you know, like, like theoretical, uh, uh, kind of shows or anything that is happening in school. And I'm away during the daytime, even evening times, even for days, sometimes when I have to travel. they get it. at the end of the day, for me, it's more about where as our future, how long do we wanna work and where our kids are gonna be down the road and how is it all gonna be turning out because.

If I have to, let's say go for a long time, I'll tag the kids along with me. Mm-hmm. So if we are gonna go out scouting for an acquisition or for a place, the kids are coming with us. Right. They'll be like, Hey daddy, where are we going? Well, we gonna go check out an office. Let's go. that's where my work-life balance is, Michael.

Michael: Gotcha. Okay. Nice. No, I appreciate it. 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?

Noel: Yeah, absolutely. So I give all my personal numbers. Okay, so my number is pretty cool. 8 1 5 6 7 0 2 9 2 3. as long as it's not a scam, or a spam or you know, one of those three marketers, I'm cool.

so again, it's 8 1 5 6 7 0 2 9 2 3, and we [email protected] dental group.com. Or you can follow me on Instagram, Dr. Noel.

Michael: Awesome. So guys, that's all gonna be in the show notes below as always. And Noel, thank you so much for being with us. It's been a pleasure and we'll hear from you soon.

Noel: Thank you for having me.

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(If you DO want to work with Wonderist, be sure to mention this podcast/ episode!)

Reach out to Wonderist here: https://offers.wonderistagency.com/thedentalmarketer

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Welcome to this week's Monday Morning Marketing episode! Today we're joined by, Sabrina Disney, from Wonderist Agency. We are going to dive into the exciting topic of expanding your business beyond its current borders by tapping into nearby markets.

From mastering the art of local SEO, to ensuring your practice's name and location feature consistently across web platforms, we explore the fundamental strategies to gain a competitive edge. Learn how honing in on your primary tag for Google Business listings and then exploring secondary offerings can boost your online visibility. We also uncover ingenious ways to scope out and analyze your competition's tags to stay ahead of the game. Plus, discover the power of crafting a compelling "Geo Page" to win over new markets and supercharge your success!

If you've been ranking highly in your primary local market, listen in to this episode for tips and tricks on expanding with SEO!

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You can reach out to Sabrina Disney here:

Website: https://offers.wonderistagency.com/thedentalmarketer

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Other Mentions and Links:

Google My Business

Google Chrome

GMBspy

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For more helpful tips, strategies, ideas, and marketing advice:

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

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

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, Sabrina, so talk to us about s e O. How can we utilize this, or what advice, suggestions, or methods can you give us that will help actually attract new patients through s E O?

Sabrina: Great question. You know, when we talk about effective like local SEO strategies for both new and established dental practices, the list essentially never ends.

It's always ongoing. There's always more to do, right? Mm-hmm. So today I'd kind of really like to talk about boosting your local dental presence, not just in that immediate market, but you know, the potential to expand into surrounding markets. I'd love to kinda just start with the one and only Google business profile, right?

So optimizing your Google Business profile is the best strategy for enhancing your local s e o and increasing brand awareness in that target area, right? So I'd love to kind of just talk about some known ranking factors. First, of course, pretty self-explanatory. This is gonna be your practice name and your location.

We wanna make sure that your practice name reflects that of your website as well as your address to make sure that you know name brand consistency is key, right? Second, we're gonna dive into a little bit more of the fun stuff. So this includes primary and secondary categories. So what is a primary category?

So this essentially will explain like your dental practice as a whole, right? this is known to be one of the top ranking factors that goes into ranking your business on Google. dentists can choose from about 13 different primary categories. So, This is anything from, you know, dental clinic to dental hygienist to cosmetic dentistry.

where do you start with these, right? There's so many to choose from our recommendation, and mine always is, you know, unless they're a specialty practice, like pediatric cosmetic, the most effective primary category that you're gonna wanna go for is dentists. Why is that? Why do we wanna just do dentists?

It seems a little bit more basic, right? So the term dentist almost always has more search volume, right? So for example, if you're in a new area, you're searching for a dentist, chances are you're gonna start with those core dental keywords like dentists. Dentists near me, dentists around me, right? So we wanna make sure that, you know, we're really optimizing your Google business profile in line with both your practices, values, as well as what's really highly searched in your area.

So, secondary categories, right? You get a maximum of nine different extra categories to put on your Google profile, which is also insane. Of course, these secondary categories, they don't hold as much weight as your primary, but it's still really important to build these categories out. So kind of where to start with this, right?

My main thing is pick the ones that really make most sense to you. You know, if you do teeth whitening, add that, you know, if you offer emergency dentistry services, add that as well. also a pro tip from Sabrina Tru. This is from me. there's some really awesome chrome extensions that you can add to your web browser to see exactly what secondary categories your competitors are choosing.

So this way, if. You know, there's an competitor. They're ranking number one for dentists near me. In your area, you can actually see what primary category they're using and what secondary categories they're using. So there's a lot of really awesome research tools that you can also hone in on your competition while also making sure you're focusing on your practice's values.

Nice.

Michael: Real quick, I wanted to ask on the, where do we add these secondary, like where can we find that and then where can we find the chrome extensions?

Sabrina: Yeah, for sure. So for the secondary categories, all you're gonna go is go to your Google business profile. It's gonna be right under that primary categor, so it'll be like add additional categories.

So you can go ahead and just hit that and add up to nine extra categories. So this is also really great if you wanna give your profile a little bit more boost on those other categories. And then for Chrome extensions, all you have to do is go to the. Extensions. You can just type it right into Google.

You can say extensions and a Chrome extension, GM B, spy, which now it's G P P, but GM B Spy is a really awesome tool to use. It essentially, um, will analyze competitors. All you have to do is search them in the local map pack, click on them, and it'll show them all

Michael: that data. Interesting. Okay. Awesome.

Sabrina: so let's talk a little bit more about attributes. attributes are really important as well when you're ranking, right? So, including from the business attributes. So identifications of your business. You know, if you're a woman owned dental practice, if you're veteran owned, it's really important to add these to these, your profiles, of course, not just if people are searching for them, but also to differentiate your practice.

This includes also service offerings in the attributes section as well, so, Kind of diving into whether or not your practice offers online care, if your practice offers language assistance. These are also really great differentiators that can help you stand out from your competition. Heading on to reviews.

So it's known that you should have a maximum of 10 reviews to see a ranking boost. Right now, if you're in a really competitive area, chances are those established practices if your new practice are gonna have hundreds of reviews. So it's really important to come up with a consistent strategy for gaining those reviews naturally and consistently.

And then of course we all know this. Number five service offerings. Add all applicable service offerings that your practice offers. This is anything from dental cleanings, dental crowns, dental implants. If you offer it, add it. there are a lot of other really important factors when, when it comes into, you know, optimizing your Google business profile.

But you know, the ones of course that we discussed, and I'm sure that you've heard, Over and over again. This is a really great starting point for your practice. So I'd kind of love to get into expanding your local SEO presence with Geo Pages. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So, yeah, this is a really interesting. Thing and something I think a lot of practices don't really utilize as much.

So let's say you're a dental practice and you're really crushing your primary market, right? And you're looking to expand into surrounding markets near your location. This is where Geo Pages a k A, this is just a really fancy name for targeted location page. So with these targeted location pages, practices can actually begin to show up outside of their primary market.

And of course, before I jump into this, it's always important to note that s e will always work best in your primary market where your practice is physically located. However, that doesn't mean that ranking outside of your market is impossible, and factors are all determined by, you know, what your competition is like as well as where you're located.

So let's kind of get into what is a Geo Page? Mm-hmm. A geo page is a page that your site is essentially focusing on a specific service in a city that your practice isn't located in. So these pages are different from your location pages on your site. So your location pages are where your practice is actually located, right?

These geo pages are targeting different markets. In different cities. So these pages should really target keywords that are more highly searched and, you know, services that your practice would actually like to offer to potential patients in the surrounding areas. So I love my examples. So for example, let's see your practice.

Who's really crushing it in their primary market? We'll call that market Market a Let's say you really wanna start to capture clear aligner patients in a city nearby. We'll call that market B in order to hit you know your target patient goals. This is your chance to create a geo page.

Google really loves pages that are to the point and dedicated to a specific city and service. It's honestly a really simple strategy. Google does have, so creating a Geo page titled, you know, clear Aligners in Market Fee is a great way to start showing up on Google in this market.

Michael: if we wanted to start locating the geo page, where do we kind of go from there?

Sabrina: Yeah. Are you talking about kind of like where, where you're looking to expand? Yeah. Yeah, that's a great question. Um, so normally when we suggest expanding into, you know, different markets, it's normally markets that are fairly close to the practice and we really wanna make sure that we're really authoritative and ranking really well in that primary market at first.

So, for example, if, if you're in market a, you're in a rural, rural area, you're, you're doing really well. And, you know, market B is maybe, you know, 20 to 30 miles away and it's also a more rural area. expanding into that market, into that new patient base is gonna really help. Potentially drive, you know, new patients to your practice.

And now if we're kind of talking about what content we should add to this page and where to start, it's really important to think about if you were a potential patient and you arrived on, you know, this page, right? What would you wanna see? If it's a little bit out of the way, if you know I have to drive a little bit, I'd probably wanna see, you know, some directions, uh, from, you know, that location to, you know, the practice.

I'd also like to see what makes that dental practice different from maybe others that are already in my area, that are maybe offering clear aligners. So really showcasing your practice is gonna be the best way to help drive new patients from other markets.

Michael: Hmm. Okay. that's good. So then anything else on Geo page?

Sabrina: honestly offering something special, making it special to that people will drive, will call, will come to your practice. is the bottom line.

Michael: What have you seen, Sabrina, from your area of expertise like this is the offer.

Speaking from like, or looking at it from a general, cuz for example, if it's like a, a dentist right? Or somebody in the dental industry, we're easily like 5% off, 10% off. Oh my gosh, that's a great deal. But if we're just walking down the street and we see it, we're not gonna be like, oh my God, 10% off, we gotta, or we're looking at it.

Right? 10% off my first exam, yes. It's, um, and that is enticing so to you. Yeah. What have you seen where it's like, these are the offers that we've seen Yeah. Work really well? Yeah, I think

Sabrina: having free consultations is a really great benefit. Um, and maybe even having consultations that, you know, Patients can schedule virtually.

I think if your practice is a little bit out of the way, it'd be great if a patient could, you know, see her face virtually versus having to drive all that way. I also think something that is really important to have is having. Before and afters, on those pages. Any practice can, take so much money off and, you know, have all these great offers.

But really showcasing your work and what you do is gonna make me as a patient, feel like, oh, you know, they do really great work. They know what they're doing. I'd rather go to them versus another practice that maybe is giving me a better offer because I know for a fact that they're gonna do a great job.

Michael: And you want us to showcase these before and afters on the Google My Business page, or,

Sabrina: uh, you can showcase it on the Google My Business page. You can showcase it on your site, on these Geo Pages, really anywhere that you expect people that are gonna actually come to these pages, right? You wanna really showcase who you are as a practice.

Michael: Gotcha. Do you think, I know we, let's, we rewind a little bit. We talked about putting, review the attributes, reviews, service offerings, right? And we wanna mention everything. does it kind of apply to like, you know how mill and postcards, they're like, Hey, just give us like your three best, four best things, right?

If you put everything on that postcard, then Do you feel like it applies here too, or, no? We should put everything, everything

Sabrina: on here. I think when it comes to services, Put everything, because that's gonna be the main ranking factor in terms of if people are searching any type of service in your area.

Right? So for example, if you add dental checkups, but maybe you don't add dental cleanings on your site, Google might be like, oh, well they didn't actually add dental cleanings, you know, maybe. They actually don't offer it, even though you offer dental checkups. Right. So it's really important and for Google to be as specific as possible because that's what essentially is gonna, you know, drive more people to see that you're offering these services.

Gotcha.

Michael: Okay. And so any final advice for the listener listening right now who wants to optimize their seo? They're gonna start doing this, which you said, but any final advice?

Sabrina: Yeah, I think really starting from square one is gonna be, The best bet for you. There are so many different things that you can do, and it can be of course, overwhelming at times, but really honing in on, you know, your Google business profile, being active on there, consistently updating it, is gonna really help with just driving local.

Traffic and then of course, you know, trying new things. if you see that maybe geo pages are something that you wanna do and maybe you're looking to expand into a new market, try these geo pages out. See if, you can rank in another area. It's really fun to try, you know, different things and d different strategies.

That's, you know, the brilliance of SEO and what we do every day, because some things might not work in certain areas that they work in others, but, It's really important to just be creative and try different ideas while also, you know, honing in on things that actually do still work.

Michael: Awesome. Awesome.

Sabrina, I appreciate your time and if anyone has further questions, you can definitely find her on the dental market or society Facebook group or where can they reach out to directly? Yeah,

Sabrina: um, you can reach out to me at my email. Um, I work at agency, so, um, yeah, we can totally link my email in here. That would be great.

Awesome.

Michael: So guys, that's gonna be in the show notes below as always. And Sabrina, thank you so much for being with me on this Monday morning marketing episode. Thank you so much.

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Guest: Sundar JagadeesanPractice Name: DentiqCheck out Sundar's Media:

Website: https://www.dentiq.nz/

Email: [email protected]

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Other Mentions and Links:

‍Kois Center

Venmo

PayPal

Zelle

The Thriving Dentist Show with Gary Tackacs

Ekwa Marketing

Google Ads

Bing

Scheduling Institute

Dr. John Kois

The Psychology of Money - Morgan Housel

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For more helpful tips, strategies, ideas, and marketing advice:

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

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

Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041

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My Key Takeaways:

• Do you best to stick with your practice philosophy and communicate that to your team! The details become easier when values are understood.
• If you're a comprehensive service, the extra time taken in patient onboarding is worth it!
• Don't overload patients with all the ins and outs of procedure details. Keep their health as top priority, but simplify your treatment planning so it's understandable.
• Cashflow is the underlying issue from most problems in business. Once this is in order, you free up bandwidth to serve more patients!
• Using a non-scripted approach to patient calls and asking lots of questions can be a great way to add a personal touch and show interest.
• Sometimes it's better to lock down just the big picture strategy and then brainstorm the implementation with your team.

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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, Dr. Sundar Jaen. Sundar, how's it

Sundar: going? I'm good. It's quite cold down in New Zealand here. I know, I think,

Michael: I believe we have quite a bit of listeners in New Zealand, but I, we've never had an actual practice owner from New Zealand, but, We're excited to dive into your practice.

Sundar: I've been actually following your podcast for a while now, and I've been listening to you for a while, so it's quite awesome for me to be on the show. I

Michael: appreciate that, man. Thank you so much. Yeah I'll Venmo, PayPal, you ze use after this. We'll be like, thank you for the shout out, Zender. I appreciate you, ed.

Thank you for the support, but could you briefly introduce your dental practice and the demographic you primarily serve?

Sundar: So basically we are a general dental practice fully catering to family dentistry from fillings hygiene work to rehab. Full mouth rehab, fully restorative implants. We place our own implants and I do a bit of microscopic endodontics as well.

So it's a fairly good mix of general dentistry and a wee bit of advanced restorative dentistry, as I would like to call it. The demographics here in Napier is basically, a middle to upper middle class group. And we are the fruit bowl of New Zealand. Like, it's quite a horticulturally, quite a big space in New Zealand and we export a lot of citrus fruits, stone fruits and the economies mainly agriculture based.

Yeah.

Michael: Okay, wait, real quick. What's the currency over there?

Sundar: New Zealand dollars. Oh okay. Yeah. Interesting. Around and dollar and a half compared to the US dollars. Okay. Okay. So buys one and a half New Zealand dollars. Yeah.

Michael: Gotcha. And that's the main thing over there at the agriculture, like the citrus fruits.

You guys export that,

Sundar: In this region, yes. But in general, New Zealand has the main industry here is dairy farming. And so we are quite an agrarian society. Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah.

Michael: Interesting. Good, good lesson for us. Awesome. So then that's the primarily the demographic you serve. In which category would you place your practice?

Would it be, DS o, private practice? Solo doc? Do you have multiple doctors or general.

Sundar: So we are fully small boutique practice. I started the practice in 2018 by myself and then in 2021 I had my first full-time associate joined me. And then she worked with us for 2020 and the whole of 2022.

She's back in California at the moment. And we've just started another dent associate dentist who started with us early this year. And we had a bit of a three month changeover. So there's two of us with one hygienist. It's a fairly small practice.

Michael: Okay, nice. So then how did you know you were ready to bring on the associate full-time?

Sundar: So when I set out the set out at the practice, my goal was to get a hygienist at eight months. So, but at six months we did bring her in at a kind of couple of months early. And I told myself like, the day when my new patient booking goes past three weeks point, I'll get an associated.

So that, that's what it took me that length of time. We didn't plan it to be in two years or three years. whenever organically the practice grew we were going to do it. But 2020 after Covid hit, we went into this big lockdown and when we came back there was a huge influx of.

Patients coming in after the lockdown and I couldn't handle it. And that's when we said we'll get an associate three week point was my cutoff.

Michael: That was it. You're like, at three weeks we gotta, and immediately she jumped on us full-time. Or was it part-time and then

Sundar: full-time? No, straightaway. Full-time. Ah, straightaway.

Full-time. Yeah. I didn't wanna start an associate part-time for a reason because. My practice philosophy is very comprehensive dentistry boutique. You are, you are, You are looking at a patient. You are trying to understand it's more personalized. It's not like a DSO where you are just going through the numbers, kind of.

focusing on a very limited number of new patients a month. So I wanted a person to come in full-time who would absorb into my philosophy first. And then go in, like, if I had a part-time, then the dentist has to work in a different practice with a different philosophy and half the philosophy in my place so that there will be a clash in their mindset.

So that was my reasoning behind us asking someone come in, you come in full-time. Yeah. And you've been with me.

Michael: Yeah. Gotcha. Okay. Was it easy finding an associate.

Sundar: It is actually fairly difficult to get experienced associates in New Zealand at the moment. So I'm actually interviewing another dentist from Colorado and he's quite keen.

Looks like our philosophies are kind of coming together. And then hopefully in 2024, we'll try and be a three dentist practice. Oh, wow.

Michael: I thought you were interviewing associates in New Zealand, but sounds like you're interviewing associates everywhere, right?

Sundar: Every anywhere in the world, to be honest. Mm-hmm. in New Zealand at the moment there's a shortage of experience, dentists.

So my practice is at a stage where unfortunately I'm not able to mentor a young graduate, come in and. And kind of take them through the learning curve. We've reached a space where we have to kind of hit the ground running And also in New Zealand, because of after covid, especially the, there are a lot of people who expatriates who came back into New Zealand. When the lockdowns happened the rest of the world and they've all gone back out, back to Australia, us, uk, and all these countries. So, so there's a real shortage of experience to clinicians.

There are, there's a good pool of new graduates coming through. Obviously new graduates they leave. Two or three years to warm their feet up and kind of get into the rhythm of doing dentistry at an advanced level. So that's where we are a bit stuck. And I think the government migration policy is a bit they're opening it up as well post covid.

And so, so at the moment it's a bit easier to get a dentist from overseas, experienced dentist, I mean,

Michael: Okay. Makes sense. Makes sense. So you're growing pretty quick. So what has been your experience with, different marketing companies and which strategies have proved to be most

Sundar: effective? So originally when we started we were focusing on Ground marketing quite a lot, like newspaper ads, radio ads, print ads.

Like, like put inserts into the local newspaper. Deliveries. We did get a good uh, group of, patients from that, but not enough to sustain a full startup full-time practice. It was like kind of half and half. And that's when I started researching and learning about s e o, and digital marketing.

And the previous website I had wasn't good enough. one of my cousins he worked in the IT industry in the uk, so I asked him, can he review my website and tell me. From a non-dental point of view, from a patient point of view, do you think it's informative enough to do it?

And he gave me a big list of corrections to be done on the website. And so it kind of built up into this whole situation. This was around just before the lockdown, just before Covid. We knew that Just ground marketing is not gonna work for us. so we decided, okay, we are gonna go into digital marketing if we are gonna expose ourselves in the region and also just across the region.

Like New Zealand's quite a small country. We are in the north island of New Zealand, four hours drive south of us is Wellington the capital of New Zealand. so we said, okay we are going to concentrate on the region more. And then we went into digital marketing quite a lot, so, And at that stage I was listening a lot to Gary aka mm-hmm. the Thriving Dentist Show. And I came to know about Equa marketing. And then we signed up with them. And we are going on with them for three years now.

Michael: Okay. So Echo marketing. Marketing. Yeah. Okay. And so the most effective thing, do you know currently what they are doing for you digital marketing wise?

Sundar: Yes. So they manage our website the content in the website, and they manage all our social media handles. They pretty much manage the whole online presence. they keep working on the website quite a lot. Like they keep doing all my, content review.

And pretty much every month there's new content being written and updated into the website. I do a bit of writing myself as well. And they proofread it and correct my blogs and they include that into the website and More of educational pieces for patients. So we do that a lot and they, they manage the whole lot of that.

Google marketing what is it? Like Google Ads. So they do all that part and then they manage that as well.

Michael: Okay. Okay. Interesting. So then how much budget do you typically allocate for your marketing activities?

Sundar: for the first two years I decided I'm gonna allocate 5% of my, gross profit.

So we did that. And then since we moved into ewa, it's a set fee. I think they charge around 1200 US dollars a month for the whole thing. And that has locked in my. Budget with them 12, $15,000 a year. And then we put another 5,000 US aside for, we still do a bit of print marketing and newspaper marketing and all those things.

We just use a wee bit of that kind of a mix. Radio, primetime radio. Drive time, radio. Newspapers and all those things. We mix it up a VB bed. But I think mainly our patients are coming. Like I did review the reports on oryx last night and it was pretty much search engine for, since 8% of my patients are coming from search engine, from

Michael: seo, from like their, the search engine, Google or Bing or something like that.

Yeah. Gotcha. Okay. Interesting. And how many new patients are you currently getting

Sundar: a month? So average we are averaging at 50 patients a month, 50 new patients a month. And for the first two years, obviously, because every patient is a new patient. Mm-hmm. we were, first year we had it good, to be honest.

We were averaging close to 1 20, 1 50 a month. Uhhuh. There was a bit too much to start with, to be honest. I didn't have the time to concentrate on the personalized care I wanted to develop in this practice, but then it worked out like not all of them were looking for a comprehensive dentist at that stage.

Yeah. Some of them were like, oh, it's a new practice. We'll check 'em out. Kind of people coming in as well. Yeah. And local social media influencers coming in to check me out as well. And there was bit of that happening as well. And it did, we did manage well in the first two years. But digital marketing is where we settled into the.

Grew.

Michael: Okay. So it was like about 120 at the beginning, but then you realized that was too much in the sense of the quality that you wanted to provide. 50 right now is a sweet spot.

Sundar: 50 is the perfect spot for me. we are back at the stage where with 50, we are with two dentists.

We are back at that three week mark. So need another one. We decided, we said we'll go for another associate. Yeah. So that's how we are progressing. Okay.

Michael: Yeah. Okay. That's interesting. And then how equipped would you say is your team in converting calls into actual patients?

Sundar: We did have fairly decent front desk group in the last four years, but I think we have finally nailed it with the two.

Ruth and Detroit will come into our clinic now, in New Zealand. First time we have a, probably not the first time, but very rare occasion we have a male front desk person they have got onto the concept quite well and they understood the philosophy and they do a lot of I wouldn't say.

A hundred percent. Like they're not filtering people, but they do a fair bit of pre-screening in the phone and then they bring patients on board. I think FrontDesk, as long as they understand the philosophy of the practice and they believe in the philosophy, they'll be able to convert a phone call to a person on the chair.

And we spent a lot of time in the last 18 months to train them in the philosophy, and then that has rolled over into good conversion rates as well for us.

Michael: What do you do if you can break it down for us to like, and remind us again real quick what the philosophy is, but at the same time, let us know like, in these 18 months, this is the system that we need to start believing in.

Sundar: The philosophy of the practice is we are looking for patients who are seeking comprehensive care. say for example, they have a toothache, they come in, emergency patient, that's the limited examination. They're coming, they coming in for an loe, they get them out of pay. But then we explain to them about a comprehensive dentistry like we do a full coe full panel.

Full set x-rays, full set photographs and get to treat the whole mouth. And any dental pathology we see in the mouth, we want to treat it and get them back to good health. So this is the one line of the philosophy and I told my friend desk that we are almost like dental evangelists in this part of the world.

To me, the patients coming into my practice, we are pretty much our, their last chance for dental redemption. they have to hear what they have to hear. So we need the time and resources to spend time with them, explain what's happening in their mouth in more detail. What I find is people with they don't have the patience to listen to what all is happening in their mouth.

They have a toothache or a problem, one single problem, and they want to just get that fixed and they wanna move on to the next part of their life. But challenge for us. Or for the front desk is to convert that single person from that mindset of pain, attendance or pain relief dentistry to a comprehensive patient like once we move them, or at least so the seed that you can be a bit more healthier.

You don't have to lose a tooth every two years and you're still paying money for an extraction. At the end of the day, you don't have a tooth to show for the money you spent. And that's something I tell my patients all the time. And if unfortunately you lose this tool, We don't wanna lose another one.

And that's the starting point. And then we took the time to kind of do clinical retreat days management retreat days, practice retreat days, with the whole team. And we would sit down and thrash out and we'll take randomly uh, a few concepts out of what is available out there. And then we sit and discuss, okay, this is what we want to do.

How we are gonna do it. I'm kind of a big picture guy. I get, get the gist of what I want to do and then I roll the idea to my team and ask them how you want to do it. And when they decide, okay, this is how we are gonna do it, this is how we are going to speak to the patients, and all those things.

And then it's their concept. It's, they believe in it and they know how to do it. It's because it's not trained or it's not out of shield for them. For me to come back and say, this is the word b hg gotta use, yes, we do discuss verbiage, but then it's not scripted, it's out of coming out of their core belief.

That they want to see good, healthy smiles. And they kind of explain that. And we do these retreats often. And once we do these retreats, often they, over a period of time, they get to understand my thoughts and what I wanna achieve for the patient. And once they believe that, then the phone call conversion happens a bit better.

that's what has worked for me.

Michael: So there's no specific script that you guys follow? Like, oh, if the person says How much is it for, you know what I mean? Like a implant or do you take my insurance? There's no specific like, oh, we're gonna wanna

Sundar: say this. No. My biggest thing for my team or front desk instruction is ask them more questions to understand them.

Each call will be different. There's no scripted questions to us. And all they do is just try and question them more. Like, okay, if you are asking for how much it is, why do you ask them? Have you, do you have another call? Or do you have what kind of treatment are you looking for? Say for example, how much is an extraction?

Then the next question would be, Is it a front tooth or a back tooth? Oh, it's a back tooth. Oh, how broken down it is? Oh, it's quite painful. I think, you know what may, so the conversation kind of drags on from there, but the main thing for the front desk is to express or impress on the patient's mind that unless a dentist sees the mouth, you're not gonna get an answer precisely.

So that's where they're driving and then the conversion happens and they come and sit down, have a chat, and once they're in the chat, then it's up to the dentist to express my philosophy of teach them, educate about having this whole concept of comprehensive dentistry. but we don't have a totally set script.

We don't have that. No.

Michael: It sounds like you take a lot of time investing in the onboarding, right. Of your team members. You're not just like, guys, throughout this time we're gonna be learning quick systems. Follow what the office managers telling you that it's not like that. It's like we gotta onboard.

And a lot of that time, more than 60% is like, It really internalizing the philosophy so you can care a whole lot. Yes, exactly. About the patient.

Sundar: Yeah.

Michael: I like that. I like that a lot. Yeah, because you almost feel, they say that's like a thing in, in selling, almost like they say when you sell, if they say no, you want to feel bad, that they're like, this thing that I have for you is gonna help you out so much.

I feel bad that you're saying no. Exactly. Kind of thing. Okay. Interesting. I like that. I like that a lot. Your philosophy.

Sundar: It does take time though. The downside to the concept of the way I do it, it does take time, for a person and I, yes. I have had staff members who come in and they themselves are a bit impatient to get rolling So the whole process gets, sometimes it's a bit, too slow for them and they pull out, but I said like, that's fine. Like you, you might as well go now. So that has happened as well.

Michael: Yeah. No, but it's good. It's good that you are, you know, you're sticking to your guns kind of thing. Yes. And making sure not adapting to them.

Interesting. Okay. So then, Right now, throughout this process, what have been some of the best companies you've worked with and some of the worst companies you've worked with that it just didn't work out for you?

Sundar: one of the companies which did not work out for us was Scheduling Institute. So we did some time, like we spent almost like six, seven months with them. But they were really nice people. The concepts, I liked them. call it cultural difference between the two countries. I don't know, but I felt or my staff felt as well, they were a bit more aggressive or a bit more scripted.

And that's where I got my concept of I don't want it to be scripted. I wanted to be organic. I want the patient to feel, be part of like walking into a friend's house, And that's the organic feeling I wanted in my practice. So we said no we will stop scheduling Stuart, we'll come out of that.

So Shelling Institute something which did not work out for us, but two people who influenced a lot in my. Two people, two companies, so to speak, one is Dr. John Coce from the Coy Center in Seattle. He taught me the philosophy and the treatment concept and how to do higher value dentistry.

at the same time, John also teaches you how to grow yourself as a person. And it kind of, The whole tribe is about being, doing better for yourself, doing better for your patients, doing better for your team, doing better for your family. it's this whole concept of working towards excellence.

I learned that from John. And then the other person is Gary Tagus with the Thriving Dentist Show. what I learned from him was the whole concept of co-discovery being honest with the patient. If you don't know something, you don't know something, if you wanna wait and watch, you wait and watch.

and if you are not desperate about making that sale, it happens. there's also like, like a subtle element of. Being detached to the sale. You want the health for the person, it's not a sale kind of target driven agenda there.

I learned that from Gary ERs and it was an organic move from him to Equa as well.

Michael: Yeah, that's true. I feel like if you don't have that monetary value all the time, you more have the, I need to help this person value.

Sundar: Yeah. Yeah. Because there's a conflict of interest, right?

Like you, we get paid. For the help we do to people. Whereas an NGO for that matter, they don't get paid for it. And then there is a concept of gratification. Like they, they're doing it for the sheer fan of doing it, the sheer satisfaction of doing it. And when we change the practice or the whole practice model, do that part, that's when it becomes easier for me to speak to the patient and say, You know what, you have all these problems, but it's great.

Like it's, I'm getting excited. I could do this for you. I could change this for you. If you want to go. If you are ready when you are ready, I'm happy to do it. Yeah, and I did a presentation as last night and I was super excited. I was so buzzed out. The last two hours before the presentation I was just waiting to go into that case presentation and it worked out right?

Like she enjoyed it and that's where it is. She wants to go ahead, but she still has to make the commitment financially and all those things. I understand that, especially with this whole new recession happening and the cost of living crisis and all those things. We understand people in where they are in their life and we give them the space they give back, into the practice.

another company which has really worked with the comprehensive care, what we are trying to do is, oryx the dental software. Because I feel the software itself should support a clinician to make better decisions. And it should be intuitive and interactive to your workflow.

A software should not be just a recording medium. Software should be part of your workflow, and that's what I like about Orx. from the time the patient, the phone call comes in, the interaction new, the welcome. Email, which goes out, the new patient forms, which goes out.

Uh, Cause of my time with the Coy Center, this is fully embedded with the coy philosophy, the forms and everything. And that kind of speaks to the patient from the word go. That I've come to a place which is different. I've come to a place where they take care of me as a whole person, Not as a single tooth or a as a number. So Oryx gives me that platform to speak to the patient it's a soft, subtle message which goes to the patient that I am comprehensive, I'm looking to treat you comprehensively, and that's what our excuse is.

And the moment the patient walks into the clinic, the way we take them into the room and settle in and we do the whole charting process. They could see the screen and we go through radio. Like the structured exam process. Dr. Coy teaches like radiographic exam TMJ tool structure, head and neck lesions morphological lesions, orthotic classifications, periodontal dfa, airway.

I don't think any software, as far as I've seen, is so extensive and patient care centered, health centered, person centered I don't think any other software facilitates this kind of care. At least I've not seen it. Yeah.

Michael: No. It's, that's fantastic. How did it take your team?

Because you say there's a lot, right, that Orix offers and there's a lot of things and I feel like when it comes to softwares that have a lot, sometimes it either we tend to say like there's too many bells and whistles, or we tend to the team. It takes a lot for the team to get on board to know it, to understand it, you know what I mean?

Did that happen with you or no?

Sundar: It did not, to be honest, it did not because. I made a very conscious decision to hire people who were non-dental people. From the, so all my staff, a first time into dental industry, except for my first practice manager who started the clinic with me, she had 20 years of clinical experience, like as a practice administrator.

But. Her time was done in the first two, three years, and then we made a conscious station to hire people who did not have any dental experience. So they came in with no baggages. They were not exposed to different softwares. They were not exposed to different philosophies. All they had exposure to was their own dental care themselves.

Met a dentist, had a filling, had an extraction done, or whatever treatment they've done and that's about it. And another personal project we have as a family like me and my wife, is to encourage younger dental assistants who come to us. We encourage them to go on to a hygiene school or even dental school.

So we motivate them to go on and do that. I see. So we kind of get people in from the homeschooling group. From high school dropouts and all those things. They come in, they get a bit of a grounding with us, and then they go back into schools. So we get people who are non-dental all the time.

Michael: So it's easier to train them, especially with a oric real quick. Yeah. How much do you, if you don't mind me asking, how much does Orix cost? How much are you paying

Sundar: for Orix? I'm paying. hundred and thirty $5 a month. Okay.

Michael: Us. Us. Okay. And that's with everything at the very end. If you can tell me two things, what is it that your team, or three things, what is it that your team really loves about Oryx?

The patients? What do they love about Oryx

Sundar: and you, the team likes about Rx is. It's very easy for them to manage the scheduling. Mm-hmm. And the exam part. And then the treatment part, treatment planning part, I mean. So everything is segmented and everything is, is on a dropdown menu. So it's very easy to use.

And that's what the team has told me that's the easiest part. from a patient point of view, all patient communication, is pretty much on a click of a button. Like, for example, one of the smallest things, but I love that feature is save the date, appointment. As soon as we book the patient in the room, we just click a button, it sends them out a text.

I've asked this at my. Medical doctors, clinic. Can you send me a text so I don't forget it? I don't have to note it down. I don't have to write it down. They say, oh, we'll send one the day before, but to me, that's too late. So it's instant. And things like that, like small things like that, it's easy.

And another thing patient from a patient point of view is, or ex, as soon as you get all your exam data very correctly and put it in then it gives you Dr. Coys diagnostic opinion automatically and it gives you the risk assessment, printout automatically. So that's a big thing for me.

Making the patient understand, you know what this is what is happening in your mouth. And it's very easy for us to explain to the patient, especially in a comprehensive setting, you have to look at the whole thing. You have to look at the gums, you have to look at the teeth, you have to look at your, your aesthetics and all those things like it's organic, the whole thing.

And patients like that. Patients like that because everyone wants to speak about themselves, right? Like everyone wants to, hear others speak about them. And when I give this report and they read it, and it's like, oh, that's me. Oh, is this what's happening? Oh, is this what's happening?

Oh, that photo looks horrible. That x-ray looks horrible. They don't read x-rays, but. As soon as they see it on a piece of paper, physically on their hand, that makes a difference and Orx makes that possible from my point of view. For all these reasons, it makes my life easy. the biggest thing is when I first did the COI Center curriculum, my biggest challenge was how am I gonna implement this?

I'm half the world away. I don't have the same kind of support system as a dentist in US has, like, they have local COIST members, easy support system. But I'm here. But then to me, ORX becomes my link back to the coy Center on an everyday level. It's a reminder for me, like, you go through this checklist, you not missing anything.

Exam, you go through cavities watching existing illustrations. It's pretty much like what Dr. Coy speaks about. The checklist manifesto the book. Quite big on that in the first couple of sessions. He speaks about it like and how he trains us to, he says, you should not have cognitive overload.

You should be thinking how you can make the patient better, but you shouldn't be thinking, have I noted this down? Have I noted this down? Have I, am I looking at this correctly? That's cognitive overload. I don't have that cognitive overload anymore. My energy is spent to interact with the patient, understand the patient, and present a comprehensive plan to the patient rather than, oh, have I noted how, what is the mobility?

Have I noted? What is the periodontal pocket depth? Have I noted cavities? It's all there. It's a checklist. You just go through the list. Your exam is done. it's very systematic. You don't have to think it. Think about it. Dr. Coys one of the things he says about not to have to think about things is apparently when he goes to the SeaTac airport, he parks his car at the same place.

when he comes back from the trip, he's like, I'm not thinking, where did I park my car? And all those things. He just goes to that spot straight away. He says, as dentists, we should preserve our brain and cognitive energy to serve the patient. Not to think about, oh, have done this, haven't done this.

I've done. And that is, that small concept has changed my life as well. In personal life. Now I go from home to clinic. It's the same route, same speed, same things. Like it becomes a routine and it's actually quite liberating. To do that.

Michael: Yeah. No, I like that. I like that a lot. So then it makes it a lot easier.

Everything, right? Everything. Awesome. Okay, so then switching gears here a little bit, have you ever faced a situation where the promise results were not achieved with the expected timeframe within your marketing or marketing company or previous marketing company

Sundar: that has been there? Sometimes that has been there with equa as well. But I've come to a stage where I kind of let it happen. Sometimes I feel I take a more philosophical back step and say, I'd let this go. I'd wait and see how it pans out. It does put a cashflow pressure when things doesn't happen a bit faster.

From a business point of view, it does put you on the spot sometimes, but, if we manage cashflow better as a business owner, like allocation. And that's another thing which has happened with us is since Covid. I looked at the profit for system. So the profit for system as such that from the cashflow point of view, has helped me a lot.

Some months are big, some months are slow. But then there's no consistency. We kind of get frustrated about, oh, the marketing is not working, conversion's not happening. Front desk is not doing their job. Or the DA hasn't followed up with the treatment plan presentation, or the, these frustrations a reflection of your problem.

On the behind is your cashflow. As soon as the money part is clear and slow and seamless. And as a clinician, as a business owner, my mind is clear to concentrate on the thing. So the frustrations on a day-to-day life from a marketing point of view or from a, staff performance point of view, I've got to a stage where, I'm not going to force and make it happen.

sometimes we do. I, I'll admit, sometimes it does get to me sometimes, but mostly, once we manage the cash flow a bit better, then we have the systems in place. We trust the process and just go through that hurdle and then just move on to the next one. So that's how I've been doing it in the last three years.

Yeah.

Michael: Do you ever approach them and say like, guys, what's going on, or what's happening or, anything like

that

Sundar: that has happened? We do have a bit of a heated huddle sometimes in the morning. That has happened. Like, like we, it happened recently last week. We came off a long weekend, first day back.

Couple of them were sick. And I was impressed. I wasn't happy. I did tell them, I did tell them the Tu Tuesday we were, and on the Wednesday morning when they were back, I did tell them, this is not on, you have to preserve yourself through the weekend so that you could turn up to work and be at your best.

They did something in the weekend, which didn't go well and they were tired of a bit sick to come back. And I do voice my frustration. I think as a business owner, it's also. Important for me to express how I feel for my team to know that I'm human. I have pressures of running a business, cashflow, paying them, paying suppliers.

There's a lot of financial pressures on running a business. And to me, it's about being honest and human, to your team. To the pressures of running a business and explaining it to them, like you guys have to sometimes start thinking like a business owner. If this doesn't work out, it's gonna put a big cashflow, press pressure on us, and on the clinical retreat days, another thing we discuss is the impact of today's sale in six months time.

That's what's going to translate as a pay rise to you. If that doesn't happen, if you are not helping me to do that today, please don't expect a pay rise to me from me down the line. in the pot. I can serve it to you. If it's not in the pot, I can't serve it to you. I'm not gonna pluck money out of thin air and give it to you.

Right. Like so. Yeah. Come on guys. We are a team. We have to settle down, get into the groove and do things so that we can serve people better, get paid better, and we share better. we do have those conversations now and then, in the clinical retreat days, we do explain it to them. Cause staff training days and things like that, we do discuss them team meetings.

Michael: Okay. That's good. That's good that you're able to open up about that, you know what I mean? But express it that way. today, if we don't make it the sale, what you do today? Is it gonna affect six months from now? Yeah, everybody's pay. Yeah. That's real good. Awesome. So then one the last questions I wanna ask you.

As a practice owner, what advice could you give our listeners who are new to this?

Sundar: I would say if you are starting a practice out, be clear in your value system, out of your value system, you deliver the vision for your practice. And once you get a concept of what vision, what philosophy you want your practice to be, and make it unique.

From what is offered around the area. Kind of backtrack it a bit, do a good area study, location study, be clear in your philosophy, and then stick to your guns and don't change the philosophy, at least within the first five years to see whether it's working or not. Do all your planning prior to that, before the day, first day you open the clinic, you go in and then you've done all your homework before that you're not there to change things.

You all you're doing is just to sit there and let it happen. one other thing I would do differently if I need to, if I'm gonna do a, another startup is. I'd get a fairly decent reserve cash flow, personal cash to protect the family or give the family a good year's living expenses.

One full year living expense before you go into it. Because one of the things we get carried away is, oh, we put everything into the new practice and we don't. Kind of keep reserves to take care of the family and cause the reality is, unless your family's happy, you're not able to concentrate on the new startup.

You need that freedom to concentrate on the new practice fully. So reserve cash is something I'm quite passionate about. I tell the other dentists here in New Zealand who are starting practices to at least have. Anything between me around at least a bare minimum of a $50,000 reserve, personal cash stashed away to take care of the family.

Yeah, and another thing I would say is look into Oryx as a software. I tell that to all my associates and all my dentists, all my friends, because the software itself should support your growth as a clinic. It should not be a recording medium, even for the associate who's gone back to California now.

I did suggest her to go with Orex, as a software for the new clinic. She's starting in, California. that's something I'm quite passionate about, having your systems in place. And then grow. And one more thing is, When you come to acute the practice, have the minimum to start with.

Don't over capitalize on the practice too early and be slow and adding things into it equipment wise, but have the real estate space ready for it from the word go. So that you don't have to, oh, I want to add another chair, but I can't fit it within this space. I have to move premises. So concentrate on your homework, getting the real estate right.

You don't have to put it out all in one go, and you could slowly work your way through. In the first five years.

Michael: Yeah. Awesome. Sundar, thank you so much for your time. We appreciate it. If anyone has any further questions or concerns, where can they find you?

Sundar: They can find me on my website.

dub do do ent.nz. Sj ENT nz is my email. I would love to hear from your audience. Yeah.

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

Sundar: My pleasure, Michael. It was an absolute honor to be part of your show also a shout out to my team and my family for supporting me to get where we are today.

Thank you so much.

Michael: Awesome. We'll talk to you soon. Thank you.

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