191 3 Tips to GROW Your Dental Practice Quickly

The Delivering WOW Dental Podcast

Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Delivering WOW Dental Podcast. I am super excited today. Today, we're going to be talking about three tips to grow your dental practice quickly. And what's going to be really exciting about today's episode is that everything that I'm sharing is actually part of a process that you could use to be able to ... Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Delivering WOW Podcast. Super excited to be here with all of you once again. So, today I am pretty excited to announce that we have actually done some pretty significant changes with our Facebook group. So as many of you guys may or may not know, back in April, I made a decision to, I guess it's now temporarily close our Facebook group, our Delivering WOW hangout group. And I did it for a few reasons. Number one, I wanted to really focus on my coaching clients.

As many of us know, we had lots of transition, lots of changes, lots of overwhelm, lots of stress with COVID-19. And so, during that time, I really wanted to just serve my coaching clients really, really hard. We winded up doing multiple, multiple workshops. There were several weeks where we were on Zoom calls for two or three hours, just using that gift of time to build systems and to really hone in on training their team and just looking at how can we use that time and that opportunity. I also really wanted to focus on looking at what was next in terms of our training programs for the dental profession. And so really honing in on really creating a virtual platform where there would be CE, not just for practice management, but for clinical. And so we started honing in and we invested tens of thousands of dollars into our practice accelerator program, which is now allowing us to be able to train doctors and teams and have live coaching calls and help with marketing.

So it's been pretty exciting seeing all of the work that we put in and seeing the results of our clients. And so now, guess what? We're back. I've decided to go ahead and open back up our Delivering WOW Facebook group, which is now opened and rebranded as our Dental Boss Movement, super excited. We actually created a doctor only Facebook group back in April, which is now rebranded as the Dental Boss Movement, Doctor Only Group. So super excited to have you guys back in the groups and we're going to be doing some pretty exciting things. I am, once a week in our Dental Boss Movement Group, doing updates for our community, sharing a lesson. And also, of course, making any announcements that would be helpful for you and your team. So if you've not yet joined us there, check us out, dentalbossmovement.com.

This is a great group for you as well as for your teams to be able to get insight to grow your practice. And to be honest with you, also to connect with like-minded dentists. To be able to post your questions, get feedback, collaborate with others, share your wins, share your struggles and super excited to have that group back open. So today, I am actually going to be talking about three tips to grow your practice quickly. And this is going to be pretty exciting. Because when many people come to me, they have a few concerns when they come to us and they're looking for coaching. Number one, people are saying, you know what? I want a stronger team. I want accountability in my practice. People are telling me, I want to have a way to make sure that things are not slipping through the cracks.

And what I also of course hear is, I want to make sure that we are growing, that we have more profits, that we're not just wasting our time going day by day, that we're serving our patient's hard and that we're doing more cases to be able to change more lives. And so what I'm going to share today is actually going to be a really simple way to be able to grow your practice quickly using actually one tool. And really, really excited to share this with you. So one of the things that we implement with our coaching clients in our mastermind, as well as for the members of our practice accelerator program, which of

Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Delivering WOW Dental Podcast. I am super excited today. Today, we're going to be talking about three tips to grow your dental practice quickly. And what's going to be really exciting about today's episode is that everything that I'm sharing is actually part of a process that you could use to be able to ... Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Delivering WOW Podcast. Super excited to be here with all of you once again. So, today I am pretty excited to announce that we have actually done some pretty significant changes with our Facebook group. So as many of you guys may or may not know, back in April, I made a decision to, I guess it's now temporarily close our Facebook group, our Delivering WOW hangout group. And I did it for a few reasons. Number one, I wanted to really focus on my coaching clients.

As many of us know, we had lots of transition, lots of changes, lots of overwhelm, lots of stress with COVID-19. And so, during that time, I really wanted to just serve my coaching clients really, really hard. We winded up doing multiple, multiple workshops. There were several weeks where we were on Zoom calls for two or three hours, just using that gift of time to build systems and to really hone in on training their team and just looking at how can we use that time and that opportunity. I also really wanted to focus on looking at what was next in terms of our training programs for the dental profession. And so really honing in on really creating a virtual platform where there would be CE, not just for practice management, but for clinical. And so we started honing in and we invested tens of thousands of dollars into our practice accelerator program, which is now allowing us to be able to train doctors and teams and have live coaching calls and help with marketing.

So it's been pretty exciting seeing all of the work that we put in and seeing the results of our clients. And so now, guess what? We're back. I've decided to go ahead and open back up our Delivering WOW Facebook group, which is now opened and rebranded as our Dental Boss Movement, super excited. We actually created a doctor only Facebook group back in April, which is now rebranded as the Dental Boss Movement, Doctor Only Group. So super excited to have you guys back in the groups and we're going to be doing some pretty exciting things. I am, once a week in our Dental Boss Movement Group, doing updates for our community, sharing a lesson. And also, of course, making any announcements that would be helpful for you and your team. So if you've not yet joined us there, check us out, dentalbossmovement.com.

This is a great group for you as well as for your teams to be able to get insight to grow your practice. And to be honest with you, also to connect with like-minded dentists. To be able to post your questions, get feedback, collaborate with others, share your wins, share your struggles and super excited to have that group back open. So today, I am actually going to be talking about three tips to grow your practice quickly. And this is going to be pretty exciting. Because when many people come to me, they have a few concerns when they come to us and they're looking for coaching. Number one, people are saying, you know what? I want a stronger team. I want accountability in my practice. People are telling me, I want to have a way to make sure that things are not slipping through the cracks.

And what I also of course hear is, I want to make sure that we are growing, that we have more profits, that we're not just wasting our time going day by day, that we're serving our patient's hard, and that we're doing more cases to be able to change more lives. And so what I'm going to share today is actually going to be a really simple way to be able to grow your practice quickly using actually one tool. And really, really excited to share this with you. So one of the things that we implement with our coaching clients in our mastermind, as well as for the members of our practice accelerator program, which of course is our on-demand program. With live calls is having what we call a level 10 meeting. Now, some of you may have read the book, Traction, where you learned about level 10 meetings.

And so within our delivering wall programs, we use a lot of the principles and teach and help practices to implement a lot of processes and frameworks from EOS. And the level 10 meeting is one of them. And what we've done is we've really implemented and customized it for dentistry. And so, what that looks like is, every single week, having a meeting with your team where you can, number one, check-in and see, what are they sharing as their personal and professional best that they've had for the last week? Allowing you to be able to review and look at your numbers and see, what did you do really well to celebrate, again, success? And to look at opportunities for growth that week. To be able to look at all of the past projects that were important, maybe it is creating a new training manual, maybe it is starting a new marketing project, maybe it's committing to doing some research to purchase a new piece of equipment or taking a CE course.

It's also allowing you to really have an opportunity to hone in on cracks and discuss things that need to be discussed in your practice. Maybe you have broken appointments. And so, I absolutely love practices having this meeting. This is something that we've been doing in my practice for years, as well as something that we help practices implement, again, within our accelerator program and within our coaching program, our mastermind. And so, I want to share some of these tips with you and hone in on a few particular areas to go ahead and give you three things that you can look at specifically to be able to grow your practice. And number one is, having that opportunity to come together every week as a team. And the first thing that we do in our level 10 meeting is, we have where our team comes in and they share their personal and professional best.

And what's really interesting is that we have team members, everybody has their tasks that we're working on, but we're all people. And so you may have a team member that may have marital issues, you may have a team member that has a sick child, you may have a team member that is sick that week. And so, having an opportunity for your team to come in and say, this is my personal best. I was able to spend time and take a weekend away and spend time with my mom who's getting older. Or, you know what? This week I didn't have a personal best, I'm having some struggles. And they're able to share that. Then now the team can understand where they are and they can support them. And what's awesome as well is it's personal and professional best.

So the professional best they may say, I'm really excited, maybe it's a team member, maybe it's a dental assistant. Last week there was a patient that came in and she was very apprehensive about getting that bridge done. She had some dental work done in the past and it didn't work out really well. And I was able to talk to her and share with her that we are going to take time and we're going to listen. And we went ahead and started that treatment. And I'm really proud of how I contributed to that. And so that's a great way for the doctor to be able to really see all of the great things that our team members are doing. A lot of times, we just don't. We're stuck in a bubble or we're so focused and zoned in on treating the patients that we don't realize all of the extra things that our teams are doing.

And so this is a great thing that you can do is to have your team to share their personal and their professional best. And again, personal best might be like, I'm so excited. I was able to put time into myself and I spent the weekend reading a book or doing some self-care. Really, really powerful stuff. So that's the first tip. Because a lot of times we look at how can we build a strong team, and a lot of times it's really just having that simple time every single week to just connect with them and to learn a little bit more about them. And when we do, we give each other grace and we give each other support. And it's so interesting, I hear my coaching clients a lot of times, I say all the time, you might've heard me say as well, if we want to pick up a table, a big, heavy dining room table, it's really hard for me to do it by myself.

Even if I get my office manager or a team lead to help me, it's a little bit easier. But if we have the entire team picking up a little corner of the table, we're able to pick it up very quickly and walk across the room. And it's the same thing. It's these foundational core principles of just coming together, connecting, seeing what we're doing well, and not just the team, but the doctor. I'm really proud this week. I wasn't sure, I was very nervous. I know we've started doing and there's a line and I wasn't sure, but you know what? I went ahead and I did it. I did my first case and it went really well. It's great because your team hears you being vulnerable, they hear you being proud and even sharing, I've been working so hard, so hard, so hard, and I decided to take the day off yesterday and just spend time playing board games with my family.

And again, they see you as a real person. So that's my first tip. To be able to build a strong team and strong culture is implementing ... not only just implementing this weekly level 10 meeting, but having that time at the beginning of the meeting to just do that connection. And it takes literally five minutes, where everybody just shares that. That's the first thing. The second thing to grow your practice quickly is, you're definitely going to want to have a way to look at results and performance from the previous week. And by the way, these level 10 meetings, I have them in my practice on a Tuesday morning. That's typically what I recommend, first thing before you start seeing patients right after huddle. And that way you have Monday to go ahead and have your team to go in and to pull the metrics.

So that would be the doctor production per visit, hygiene production per visit, production collection, new patient numbers. How many patients last week left without an appointment? How many patients were rescheduled, that were unscheduled? What's your AR looking like from last week? So there are certain things that we recommend that you look at in your practice and have a team member to be able to put them into the scorecards that we've custom created for our accelerators and for our coaching clients. And within that, now on a Tuesday, you can quickly look and say, oh my gosh, these metrics turned green, we hit our numbers. And the ones that you hit, you can celebrate. And the ones that you didn't, then now further along in the meeting, you will have that time to discuss them. But this is really important, looking at your numbers week to week.

And once you have a system in place where you have a team member that can take five minutes and put the numbers in, then now you can have a way to be able to discuss, and again, celebrate and also analyze. And analyzation is never about, oh my gosh, you didn't do your job, or we let this patient slip through the cracks. It's about looking at, how can we come together and discuss? And so if the doctor production per visit last week was not as high as we want it to, where our goal was set, then we can say, okay, what can we implement this week? Can we go ahead and pull a list of unscheduled patients? And if you have a way to be able to send them an online email with a scheduling link, then now you can send a blast to a few hundred patients and give them another opportunity to schedule.

Or now you can look at same day rollovers, or now you can, perhaps if you feel that you need new patients, if you're looking at that metric, you can go in, do a Facebook live to talk Thursday video that we're talking about a specific procedure. And so you're able to change the dynamic of the month before the month actually ends, and change performance based on what you're seeing. If you see that your unscheduled patients rescheduled number is not where you want, you can focus on that this week. Or if your hygiene patients did not book their next visit and you had 87% last week now you know. And so you can say, hey guys, what happened last week that we failed to have the communication, that we failed to take the time to get the patient rescheduled. And now again, you can change the dynamics.

So that's another thing that we look at, is really looking at our weekly scorecard and utilizing it within a weekly meeting where that meeting time actually holds us accountable to looking at the numbers and not just having, for example, a team member go in and write down the numbers, but nobody's analyzing them. And to be honest, as we all know, there are lots of things that we implement. We have our teams doing things, and we never look at it, we don't follow up on them. And that's a big, big mistake. And so putting it into a system like this is going to be very helpful for you. The other thing that I recommend to be able to grow your practice quickly, and this is as it relates, again, to the level 10, is to go ahead and make sure that you are having that discussion time within your level 10 meetings.

So this is a time where you're bringing together any issues that you have. Maybe, again, you had broken appointments, lots of broken appointments from last week. Maybe your hygiene production per visit number is just not growing, you're staying flat. And so you can have that discussion about, what can we do to be able to increase hygiene production per visit? What's the issues? Maybe the team needs to have training, case presentation training. Maybe you need to look at, what are some additional services that you can implement in your practice? Maybe it's going ahead and getting certified and trained in Perio protect. Maybe it is looking at creating a reactivation project for unscheduled scaling and root planing patients. Maybe it is looking at your schedule and actually putting in block scheduling for scaling and root planing or a Perio Protect to, again, hold you accountable to having the conversations, to doing the marketing, to doing really good follow-up for patients who have treatment planned.

So having that time weekly, where you can, what we call IDS, identify any issues in your practice, discuss them and solve them is going to be extremely, extremely powerful. And what happens is really important when you're having these meetings, is don't just meet for meeting’s sake. At the end of the meeting, what you're going to want to do is you're going to want to look at, what are your next steps? Who's going to own the next steps and by when? And so if it's a situation where, for example, with the hygiene production per visit, you're saying, I want to be able to implement Perio protect. Then the question is, okay, what's the next steps? Do we need to contact Perio Protect so that we can become certified? Do we need to look into learning more about how this procedure will help our patients? Do we need to go ahead and do our reactivation project?

If so, who's going to own contacting those patients? Who's going to own setting up some emails to go out to our existing patients who have unscheduled scaling and root planing? So that's the next steps, is looking at, who's going to own it? In addition to who's going to own it, by when will it be done? And so now the next week, when you're having your next level 10 meeting, you can come back and you can discuss, was it done? Are there any questions about the task? Are there any issues? And you can continue that discussion until the task is done. And what's also really cool as well is utilizing a tool such as Asana. And this is something that we use in my practice, as well as what we train on in our accelerator program, is using Asana.

And with Asana, now you can have your level 10 task within the Asana platform. And now you can communicate on the different projects between any team members that are associated with that task. And you can ask any questions, you can upload files, get feedback. Pretty, pretty cool, what's available once you start looking at expanding your mind and thinking a little bit differently about creating systems and growing your practice. All right. So hopefully, this served you and helped you. I absolutely love connecting with all of you on this podcast, and I look forward to connecting with you guys inside of our Facebook group, dentalbossmovement.com. All right, guys, that's it for now, take care, and we'll see you next week.

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