#864: Earn More & Work Less

The Dental A Team Podcast

Re-releasing one of DAT’s most popular episodes!

Dr. Jesse Green is back on the podcast to share more real-life experiences of a dentist. In this episode, Dr. Green shares with Kiera how to move your practice from being profitable to scalable. He shares specific insight about:

• How to become a training institution

• How to best back away from the business

• And how to overcome the fear of giving over your practice

It may be a hard pill to swallow, stepping back into a role where you’re no longer the primary profit generator, but Dr. Green shares how other doctors of all shapes and mindsets have managed to do so.

About Dr. Green: Author, speaker, and entrepreneur, Dr. Jesse Green is a leading dental business coach. He established Savvy Dentist to support dentists to develop financial intelligence, have more time and work less, create high performance teams, and master the art of patient flow.

Episode resources:

Connect with Dr. Jesse Green

Listen to episode 414, How To Be a Savvy Dentist

Reach out to Kiera

Practice Momentum Group Consulting

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Transcript:

The Dental A Team (00:05.806)

Hey everyone, welcome to the Dental & Team podcast. I'm your host, Keira Dunt, and I had this crazy idea that maybe I could combine a doctor and a team member's perspective, because let's face it, dentistry can be a challenging profession with those two perspectives. I've been a dental assistant, treatment coordinator, scheduler, filler, office manager, regional manager, practice owner, and I have a team of traveling consultants where we have traveled to over 165 different offices coaching teams. Yep, we don't just understand you, we are you.

Our mission is to positively impact the world of dental. And I believe that this podcast is the greatest way I can help elevate teams, grow VIP experiences, reduce stress, and create A -Teams. Welcome to the Dental A -Team Podcast.

The Dental A Team (00:52.866)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kira and you guys, I have a very special guest that I am excited to bring to the show today. I was on his podcast just recently and obviously we want to have him back on our podcast, share a wealth of knowledge and believe it or not, he is actually from Australia. So it is early tomorrow and his time. he said Australia just opened up. So I think his highlight of his day was being able to get a haircut. think all of us here in the States can remember that day.

but I'm so, so excited to welcome Dr. Jesse Green to the show. How are you today? I'm really well, Kira. Thank you so much for having me on the program. I'm really, really, really, really happy to be here to talk to you today. absolutely. I'm so glad. And your haircut does look good. I see you on zoom. It does look nice. It good. It felt fantastic. Honestly, as well as things you appreciate the little things in life and you think how good is a haircut? It's

It's like this luxury that we used to take for granted. Now it feels very luxurious. I absolutely, remember luckily I had just come back from Antarctica when the pandemic hit and I had, so coming back from Antarctica, I got my hair done. got my eyelashes done. got my nails done. Cause I had been gone for three weeks anyway. And so I felt very lucky, but Ooh, towards the end of that shutdown, I was like, man, I was having to learn how to cut my husband's hair again. man. Took me back to pharmacy school days.

I agree. I remember a meme and they said, next time there's a pandemic, can we say that barbers and beauticians and cosmetologists can be considered essential business? And it's got this guy with hair cleared out into his nose. I felt it was very fitting. So, hundred percent. So Jesse, I just wanted to kind of talk to us about how you even got to where you are. I know the topic today that we want to go into is how to earn more while working less. You also talked about how to have a very

a productive associate dentist. So you've got a wealth of knowledge, but just so our listeners know, kind of just give us a quick background and bio on how you even became known as the person who earn more and work less because I'm so excited to learn about that today too. thank you so much. So I'm a dentist by profession. And so like most of your listeners, I did the usual dental school thing, but prior to dental school, I had a business and I was always

The Dental A Team (03:13.74)

really interested and engaged in business, loved it. Did the university thing like everyone else, kind of then found my way into clinical practice and really knuckled down and focused on that. And then I was a dentist in the Navy and I learned a lot about leadership and process and, and organizational structure. And then when I went into my own practice, I did traditional practice management kind of teaching. And while it was good, it was fine. We certainly had a business.

producing good money, but in actual fact, I was so tired, so burnt out, so stressed out. My kids were little. was doing dentistry during my work day. Then I'd come home, have dinner with the kids, and then I'd be trying to do payroll or other, you know the how it goes. You know the story, right? And I was, and I was tired and stressed and burnt out. So what I did is I then sold that business and I didn't quite figure out how to fix it until I started a different business, which was around.

I was building websites, running SEO, PPC campaigns. And then it was when I ran that business and I kind of got out of the dental head space and went, my God, I remember all these lessons that I had when I was a kid with my first business that I'd learned that I didn't ever apply to my dental practice. I had this massive, honestly, it was a face palm. I mean, you just go, I can't believe I did that. Jesse, what were you thinking? Clearly not. So then I started thinking about all of the traditional.

practice management techniques and how we could adapt some of those and replace some of those so that businesses can have a true business rather than self -employment. So that's kind of how it came about. I love that because you're right. And the way you just described dentistry is how dentist life is working with so many dentists. I think that that's the life of an entrepreneur as well. I mean, you see lots of different businesses yourself and I think it's just that like, just never feels like there's enough hours in the day, but like you said,

There's got to be a better way to do this. think of it constantly. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I see a lot of people who are way more successful, very, profitable and they don't work crazy hours. They have a true life. Like how do they do that? So I'm excited to have you just dive into that. And I'm excited to see where this podcast rifts and goes to. I also love that you are a dentist as

The Dental A Team (05:31.352)

That's why I wanted you on this show. Like let's talk about real life experiences of a dentist and how to, like you said, earn more and work less. That's a mantra that I have. We're actually working on an office manager planner that's called do less, create more. because I think it's really that mentality. So Jesse, take it away. I just want to hear like, your knowledge, tell us how to earn more and work less. Like you figured this out. So share the secrets with us. I'm ready.

Well, thank you. Thank you for that, for that, yeah, free rain. I'm also going to tell you that I learned it the hard way. I learned it. I learned it through experience. learned it easy way. I'm going to learn from you. Well, that's what we want. Right. That's what we're going to give our listeners. But the reason I say that is because everything I've done, I've made a lot of mistakes in my life, Kira. So I just want to start this conversation by saying, I'm not perfect. I didn't get this. wasn't, you

born with some sort of insider knowledge around this. had to learn this through trial and error and bumps and grazes and bruises. But think that's really important. I'm going to jump in right there because I think so often we sometimes hear people say, this is how I got there. And we think, well, they were just born that way, or it was just naturally given. And so I really love that. Like, Hey guys, with hard work, learning from great mentors like Jesse, you can be there too. And not limiting yourself is to me a huge, huge piece of what this is all about. So

Continue on. I'm cheering right alongside of you. Like, yes, go. You're not just this like dipped from, from heaven Hercules. man. If only, so here's what I learned. one of the things that I learned is we, we spend so much of our time doing clinical work and we do that because we want to make a dollar and we understand the necessity of making dollar, but it's also what I call a golden handcuffs. And at some point we need to.

lift our gaze from the patient who's in the dental chair in front of us and start surveying our surroundings. So typically there's a couple of different levels of practice that we see a profitable practice, scalable practice and a valuable practice. And so a profitable practice is that typical practice where the dentist is going to work, doing the dentistry, going home at night, doing the payroll sort of thing. And you can actually make quite good money out of that. mean, this is the trap is you get used to the money.

The Dental A Team (07:51.652)

You get used to the toys, you get used to the lifestyle and you get on this treadmill and you keep thinking, my goodness, I've got all this stuff, but I don't have time for my kids. so working harder is not the answer. so let me just repeat that for all the dentists here who are really conscientious, who are normally the people that work hard, the good people that work hard. And we just want

not work quite so hard, but work a little differently. We want to shift our focus. And the way that we cross from a profitable business to a scalable business is by crossing what we call the leverage line. so the leverage line is at that point, you've got a practice owner who's no longer the primary revenue generator. You've created a team and this is your work, right? This is what you help a lot of people with creating what we call a self -managing team, a team of

that know what to do, they know how to do it. We've given them the resources to do their job really well. They know what success looks like. We've got some success metrics in place, but those people come internally motivated to do well. Okay. So we're not having to put the defibrillator on them every day to heart start them. They come with batteries included. And so when we've got a self -managing team and we've got our systems and processes, we're now starting to create some leverage.

How do we get to that point? How do we make that leap? And it is a bit of a leap. And because you guys are North American, I'll try and use a baseball metaphor to go from profitable business to scalable business. It's like going from first base in baseball to second base. can't get to second base by keeping one foot on first. There is a moment in time where you have to leave first base.

And you have to run towards second. And when you're in the middle of the two bases and you're not, you're not yet on second, but you've left first, it's uncomfortable. It's uncertain. And there's doubt. And so managing that emotional journey is really important because the natural tendency for us is to run back to what's comfortable rather than pushing forward. Now, the way we push forward is to understand that making money all day, every day.

The Dental A Team (10:09.217)

is a great short -term fix, but it is also what's going to keep us stuck on first base. So we need to dedicate some of our time to building that team, to becoming really good at training people, to being really good at finding great talent, training great talent, bringing them on. And that means we need to take on a mindset of becoming almost a training institution so that we can take these wonderful people and get them up to speed so that they can join

The freeway, it's like an on -ramp onto the freeway, get them up to speed really, really well. When we do that, we build the resources for them to use. We now can start hiving off activities that we don't want to do. So that's where the delegation comes in. Now, of course, this is nothing new. This is quite rudimentary. It's quite basic, but what is the hard part is actually letting go. Kirit, let me ask you a question.

Of all the dentists you know, what proportion do you think tend to have perfectionistic tendencies? Oh, you know, every single one of them. Me included, me included. And that's what I did wrong in my first practice. That's what I did wrong. I had to learn and as I've gone through other businesses to learn that 80 % is okay. 80 % done by someone else is a hundred percent awesome. Yes.

Yes, I love that. Did you guys hear that? 80 % done is a hundred percent awesome. Yeah. So let's get our team members out there being prolific. They may not be perfect, but they'll be prolific. They'll get through a lot of work for you if we let them do it and we resist the urge to micromanage. So how do we get away from micromanaging? Now, one of my good friends and other dentists in the United States gave me a wonderful book called Turn the Ship Around.

And for your listeners there, I'd really encourage you to grab hold of it. The author is a wonderful guy, David Marquet. He's a US Navy submarine commander. And what he talks about is developing a leader -leader model. So rather than teaching people what to do or telling them what to do, we want to teach people how to think like us. Not just to do what we asked them to do or to be task -oriented, we want to develop their thinking. So when our team members come to us and say, yeah, Kira,

The Dental A Team (12:29.793)

You know, this has happened. What should I do rather than because you've got the answers at your fingertips rather than saying, Hey Bob or Hey Mary or Hey Susie, this is what I think you should do and give them the answer. By doing that, we're actually training them to come to us all the time. So we want to be able to go with them and say, what do you think we could do? What else could we do? What risks do you see with that type of action? What do you think I'm thinking about and start that conversation so they can understand your thought process?

Now, again, it sounds really simple and it's simple, but not easy. Simple, but not easy. So that, would be a starting point there. Now I'm happy for you to guide me, direct me wherever you want me to go with this conversation. Okay. Number one, I love it because we just talked about number one is I think, I think for me it's accepting that I'm going to have to leap and go into that scary zone. Like you said, it is very easy. Like I think it's that, that control, that safety net

false security of, know that if I work here though, Jesse, I know I can make money. know I can sustain my lifestyle. I know that I can continue to live this way. However, I think it gets to a spot where when does that hamster will become no more? When do you want to say like, I don't want to do this anymore. I feel like until you get to that breaking point where you say enough's enough, you won't want to jump from first base to second base. you use that really great analogy.

But I think when you are there and I know I'm there, I say it all the time, I'm like, you know, there's gotta be a better way to do this. And I have the confidence in me. I've trained myself that, hey, Kira, you know that if it fails, guess what? Worst case scenarios, you're just gonna go back and do it all over again. Like I know I can grow a business. I know I can make it profitable. So like that's already a given and it doesn't matter recession, no recession, pandemic, whatever it is, I believe that people who can build businesses can do it again and again and again.

and so my thought is, so for me, it's a challenge and excitement of like, okay, fantastic. Like you said, this is a profitable business and now we're going into a scalable business. So that leap is, I really love that you talked about having that team do it for you. And I know I get guilty of this often today. I was about to answer an email and I was like, this is literally does not need my answer. I don't need to approve this. can, like, does it really matter? The answer is no. So I just wrote back and said, you have full control on this. I know you know it

The Dental A Team (14:55.363)

Just, just take care of it. know you know what to do and you're going to do the best thing. I've trained them. I've trained them. Like you said, it's a training thing. I also loved a lot of the questions you mentioned of asking them to think like leaders and owners versus just telling them because that's more of a long -term game versus a short -term just constantly feeding them. So then I'm curious, like, okay, great. We've got an awesome team in play, but I feel like to really know that you've got this awesome team and play, you do have to make that jump to see does this team actually know how to execute? Because if you're always

They don't have to execute. that's where, that's where I actually go on vacation to see if they sink or swim. Like, good luck. Well, that's exactly, that's exactly the right. he's, that's a really good point you're bringing up and thank you for bringing up because you've actually, answered the question and one of my clients, is a lovely, lovely guy and, his name is Barry and Barry in our community takes more holidays than anyone I know. And he is a really good business owner.

And the way he started stress testing his system, stress testing his team was exactly that. He'd take a holiday. He had take note of what didn't work when he got back and he'd just make some notes and go, Hmm, I've got to fix that. Now I'd like to just leave your listeners with a thought process. Every headache, bottleneck, pain in the neck comes back to a deficiency of assets. So what do mean by

Specifically, there's lots of different types of assets, but in a dental practice, there's a couple of broad categories. There's, you know, there's the goodwill of the business, you know, the patient base, there's the team as an asset, there's the cash, there's the physical infrastructure. But what I'm referring to here specifically are the intellectual property assets. What are the systems, processes, checklists, cheat sheets, whatever else you need to have in place. So when it comes back to these bottlenecks or things that go wrong, we go, hmm.

What asset do we need to create in our business so that if I teach someone how to use that and they've now got the resource to do it and they've got the confidence to do it. If I go away next time, that thing should not break again. And so it's that constant iterative process. to take that metaphor or to give you another case study around that, one of my clients.

The Dental A Team (17:15.311)

Uh, really lovely lady. Um, when she was working with us, she was taking home about $350 ,000 a year out of her practice. Yeah. Which is okay. She was working four days a week, about 46 weeks of the year. So it's 184 days. And what we did with her is we did exactly the process I've just shared with your listeners already. And she was able to take her take home money from 350 ,000 to about 1 .1 million and

a day and a quarter a week. So she went from four days a week to a day and a quarter. It wasn't really a day and a quarter week. was 65 days a year, but 65 divided by 52 is a day and a quarter on average. here's the thing. That was great. She loved it. And that's a wonderful headline number to talk about. it, and it makes me sound like an amazing coach. I'm not, she was an amazing client, but here's what I want to say. We made a mistake. This is, this is really important. It sounds

better than it is. The mistake was that in that time out, she went traveling around the world. This is pre -COVID. She went traveling around the world. And what happened is some of those systems, some of that team structure started to erode and to collapse. Yep. And what happened, so here's the thing, is when you get into that scalable space, that when you're starting to create that time, freedom and flexibility, you're still there as the leader.

You're still there setting the vision, the direction, the concept of just being absent. I don't think is entirely sustainable. I don't think you can be on the beach drinking Pina coladas 365 days a year. Maybe, maybe you can, but what we had to do for this client is we had to reinstall a leadership team. So this is the next thing is now we have to build a more robust structure for her. And now.

She still works less than 60 days a year. She's making more money than she was before, but now she's not the only leader in the practice. She's developed a leadership team as well. So I think, yeah, it sounded great upfront and it was great upfront, but she pulled out of the business too soon before she was replacing herself as a leader. And I think even with that team, she's still going to be there to walk the corridors, to set the vision,

The Dental A Team (19:33.227)

Yeah. Be the culture champion to do all those sorts of things. Absolutely. And I love that you brought that up because I think so often there's kind of this mindset of if I do it right, I don't have to be at my job and it will be, I think my favorite phrases, it will, what do they say? It will just run on autopilot. That's the phrase that I hear often like, Kira, I just want my practice to run on autopilot. But I love that you point out as leaders, as CEOs, your job is to set the vision. Your job is, I like the phrase you use of culture champion.

really set those that that is your job to do and instill that it's there and to have a leadership team that can continue to drive forward. But my question is to you though, Jesse is what did she do to increase her income that much? She's working less. What were some of the things that she was able to do? Is that having, like you said, a rock star associate producer? Because a lot of times bringing in associates, people are scared they're going to make less. So can you give any insight of how was she able to have more take home pay working less hours? Because I think people kind of get funny in there and

feel that if they work less hours, their income will drop as well, which clearly you've proven. Don't leave your job. You still need to do your job of being there, making sure you're having those people in play. But what were some of the things she was able to do to increase that take -home pay for herself while working substantially less hours? Yeah. So it's a great question. And I also point out this was a two and a half year process as well. again,

I want to make sure we set the expectations of your listeners. is not a good thing. can't just do this tomorrow. I know it's not a magic button. There's no silver bullet. I'm sorry to be the one to, tell you that Santa's not real, but there's no magic bullet. so I feel like now, now I'm going to be unpopular. I hope none of the kids are listening. But look, here's what happened. You're absolutely right. She had very productive associates and what we did over that period of time.

is we were able to help those associates become more more productive. And there was three key things that those associates or three key skills that those associates needed to master. The first one was that they needed to master the ability to build their own appointment book. They need to build a following. So they needed to know a lot about internal marketing, making sure their patients were happy to give them a great clinical experience, clearly to make sure they get a great customer care experience.

The Dental A Team (21:54.541)

But from the dentist's point of view to keep rebooking those patients to make sure they're coming back for their scheduled maintenance, we call it a recall system here. I'm not sure what the phrase would be. Same, same. So that makes sure they're coming back for their recall appointments, all of those sorts of things to make sure they're building value for those appointments so that the patients understand why they're coming back, why that treatment is important. The second skill they needed to learn was the ability to master case presentation.

Right? They needed to be able to offer treatment. Firstly, I beg your pardon, they needed to be able to comprehensively diagnose, you know, rather than patch and plug dentistry, they wanted to take a holistic view of the patient's mouth to recommend appropriate clinical care, the same sort of care that offer their mother, and then to be able to present that in a way such that it was accepted. So they needed to learn those skills. And the third skill that they needed to learn.

was the ability to deliver high quality work in an efficient manner. And that comes back to workflow, it comes back to utilizing your auxiliary staff, your dental assistants, other people, just the usual sorts of things about four handed dentistry, rubber dam techniques, all those sorts of clinical things. And to be able to do predictable, high quality dentistry efficiently. And that was the skills.

And the big mindset that united all of those three points, the mindset that those associates adopted was one of being an intrapreneur. So I like that phrase. Yeah. So they, they viewed themselves as their own unit within the business. know, they took responsibility for themselves. They took responsibility for their business. They took responsibility for their productivity.

they took responsibility for the clinical care. And that was a culture shift. It was a mindset piece. And again, that took a little bit of time. And so that was a key thing. Now, in addition to the associate dentists, I don't know exactly how this translates to the United States, but in Australia, we have oral health therapists and they're, they don't have a full dental degree, but they can do quite a lot of restorative dentistry. So what we did in that process,

The Dental A Team (24:09.419)

is we used everyone's skillset to the maximum that we could. So we built the team up and we pushed the work down. So we trained the dentist, we trained the oral health therapist, we delegated everything that we could to the oral health therapist. So the dentist's work or the dentist's time was used for its highest and best use. And then that meant that the principal dentist was delegating to the associate dentist as well. So her time was used for his highest and best use.

And so it was just this process of training people, delegating, training people, delegating. And so that cycle continued. I really liked that you, just said that because I think so many, I'm curious, like you might have a, an answer to this because as you said that training up an associate dentist to take over your schedule, sometimes it was very scary, Jesse. some doctors feel like that's their identity.

that if an associate dentist takes over my book of business, I even have a practice anymore? And for your oral health therapists or specialists, we call those like EFTAs. So experienced, expanded function dental assistants that can literally do that. But I have quite a few offices that have these EFTA dental assistants and the dentist will not leave the room. They will do the filling even though they don't have to do the filling because now they have somebody that can do it for them. They could be seeing more patients.

People ask me often how I was able to 365 ,000 a month in a five -op practice. Well, we literally had three columns of doctor production and you better believe I had big production next to each other and we would prep, prep, and then we had like an implant that an assistant couldn't help us with. And then our assistants were working while our dentist was over doing high, high level implant sedation cases. And per hour we were cranking.

but we were very, very, very talented at what we did. We had lots of trainings with our assistants to make sure they were doing just as good, if not better clinical work. how do you, Jessie, what do you say to these people who hear you and they're like, that's a really great idea, but I like to do the fillings or I am scared that if I pass it to my associate, my associate is not as good as me. so, or I feel like it's ego. feel like ego just runs it so much

The Dental A Team (26:23.725)

So many people stay in this loop for a long time because they aren't willing to train. So do you have any tips of thoughts for that? Maybe you experienced that, maybe this dentist experienced that because I don't think it's, I don't think the ego is bad. think the ego is a natural part of life. I also think being afraid to give up your practice that you've grown to someone else is a very normal feeling. But do you have any thoughts of how people can overcome that or how you've helped people overcome that fear? Are you guys sick of trying to figure it out on your

I know I am. When I'm trying to run a business, sometimes I just think like, there's got to be a better way to do this. And so for me, my answer has been to find someone who's done it and does it really, really, really well. Like I'm talking the best of the best of the best. I want someone who's been in my shoes, somebody who understands what I'm going through. When I was looking for the consulting business, I found a coach who literally has run a consulting business. Well, that seems like the perfect fit. So you guys right now,

We have a few spaces open in our platinum consulting that is in the consulting where we actually come to your practice. We help you get systems implemented. We don't just tell you what systems implement. We actually implement them with you and for you guys. It is one of the best investments I've ever made is to hire a coach who understands the business I'm in, who's lived it, who's done it. And that's what we in the dental team do. We literally physically fly to

So if you're sick of trying to figure it out on your own, if you just want somebody who understands you, join our platinum. I'd love to have you. I'd love to have our consulting team come out and see you, be in your office, be with your team and truly help you get onto the easy path of dentistry. It doesn't have to be hard. So join us in the platinum. We'd love to have you.

Yeah, sure. And it's a great question. It's probably the question that needs to be answered, isn't it? It's the thing like, yeah, Jesse, I get it intellectually. makes sense. I, you know, I see it all happening, but how do I do it? Right. So I, yeah, this is the emotional journey. This is the emotional journey. And this is why I mean managing the emotional journey is as important as managing the intellectual or the numbers journey around it. So you're absolutely correct. So,

The Dental A Team (28:39.947)

I struggled with this as well. This was part of why my first practice, you know, I didn't scale it because I just had all this stuff. A couple of things I'll share with you, in no particular order. I'll drop out a few things and hopefully, God willing, I'll be able to tie these into a nice neat bow at the end of it. Perfect. So I remember a couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to go to Necker Island, Richard Branson's Island

We spent some time with Richard Branson and he was talking about how he runs all these businesses. And he made a comment, which I've read in one of his books as well. And that was about training. know, people often worry about, you know, if I train people up and they leave, you know, aren't I just training the competition, so to speak. And his point was, well, what if you don't train them and they stay? Great question. I like the flip of the mindset.

And I went, wow. So for me, that was a light bulb moment to really see my business as a training institution. Now, what we needed to do with the transition of patients from the principal to the associate, there's a couple of things around this. we have a process, which we call pass the baton and patient transfers. And essentially it's about handing over the patient and being for the associate to be able to leverage the relationship.

that the principal has with them. And I'll explain that in a moment. But if the principal is really worried, maybe just start handing over a few things. Maybe hand over one filling at a time. It doesn't have to be, I'm going to send my entire patient base to my associate in one fell swoop. Maybe let's get used to just handing off one particular procedure. Maybe it's a class one occlusal composite resin.

Maybe it's endodontic treatment. Maybe it's whatever it is that you don't love to do or in your heart of hearts, you know, it's not your strong suit because we all have clinical areas that we know we're not great at or not as strong as other areas. So let's think if you're worried, let's do a dip in the water, know, dip our toe in the water and see how we go. But the way to do that is really about saying, know, Kyra, there's this restoration that we need to do on the lower right -hand

The Dental A Team (30:58.823)

And, you know, this is obviously not going to get any smaller. it's going to get bigger if we don't tackle it. And so, I really would like to see this tooth treated as a matter of priority. Now, the challenge I've got is that my diary, is full for the next couple of weeks or months, whatever it is. And I don't really want to wait that length of time to get onto this feeling. I think we need to do that sooner. What I'd really love to do is to book you in with my associate, Peter. Peter's a fantastic dentist. does this all day, every day. And in

Peter's the person I see for my own dentistry. What if we were to get this filling done with Peter and then we can pick up the rest of the treatment plan as we move forward from there. So even if it's just handing off a procedure here or there, just to get things moving, just to build that confidence and then over time we can start transferring patients more fully. And we can even get, if you want to, you can get into a shared care model. I've got a couple of clients that do shared care. So

The patient will come in, they'll have the restorative dentists doing the bread and butter restorative dentistry. We'll have our crown and bridge expert, which is the principal, doing the crown and bridge and the high production work. We'll have our therapist or hygienist doing the hygiene or whatever it is. So again, we can introduce that to new patients and say, here at our practice, we adopt a shared care model. And what that means is that every step of the journey, you are getting our very best team member for this particular part of the treatment plan.

I'm going to coordinate that treatment plan for you, but I'd like to introduce you to my colleagues as we go through this so that you can get the very best set of hands working on you as we go through this treatment plan. So that's another way of doing it as well. really love that, Jessie, because I think you brought up quite a few things that I would like to highlight. And number one is you edify every person who's going to be taking the treatment. And I can tell genuinely, you do think that they are really fantastic. You've done a great job training them.

So you have full confidence. And as a patient hearing that from my dentist that I love, and I mean, instantly I had this interesting thought of when we go to the hospital, we don't expect one doctor to take care of our entire body. have the endocrinologist, we have the heart and vascular, we have the neurosurgeon. So why do we expect everything to be the exact same in our mouth with just a dentist? And so I think like that was a mind shift I have never thought of. so I appreciate you saying that, helping me have a light bulb moment.

The Dental A Team (33:19.603)

and I really love that you just edified every single person, like they're going to be fantastic. And you instilled your confidence in that other person. I am going to ask, as we wrap up, how do you, you specifically decide that you are ready to start having less production in your schedule? Because the fear I know a lot of dentists have, and I don't know this, I'm not a dentist. So it's that fear of, okay, Jesse, I heard you. I've trained my team up. I've got a great leadership team. I've heard.

And don't worry, we'll do another podcast guys. Jesse and I will get on another one. So you guys were learning from profitable to scalable. And then what was your last tier? What's the last year? Valuable. Valuable. Scalable to valuable. So we got to still learn how to get valuable. But reality is, okay, I've learned that I'm profitable. Now I'm going to go to scalable, but I'm real scared to have this associate and to start leveraging because I'm terrified that my paycheck is going to go down. So how do I

That that's not going to happen. How do you like make that leap? Because I think that that's what holds people in this circle forever. They're like, I'm fine. I'll just have one practice. I'm literally speaking to a dentist right now. I know he listens to this podcast. So I'm hoping that we can answer this. A couple of them, they're like, I don't want an associate. I don't want to give this over because I won't have anything to do. My paycheck will go down. So what do you say to them? How did you do that for you? So it's a really good, great question. And again, it's a really important question to answer. The key is this is it's

process of gradual reduction. not again, my client didn't go from 184 days to 65 days in one step. What we did is we looked at, if I stop working one day a week or half a day a week, how much am I producing in that half day, one day, whatever it is. For easy mathematics, let's just say I produce $5 ,000 a day. Ease of maths. Maybe it's more, maybe it's less, it doesn't really matter.

Let's just say, so if I give up a day of dentistry, I want to net $5 ,000 from my associate. Now, if we've trained our associates and they're productive, that's great. That's a big help. So A, we've got to train them to be productive first. But what I'd be saying is what do I need to, you know, what do I pay my associate? Now in Australia, our associates are often paid a commission of billings. that how works for you well? Yeah. So let's just say hypothetically,

The Dental A Team (35:42.594)

40%. So a dentist gets 40%. So we would get 3000 of a $5 ,000 associate day. That would mean if I was going to give up $5 ,000 of my own production, I would need net $5 ,000 back from the associate to be in the same financial position. And so then I work at how many associate days do I need to replace my one day with?

Okay, so in this example, it's roughly one and three quarter days of associate time. By the time I pay the associate their commission, that I would now be back to where I was previously. My paycheck remains the same. In fact, it's probably a little bit higher because I'm not paying for a dental assistant twice. I'm paying for it once with the associate. So all of those things would work out. Now,

This is a big question with a long answer that I'm trying to provide concisely. We would run some financial modeling on that and we would go, okay, what's my billing? What's my commission rates for the associates? What are they producing right now? How can we step them up? How can we help them produce more so that we're getting closer to a one -to -one trade? That's really what we're trying to get to.

I feel like that's a little bit of a messy explanation. I hope it landed. hope it makes sense. pretty clear because it just as simple math that is math of how much do I need my associate to work to replace my income? How do I get them there? How do I make them more productive? So that way at the end of the day, associates happy, they're doing super great. They're happy because we've got a very productive schedule for them. So they're killing it. And it's also replacing the income that I would quote unquote be losing. now I'm not losing.

I've actually created an engine that generates income when I'm not working, which then I'm guessing leads you into your valuable level. Yes. Is where that would go. So a hundred percent. just really quickly on that, that then ties into other conversations around capacity. It ties into conversations around patient flow. It ties into all of those other things that come off the back of that. For sure. Absolutely.

The Dental A Team (37:57.491)

That's just like a whole nother can of worms. then it's like, well, great. That is a whole can of worms. can say that next time. know my associate, but I don't have space to put this associate. So now I've got to do a build out and now I've got to get them to produce even more because I got to pay for the build out to get them to produce enough. So it just feels like too hard. But like you said, financial modeling, I think is a great idea because when you can see it in writing, you start doing small chunks at it and you'll see that it will pay for itself. Like one operatory usually is paid for within one to two months of production maximum.

It doesn't take that long to pay off that operatory with production running through it. Then they're producing while you're producing. So you're actually not losing anything. And then they're making money when you're not on that day and they've already covered themselves and the practice can still continue on. there's, to me, I'm with you, Jessie. I see it. I've seen it done so many times, but also you and I are on the other side of this business model because we've seen it done so many times that we know it works. So then how does it kick off into valuable? I get a quick wrap up.

which I don't think is fair for you. So we'll definitely like do another one and talk more about this, but I love this idea of how you can earn more without work with working less. So keep, keep it going. I'm excited. I can get out on business all day long. So, well, I think we could do both do that. So I love this conversation. So do you remember we spoke about going from a profitable scale? All we needed to cross the leverage line to go from scalable to valuable. need to cross the enterprise line. So it's understanding what the drivers of enterprise value are.

And so there's a couple of things I just want to share with you around how I built that model. That model used to be called profitable, scalable, sellable. And I changed it because I'd have so many conversations with dentists where they'd be saying, you know, I don't really want to sell my practice. You know, I get it, but you could, and you could do it easily and for a lot of money. And so I changed the language from sellable to valuable because what we're creating there is an asset. Right. And

In profitable, you've created a job. In scalable, you've created a business. In valuable, you've created an asset. So this is the key transition and the mindset shifts as well. So you go from being self -employed in profitable to being a business owner in scalable to being an investor in valuable. That's the different mindset that we bring to this.

The Dental A Team (40:23.975)

When we think about the enterprise value line, really what we're trying to do in all of this, the big drivers of enterprise value are really about risk management and how do we reduce risk and then how do we drive earnings. So if we look at the value, again, I know anyone listening to this is an expert in valuation, probably cringe when I say this, but value is often described as the repeatable sustainable earnings times a multiple.

So we want to drive the earnings, which we've spoken about briefly already, and we want to be able to have a higher multiple. And what determines that multiple a lot is risk. So how do we de -risk the practice? So if I'm going to sell that practice, how could the next person come in and reproduce my results consistently from day one? And that comes back to identifying risk. And the biggest risk, of course, is key person risk. Right.

So we want to be able to not just replace the principal dentist to create the leverage that we spoke about at Scalable, but we want to identify the other key people in our team. We want to make sure that we have built training pathways into the practice for all the roles, not just for the associate dentist, but for your dental assistants, for your therapists or hygienists, for your expanded function dental assistants, for your receptionists, for your practice managers, all of those people. So we want to be able to...

replace people. I'm not trying to diminish people as I say that we want to be able to replace people if someone leaves the team quickly, well and reliably. Yep. So it's about understanding that. again, the other thing that I spoke about, repeatable sustainable earnings. If you've ever looked at subscription models, you and I probably live in this world a

I don't know about your business, we run a subscription based business and subscription based businesses that recurring revenue is more valuable because it's more predictable. Now in dentistry, there's a lot of talk about, do I have a subscription model and membership model? And that you could definitely do that. That's fine. But interestingly, we have the recall system, like din as a subscription model. So I was thinking, was like, it's not membership guys. It's your patients are actually a membership program.

The Dental A Team (42:50.611)

Like because it comes every six months and that's what insurance is set up. That is literally a subscription model. That's genius. I had never thought of it that way. It's right there for you, right? So we want to make sure that we are really dialing in that repeat business. We want to make sure that we have predictable income and we can project with confidence that, you know, you were doing $360 ,000 a month, I think you said. And so we want to be able to know that next month I'm going to do $360 ,000 as well.

And the month after that, and the month after that, what we don't want is a roller coaster of revenue. We want to see stability of earnings growth. So stability of earnings growth is a metric that Warren Buffett uses to value companies. And so we want to see stability of earnings growth while we're de -risking the business. So I'm sorry that I've kind of a whole lot of stuff in there. Don't apologize because this is actually one of the number one reasons I love to podcast is because I get to talk to really cool people like yourself.

I get a geek out on dentistry. got a geek out on business. The two things I actually love to talk about. And for me, it was fun because these are things that I think about independently, but I don't have a lot of people to talk to about this because I'm supposed to coach it to a lot of people. I'm sure you feel similarly. We have a lot of clients who are coaching this, but to have somebody that I can talk to about these things, geek out with you on it. And I love that you talked about this valuable asset because I love to not think of always having this

because I was actually just talking with another financial investor advisor, dentist advisors, Ryan and I had this conversation the other day and he was talking about how sometimes once our business becomes this profitable asset, sometimes it actually makes more sense to keep it versus sell it because you're actually more profitable long -term because you've created this money -making machine. You're giving amazing value. You're providing incredible jobs.

that it actually is way more profitable than selling it off for millions. And let's be real, most of the people who build these businesses are highly driven entrepreneurs. So give yourself six months and you'll be building another business. why not keep the one that's super profitable, keep that thing churning and use it for other ideas. So I love that you talked about it as an asset. I just hope that the people listening today, I did a podcast with an author, his name's Jeffrey Shaw. He did the self -employed life, very, very talented author.

The Dental A Team (45:11.387)

And I remember he and I talked about what makes really successful business owners. And we think that the key tipping point is business intrigue. Those who are intrigued by business, these conversations you and I are having, Jesse, because these are the things that spur the innovation, that spur the hard work of building that training facility, that gets you to dig deep and build a team of leaders. So that way you can pivot from base to base, like we just discussed. So go from profitable, like you said, and I love the imagery of like you're self -employed. Then you become a business owner.

And then what did you call it? Remind me. Investor. An investor. Like even just those mindsets are such different mindsets of how you view your business and where you're providing it. So Jesse, I loved it. I thought it was one of my favorite podcasts actually, and I hope all the listeners did. So Jesse, know you obviously work with dentists. You are a dentist. If people want more, I know you've got your podcast as well. just kind of share how people can get more Jesse Brown in their life like I need in my life. Sure. Well, you can find me at SavvyDentist .com.

the podcast is there. Come and have a listen. This is the sort of stuff we talk about and, Kira and I come and listen to the conversation Kira and I had on my podcast, which was about recruitment and ice cream. It's really, it's a great episode that Kira shared with our audience. So, that was great, but yeah, head across to savvydentist .com or join us on the, in the Facebook group, savvy dentist Facebook group. And we'd love to see you there. So yeah, you just, it's brilliant. Brilliant. I love it so much, Jesse.

Guys, check it out. Jesse, thank you for your time. Thank you for, I mean, sharing your nice haircut with me too. It was so fun to sit here and just feel like we were hanging out together. when Australia opens up to the rest of the world, you'll be one of my first people I want to come see. So super great to have you. So thank you again for being here today. thank you so much for having me. And we can't wait to see you down under. It would be great to have you here and I'd love to catch up and have a beer. Absolutely. All right, you guys, thank you all for listening and I'll catch you next time on the Dental Elite Team podcast.

The Dental A Team (47:06.003)

That wraps it up for another episode of the Dental A Team Podcast. Thank you so much for listening and we'll talk to you next