Operations in Action

: We are continuing this conversation about the dental CEO, and we are in the : depths of discussing one of three pillars, managing operations. : Scott, give us a little bit of, you know, welcome to the show and give us a : little bit of the framework overall so people can find themselves in this overall journey.

Guest Track:: Yeah, well, by the way, I'm glad I'm even on the show because my puppy chewed Guest Track:: the power cord that went to the major internet box I've got for my entire house Guest Track:: and the building behind it. Guest Track:: And so I didn't have internet for a while. But anyway, that's what I'm dealing Guest Track:: with. But sure, let's just dive into dentistry.

Guest Track:: I love this topic, the CEO. So if you haven't heard the previous episodes, Guest Track:: you really need to stop and go back and listen to them. Guest Track:: But as a review, to be a dental CEO might mean to manage three big pillars. Guest Track:: One is operations. The second is how we spend money, the expenses. Guest Track:: And the third is managing the people. The people obviously is what's doing everything.

Guest Track:: That's how we make money and spend money. We have to have accountability. Guest Track:: We have to have a whole process of managing them that we're going to talk about later. Guest Track:: Managing how we spend money is insanely important, but we've started with the Guest Track:: first pillar, operations. How do we create the collections?

Guest Track:: The operations is what everyone does every day. And as a CEO, Guest Track:: in the last few episodes, we talked about this concept of a really intelligent Guest Track:: way of looking at numbers. Guest Track:: We've got these five areas, patient flow, diagnosis, case acceptance, Guest Track:: capacity and collections. Guest Track:: And we identified ways in each of those five areas to look at a simple number

Guest Track:: and to know immediately, are we are we good or bad? Are we healthy or not? Guest Track:: You know, is this practice needing our attention? Do we need to diagnose treatment Guest Track:: for our own business as a CEO, or are we good? Guest Track:: So that was kind of a quick little general review, but you have to go listen Guest Track:: to those episodes because we dove into a lot of detail. : Yeah. And this is, my favorite part of this is when we get to talk about application.

: So rubber meets the road, where does stuff break? What actually happens in dental practices?

: And what can we do about it? And so now that we've talked about what we should be looking at, : we've mentioned some areas of improvement, but I do want to bring and talk through : specific examples, common examples where we see practices that are broken. : And a lot of times we can self-diagnose as like, yeah, we're not good at this. : Maybe we suck at this one thing in our dental practice or there's room for improvement. But.

: Knowing how to improve or where to go or what resources to rely upon, : how to train these systems or build these systems, policies into our practices, : a lot of dentists want to be pointed in the right direction. : And this might even be creating future episodes as we talk about this. : We'll hit a topic and say, here's the high level, and maybe we need to come : back and do a series on this specific topic.

: But the first thing that comes to mind was in : that first area of you : know we were talking about patient flow we talked about retention : we talked about marketing activities where : a lot of dentists kind of get distracted in in that as being the important thing : but then the call volume the the call miss rate as well as the call conversion : i've been guilty of this where i know that we're not in my specific offices : that I've run in the past,

: I know we're not handling the call side of things great. : I know that we're not taking control of the conversation, but I almost, : I don't have the skills, even though I've talked about this and podcasted, : I don't have the skills to train : my team on like what's my, in my head around what we should be doing. : And, and so how do you help dentists to figure out, you know, : we have our coaches work with the team members.

: We almost bypass the dentist at shared practices. It's like, : let's get our coach coaching the dentist on the high level things. : And then you can kind of leave the room and we're going to train the team on : answering phones and building these systems. : But I want to hear your perspective on where to go to get better at call conversion : and answering the phones.

Guest Track:: Well, yeah, let's back up. I'd like to use an analogy for a second, Guest Track:: just to make sure everyone listening is kind of on the same page here. Guest Track:: So if we think to a really skilled surgeon, you know, in the medical space, Guest Track:: you know, what does it mean to be a skilled surgeon? Guest Track:: It means that number one, they can diagnose incredibly well, Guest Track:: they can see that there's disease, and they can diagnose the treatment needed, right?

Guest Track:: So they can see the disease, and they can diagnose what to do about it. Guest Track:: And then next to be a really skilled surgeon, they have to be able to implement that diagnosis. Guest Track:: They have to actually be able to perform the procedure, surgical procedure. Guest Track:: If we use that analogy to being a CEO, we need to be able to diagnose the problem Guest Track:: really well to see it that there's disease, but also to know what the solution is.

Guest Track:: And we have to be able to implement that solution really well. Guest Track:: We in dentistry so often fail in these three moments, but especially the first Guest Track:: one, to not even see the disease. Guest Track:: And that's why it's taken so long for dentistry to kind of adopt the concept of metrics tracking. Guest Track:: It's taken dentistry so long to even understand how do we use metrics to help us find the disease.

Guest Track:: Most dentists don't even know national averages, yet they know if we've got Guest Track:: a four or five millimeter pocket, we might have periodontal disease. Guest Track:: They don't know if we have phones disease. They don't know if we have reappointment disease. Guest Track:: They haven't been taught or learned kind of what that disease looks like.

Guest Track:: So I know that, you know, probably everyone listening to this knows that I give Guest Track:: these really like intense like training seminars, these events that you and Guest Track:: many others have been to. Guest Track:: And when I started giving those events, it was all around like teaching people Guest Track:: how to do the surgical procedure on their practice. Guest Track:: And over time, I realized they couldn't even see the disease.

Guest Track:: So it's had to, of course, now take this holistic approach and teach people Guest Track:: how to actually find the disease in a very intelligent way, in a very kind of efficient way. Guest Track:: So I think that that's where we're at. Before we can even say, Guest Track:: what do we say on the phone? Guest Track:: We need to understand that we need to see the disease with the right number.

Guest Track:: So start there. how do we even know we have Guest Track:: a problem on the phone you know we need to have the Guest Track:: missed call rate the conversion rate in front of us and if you're not getting Guest Track:: that through ai or through you know your marketing company might have some of Guest Track:: that technology if you're not hand auditing it maybe you have to do that you

Guest Track:: you will never be able to understand if there's disease there so we have to have that first well. : Then then let me dig on that a little bit, : There's voice over IP, there's regular calling. Depending on your marketing : company, they might be call tracking depending. : They've got different numbers to track different marketing efforts. : If someone is fairly unsophisticated in this, what's the minimum to start?

: Or if you were doing a startup and you could design the system the way you'd : want to, how can you get the most data out of your phones? Guest Track:: Well, I don't know if I'd get the most data I can possibly get. Guest Track:: I'd want to get a very nice sampling of the right data. Guest Track:: So typically, you can run, there's Guest Track:: a couple companies out there that allow you to run AI on your phones.

Guest Track:: The AI will listen to the phone call and will tell you things like, did you answer or not? Guest Track:: If you did answer, did they convert to an appointment or not? Guest Track:: How much was that potential phone call worth? Did they ask about certain procedures? Guest Track:: They ask about insurance? Guest Track:: Did you mishandle the call or not? You're literally having this AI agent auditing Guest Track:: your call for you. There's a couple of companies that do that.

Guest Track:: Also, the marketing company that I've been using for years has also developed Guest Track:: their own AI that does it. Guest Track:: It does it specifically on the new patient leads. Guest Track:: That's the most important lead to get this information on. Guest Track:: We don't necessarily need to know, you know, what some salesperson said when Guest Track:: they called our practice trying to sell us Ozarka water.

Guest Track:: You know, we want the data on specifically the new patient calls the most valuable. Guest Track:: So we need to have that set up first. Otherwise, we'll never see the disease. Guest Track:: We have to take that x-ray on our phones. Guest Track:: And once we get that x-ray, as we've spoken about in the previous episodes, Guest Track:: the two main numbers we're looking at is, are we answering calls? Guest Track:: And if we are, are they scheduling?

Guest Track:: And if we're answering them, that has to be set up properly. Guest Track:: Answering more calls doesn't mean you train your team to answer more calls. Guest Track:: They're already trying to answer calls. What are you going to train them on? Guest Track:: Answering more calls is probably tweaking your phone system structure while Guest Track:: also utilizing a virtual employee or virtual answering service that can schedule patients.

Guest Track:: That's like that ingredient that you would prescribe. That's the medication Guest Track:: you would prescribe if you found phone disease. Guest Track:: You'd say, okay, take this pill. If you need to answer more calls, Guest Track:: take the virtual assistant pill. Guest Track:: And, you know, it's so interesting to me how few dental offices have incorporated virtual assistants. Guest Track:: And I think it's because they don't know that they've got this cancer.

Guest Track:: They don't know they're sick to begin with. So they don't think they need to Guest Track:: take this medicine. Does that make sense? : Yeah. And I would say the side effects of these medicine that people are scared : of is, number one, they don't want to pay for the AI software.

: But you think about how much money goes into marketing when you are spending : marketing dollars and how valuable a new patient is, one more new patient per : month, two, you know, five, : the investment in the dental AI software on top of whatever else you're doing, : and the investment of time and effort to set these things up ahead of time or : to work with a virtual assistant or to work with a company.

: I think there is a fear of the amount of cost and disruption that these efforts experts will take. : And once again, this is important, non-urgent tasks that there are going to : be other fires to put out. : There's going to be resistance from the team of like, we're doing a good job of this doc. : Like I swear we're catching the calls and we don't need to change our phone : system and change all of this.

Guest Track:: So yeah, let's dive into that. So, cause hold on, you know, all this cost, Guest Track:: all this fear, all this pain, all this conflict about maybe using AI or, Guest Track:: to see if there's a problem. Guest Track:: I tell you what might cause fear or cause for pain is getting a colonoscopy. Guest Track:: But my Lord, if you find out you've got colon cancer, you've just saved your life by doing it.

Guest Track:: Using AI is way easier than a colonoscopy and it's going to make you a whole Guest Track:: lot of money if you find that you've got some kind of issues there on the phones. Guest Track:: Let's make this simple for a second. The national average practice, Guest Track:: just the national average, they answer 68 out of 100 new patient calls. Guest Track:: And of the 68 they answer, they end up scheduling 29 appointments. Guest Track:: That's national average.

Guest Track:: So 100 new patients called. We paid for marketing for 100. Guest Track:: And we ended up with 29 appointments because we missed some calls and we didn't Guest Track:: convert some calls. We ended up with 29 appointments. Guest Track:: If we if we make that number bigger, let's say a practice usually gets 100 new patients a month. Guest Track:: Well, that means they could have had like 300. Right?

Guest Track:: If I were go to practice and I were say, Hey, if we utilize AI software for Guest Track:: a few hundred bucks a month, and we figure out what's going on on your phones, Guest Track:: and we correct some of these issues, we could take you from 100 new patients Guest Track:: a month to 200 new patients a month, without more marketing, Guest Track:: Now, suddenly that like sounds like a very smart thing to do.

: Right. Guest Track:: You see, we need to bring it down to like, how does it impact me, the dentist? Guest Track:: Why do I care? Why do I want to go through the trouble of putting AI software Guest Track:: in place to tell me if I've got cancer and then the trouble of treating the cancer? Guest Track:: Well, I mean, you're going to make a lot of return on this without even considering Guest Track:: how much a new patient is worth.

Guest Track:: Just the thought of being able to have twice as many new patients, Guest Track:: without having to hire some rock stars of this or a rock star of that and move Guest Track:: your practice to an amazing location or redo all of your facility or double Guest Track:: your marketing budget. All of that's painful. Guest Track:: But putting AI software in place and training your two or three front office Guest Track:: people, that's so much easier than a colonoscopy.

Guest Track:: You can get that done. Does that make sense? : Yeah. And that's why I wanted to double down on this because I think there is : a hesitancy and a reservation to do this. : And we're going to get to this in the future episodes. : When you change things, this is going to take a cycle of change and training and auditing. : And so that commitment to, I am convicted of why this is a problem. : I can see the data and I want to do something about it.

: And it is going to be disruptive for a little while, but the value is on the other end. : I think that's a horse that we can keep beating because I think people are missing : the opportunity and they're letting their fears and their resistance around : this issue stopping them from getting there and a lack of knowledge. : They maybe don't have the skills to teach the team members.

: That's where I started with this. Often dentists don't even know how to help : their team members and they need a coach. : They need someone who can come in and work with their team on these skills. Guest Track:: Yeah, so let me reiterate this again. The three components to fixing something Guest Track:: like what I introduced at least initially, the three components of an excellent Guest Track:: surgeon is to be able to see the disease, diagnose the treatment and perform the treatment.

Guest Track:: So we need to be able to see a problem on the phones. Guest Track:: We need to be able to diagnose what needs to be done about it. Guest Track:: And then we need to actually be able to implement that, that solution, right? Guest Track:: So seeing the problem is step one. That's through, for example, Guest Track:: the AI issue, the AI product, the AI service, then we need to know, Guest Track:: okay, what do we do about it? What's actually best practices?

Guest Track:: How am I supposed to answer more calls? How am I supposed to schedule more patients? Guest Track:: That's actually why most people come to my events is because we go through like Guest Track:: 100 of those things within two days and they walk out like, aha, Guest Track:: I know now how to do all of these business procedures, right? Guest Track:: I've just in one weekend learned a hundred new business procedures,

Guest Track:: how to fix these diseases, right? So they have to know how. Guest Track:: And so how do we answer more phones and how do we convert more patients is the Guest Track:: next thing to talk about. Guest Track:: And then of course, after they know how, well, shoot, knowing how is not enough.

Guest Track:: You have to actually do, you have to implement. Guest Track:: And implementing is always going to be micromanaged by you, the leader. Guest Track:: Even if you're using a coach, or a consultant, or an office manager, Guest Track:: it will still be micromanaged by the leader. Guest Track:: It will take less time. If you utilize other people to help you, Guest Track:: it will be less work for you.

Guest Track:: But there's always going to be a phase of micromanaging the implementation of Guest Track:: this to get it to stick all the way. Guest Track:: So we've talked about phones, you know, How do I see the disease? That's going to be AI. Guest Track:: Now we need to say, okay, well, what do I, if I have this disease, Guest Track:: how do I know how to treat it? Guest Track:: So how do we treat a missed call rate problem or how do we treat a conversion

Guest Track:: rate problem? Is that where we should go next? : Yeah. And, you know, we're not going to be able to get to all the five knobs : that we're talking about, but I just wanted to follow this through of from these : like three surgical, you know, : parts of being a great surgeon and see what that looks like. : Because I think some of our listeners, when they hear all of these things, : there's this flood of, oh, these are great ideas, and then nothing happens.

: And so walking them through the journey of addressing some of the bad data that : they're getting back or the areas for improvement is worthwhile, in my opinion. Guest Track:: So we've set up AI because we should, as a CEO, know what's happening on the Guest Track:: phones because it impacts dramatically our big first knob. Guest Track:: And we find out with AI, oh, we're missing too many phone calls. Guest Track:: Now we've identified the disease. We see it on the AI x-ray.

Guest Track:: There it is. We're missing too many calls. Guest Track:: Now, how do we treat that disease? All right. Guest Track:: Well, one solution would be Guest Track:: when we miss a call, we forward that call to a virtual employee of ours. Guest Track:: We don't have one, but we understand that that is one prescription to solve Guest Track:: this disease is the pill of having a virtual assistant.

Guest Track:: So we would find a company that has virtual assistants. And let me walk you Guest Track:: through what that's like, by the way, when you have a virtual assistant. Guest Track:: It is and it's changed dramatically over the last couple of years in such a good way. Guest Track:: So there's companies that operate in other countries in the world.

Guest Track:: And they have offices, office buildings, they have managers and trainers for Guest Track:: all of these virtual people that we quote unquote hire. Guest Track:: And if we're wanting to hire someone to help us answer these phone calls, Guest Track:: we would tell the company, we want to hire someone full time or part time, Guest Track:: and the company would line up five or six people to interview. Guest Track:: And we'd interview them over Zoom. These are college educated.

Guest Track:: They speak English. They can speak Spanish. Guest Track:: In their country, this is a coveted job. It's a well-paying job for them. Guest Track:: It's a respectable job. They want the job. They don't want to lose it. Guest Track:: I don't know about you, but I don't always feel like dental employees in the Guest Track:: US and Canada feel the same way. : Or call center employees in the US.

Guest Track:: Yeah, exactly. We're call center employees. Exactly. There's no website that Guest Track:: you go to where you can just line up six interviews and they all show up and Guest Track:: they're all college educated and can speak well and they really want the job. Guest Track:: So they line up these people and we interview them over Zoom and we pick one. Guest Track:: And they are going to log in every day and only work for us, only our practice.

Guest Track:: They are coming somewhat trained. They've gone through certain training sessions Guest Track:: and modules before we've interviewed them. Guest Track:: So they're coming somewhat trained, but they're not obviously trained on us. Guest Track:: So we are going to train them like we would train a regular employee on us. Guest Track:: And they'd log in every day in Zoom. I'd get a report on what they did and they would be live.

Guest Track:: I could talk to them every single day and they're going to do what we assign to them. Guest Track:: And it might cost us $13 or $14 an hour, all in. Guest Track:: No payroll taxes, no benefits. Guest Track:: They're not getting Friday COVID. They're not taking maternity leave. Guest Track:: You know, there's no added cost. They're not complaining that it's too hot or Guest Track:: too cold in the practice.

Guest Track:: Like they are all in 13 or 14 an hour performing this function. Guest Track:: All right. So our primary purpose in this hypothetical is that they answer the calls we miss. Guest Track:: Well, that means they're going to be bored most of the day because we don't answer. Guest Track:: We don't miss calls every minute of the day. So how about we have them do insurance Guest Track:: verification, or maybe we have them process EOBs, or we have them confirm appointments.

Guest Track:: Or I've got some practices that I coach one-on-one, for example, Guest Track:: that actually have them do check-in. Guest Track:: We've got a digital check-in process with a screen, with this person there to Guest Track:: help answer any questions patients might have and to greet them. Guest Track:: It's not kind of normal for most practices to do it that way, Guest Track:: but I'm just kind of like trying to open your mind a bit.

Guest Track:: So we've got this virtual assistant whose primary role actually isn't answering the phones. Guest Track:: They're busy all day long verifying insurance and confirming appointments. Guest Track:: But when we miss a call in the practice, it's after two rings transferred to Guest Track:: them, and then they answer the call and save it.

Guest Track:: If they only have, excuse me, if they have a 90% answer rate, Guest Track:: because they only get one call at a time, then that means 90% of our missed Guest Track:: calls get saved overnight. Guest Track:: Overnight. That hasn't changed the conversion rate yet, but it's changed the Guest Track:: missed call rate. And in this hypothetical, we said that was our problem.

Guest Track:: Overnight, it's solved. And I've got now this employee that is not only enabling Guest Track:: us to have tens of more patients per month and all that that's worth, Guest Track:: but they're also performing other tasks that my team doesn't have to perform Guest Track:: now. Does that make sense?

: Yes. And I'm grateful that you walked through this because, : I remember in the early days of call centers in dentistry, : one of the concerns was like, okay I'm getting : a different call center person maybe they're trained on a few : practices they're bouncing back and forth maybe the call center scales and the : there was a high quality at first of call center people who were answering and : as they scale the quality kind of isn't there or there's turnover and the person

: that we used to be working with isn't there the thing I like about this process a lot is, : They really are like an employee of the practice and you can get to know them : and train them and invest in them. : And the return is there. The security is there. : And that process is different than what it has meant in the past to outsource these missed calls.

: And I've seen personally, as we've done some outsourcing of answering calls : at our group, that there's a huge difference between one person and the next. : You know, you might have a very skilled, very articulate, very low accent individual : answering the calls over here. : And if you scale and eventually that's not the person who's answering the phones. : So I just I think it's worth pointing out the differences between solutions : in the past and what this looks like now.

Guest Track:: Well, obviously, things change, right? Guest Track:: So the past internet speeds weren't fast enough to do the job that's done today. Guest Track:: And technology wasn't efficient enough either. Guest Track:: So in the past, in order to get costs down and to get kind of everything making Guest Track:: sense, you had to run volume, you had to have call center setups.

Guest Track:: And I built probably one of the first big ones in dentistry, Guest Track:: you know, back in the day when just internet wasn't even fast enough to do it well. Guest Track:: And that had a domino effect of issues and inconsistencies in quality and so Guest Track:: forth that you've described.

Guest Track:: However, if you're listening to this, don't let old medicines side effects make Guest Track:: you think that there's a problem with the new medication that doesn't have a side effect. Guest Track:: And let's not let the fear of side effects make you ignore that you've got the Guest Track:: cancer to begin with, right? We have to solve this problem. Guest Track:: So step one is identify that you've got the cancer. Yes, we're missing calls.

Guest Track:: We have to fix the cancer some way. Guest Track:: We might use a little radiation, we may use a little chemo, we may do a little Guest Track:: surgery, but we have to get that cancer stopped. Guest Track:: Right now, what I'm telling you in this example, in this hypothetical, Guest Track:: is a really low side effect medication for your missed call cancer is utilizing a virtual assistant.

Guest Track:: And if that person we hired, by the way, doesn't work out, they end up not being Guest Track:: what we want, then within a week, we're interviewing five more.

Guest Track:: Like we have what is practically Guest Track:: an unlimited list of people to Guest Track:: try to find the perfect fit wouldn't Guest Track:: it be nice if that's how dentistry was like we needed an assistant so let's Guest Track:: just keep using them until we find the perfect one because they're all waiting Guest Track:: to be tried like that'd be great if that was actually reality it is when it Guest Track:: comes to virtual assistants so that overnight solves the problem.

Guest Track:: However, that's just the treatment. Guest Track:: We haven't talked about actually implementing the treatment, Guest Track:: performing the procedure, right? Guest Track:: So, step one was identifying the disease. Guest Track:: Step two is knowing how to treat it. But step three is actually implementing that plan.

Guest Track:: We need to implement a virtual assistant plan in this hypothetical. : So can I start with a question here, which is, if we're talking about treatment : plan, can we talk about treatment length of implementation? : So someone's coming in and they don't have AI set up. They don't know their : missed call rate. They don't have a virtual assistant.

: What would be an expectation of like to really overhaul, build new systems, : build new policies, implement an audit to the point where this is not like a : top priority micromanagement of the dental CEO and they can move to other higher : need areas of the practice as the main focus, the main change initiative? : Is this a three-month process? Is this a six-month process?

: You know, setting expectations for the speed of change and implementation before : we get into the other parts of execution. Guest Track:: Well, you can kind of take maybe two different approaches to this. Guest Track:: One approach says, before I implement anything, I'm going to do a complete scan Guest Track:: of my whole business to know all the broken pieces. Guest Track:: So I know what to prioritize. I know what's most important, what I need to focus

Guest Track:: on first. So what that scan means is I'm going to get metrics tracking set up. Guest Track:: I'm going to get AI set up on the phones, for example. Guest Track:: I'm going to get everything I need so that I can actually build my CEO dashboard Guest Track:: or set of numbers so then I can see if I have any cancer anywhere. Guest Track:: That's one approach. Let's scan the whole thing first and come up with a big strategic plan.

Guest Track:: And then we're just going to do one thing at a time. We're going to fix one Guest Track:: little spot at a time. That's one healthy approach. Guest Track:: Another approach says, you know, I already have a problem. I already know I have a cancer over here. Guest Track:: I don't want to go through the time and the trouble to scan everything and to Guest Track:: understand everything and to come up with one big strategic plan. Guest Track:: I'd rather play whack-a-mole.

Guest Track:: I'd rather just, I know I got cancer here.

Guest Track:: I don't need to know should it be the most important thing we address or not Guest Track:: because it just pisses me off and I'm just going to want it fixed right now Guest Track:: because I heard them answer that phone that way and I need it fixed so we're Guest Track:: just going to fix that so in that case we're going to run AI, Guest Track:: just to know how bad is that cancer over there and then we're just going to fix that thing,

Guest Track:: So I, as a coach, of course, try to do the first one. Guest Track:: Let's scan the whole practice. Let's find all the moments of cancer and let's Guest Track:: come up with a big strategic plan. Guest Track:: But then when we prioritize the plan, sometimes the emotional pain points might Guest Track:: make their way up to the top, even if they're not technically as important as something else.

Guest Track:: If it's an emotional pain point, sometimes we need to get that out of the way. Guest Track:: So I see that as the best thing. Now, to answer your question more specifically Guest Track:: about phones, what does it take to get AI?

Guest Track:: Realistically, you're talking about a couple of weeks to get the company on Guest Track:: the phone, to hire them, to sign the contracts, to integrate with your phone Guest Track:: system and solve any riddles that there are on the technology. Guest Track:: And then you're going to need maybe about another couple of weeks to a month Guest Track:: of data to know, okay, how big of an issue do you have? Guest Track:: So maybe we call that a month or a month and a half.

Guest Track:: And now we know we have cancer. All right. Now, what does it take to fix the Guest Track:: cancer on hiring a virtual assistant company? Guest Track:: That's going to take another two to four weeks of onboarding and, Guest Track:: you know, interviewing and training.

Guest Track:: So now we're maybe in it two, two and a half months. And then it's going to Guest Track:: take another two to four weeks of micromanaged implementation and auditing to Guest Track:: make sure it sticks and make sure that most of the wrinkles are ironed out. Guest Track:: So it could really take a quarter from finding the cancer to completely eradicating it. Guest Track:: And it doesn't have to be the only thing you focus on.

Guest Track:: You want to kind of start one thing at a time. Guest Track:: But I would be totally fine with starting this in January, and it takes three Guest Track:: months to complete, but starting something else in February. Guest Track:: And because we can manage the implementation more than one thing at a time, Guest Track:: but starting one at a time makes the heaviest weight of it happen separately from the other stuff. Guest Track:: Well, phases it out, staggers it.

: And the creating of the plan, and here are the steps, and then the executing : of that plan and reinforcing and then eventually auditing. : I really appreciate you walking through that because I think sometimes people : can hear all this information in a podcast, but seeing that, : followed through, here's some expectations, here is an example of what this : would look like, means that someone's like, okay, I can now fit that in my brain : into the practice and what that would look like.

: And now it's a matter of executing. So... Guest Track:: Yeah, the problem is who's executing? : Yes. Guest Track:: It's this dentist owner that's like burnout in part from their career. Guest Track:: They're also burnout at the micro level from the day. Guest Track:: They're struggling with emotional issues and conflicts in the practice with Guest Track:: staff, with patients, with themselves, with their spouse.

Guest Track:: They're struggling with maybe health issues sometimes, financial issues sometimes. Guest Track:: And their solution to all of this has been to just try to put their head down, Guest Track:: squeeze more people in and get through the day and go binge on something to Guest Track:: like overcome this feeling only to see it all happen again the next day.

Guest Track:: So while having a podcast and talking about it is definitely a cool thing to Guest Track:: do and it's educational, for a lot of people it's merely theoretical until they're Guest Track:: able to break their own cycle.

Guest Track:: And a lot of people to break it, they need a personal trainer of dentistry to help them, Guest Track:: see the path and to help them get pushed up that path to kind of break these Guest Track:: cycles and to really have the support they need to put in this kind of new way, Guest Track:: this new chapter of their practice, their new chapter of their career.

Guest Track:: Now, some people, they wake up at 4.30 in the morning to work out and they're Guest Track:: on a meal plan and they listen to self-help podcasts and they're a leader in Guest Track:: their church and everyone looks at them like their life is buttoned up and they Guest Track:: may not need someone coaching them. Guest Track:: I would say that's a phase they're in. I think a lot of us go through phases Guest Track:: where we are buttoned up and then we might come unbuttoned.

Guest Track:: But even the person that's buttoned up, even that Olympic quality athlete has their own coach. Guest Track:: So, you know, I think that it's part of the formula that's been missing in decades past. Guest Track:: In decades past, you didn't have coaches, you had kind of cookie cutter consultants Guest Track:: with cookie cutter manuals to do cookie cutter things.

Guest Track:: I think we're in the era now where we really understand that there's this emotional, Guest Track:: this mental component to becoming a highly effective CEO that goes beyond the Guest Track:: mechanics of operations and financials and team management, Guest Track:: but it also gets into the mindset and the habits of the actual person, the actual CEO, Guest Track:: and they need support and help if they intend to achieve the highest level in Guest Track:: the fastest amount of time.

: I couldn't agree more. And I laughed when you said that might be a phase because : that is for me, it's that was definitely a phase. : And then there was a phase where everything came unbuttoned. : And now I'm back in the, you know, up at 415 and super excited about all these : things, have all these systems implemented and have a lot of momentum. : And, you know, I just paid for 20K of coaching with two different programs in : the last three weeks because I value that.

: And, And I, you know, none of it's dentistry related and all of it's very high impact and high value. : So, you know, we love having our coaches that end up serving a lot of roles : in terms of execution. But also, you know, they tell me they're like, : sometimes we're a counselor. : Sometimes we're emotional support. Sometimes we're digging into other things : that are getting in the way. : And that's part of the fun of being involved in helping a dentist grow a practice

: is there's a lot to work through. There's a lot to process, and there's a lot : of support needed on different levels. : And it's not just, like you said, implementation and execution. Guest Track:: That's right. You know, I think when I lecture, it's a massive amount of content, Guest Track:: of information delivery, of understanding how to see the disease and understanding Guest Track:: exactly what you need to do to fix it.

Guest Track:: When I coach, I'm doing less of that because I've already taught them how to do it. Guest Track:: When I coach people one-on-one, and these are sometimes super entrepreneurial Guest Track:: people, but sometimes they're like right out of school and they just need to Guest Track:: make a million dollars take home pay as soon as possible to pay down their debt, right? Guest Track:: I'm coaching a whole lot more on like, hey, we got stuff to do next month. Let's stay on track.

Guest Track:: Let's talk through the problems and the hiccups that are holding you back from that. Guest Track:: Like it becomes a lot more about the implementation side of change. Guest Track:: So these events in my life, at least, are more about like identifying the need Guest Track:: to change and teaching what to do, Guest Track:: The coaching is about actually getting it done. And I'm highly fulfilled in Guest Track:: my career doing those things for people.

Guest Track:: And unfortunately for me, I have learned these things, the cliche, Guest Track:: the hard way, on the streets with the scars and the blood and the sweat and the tears. Guest Track:: And luckily, I think for me, the way my brain thinks in these outlines and the fact I've.

Guest Track:: Kind of been open-minded with change. It's allowed me to help other people achieve Guest Track:: higher levels than I did when I was kind of in their position, Guest Track:: much higher levels than I did. Guest Track:: And that's actually a really weird feeling. Guest Track:: Sometimes my wife will talk about it. She's like, man, these people are doing better than you did.

Guest Track:: And it's kind of a weird thing because I'm the teacher. I'm supposed to be the Guest Track:: one that achieved, right? Guest Track:: The reality was, I was in the front, I got all the arrows. Guest Track:: And I can now tell them, you know, how to get through that in a healthier way. Guest Track:: And it is super fulfilling for me. : My wife made a comment to me earlier today about exactly that thing. : And it still comes up. So this has been a phenomenal deep dive.

: Thank you for indulging me on what this looks like implemented. : Before we move on to these other pillars.

: And in these next episodes, we're going to be discussing the next two pillars : of managing finances, as well as managing people, which is more of the rubber : meets the road, especially on the people end than the auditing and all of that. : So anything to wrap us up before we move on to this discussion of managing finances?

Guest Track:: You know, if you're listening to this, and if any of this is speaking to you, Guest Track:: it's probably a sign that you are ready to like become the next version of yourself. Guest Track:: If any of this is speaking to you, it's either speaking to you from an area Guest Track:: of pain where you got pain points that probably need to be corrected, Guest Track:: or it's speaking to you from an area of almost inspiration.

Guest Track:: You want to live a certain way. Maybe you're not under attack and in pain. Guest Track:: If any of those are happening, take advantage of that feeling of this moment, Guest Track:: of this kind of experience, and say, you know what? Guest Track:: Today's the day one of the next face. Guest Track:: Now, let me kind of throw away some of my procrastination and excuses on what I want in my life.

Guest Track:: And let's use this moment as the universe telling me, you know, you're probably ready. Guest Track:: You may not feel completely prepared, but you're probably ready to like take Guest Track:: a new step in a different direction. : I love it. That's an amazing invitation for action, which is what people need. : Don't just listen to 40 podcasts. Let's do something about it. So thank you, Scott. : Thank you for today's episode. I really appreciate having you on.

Guest Track:: Awesome. Thank you. Till next time. : We'll talk to you next time on the Shared Practices podcast.