Welcome back to the Thanksgiving edition of the SPG podcast. This is yet another episode in our Dr. Spotlight series. And I have yet another Arkanzen adopted on the line today. We interviewed Kyle Hargis a few weeks ago. And here we have Dr. Leike. And Leike and I first met over the phone when we were discussing opportunities within SPG. And at the time, he had to be sold on Arkansas.
Because when he heard Harkinsaw, he thought, what most people think when they hear Arkansas, it's like, okay, do people live there? Do the people that live there wear shoes? Tell me more about Arkansas. And the answer sometimes for those that haven't been here before, it's sometimes we wear shoes. But yeah, that was how we got acquainted was over the phone. And since then, I've gotten to know Dr. Leike pretty well. And he is a credit to SPG. We're fortunate to be able to work alongside him.
Leike, how's it going this morning? It's going good, man. It's Thanksgiving a week. It's hard not to be thankful and have an attitude of gratitude. So all's well, well, over here. How are you doing? Man, I'm doing great. We were trading war stories before we hit record. And Dr. Leike and his wife are expecting baby number three due in February. So congratulations on that, Leike. Appreciate it, man. Thank you.
Well, we're at the end of November, where we're about to be in the home stretch of 2024. And like you said, Leike, there's a ton to be thankful for within SPG personally, professionally, within each of our practices. And before we get into those talking points, I want to start the episode similarly to how I've started all of these Dr. spotlight episodes in the past with the question, why dentistry? Yeah, great question. And hopefully I don't ramble.
I think it started when I was actually dentistry didn't come until later. I'll talk about health at first. So we've had some health things kind of happen in our family with certain family members and just certain things that kind of had us going in and out of the hospital quite a bit specifically growing up. As a kid, I remember whenever there was some kind of crisis. I remember there was a lot of pandemonium. I remember there was a lot of worry. There was a lot of fear.
There was a lot of hurry just getting the car. We got to go to the hospital. I didn't really quite grasp what was going on, but I was just like, hey, like something's happening. You know, there's fear in there and we got to get to hospital. Once in the hospital, I don't even know what happened. We'd be sitting in the lobby for a while. I'd be on my Game Boy, whatever is going on, just trying to wait it out.
But I just kind of realized that after we left the hospital, after something was fixed, that that pandemonium, that fear was gone and it sort of replaced with peace, replaced with jokes, was replaced with just this feeling of okayness if you want to call out that. So I kind of associated health with not just physically treating people, but emotionally treating people, not just them, but their families as well, the people around them. So I kind of like health because of that.
It's funny because as I kind of got some middle school and high school and things like that, I actually thought I wanted to be a pediatrician. You know, I liked kids and it's funny because I've heard that a few times, I think with certain SPG members, kind of this desire to like be with kids, you know, at least earlier on. And just like those people, I love kids, but praise God that I did not venture down that path. Shout out to my PEDO, brother and sisters all over the world.
Thank, I'm thankful for you guys because that's not my blessing to say the least. I don't think I could do that. But really thought I wanted to do health. I got into college, thought I wanted to do chiropractics, maybe physical therapy, I was kind of looking at certain things and nothing really scratched that itch, I think for me. It specifically has a freshman in college where you're just trying to figure out college in general, let alone what am I going to do for the rest of my life.
But I was still doing pre-health work, my biology, my chemistry, that kind of stuff. So it really wasn't until my junior year that, you know, it's nothing glamorous. I met with a pre-health advisor. He said, like, have you ever thought about dentistry? I was like, you know, I don't think I've ever thought about dentistry. He's like, well, do you like being around people? So yeah, I think about like being around people. She said, do you like working with your hands?
You know, I was playing a lot of piano at the time. And I said, yeah, I think I like doing stuff with my hands. She was like, oh, do you like biology and chemistry and science? I was like, sure, why not? You know, so I checked all the boxes. She said he should pursue it. I joined our pre-dental society, started shadowing, doing all the things that everybody does. And really, day by day, week by week, I enjoyed it more. I played dental school, got in, and now I'm here with you on the SPG podcast.
So it's kind of a little bit above my background. So when did you pick up piano? Like how long has the musical gene been expressing itself? Oh, yeah. So it's not a gene at all. I did not. I was not born with it at all. The story was actually my senior year. I was out late one night and I was on YouTube and actually heard. You remember the killers? You remember that group? I don't think they put out this. Somebody told me is the only killer song that I know. Yeah, so they had that song.
They had another song. I didn't really listen to it much, but I just saw on the side it's like a piano cover of When You Were Young. That was another one of their songs. Oh, yeah. That one. Yep. And I clicked it and I don't have another word for it, but man, it was magical. I just started listening to this guy just playing and I was like, man, I want to do this. A lot of kids start earlier on in life.
I was 17. My first elective that I took when I was in college was a piano credit and I played a lot in college, not too much at all. It uses a different part of your brain, the music stuff because I picked up guitar later and I'm dinking around with piano now with my 10-year-old taking lessons. It's interesting because you have to use, you truly feel that right, creative side of your brain, worrying and working differently than you do when you're using your analytical brain.
And I think it makes you more well-rounded and in our world where I think in dentistry, it's a really interesting intersection point between the arts and the sciences, the hard skills and the soft skills. Like you have to be so good at both that I think finding a way to develop that musculature in the right side of your brain is extremely healthy. The trick is just finding time for it these days. Yeah. That's the tough part.
So you figured out, you had, it sounds like you had a really good advisor working with you to steer you and take the time to even have that conversation with you. I think that's pretty uncommon. So shout out to that person for actually auditing your skill set and helping you to see the light there. Once you figured out, okay, I have this rough direction in undergrad that I'm going to follow. What was the process of vetting dental schools?
And then as you were progressing through dental school, at what point did you realize, you know what, I kind of look forward to going to the oral surgery department, not so much doing the crown and bridge or the endo or, you know, worrying if I did the right .2 millimeters of reduction extra on the crown prep. But when did you figure out like, oh, surgery is the thing for me. Yeah, great questions. So the first part, as far as vetting dental schools, I knew I wanted to be in Texas.
I'm a high school in the Houston area, went to college in Dallas before that actually was in Birmingham for a little bit. But so I was in Texas already. They make it really easy where you apply once and it goes to three Texas dental schools is now four. So I knew I kind of wanted to stay in Texas. Being completely honest, I got into Houston and I got into Dallas. My wife, my now wife, now she's my wife at the time. She was almost my girlfriend. We met almost. That sounds like a story too.
Talking, is that what they say? So that's kind of where we're at. I took kids day these days. Yeah. I guess so, I guess so. But that's kind of where we're at with that. And honestly, I got into Baylor, now, Texas, and I'm which is in Dallas. And it's like, I kind of want to see where this thing goes. Dallas was neck and neck with Houston. I chose Dallas, great dental school, great education. Great choice because now she's got two buckets too. So that helps.
But got into dental school, just like a lot of students, I believe when they first started, they're trying to figure out, okay, I just want to survive. Just trying to get through D one year and I was just like anybody else just trying to survive one test at a time. Got into second year. That's when we started using our hands a little bit, just like a lot of people.
Just kind of like, okay, I kind of like this, you know, like it's not just learning crop cycle and gross anatomy, you know, we're actually doing something now. So I kind of piqued my interests a little bit more with just the hands on portion. Then we got in clinic and my mind was blown. I was like, okay, this is what I signed up for. I want to be with people. I want to impact people. Now did I really make a huge impact with my patients at the time?
It's kind of hard to, you know, obviously in dental school, you have to step by steps and things like that. But I did want to impact people when I did want to be around my patients and be a little bit more than just the dental students who don't. I wanted to be somebody that's helping them and they're my whole decision. 30 years also, when I started looking at GPR programs, a lot of them were surgically based.
And I remember whenever I would go to the surgical department, that's when I really got to see like that change. Everybody came in, physical need, in pain, hurting, numbed up, out of pain, tooth out, thanking us for doing that. It was like, what? What? You're thanking me for jabbing you with a needle, getting steel forceps, ripping this tooth out of your head. I'm being dramatic, obviously, but you're thanking me for that. You don't really get that when you do a deal on 13.
And no disrespect to my general practice, you know, colleagues and whatnot because they're the people that keep teeth maintained. I hope I'm going to a general office for the rest of my life. But there's such a huge need already for this type of dentistry. I haven't even talked about it. I'm just talking about getting out of pain, extracting bad teeth, all that good stuff. So that's what really being my interest with oral surgery is just the instant gratification that you can provide somebody.
Building on a little bit more, saw the removal department. It's coming in slick and in dental school, just like all of us know, it's a little depending on your dental school. Our dental school, our process was basically you're in the clinic, you get all your teeth moved out removed. There is no immediate denture. Your slick for about, I don't know, too long, I think. 1940s philosophy. I had the same dental school philosophy. Exactly.
So these patients are their troopers, you know, they get their dentures. Maybe there wasn't enough alveo. The cells done. So when they, you know, you're doing your wax trying and run out of wax, it's just base plate. You're like, well, we've got to do more alveo. Or there's a spot that's hurting them, that kind of stuff.
So but what I did like about the removal department is that you could, again, provide that kind of transformative dentistry that you can have somebody, bad teeth, give them teeth that they could smile with and that kind of stuff. So I think it's big time just to transformative part of dentistry, the getting somebody out of pain, getting them aesthetics, giving them function that really kind of got me interested in just surgery and whatnot.
All in four of that stuff came a little bit later, but while I was in dental school, that's kind of what piqued my interest with that. Good thing is true question. Man, I love what you said about being able, even early on when you were first in clinic and seeing the psychology behind people coming in that are in pain, needing a solution. And you can't, you were able to be their savior that day by being the purveyor of that solution.
And so you got to see the difference between someone's motivation. They're not going to know show you they have a toothache. They're in the chair. They're going to pay you. They're going to happily pay you. And they're going to be singing your praises all the way down the hallway out of the clinic compared to the kind of monotony, drudgery, lack of urgency surrounding the D.O. number 13, because best case scenario, their life is no different. Think about that.
You do a procedure and you're hoping that it's not noticed afterwards versus a procedure that makes an immediate impact that people are thinking you up and down for. And on the single tooth scale, that's already huge, but on the wide scale of someone who maybe has been a dinchless for a long time and all of a sudden we're able to restore them back to function and confidence and being able to thrive and have a healthy lifestyle, that's when you catch the itch.
That's when you're like, okay, this is what I want to do with my career because I'll tell you I've had I've done so many quadrants of fillings and so many crown cases and so many root canals and you're just trying to get back to being above water with removing the decay and doing so in a way that doesn't leave them sensitive or it doesn't hurt when they floss or it's not shredding the floss and like there's so many different expectations
that people come in with when you're doing restorative versus surgery.
The expectations are completely different and I would argue that the expectations are more malleable in a way where you got someone that comes in and we were doing an amazing case review on I think it was Grady's office hours the other day where I believe it was I can't remember who it was it was one of our newer doctors they were showing the color photos of a case and the case you look at the cone beam and the lower jaw was pretty
straightforward it was like yeah this is green light all the way let's roll upper jaw was more of like a yellow light case because of bone loss because of the anterior positioning of the sinuses and we were looking at the teeth aesthetically and we're talking about the high smile line and I from my vantage point I just was like hey let's let's take a time out when we're looking at this and say this patient's expectations aesthetically
are way different than someone's pay someone's expectations who are coming in with visibly perfect teeth they're white they you can smile they have confidence this patient came in with tons of tons of cementum showing they they were missing some teeth their their aesthetic bar was already really low so if they come in and we give them an eight eight and a half out of 10 aesthetic result they're doing backflips they're over the moon because we made them we we improved
them so much from where they started and we if we have like an absolute ideal of perfection in our brains it can feel like oh the the results not great because we're showing a little too much gum or whatever but it's a huge relative win compared to where the patient came in so that was that was me rambling this time like a but how does that land for you when you think about the blank canvas that so many people offer for us and then the immediacy of them realizing
oh wow i got way more than i paid for yeah not to add to that i love what you were talking about aesthetics because i feel like aesthetics is we make it more objective than it needs to be i think at times because a lot of these patients like they you're exactly right you know they might have had just five really broken down seat they're like man i just want to be able to smile again not to say that we shouldn't provide the highest quality work but for a lot of these patients
sometimes they're in the wax trying before i even get to evaluating things like that i just see how they feel like what do you think you know like you like the way you smile and that kind of stuff and i'll get to the objectivity is of things you know if you know um that the functions off the mid lines weigh off things like that i had a patient who requested that we make his teeth a little bit crooked because that was him before he had dentures and then snap in and
then we got him to all of fours we met him when he had a failing over denturing he said i'm too young for this he was about maybe 39 i think and he was a patient that requested that we had some kind of character to his teeth you know so anyways just wanted to highlight that that aesthetics is just very it can be very subjective i remember taking orthoclases in d1 year and uh it kind of made me cringe a little bit at times because it's like okay like teeth need to be in this position
everybody has to be this perfect class one everybody has to be like this the and i get it you know we need some kind of uh framework you know to build off of um but i think yeah just that just that the aesthetics can be very subjective to the the patient or whatnot um but kind of going back to your question i believe you're saying um basically how does that fit you know just having a blank canvas with these patients um something on those lines i i mean that's where my art gets to my artsy side
i guess what little of it that i actually have i think gets to shine i love it you know i'll be able to look at my photos i love being able to uh design smiles i like to be able to uh really be able to um just be creative you know in that sense it's a little bit better than you know you do your composite grind down your occlusion tap tap tap how does it feel you know now we get to really work with the aesthetics of the smile you know do you like the way you know these teeth
are shown or you're shown too much teeth that kind of stuff so i enjoy it um it's a fun part of my day it's little it's a different type of fun from the surgery the surgery i get to actually use my hands to to do work um so that's a lot of fun as well but uh i think the pro side is not very enjoyable in the sense that you're actually giving the patient what they came for it but it used to smile and that's the part that they see that's what's so interesting is is that hit me when when i was
with um voreholt and erin and we were teaching that intro to all on x-course which for all the spg docs listening all of that should be uploaded or like 90 percent of it should be uploaded to kajabi by the time you hear this like i've recorded my part voreholt's done his part erin's done almost all of his part so if you want to hear that content that we talked about with aspiring full arch implantologist gp docs uh log into kajabi it looks way different voreholt gave it a
facelift and modernized it and made it into spgu so listen so give that a listen give that a watch it's really cool but what i learned at that course was rightfully so we spend so much time energy effort and meticulousness focusing on the implants because we have to because that's the foundation because if the the shoddy foundation gets put in then the teeth attach attach to the foundation don't thrive but then the patients what do they see they just see the teeth they don't
they don't see anything below the gums at all and so i love what you're saying about using that opportunity to deliver value because people understand the value that they can see tastes feel smell detect they don't really understand like ap spread or tort values or anything like that like that's all for us but the part that's for the patients can sometimes feel like an afterthought i don't i don't i don't think we think that way but some people i can see how some people could
because we're so gung ho about the implants and we're so maniacal about making sure the implants are good that sometimes the teeth part can be put on the back burner even though that's like the feature entree yeah for the patient so if you have you noticed that tendency or how do you how do you juggle that dichotomy yeah i think uh for a lot of our consultations you know i say the slide i think all of us have our little one liners and things like that that we revert back
to and one of them as i'm trying to just connect with my patients um i don't know the real contents that i use that i just use it when it feels right but i'll say you know like nobody really wants implants you want a new smile you know or you want a smile that you used to have you know that's a great line confidence you know you want to be able to chew foods again you know so i love placing implants and that's what we want to do for you in 2024 it's kind of the number one way to
replace teeth but also we want to give you what you truly want and that's you know some confidence you know or whatever it is just fitting it into the right situation with that specific patient because that's true you know like nobody really wants per se implants but you do want what they can give you and for a lot of these patients it's it's not really diverse you know everybody's story is very diverse but i mean most these patients either want aesthetics function
um what else is that it's function and health you know that's another big one that a lot of patients will come in and say like i just i know my mouth is bad you know and honestly it's those are kind of the easiest patients to please because as long as we can get the infection out that's where i'll revert back to it i'll say like hey you're going to be healthy um it's obviously a big thing that we try to emphasize is that we want to within our office we want our heartbeat to be
is that we want to provide transformative dentistry like if we can simplify our message i'm currently reading a book it's called smile brand i don't know if you're a doubt dollar miller and uh basically what that story what that book is about is connecting with your customers your patients whoever it is um in the form of the story you know like why do we like movies so much why we like tv shows um not really because we've been on a boat in the middle of that
lighted ocean you know we haven't experienced that and it's going down and things like that or you know any Disney movie we we can't really you know we haven't experienced these exact experiences that we see in these movies but we do connect with the message you know those things of those messages of hope or those messages of resilience to things like that and what we can do you know as we craft our stories with our patients you know we can see them as the hero of the story
um we are the guide in the story and basically what we're trying to do is get them to where they want to be ultimately um not that we are the experts that we're the heroes we're going to save the day we're trying to help them the hero gets where they want to be so kind of full bring that full circle you know like we want to be able to provide transformative dentistry for patients who want transformative dentistry and who doesn't want you know if they're on the
console books you know if they're on the schedule they want transformative dentistry so we want to simplify our message to that um and do it at the highest level of process possible and and democratize it you know as sp you says man i've got so many notes from what you just said that was an amazing rant we'll call it that was so good so listeners i recommend doing what i did and take notes on probably the last five minutes because we we have so many great nuggets in there
number one that i think should be on the top of all of our training for all doctors team members anybody is nobody wants implants they want the outcome that implants unlock whatever that is and to boil it down to into bare bone basics which is they want aesthetics they want function they want health those are the three and notice lekke didn't say pain because pain doesn't cause someone to do transformative dentistry pain causes someone to be reactionary pain causes someone to get the
tooth out get feeling better and sometimes you have a patient in pain that agrees to do the full scope of what they would benefit most from but in general that's a phased type of treatment plan that's let's get the bad tooth or teeth out let's get the infection out let's graph the sites let's come back to fight another day and evaluate the full width and breadth of what you'd benefit from so that's pain i love that you left pain out because i've just seen more and more that it's
really aesthetics function and health are the three and when i was in omaha hanging out with dr adler and his team last week we we had the same epiphany that you just shared which is people are coming to us it's not like we're walking out on the street and like kidnapping people and bringing them to the office like they're self-selecting there's some level of interest some level of recognition of what their needs are and so it's not like we're trying to pull the okey
doe gone i mean we're not we're not trying to bamboozle them like they know they have needs or else they wouldn't be here so the the piece that i want to add to what you said about the transformative dentistry i love the concept of the hero's journey i love the concept of understanding where people start and the the awakening that they have and then the fact that that they go arm in arm with us up the mountain they take the leap of faith they do the procedure
we we give them a better result than they started with and the the part that i want to add to what you said is that sometimes they come in with a goal and that goal is based on their own limited understanding they may think okay my teeth are bad i need dentures because my dad had dentures because my grandpa had dentures and for us sure maybe dentures are the thing that they can afford but we'd be doing them a disservice if we don't articulate the value of what we know they would
best benefit from so we have to at least extol the virtues of fixed and then if we find that that's just something that they can't do at the moment then we talk about it in terms of hey eventually you'd be really wise to upgrade to fix because the teeth come out the jaw starts shrinking there's no time like today to do it you still have a window of opportunity when things change let's look at upgrading so that you can really have the full functionality and the full confidence
that that implant dentistry will unlock for you so yeah i mean this that was a wonderful analysis and then what what do you how does that land for you like it when we think about juggling the patient's wishes which again are informed by their own experience and their own research versus what we know to be the best option that's a tough thing to navigate sometimes sure yeah it's an art and it's something honestly i hope to be growing in for for years and years to come
there's another guy named paul homily i used to work for an office maybe about five years ago and uh the uh doctor who uh owned the practice he put me on his he's in law old school so he sent me the uh the dvd of it i was like we're not playing this dvd dude his book his book is like that thick for for listeners i'm holding like my fingers about three inches apart it's very thick yeah i haven't read the book but uh i guess it was like a seminar that he did and it was just a recording
of it and uh he talks a lot about that so for anybody listening uh it's i want to say it's uh helping patients to say yes something like that and um big part of it is just getting on the patient exactly what you just asked is how do we bridge that connection between what the patient wants um and then our expertise because if we focus too much on one of the other i mean you're doomed for failure if you focus too much okay there it is and there it is yes sir that is a big book
man i didn't realize it was something yeah but um if we focus too much on one or the other we're doomed for failure if we focus too much just on what the patient wants then you know we're kind of a uh an hired gun you know at that point we're not really you know implementing the years of research the years of schooling our expertise which we are the experts you know but we're kind of maybe out of wanting to be polite or wanting to be nice or those kind of things we kind of
sacrifice what truly is best oh that's so i love the hired gun because you i felt and i need to actually add that into my presentation that i do with new docs that join the company is when i when i hire them and i i do the core values assessment with them i try to create the the chasm and to show the difference between gp and what we do because in gp you could just simplify all the all the stuff that i say and just say like you're a hired gun kind of because you're
doing what insurance dictates more often than not the patients think that if insurance doesn't pay for it why would you even talk about it you're crook and so you're you're you're sort of operating within the confines of something that you don't have full control over and so that's a i'm stealing that phrase thank you and then and then the other thing i want to say is i want to shout out kyle hargis again because we've we've talked a lot over the years about how to approach
this topic about how to approach with confidence and with authority us just laying it out there and saying look i understand your preconceptions i understand your goals i understand where you're leaning based upon the research that you've done but if you were my mom sitting in this chair with with the with teeth and the condition that yours are in right now i would unequivocally 100 recommend this based on your expertise and that's how you get out of feeling like a hired gun or
feeling like your patients are holding your host holding your hostage or holding your feet to the fire or saying like oh i only want to consider this it's it's an art form as you said to be able to educate and to be able to steer the conversation differently in a subtle way without the patient detecting that you're strong arming them in a different direction that ultimately you know will increase the likelihood of them being happy with the outcome because that's what it's all about
yeah there's something that i've stolen from you it was uh i forget which podcast that you said this on but it was basically like if you approach every situation with curiosity you'll win more than you lose i believe that i think that was you i could be lying but um i remember hearing that and i was like man that's that's good and it's exactly true because that's not saying that you're you know you don't have your own foundation or your own values or your own whatever that you're
just kind of you know um listening to somebody and believing in whatever they say but if you approach every situation with curiosity you're already lowering that uh potential defensiveness you're already opening up the the gate to some kind of communication you're telling whoever is in front of you that you care so you do want to approach the situation with curiosity you want to ask the patients why they're even here you know like is there something that you're
trying to do this for do you have a wedding um you know a kid's wedding you know fill in a blank with whatever reason but just kind of starting off and just being curious and letting the patient know that you actually do care which goes into the second thing that i would say i'd say if you approach every situation with compassion you know you'll win more than you lose and when i say compassion i don't mean that you know just la de da you know i just want to you know be nice
never be stern oh i think you can compassionately tell somebody the truth you know you're telling them the truth that you're not gonna like this lower denture because of exactly what you said if you were my mom and i love my mom very much i wouldn't want her in a lose lower denture you know oh wait um so what's one of those other things giving anyway exactly exactly um so i feel like curiosity and compassion are those two things that if you approach every situation with those two
things i feel like you'll win more than you lose kind of as you said um so kind of going back to your question i feel like how do you balance those two it's an art and you know that's why we have our spg group i feel like we're constantly kind of bouncing ideas off of each other i feel like we talk a little bit more clinical um it'd be i think nice and beneficial to talk a little bit more about those consults and talk a little bit more about how we can connect with patients and patients and
help them to say yes not that we don't um and obviously we're doctors and obviously clinical is that the you know top of the list as far as hey how do we do our craft well you know but i feel like for a lot of um it's just and it's a it's a different muscle that needs to be exercised you know as far as how do i be curious how do i be compassionate and then how do i be efficient you know with those consults too i don't want to be in there for 30 minutes to an hour listening about you know
the cat you know um but so it's it's an art but i feel like the more you do it the more you record your consults as awkward as it could be the more you listen to it the more you just exercise that muscle uh the better you'll get and that reminds me of what we said earlier about the implants the surgical aspect garnering the lion's share of attention in each of our development as the people that can do this procedure effectively and predictably and again it's it's kind of a
progression like you have to be able to do the implants well so that the prosthetic survives and thrives and functions the way that it needs to but if you think about the order of operations exactly what you just said like you have to be good at communicating the value connecting with people and developing those soft skills to even have the opportunity to do those procedures and so foundationally and this this is a sneak peek spoiler alert um in our doctor mentorship chat
where it's me steve erin lekay gradie shawn land erin burger and the maths i think we voreholt developed this flowchart which is going to inform our 2025 and beyond process of how we structure the onboarding of new doctors to spg the onboarding and the training and we start with fundamentals and then we build efficiency and then we get closer and closer to pursuing mastery and in that fundamental section there's going to be a lot about just understanding how to
articulate the value of what we do because there's you've met people like this lekay where they're amazing surgeons they have hands of gold but then the act the stumbling block is enunciating the value and getting people to understand that they're the right person and and projecting that confidence and it's a shame because you you want those golden hands to be attached to the the golden tongue to be able to get the deal done but some people have one some people have the
other you'd like everyone to have both but what you said rings so true which is it's a process it's a it's a it's a it's a growable skill set you don't you don't just have to say well another suck at communication no you probably suck at listening you probably suck at that's good taking time to understand what the patient is telling you because what you said is curiosity another way to phrase that is hit time out on your brain thinking about what you need to be
doing 30 minutes from now and actually just sit and listen and hear what the patient's telling you and chances are you can make it almost like idiot proof where you think about it in bullet points do they care about function do they care about aesthetics or do they care about getting healthy or is it a combination of the three and if it's a combination of the three that's amazing because they're probably going to be eating out of your hand at the end of that consult if they have
that many motivations and that many problems that they're trying to solve so there was a great patient example I can't remember which focus day it was that I had but I like to talk about like an ideal patient at those SPG focus day so that the team can understand like oh man if every patient could be like Philip or whatever then that would be an amazing day every day okay well what was so good about Philip and generally we start back at the consultation and we say well
Philip came in and we got crystal clear on what Philip was shooting for and it was even better because Philip's wife Susan was in the consult with him and we understood immediately that we weren't really selling to Philip we were selling to Susan because she wore the pants in that relationship and if Susan said yes we were going to do it and so that was an example of reading the room addressing the decision maker and then getting it done because you took the time to be curious and
to connect versus going through the motions and oh they didn't want all on four we're going to settle for whatever because we didn't take the extra two minutes to build the value and so that's the beauty of this model is that even in a month where there's a lot of consultations in general the schedule is such that you can slow down and you can at least take five or ten minutes to really listen and connect has that been your experience yeah that's all that is good i feel like especially
that last part as far as because i think the the negative things between the loudest right that consult that didn't go well that surgery that didn't go well um which not to say that those things shouldn't be highlighted and they shouldn't be you know let's analyze this you know what went wrong where did it go wrong you know how could it have been fixed obviously you have to shed light on those things but what happened when things went well you know like what were some
of those consults that just like went really well i think those things are really easy to bypass but i think another muscle to exercises okay let's focus on the things that really went well and not just focus on them so we can ignore the other things but kind of take away from those things like what did we do well like what were the things that we were firing on all cylinders during those times and how do we replicate that with other consultations how do we replicate
that with other surgeries how do we replicate that with other conversations with patients and things like that because i think if we're focused on the the bad things obviously it's good to you know analyze those things but we can be in it for like better or just in a dump all the time just thinking about bad stuff but if you think about the positive things not that you just be on cloud 9 all the time and just being lala land but you can take from those good experiences
and just try to replicate them to do more of man you asked me a question i forget what i was can you repeat that real quick no i mean it was it was centered around your experience of being able to understand that not all patients come in hardwired to be able to understand what's best for them in a lot of cases and being able to to take the time as the doctor as the team even if it's not the doctor doing all the doing to just carve out that time to intentionally sit and listen
because if you and your team have that habit and take that posture of sitting and listening and understanding what truly is motivating this patient to be in the room right now then you have a much better chance at being able to to build value with them and craft your pitch because what you don't want to do is just have an assembly line where you're saying the same thing to every person personalize it take the time to personalize it use the available time in the
schedule and there's practices in our group where the doctor kind of just comes in and rubber stamps it because there's a member of the team that's so adept at connecting and building value and the doctor looks at the radiograph and the doctor says congratulations you're you're a candidate for the the care that you and Susie talked about yeah and then there's there's cases where the doctor is the best one to be able to handle the listening navigating objections but yeah my
question was just around has that been your experience that sitting there with that listening posture looking at what you learned from the connection call taking time to weave all the pieces together has that been most effective for you rather than like the boiler plate treatment presentation yeah that's good yeah no you'll say something I always have to go back and uh and uh say basically what i was thinking about that but yes I remember that now it has been definitely I think
that uh every as I said uh machiel and I were talking on friday just as far as the month goes and you know the ups and downs literally everything i'm saying right now like i'm not just blown steam right now or blown smoke uh these are things that we've been trying to do so on friday i remember we talked for a while um and just trying to figure out you know like what went right what we're wrong um how can we continue doing things that went right now can we change the things that
went wrong but specifically with the consultations yes I do believe just sitting down in in listening again approaching situations with curiosity now there will be some kind of framework because you are the provider uh you do have three other patients you know maybe not three in this model maybe two or something like that like who knows depending on the day um you might have nobody um but you do have other things going on but you do need to devote that limited amount of time
to the patient and you do have a framework I think that's something that keeps you efficient as far as hey i'm gonna come in i want to be curious or while i want to form some kind of connection i want to see why they're even here um i do want to congratulate them on their candidacy you know uh that's a big i always try to say you know there are patients who come in who have been in dentures for years and unfortunately they don't have the bone for uh this type of treatment
and we have to do some kind of grafting uh we have to do some kind of extra procedure yada yada but miss jones that's not you you know you are blessed with a lot of great bone you are a great candidate for this treatment um so that's awesome to see um and then lastly kind of facilitate that transition because normally those ask for lack of better words how much you know that kind of stuff and that's when i kind of facilitate them the uh the patient basically to their ultimate guide
which is my to you know and saying like um hey you know like that's a great question let me hand you back over to andrea uh she'll be able to uh take care of all those questions but on the clinical side of things did you have any other questions set off for me uh generally they'll say no and a lot of times you know say you know doc you did a great job you know thankful that to be here yada yada those things that i like to hear because i'm like okay i feel like we did pretty good during
this five to ten minutes um and then i'll transition them to uh to ondraer but yeah i think just listening i mean that that just goes um that's worth its weight and goal uh you said it best you know it's a lot of times it's not a communication issue a lot of times it's just a listening issue like you're just not getting it you know um and if you did listen and well you pick up on those cues you'd pick up on i don't like to eat at the restaurant you pick up on
i'm embarrassed you pick up on uh just those little things that really trigger the patient and that's where you want to stay um kind of going back to that book story brand um a lot of uh donald mill kind of talks about how many marketing pitches whether it's a plumbing company a mechanic shop whatever they'll just talk about too many things and they're talking about hey we can do this we can do this we can do that and yada yada yada and it kind of overwhelms the
patient so they're like well i need a new tire or like my abbot's flat tire or something like that or you know a film a blank whatever simple need that they need that they're looking for versus another company will really simplify that message and i'm not really talking about marketing per se i guess you can use the marketing i'm more so talking about the consultation but if we can simplify that message as much as we can to the patient focus there and say that hey we want to
get you to where you want to be and we want to guide you there and you can use whatever words you want but i think that's kind of the the biggest thing about the consult is that you want to just make sure that the patient knows that your ear um uh knows that they are being heard and knows that you want to guide them to get to where they want to be yeah and i'll tell you that very very commonly in my journey to you know getting better at communicating with people i want to come back to
what you said earlier about listening to yourself that's so difficult but so so so impactful in your growth because if you can like get the stomach lining to listen to yourself in the consultation not only are you listening when you're in the consultation but then you hear things from a different perspective when you're listening back to game film because then you're really figuring out like oh i totally missed the fact that when i was in the room that they were telling
me loud and clear like i hate going out to eat and that completely you know just went over my head because i was thinking about the the procedure that i'm doing the next hour so that's important but then the next thing that i hear when i listen in to recorded consultations or when i go to offices and listen to people talk is there's still way too much dental jargon which goes back to what you were saying about simplifying for the patient so we simplify in what we talk about
like the the actual recommendation that we have singular because the the the less we have multiple recommendations door number one door number two door number three if we distill it down to one and then we just have to figure out like will that will that work or do we have to back up and then present something different which occasionally you do but if you can boil it down and marry their objection or their objections to care their fears things that they may be worried about
their goals and then what they stand again if you can marry all that into one treatment plan then you're better off and bonus points if you can do it without talking about too much like dental minutia using kindergarten language easier said than done because a lot of dentists get nervous they they're kind of figuring out what do i say next i got to fill the the empty space in the room and sometimes they just start talking about sinus lifts and nasal floor and peregoids and it's like
no one knows what the heck you're talking about so having that discernment to keep it simple and sometimes leaning into the silence sometimes the absence of talking is really really powerful where you with with some some real delivery you say you know missus smith based upon what you're telling me about your your lack of confidence in your smile and your inability to go out to eat with your friends what i recommend is to do the best type of dentistry that you're a candidate for
which is the all-on-four where we have implants attached to teeth that only come out when i take them out and then you just sit and then they'll have questions and then at the end you go what questions do you have and then that opens the door for them to really surface whatever misgivings they may have come up with about that but you know i love what you said about simplification because no matter how ruthless we are about cutting stuff out of our pitch
there's always more stuff that could be cut that could be considered noise or or something that's distracting so i i love that approach i know you've got patience to see and and the last question that i have and thank you for your time today lakey but the last question that i have is what are you so excited about for 2025 what what what do you when you think about the coming year and all of the improvements that that you've made and that you that you've seen in your practice
and your team and like getting the team stable and getting the team closer to being fully equipped what excites you about the possibilities of 2025 yeah i like that question and my wife knows best that any birthday gift my favorite birthday gift is just a good question about the future and the past and analyzing things and uh being able to listen being here to that uh i think 25 25 goes uh what i'm most excited about 2025 is really just honing in on our efficiency you know
we have different sagas you know i literally use that word on friday that we're kind of in our you know uh last saga of adding new type of appointments to our uh appointed books that other things that's you know at first it's all consoles these are adding in the impressions you start adding in surgeries in all the while you know you're doing all these sagas at the same time then you add the restorative phase doing you know those four sagas at the same time on your
schedule add in the maintenance phase you know and then you're doing all these things at the same time depending how you schedule some of them like to walk out things and have surgery days and things like that um but we're kind of in a season where we're basically seeing all these different sagas at the same time all these different phases of the full arch journey for our patients so as far as 2025 goes i really just want to see us more efficient for lack of better words i want
to see us be able to be firing on all cylinders because right now i feel like there's times where we're firing on maybe five out of six you know maybe maybe six out of six sometimes but sometimes it's three out of six and there's still little things here and there and really just wanting our team to have the same heartbeat you know as far as everything that we do i want to continue to remove myself as the bottleneck of the practice because i think there's a lot of it that is
depending on me being somewhere specifically clinically i want to better train my assistants assistants want to learn they want to do work you know and i'm grateful for that but i want to better train them to do things when i'm not around uh freeze up time for me um so two things i'm excited to continue to hone in on our efficiency in the number two adding in the digital and i know as far as the beginning of all that there'll be its own little hiccups here
and there but i'm excited to streamline our care for patients in a way that's top notch and comes at a high level well lakay thank you again for taking the time to do this recording today i love working with you i loved you running me around the basketball court a few months ago when i came to do a visit to springdale so whenever we get to do y'all's focus day i will have to we'll have to run it back and i'll have to be sore for another week so
thanks in advance for that yes sir i got you i got you yeah man all right for admin uh we we appreciate i hope you hear this enough we appreciate all that you do for this company um and happy to happy to be a part of the team well lakay right back at you thank you for all the amazing patient care and leadership that you bring to springdale dentures and implants and also thank you for all the the leadership and guidance that you give to all of your spg doctor mentees
uh they they're lucky to work with you and i look forward to to making that process and that program even better in 2025 so thank you for all you do and for all listening hope you have a happy thanksgiving and a wonderful holiday season thank you very much you