Hey, before we jump into today's episode, this is Dr. Stephen Vorelt from the Full Arch podcast, Shared Practices podcast on all things Full Arch in Plantology. I wanted to let you know and remind you that we have our second course coming up. It's going to be May 29th through the 30th. That's for the Intro to All In X Level 1. And that's for people who have never done it, never even learned about it. This is the introductory course for you.
We'll go through patient selection, treatment planning, surgery, follow-ups all the way to long-term maintenance. If you are already doing some All In X and you want to get into the digital realm, we are now offering and launching Intro to All In X 2. It'll be May 30th to 31st also in Dallas, Texas. And we're going to be talking about all the things you need to know for going digital and Full Arch, 3D printers, scanners, photogrammetry, you name it.
We'll talk through how the treatment planning rationale changes and all the little nuances that you need to pick up if you're going to go digital. So join us in Dallas in May. We look forward to seeing you there. Hello and welcome to another episode of the SPG Pod. I'm your host, Dr. Alex Sharpe, CEO of Shared Practice This Group. And I wanted to talk today about a framework that I happened upon. I don't think I came up with it. I don't think I could take credit for it.
But I found a framework that I feel like helps all of us in our lives and also in our jobs at SPG. So whether you're listening to this as an onlooker, someone in our network or whether you're listening to this as an SPG team member, whether at the practice or centrally, I hope this framework helps you out in some way. And that framework is as follows. Step one, connect. Step two, clarify. Step three, commit.
And what I mean by that is we'll start with how it applies at the SPG practice level because this is where I've used it to a pretty good effect recently in our SPG focus days. So at those focus days, we meet offsite in a boardroom with a whiteboard and we zoom out. And that's where step one in this process comes into play, which is connect. We want to connect not only with one another, but we also want to connect with why we exist, why we're here, what are we serving?
Like what purpose are we serving in the marketplace? And for SPG, we've laid that out pretty clearly. We were here to democratize the fixed arch. We want to make the best type of full art replacement dentistry available to as many people as possible on the basis of cost and also on the basis of geographic convenience and location.
We do that also by the fact that each of our providers, each of our doctors is responsible for the whole procedure from seed to stem, from meeting the patient, to planning the case, to executing the case surgically, to restoring the arch with the teeth, with the feedback loop that's inherent in the same doctor placing the implants as who is fixing the teeth to the implants. So all of that increases access to care for our patients, makes it more convenient, makes it more approachable.
So that's our why. We also want to connect with one another, how we stand to allow for that purpose to be made manifest. So at the practice level, that's easy, right? You're able to connect about the doctor has this role, the the front office team has these roles, the dental assistant and lab tech have these roles. And at the at the granular level of the practice, it's pretty easy to grasp how we all connect together.
Now as a company, that's where the challenge is because we see strengths and weaknesses across the board. We see tendencies at some practices that work and other other tendencies and other practices that aren't as beneficial or helpful. And so we're trying to look at what are ways that we could optimize performance across the board by putting people in the right positions to succeed. That's where clarification comes in.
So step two is clarify and clarification is arguably the most important step. We have the three steps of connect, clarify and commit the connection. And then the commitment are kind of like the pieces of sandwich bread, but the meat is in the clarification. So what do we mean by clarification? Means at the practice level, we want to clarify what are we shooting for? What are our goals?
What are we wanting to do at an annual on an annual basis, quarterly basis, monthly basis, weekly basis, daily basis and on a per patient basis? That's a really helpful exercise because a lot of times it's easy to say, you know what, we're going to maximize each patient opportunity. We're going to do as well as we can each day. And then that's going to add up to a good week, which will add up to a good month and a good year.
But sometimes it's helpful to have that framework to say, hey, this is what a successful year looks like. When I went to Tacoma recently, we came up with an annual goal of all on four arches that they wanted to perform. And then what did we do? We took that annual goal, divided it by four to come up with a quarterly goal, divided that by three to come up with a monthly goal.
And then from there, you can extrapolate out what do we want to be doing every week, every month, every quarter to get to what we define to be a successful year. You don't know that unless you take the time to clarify. So zooming all the way out into the mic, the macro and then zooming all the way into the micro of the per patient basis, I think really helps having that ability to oscillate between those perspectives gives you a more well-rounded view of what success looks like.
And every practice will have a different area of growth. And for Tacoma, for example, we set a goal around same day smile design because that was a growing edge. That's something that the team was excited to work on and committed to working on. And so we set a goal for each month around same day smile designs to push the team to be as effective with its time as it can be.
And that's another preview of something that I'm working on with our doctor leadership team to figure out, okay, if we look at our strongest performing teams, not just our strongest doctors, but our strongest performing teams, because a lot of times you can't extract out the strong team from the strong doctor, right? Because a lot of times those doctors have built great teams around them by virtue of seeing the value of pouring into those that you work with every single day.
So rarely are you going to see a doctor, Grady or Dr. Greg working without an amazing team around them. It's not just a coincidence. I would argue that these guys prioritize building up the team around them. And that creates a higher level of floor. That means the performance floor each month is way higher because it's not just one person running the whole show.
It's having taken the time to clarify what success looks like for your teammates so that while you're busy, while you're doing stuff that only the doctor can do, then your team can do what they can do. Your team is empowered to perform those functions that don't necessarily require an SPG doctor. I think that's the growing edge for us is a lot of a lot of our teams are still extremely doctor dependent as they're learning the ropes as they're getting clear on what the steps are of each procedure.
So my deliverable in terms of that step two of clarification is let's all get on the same page with what are the steps to each appointment? What are the types of appointments? What are the different checkboxes to cross off at each appointment? And then at the end of the day, how do we assign each of those functions, each of those steps appropriately that's going to be the most respectful of the patient's time of the doctor's time and of the team's time.
So that's going to be a process that we continue to iterate on and work through throughout Q1 and on into Q2. But as I study the differences between how certain practices operate, sometimes you can distill it down to doctor dependency. You can say, you know what, this doctor is way more doctor, this practice is way more doctor dependent because maybe the team is newer, maybe the team could use more training.
And so that's going to be the ripple effect is what are the opportunities that we have at our practices to train the team more specifically and more strategically to get that confidence level of the doctor as high as possible so that the doctor is comfortable delegating to the team as necessary as the situation calls for it. And so all of that is plays into that step two of clarification of clarifying what is what does success look like? What's our goal for the practice?
And then also clarifying who's going to be doing what? What's the growing edge? What do we want to grow towards being able to do whether I'm a smile consultant, whether I'm an operations manager, whether I'm a dental assistant, whether I'm a lab tech, what am I growing towards? What are the aptitudes that I want to develop so that I can maximize my individual impact so that my team can perform as well as possible so that we can create as many raving fans out of our patients as possible.
It all relates back to that. And then finally, the commitment phase. This is the part where the rubber meets the road because we've had the discussions, we've theorized, we've strategized, we've figured out what needs to happen. And then the commitment piece is actually sticking your neck out and saying, I commit to this. I commit to doing this activity every day. It's in service of the success that we all commit to wanting to achieve. And this is the part that makes it a team sport.
Some of us are not wired naturally to be members of teams or to be team sport type athletes. Some people are individual athletes and you have to learn the dynamic of performing well on a team. Others of us are think are lucky stars that remember of a team. So that's the cool thing about being alive in 2025 is that you can choose to make your career as an individual sport. And I think that's the right framework for a lot of folks, for a lot of personality types.
But for someone like me, I am a team guy for better or for worse. I've always loved the team component, the fact that one plus one can equal three by virtue of people having different aptitudes and different strengths to cover up for other people's weaknesses. And SPG was founded on that principle, all of us founders.
There's some overlap in strengths, but there's a shockingly little amount of overlap into what each of us is strong at because there's stuff that George Austin, Matt Ford, Matt Greeno, there's stuff that those guys are world class exceptional at that I couldn't I couldn't hold a candle to their aptitude in those different domains.
So that's how a strongly functioning SPG practices to where if I'm an SPG doc and I look at the aptitudes of my assistants, the aptitudes of my front office team in a perfect world, I'm saying, Oh my gosh, I can't hold a candle to how well they communicate with patients or how efficiently they grab the records required for a smile design or the way that they communicate to patients about tweaking the aesthetics of the trial smile.
I just think that the more that we figure out what are the superpowers of the team that we have around us, the faster we can sprint to success. And to me, again, success is not only what we achieve, but it's also the consistency with which we achieve it.
As PG-Dentron implant model is famously up and down, Herky Jerky, you see the what we call the seesaw months, we call we call them the seesaw months, not so affectionately, but teams that really thrive have a very slight amplitude between a quote unquote good month and a quote unquote bad month. There's just not that much difference because of the consistency of each member of the team performing up to up to his or her capability.
So more on this, I just wanted to get that thought process out there of step one, connect step two, clarify step three, commit. And that's great for thinking about how to drive change, how to train people, how to resolve conflicts.
Those three steps are necessary to do most any type of change leadership in your practice or on the central team or in your lives, I find, because even if you're dealing with a spousal challenge or something with your kids, you got to connect, you got to clarify why you care about what you care about and what you're trying to what you're trying to do and then get commitments.
So I hope this helps be on the lookout for more training on these steps of each procedure, because I feel like we're getting far enough along now where we can say, all right, this is the optimal way to structure appointments for a double on four. This is the optimal way to structure appointments for an upper traditional denture and a lower
force nap. We're getting closer to that. I've been talking to a lot of teams and working with several doctors to learn what are their steps and then what can we be shooting for as we're training our teams to be able to shoulder the appropriate amount of the load, because I've been there as a doctor. It's very, very tempting to stay in that dental school mindset of,
I've got to be my own assistant. I've got to be the person collecting the money. I've got to do everything under the sun because my own sense of ownership gets in the way of me sharing the load and also the temptation to want to be in the trenches doing all the doing, but the more that the doctor micro manages, the less latitude that each team member has to be able to perform up to his or her own capability. So at SPG, we want to maximize our individual and collective
impacts. And what we just talked about is part of the path towards really fulfilling that vision. So looking forward to sharing more about next steps and how we want to further empower our docs to fire themselves from different parts of procedures and to elevate the team around them, it's going to take efforts at the practice level. It's going to take efforts centrally to continually refine how we recruit onboard train. But this is an exciting time in our company where we see so
many teams operating at a very high level and thriving so consistently. And just like we want to democratize the fixed arch to as many people as possible at SPG, we want to democratize success to as many teams as possible. So that's my commitment to you. So hope you all have a wonderful week. This should be going out on Wednesday. What's the date Wednesday, the 19th. So hopefully all of you survive the what the third or fourth friggin snowpocalypse. We've had this year, I'm over this
weather. So nobody freeze and hope you have a great rest of the week. Hey, I wanted to catch you before the podcast was over. It's Dr. Steven Voorholt here from the Full Arch podcast shared practices podcast on all things full arch implantology. And if you've ever considered yourself considering or thinking or getting interested in full arch implants and what that looks like, please join us in Dallas, Texas, May 29th through the 31st. We have two courses
run concurrently. Intro to all the next one is for those of us who have never done an arch, or maybe we've done a smattering of arches and we just kind of want to learn the basics again and have a really good foundation. Intro to all the next two, which is May 30th to 31st, is going to be all things digital. So how do we go with the 3D printers, the scanners, the photogrammetry, all of that stuff and kind of boil it down to the bare bones and what you need to
know. So come learn all the nuance, all the basics, all the fundamentals from a great group of doctors. It'll be staffed fully from shared practices group, our DSO that does full arch implants. And we really look forward to seeing you in Texas in late May.