Doctor Coaching

Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA:
“Hey All-Stars, it’s Alex Nottingham here, founder and CEO of All-Star Dental Academy. And with me is Eric Vickery, our President of Coaching, and Shelly Van Epps, our Chief Operating Officer. And both of these guys are executive coaches. And we’re talking about—”

Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA:
“KPI Performance Coaching. So what is KPI? Let me start with the President of Coaching because this is like your jam. What is KPI coaching? We’re gonna go right into it. Before we get into KPI coaching, what are KPIs?”

Eric Vickery:
“Yeah. So key performance indicators—this has become a very common acronym over the last 10 years. We started tracking this number in 2001, this information. So the tracking that we’ve done has been around for a very long time, and there’s a wide array of things. But we can put a metric to almost anything in a practice. So you want to know how well you’re converting new patient phone calls. You want to know how many new patient phone calls you’re getting. You want to know your case acceptance rate—what percentage, what dollar amount. You want to know how much open time you have and the cost of that. You want to know if you’re collecting what you produce, how much you’re writing off. You want to know not only your daily production by provider but your production per patient or per hour by provider. So new patients by source. I mean, we track anything you want to track that you’re really wanting to improve. What you measure, you improve. That’s where we’re going with this.”

Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA:
“That’s what KPIs are, and there’s a number of them. And the reason they’re key performance indicators is like, it’s not every indicator you need to know. Like there are softwares that we like and dislike, but they’re out there. And even the practice management systems, they’re giving you a lot of information, but, A, you often say some of it isn’t necessarily correct. And second, it may not be useful information. So you have to be able to really understand what you’re looking at and what impact does it have?”

Eric Vickery:
“That’s right.”

Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA:
“And I just want to—”

Eric Vickery:
“That’s right.”

Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA:
“What impact does it have?”

Eric Vickery:
“When you’re being really polite, we say ‘garbage in, garbage out.’ So if you’re not using your dental software—your practice management software—correctly to even, like, break an appointment or schedule a new patient properly, it’s going to throw everything off. I just looked at a—sorry, Shelly—Eaglesoft client’s reporting. And this is what happens with any practice management software. It told me that the doctor saw 569 patients last month. Well, I know that he wouldn’t have survived if that were the case. So it’s just because—and I won’t bore you with all the details—it’s just the way it is in practice software, and it’s just some things that you have to count manually to get the right numbers out of it. And we’re looking to say, what do you want to grow in? Let’s watch that number, and we’ll show you what levers and buttons to push based upon the number. Your perio percentage is low—we know what verbal skill and system is attached to that perio system, as an example.”

Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA:
“So Shelly, why are KPIs important, would you say?”

Shelly Van Epps:
“Ultimately, when you look at these numbers, and like Eric was just mentioning, you can actually go in, dive in, identify what’s working really well, what’s not working very well, and you can tweak your systems, tweak the way that you’re going about your day-to-day to help improve those particular numbers. So if we find a failing spot, it’s like putting a bandage on it and figuring out, okay, we’re gonna fix that particular area, which is gonna improve the health of your practice overall.”

Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA:
“And I think, Eric, you wanted to comment on that. You’re taking notes as we go.”

Eric Vickery:
“So, yeah, exactly what Shelly’s saying. These are growth measurement tools. We use them to change systems, and your information, your ideology, your intention is meant to create action. But the gap between those two things is accountability. That’s where the coach comes in and says, ‘We’ve seen this a hundred times before. This number is low or high because this is happening in practice, isn’t it?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Here’s the system that you can follow to do.’ And now it’s about implementing a verbal skill or a system.”

Shelly Van Epps:
“I think that’s great too. And you mentioned earlier, you know, a lot of the softwares will give you a lot of information, but we don’t always know what to do with it. And that’s why this KPI coaching is so instrumental because we, as your coaches, can look at those numbers and help you understand. Otherwise, it’s analysis paralysis, and you’ve got so much information, you don’t know what to do with it. So we key in on this. Yeah, go ahead.”

Eric Vickery:
“Mm-hmm.”

Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA:
“And I just thought it was funny though, like even in your operation as COO—not even, I know you’re a coach as well, executive coach—but I’ll be like, ‘I want this,’ and you’re like, ‘What are the numbers to support it?’ And I just feel it. ‘So, Alex, I don’t go by feel; show me the numbers.’ So you’re pretty hard on the CEO when it comes to that. So, you know, you’re an equal opportunity employer with respect to that. So what are—”

Eric Vickery:
“Yeah.”

Eric Vickery:
“Great.”

Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA:
“They don’t lie. So you kind of started mentioning, Eric, about the key performance indicators you use with clients, and there’s a lot. And I know you customize—you guys use a tracker that’s customized for every office that you do, and they get to keep the tracker and utilize it. Just a couple, because I want to keep this brief. I know the DISC profile Cs are going to want every little profile, but if you can give us a couple that you might look at. What could you throw out there that are some common ones you’re doing with coaching?”

Eric Vickery:
“Yeah. You know, as a coach, I think you get into a routine, and then you start to see where the client’s coming from with their information and their data. And it’s slowly you start adapting your normal routine to that client’s needs and where you’re not really shortcutting the data and going straight to something, but you’re like, ‘Okay, this client really needs to focus on this. Let’s go right to that number first.’ But from an overall perspective, the first thing I would say to you is most doctors look at production, and that’s great to set a target and a goal. But if you’re not collecting it, what does it matter? So the first thing I will say, just those out there, are you collecting 98% of what you produce? And that gets into a whole conversation of, am I producing the insurance fee? Am I producing my office fee and doing a write-off? And there’s a whole other discussion to look at and talk about what percentage. I would say this: if you’re writing off more than 10% of your total practice production, that’s a KPI to look at and say, ‘Uh-oh, why? What’s happening?’ And that takes you down a conversation like insurance freedom, and then we get into PPO trackers and what percentage you’re writing off. And you just start, as a coach, the more you look at the tracker, the more you review it with your client—your dentist—you’re really teaching them an MBA in sort of ways of how to run your business. It is a one-page document. I took five years of our yearly summary—Shelly’s amazing at modifying trackers and making them beautiful—we take five years. He was selling his practice. We just took five yearly summaries, cut and paste, put them in there. They wanted proof that that was accurate data, just not typed in. But you can literally see the growth over five years that we were a part of in creating to sell his practice.”

Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA:
“Well, let me add this. Shelly, I wanted to turn this to you because I think this can also show some of the KPIs that we use because of this. We have this concept with our coaching called ‘self-funding coaching.’ Tell me about that. And maybe both of you could list us a couple of self-funding KPIs that we’re using to be able to accomplish it. So what is self-funding coaching, and why is this unique with what coaching we do?”

Shelly Van Epps:
“So self-funding coaching is essentially, just as it sounds—what you’re paying in to have us assist you, you’re going to see that return at minimum within the first 90 days. That’s our goal, that’s our aim. And so in looking at these KPIs—these key performance indicators—we’re able to identify easy opportunities within your practice to make just a couple of small changes very quickly to start to see that happening so that we can take a deeper dive into your practice over a longer period of time. You’ve got that return on investment with working with our coaches. Each practice is different. One that I like to look at very early on is broken appointments. That tends to be a painful, painful place for a lot of practices. And if we can focus in on that in particular and help turn that around for your practice, that is a huge opportunity for many practices.”

Eric Vickery:
“Yeah, I don’t think they understand the value of that lost time.”

Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA:
“I want to just note—and yeah, ROI is return on investment for those that are not familiar with the terminology. The other thing I like to point out is that this idea of self-funding coaching came from when I worked with Tony Robbins. I was one of his top coaches, business coaches, and that was the idea. We were taught as Tony Robbins coaches to be able to self-fund coaching because if coaching is paying for itself, you’re going to keep doing that. And then just a little history lesson here of how this all came to be—that was a philosophy that I instilled with All-Star. And then Eric, who was with me since the beginning pretty much, bringing him on as President of Coaching, and he had a system that’s very similar to self-funding. He wasn’t calling it that. He had a very affordable process that you can stick with over time. That has become the All-Star Dental Academy coaching program. And the idea is that you can coach for many, many, many, many years because it’s self-funding, it’s affordable, it’s something that you can stick with.”

Eric Vickery:
“Mm-hmm.”

Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA:
“I know many of you love the book ‘Atomic Habits’—it’s consistency over intensity. And that’s something that we do here at All-Star Dental Academy—all of our products are something you can do year after year. They don’t break the bank, but they have to pay for themselves monetarily and personally and professionally—that you’re getting value out of it. I get a lot of complaints from people, and there’s some great coaching and consulting out there. But if it’s very expensive and it takes a long time to get a return on investment, dentists are going to lose interest. I know I’m very impatient—no, me. And so I know others out there want to start seeing results, and we also know by motivation theory when you get a lot of little results—little results over time—you’re more motivated. Not only do we get little results, we get big results as well that happen, but it’s the little results that keep you engaged, and then you get the big ones here and there, but that’s not what keeps you going. Eric, all right, Shelly.”

Shelly Van Epps:
“I love what you just mentioned about it not all being monetary, because for some people it truly is their work-life balance that they need assistance with. And sometimes those KPIs—open time—are we able to condense their schedule in a way to be more effective and efficient with their day-to-day, optimization of their schedule? Things along those lines make a big difference in their personal life as well. It might not necessarily be monetary, but it makes a huge, huge impact for their life.”

Eric Vickery:
“That’s right.”

Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA:
“Eric, you want to say something?”

Eric Vickery:
“Yeah, I think of a story. So we have a client in Oregon who was able to work longer than eight-hour days, and so they did three tens. They decided to go to three tens—they work Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Now they’re losing two patient hours a week, and now they’re producing and collecting more than they were in a four-day workweek because we put systems and verbal skills and just communicating the right way to patients and scheduling the right way. And so you’re right, Shelly—you could do a lot of ways. I mean, we go deep into KPIs. We can look at profit and loss with your percent of income and talk about where your expenses are and help you with that. Reverse engineer some numbers. So there’s a lot there—KPI coaching.”

Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA:
“And I think that—and I do want to speak to that for sure—is that it’s not just money in terms of—I think it’s a raw deal if we say, ‘Okay, we can make you more money, but your work-life balance is going to suffer,’ or ‘You’re not going to enjoy what you do.’ We want you to have it all. And that’s why in addition to coaching, we have other modalities—our online training, which is a requirement for the coaching because it’s part of that process. We have mastermind for both team and dentists. We have events, leadership, so many things that are there that supplement it. And let me ask you this, Eric—we talk about KPIs, and is that all that you’re doing? Because what we’re talking about here, just KPI coaching itself—we have another—we’ll do another podcast about growth coaching—but in KPI Performance Coaching, is that the only thing you’re doing with a dentist—is KPIs?”

Eric Vickery:
“Gotcha.”

Eric Vickery:
“No, we’re doing—I mean, Shelly and I both have a background, as do the coaches, in leadership training that we’ve been through. So we’re also helping the entrepreneur side here, and as well as the leadership side—those three hats we talk about them wearing: artist, entrepreneur, leader. So we’re also doing leadership coaching. I just got off the phone with a client that I’ve worked with for, I don’t know, 10 years, and we’re talking about how to do one-on-ones and how to be a leader in those meetings—not only understanding your numbers, but how to be a leader. And he was talking—he said, ‘I’ve listened to the Rocket Fuel podcast three times now.’ So he’s a huge fan. So let’s just say he got a request to do a review and talk about that. So no, we’re doing leadership training. We’re talking about team building. You know, we’re even helping doctors when we have that meeting on how to have work-life-family balance. You know, maybe there’s therapeutic coaching we need to refer to. Nothing’s off the table.”

Shelly Van Epps:
“I think to speak to what Eric was just mentioning, everything is customizable with what we do. And that’s why we love that flexibility as coaches with All-Star, because if you’re in need of something—if you have a challenge with a particular employee, that kind of lends to the leadership to some extent, but you don’t know how to approach that particular situation, you don’t know how to help hold them accountable—we’re there to help bounce those ideas off and work with you in coming up with strategies and plans, and then to help hold you accountable and checking in with you each time we have another call and say, ‘Hey, how’d that conversation go?’ Or in between, you know, sending each client a text and saying, ‘Hey, how’d that conversation with Alex go?’ or whatever it might be. So we’re there to help hold you accountable, just the same as you’re working to help hold your teams accountable. So it’s a good support mechanism.”

Eric Vickery:
“That’s right.”

Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA:
“There’s an important distinction, and we talk about this on our website as well with our coaching, is that it is customized because—and this is something that we push back about—we don’t think it’s the most helpful, but there’s philosophies that ‘This is the only way it’s going to be done, and we’re going to strip you apart like a military.’ That was the old way—military. It’s ‘Forget all that; we’re gonna do it this way.’ And, you know, the military is—you break them down and build them back up. No, we meet you where you are at.”

Eric Vickery:
“Yeah.”

Eric Vickery:
“No.”

Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA:
“And that’s partly why it’s more affordable, because you don’t have to redo and reinvent the wheel. And I think that’s a very important distinction. Dentists appreciate that—that you listen to them, and you find—that’s what we do—a lot of training on personality types and leadership and so on—that we meet them with that. That’s a very important distinction. Eric?”

Eric Vickery:
“Yeah, I want people to hear this. You’re in CEO therapy when you’re meeting with your coach for KPIs—you’re trying to figure out what’s going on with the business, understand it, and break it down. And I think some people make the mistake of thinking that coaching is only when there’s problems and ‘Help me get out of a problem; help me fix this,’ when really coaching is about taking you to the next level. Yeah, we can help you fix stuff; we can help you get out of that. And now we say, ‘Great, things are awesome. What’s next?’ And that becomes high-level thinking partnership—that’s where you’re thinking, ‘How do I take this to the next level? What’s the next level of your vision? You accomplished it; you’re not done. We’re always growing.’ And that’s where coaching really starts paying off.”

Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA:
“So tell me, Shelly—let’s ask you—who else is involved? So with this coaching call—the KPI Performance Coaching Call—who’s involved on this call? Is it the doctor only? Is it the team? How does this work? And who’s on the calls? And then I also want to hear from either of you—how many calls are we doing? What’s the commitment in terms of time?”

Shelly Van Epps:
“Yeah, so with the KPI coaching in general, it’s the doctor or the practice owner. However, with certain practices, they heavily rely on their office manager or team leader, and they invite them in on that particular call. Sometimes we have spouses that join on those particular calls that are wanting to know more about the business. And so it’s, again, customizable for sure—the doctor or the practice owner. But if they are wanting that support from somebody within their practice, we welcome that. We just want to make sure that we’re getting and giving them the support that they need. And if it means that their wife needs to be present or their husband needs to be present, by all means, we welcome them on those calls. The KPI calls are generally one call per month for an hour at a time, and so we’re there to support you through that. And then in between, as things come up, our coaches are always available by text or email, communication that way in between those particular set reserved times with their coach.”

Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA:
“And then, okay, so we said once—did somebody say like how many times we do it? Once a month, right, Eric? The coaching calls—I just want to confirm. I know it, but I want to hear it from you, right? So it’s once a month.”

Eric Vickery:
“Yes. Yep. Yep. Yes. Yeah, once a month. Yep. Yeah, KPI coaching once a month. And I think—look, we do have high-performance coaching. You can go every 10 days and meet with a coach there. That is a level of coaching that we can get into. Of course, it’s just, what does this person need? When you talk about this, KPI would be the base model of what we can do for a client and meet with them monthly and say, ‘Look at your lag measures—your KPIs—and now from that create lead measures. What’s your scorecard gonna be? What’s the action you’re gonna take daily to fix the numbers that we’re seeing? And what does that look like?’ And just pick one to three things that you know they can do in the next 30 days, create some accountability to that, and then move on to the next thing. Keep growing.”

Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA:
“I think about the 80-20 rule—Pareto Principle—and I think for us, what we see is that 80%—and we’ll talk about this in the next podcast about our growth coaching, depending on what order you see it—we have these two go together—is the growth coaching where there’s two calls. That is the most popular. And then you also have just the one KPI call, which is second in popularity. That’s going to be about 80% of clients do that. Then you have 20% that will add on an extra call. They might do leadership coaching or insurance freedom or others. And some might even have a coach come in. But what we look to do is model what has worked over many years and seen success. And we know that—we know from a precept, everyone should be coaching if you’re serious about your dental practice. And this is something that can be—stick with—one or two calls a month is enough to keep a practice strong and fit and going. And they’re overachievers, of course, and don’t want to be an underachiever. And let me ask you this, Shelly and Eric, and I kind of maybe alluded to it. I talked about coaching versus consulting. Just really briefly, what’s the difference?”

Shelly Van Epps:
“You want to go, President? You don’t want to go? Okay. I would say that the main difference is that we’re customizing, and we’re supporting you in a hands-on, unique way. And a lot of times you hear the consulting—it’s just, ‘This is what we do,’ and they’re telling you in a set way. I’m vulnerable enough in an initial call to let somebody know, ‘Hey, you’ve got a successful practice, and if I come in and I try to change every little thing that you’re doing, please fire me, because I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel.’ We want to support what you already have going on, and we want to continue that growth that you have. And so we’re supporting you in whatever way that you personally need. That’s a coach, and we’re helping hold them accountable on an ongoing basis as we go. And so by doing that, we’re able to see that growth that they’re looking for.”

Eric Vickery:
“Yeah.”

Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA:
“Eric, let me ask you this question. This one’s for you. What are the benefits of coaching versus just doing it on your own, like leading yourself—do-it-yourself coaching?”

Eric Vickery:
“I think there’s strength in numbers. I think you don’t know what you don’t know, and we have seen hundreds of practices succeed and fail in different ways. And why would you—it drives—I’ve got to—just bear with me for a second, okay? Air some laundry out here, dirty laundry. Like clients would get on the phone with me like, ‘Yeah, I did this and that.’ I’m like, ‘Whoa, why did you do—no. Okay, how are we going to recover from that?’ And they’re like, ‘Actually, I have done that.’ Had a client going on, and he was like, ‘Yeah, I hired this person, came from over here, friend, niece, don’t like her, got to let her go, and hiring this one.’ I’m like, ‘Okay, you just—’ It’s, again, like I was saying, you need a high-level thinking partner; you need someone who’s going to be in conversation with you about business decisions—not that we have all the say or are telling you what to do—but it’s really nice to have a sounding board to drive these ideas around. If you don’t have a mastermind group that you’re working with, you know, that’s a challenge. You’re out on an island, and you don’t know what you don’t know. You’re risky. You’re risky at best.”

Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA:
“It is very risky to, you know, especially to do it on your own and assume you know and not have—the great thing about the coaches is they see gaps in your business. They also are masterminding with other coaches. They see what’s happening in the industry, and you want to have that knowledge. So if you’re serious—if you’re serious, you’re coaching, and the Fortune 500 found that coaching is one of their top three factors to success. So, I mean, we can go example over example—great athletes and so on. If you’re serious, you want to grow as coaching, but it doesn’t mean it has to be binary, like ‘I do nothing’ or ‘I spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.’ It can be somewhere where it’s something that you can do and stick with. That’s why we built it that way. I also noticed you mentioned hiring. I didn’t mention before that we—of course, we have a hiring service. I had to throw that in there as well. I mean, that’s another expertise to help have that look. It’s professional support that’s really important.”

Eric Vickery:
“That’s right.”

Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA:
“Now, what would be—let me kind of wrap this up. I want to keep this a shorter session. What would be next steps, Eric and Shelly? Well, Shelly, you do operations here at Bethesda. So what would be next steps for those who are interested in KPI Performance Coaching or Growth Coaching, where we add the other call—and we will do a video on that—what are the next steps? Like, ‘I want to do this.’ What would be the next steps?”

Shelly Van Epps:
“I’d say we need to get you on a call with Heather, and she can help determine if KPI Coaching is the right fit for you, if Growth Coaching is the right fit for you. I’m assuming if you’re a member with All-Star, she’ll be able to support you in that transition to add the coaching. If you’re not yet a member with All-Star, she’ll be able to help you get set up to become a member and to utilize our online program in conjunction with your coaching. And so she’s our person. You want to definitely be talking to Heather. There’s a webinar available to learn more if you don’t quite want to talk to Heather yet, but you want to learn more about All-Star. I would say the Dental Practice Excellence webinar with Alex would be amazing. But otherwise, we need to get you on the phone with Heather.”

Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA:
“Right. So what I would say is definitely, yes, the webinar is a great way if you haven’t to learn about our philosophy, our training, because the online is something that’s a requirement for coaching. And then depending on where you’re watching us or viewing us, you may be able to purchase online, if you have that capability—the online program or even the coaching that includes the online; it’s packaged in there. You can do that as well. Now, one of the things I would mention is that if you choose the Growth Coaching or the KPI Coaching, you could always switch depending up and down each one or add. So there’s a lot—again, we customize to you. Or if you want more—somebody’s like the—we talked about D in DISC profile—you know what you want, you do it, you get it, and you move. Others who want more information, you can get a lot of information. Heather will, and our support team will be happy to help you and explain it to you as well. And so that’s coaching in a nutshell. Thank you, President of Coaching. Thank you for explaining the KPI Performance Coaching. And of course, for those who are listening to this as a podcast, remember to subscribe and all the great stuff and share with your friends. Coaching is really important that we demystify what—that’s a good podcast—demystify coaching. Demystify what that’s all about.

And until next time, everybody, go out there and be an All-Star.”