Doctor & Team Coaching

Alex Nottingham:
“Hey All-Stars, it’s Alex Nottingham here, founder and CEO of All-Star Dental Academy, and I have Eric Vickery, our President of Coaching, and Shelly Van Epps, our COO, Chief Operating Officer. Both of you are executive coaches. Welcome. Yes, we are talking about growth coaching because we did another session where we talked about KPI performance coaching, and now we’re talking about growth coaching.”

Shelly Van Epps:
“Thank you.”

Eric Vickery:
“Hello, Alex.”

Alex Nottingham:
“And so growth coaching, just to make it easy, it’s a combination of the KPI performance coaching—which we’ll briefly talk about, but I’ll also provide a link so you can watch that session—it combines that and team coaching. This is our system. As I mentioned in a prior discussion, this is what 80% of people are doing: the growth coaching program. So, in a nutshell, Eric and Shelly, what is coaching?”

Shelly Van Epps:
“That’s a big question. What is coaching? I would say it’s supporting and helping guide you in a way to get to the goals that you have set for yourself and helping to create a playbook. Think of athletes—you have a coach. What do they do? This is the same thing. This is no different. We’re here to help you identify what’s going well, what’s not going well, what you need to work on, what you need to shift in your practice, and help hold you accountable to those different changes that you may need to make.”

Alex Nottingham:
“Eric?”

Eric Vickery:
“Yeah, so my ‘why’ is helping people achieve a level of success they never thought even possible. How do you do that? By helping patients get as healthy as possible as quickly as possible. So if we’re doing a really good job at coaching, my cup’s getting filled while your cup’s getting filled.”

Alex Nottingham:
“You’re verklempt. Speak amongst yourselves.”

Shelly Van Epps:
“He’s emotional.”

Alex Nottingham:
“Yes.”

Eric Vickery:
“The greatest part of a coaching session is when you get back on a future coaching call and the client’s talking about how they’re doing the things we’ve been discussing and getting these results, and you’re going, ‘This is exactly why we talk about the things that we do.’ Some of coaching is training—it’s very training-oriented—but it is customized to what you feel good about. We’re always going to give you options. Like we said before, we’re not consultants. We’re not saying, ‘Turn to page five and do it just like this.’ When you get great results, it means we’re doing the right thing. Simple as that.”

Alex Nottingham:
“When I talk—what he said—I mentioned this in a prior session when we talked about KPIs: coaching is something that the Fortune 500 values. They find that coaching is one of the top three things that help them grow. Now, for those who do or do not know our history, I was a Tony Robbins top business coach 15 years ago, launched All-Star over 10 years ago using the philosophy I learned there. Then I partnered with Eric Vickery, President of Coaching, to build a program that we’ve been doing for over 10 years that’s affordable, sustainable, and it works. We have this idea of self-funding coaching, which we’ll mention—we’ll talk about that right now—and then we’re going to go into the elements of growth coaching.

This philosophy again is consistency over intensity. We can stick with this for a long period of time; it works. Coaching allows you to see gaps in your business. You’re alone on an island without coaching, and you’re bringing professionals and this mastermind group to see what other dentists are doing around the country and bring that data in. So it is—I’m going to say it and say it again, and we all believe it—you’re not serious if you’re not coaching or working with an outside coach. It doesn’t have to be All-Star, but if you’re not doing this on a consistent basis, it’s necessary to compete in this new world. And we mentioned before, it’s not just making a lot of money—that’s important—but also having a great life. So tell me, because I know the answer, but I’m going to quiz you. I asked Shelly last time: Eric, what’s self-funding coaching?”

Eric Vickery:
“You know, for me, it’s as simple as this: if you look at your time and money that you’re investing with us in developing you, if we’re not getting a return of—I say 3X; it could be higher—that’s the minimum. So whatever you’re spending, if that’s not coming back threefold, we have a problem. And I can say with supreme confidence that any team willing to implement the things we’re talking about will see a return. It’s when you run into roadblocks of people willing to grow. I like to start my growth coaching sessions by asking the team, ‘All right, dental team members, raise your hand if you’re perfect.’ And of course, nobody raises their hand. Every now and then there’s a smart aleck like me, and they raise their hand. And I think what we’re saying is, look, we’re not asking you to be perfect.

We don’t believe you know it all right now. I don’t think anybody believes they know it all right now. Are you willing to grow? Are you willing to spread your wings and say, ‘Hey, you know what, I’m not perfect. How can I improve me?’ And not worry about, ‘But look at Shelly, though. Watch her. She’s not saying the right things.’ No, look at yourself and say, ‘You know what, if each of us are growing’—I like the pillars of the Pantheon—’if we’re all growing as pillars on a team, then the business, the whole Pantheon, is growing as well. And that’s going to trickle down to all of us. Patients are getting healthier faster.

Team members are growing financially and in their freedom because the practice is growing. But we’ve got to be willing to do it. And if you do that, you’re going to get that ROI right back to you—a minimum of 3X.'”

Alex Nottingham:
“So I want to split these questions up between the two of you because I’m going to put a link as well where you can watch the video about KPI performance coaching specifically. So we’re not going to spend a ton of time on that. But in a nutshell, for those like myself—I don’t want to watch another video. Just tell me right now, Eric, I’m giving you an assignment, Mr. President. I want you to talk to me about KPIs in general, performance coaching, what that is, what you’re looking at, what are the benefits, okay? And then what’s happening with the KPI performance coaching beyond that, okay? Hold that thought, and then Shelly, I want you to talk about the component of growth coaching, the second component, which is team, okay? So I want you to focus on what team coaching is, what you do, and does it help? So let’s start with that. Well, KPI and then team. Eric, go. Tell them about the KPI aspect of growth coaching.”

Eric Vickery:
“So when I’m looking at KPIs with a doctor, I’m thinking, how do I get them to see their practice through the numbers, how it’s performing? I’m always reminded of the movie ‘The Matrix’—you know, I don’t see the numbers running down the screen anymore; I just see people walking around the streets. When I look at someone’s numbers, I see how many hours their hygienist is working, how many days a week they’re working. I see how much open time and the value that they’re losing. I see how many active patients they have. There’s not a lot. I see if there’s an AR issue. What I’m trying to do is teach this doctor how to be an entrepreneur, get their MBA in dentistry, and understand, okay, if that number is X, I need to go push buttons one, two, three in my practice and shift this. I’m going to lead my team from the data. I’m going to manage through the numbers, and what you measure, you improve. So we’re going to look at it next month and say, okay, did it work? We’re going to take lag measures, KPIs, and create lead measures with them. What is your scorecard going to be starting tomorrow at your morning huddle? What are you going to do? Just an example: we’re looking at your tracker, Dr. Nottingham, and your new patient numbers are really low. We don’t just look at the number of new patients; we look at them by source. Well, your Google new patients are actually higher than we usually expect, but your referral new patients are actually low. This is a big concern. That means there’s a personality gap between you and your referring top 20 patients. Why aren’t people just organically sending to you? There’s something in the personality and the customer service and the experience that’s not triggering people to say, ‘You need to go see Dr. Nottingham.’ What is it about that? You witness when you self-reflect, and then we go into a deep dive, and then we create a system on asking for referrals, and then we watch that number grow. That’s right.”

Alex Nottingham:
“So the KPIs lead you—they lead you; the key performance indicators lead you to where you start to coach about. So you have a number of these; you customize it for each office. We talked about that in the other video, that it’s not boilerplate; it’s not one way—we customize. That gives you—it tells you a story, and then you act. So you’re making decisions. What else are you doing with KPI or the performance—same call—performance coaching? What else are you doing?”

Eric Vickery:
“Yeah. Well, for example, in that story, we would put a system in at the morning huddle about how to ask for referrals. We’d put a lead person in charge of that. Then we’d say, okay, your scorecard is each person is going to ask two people a day for a referral, and you’re going to watch that happen. You’re not micromanaging; you’re keeping score. You’re performing day to day in a way that makes it tangible for lead measures to show up on the KPI next month. I’m going to start seeing a difference in the number of referred patients we get. We’ll go from new patients to collection rate, to AR, to write-offs, to insurance. Should you be accepting insurance? What’s your production per patient per hour by provider? What’s your production per patient, both in hygiene and in doctor production, separately by provider? What are those industry norms, those BAM indicators that we want you to be north of? So we can look at—I just got off with a fairly new client, and I’m going, you know, you’re paying your hygienist X, and you’re producing this number here. It’s not enough hourly to afford what you’re paying the hygienist. We’ve got to change something. What are the buttons and levers that we pull to do that? Then we get into lead measures. Does that make sense?”

Alex Nottingham:
“And you also mentioned as well that P&Ls—which is profit and loss, balance sheets—all those things come into play because it sounds like to me—I’m listening freshly—it’s like you’re a detective. You’re looking at the crime scene, right? What happened at the crime scene? How do we tell a story of what needs to then be resolved and fixed? Then that leads your coaching. As I mentioned in a prior discussion, Shelly is always on my case that I want to see numbers. If you don’t give me numbers, it doesn’t mean anything. So the numbers support what you may intuitively know, and then you can start making decisions both on what’s right and what also the numbers say from there. So it leads to that. But it’s not like what I’m hearing is you’re not spending your entire time just on the KPIs. You’re using them to guide you, and then you start making decisions to fix it.”

Shelly Van Epps:
“And then you take that—if I’m speaking out of turn—but you ask the lead measures, what you’re talking about in those KPI calls. You’re talking about, okay, this is what we need to do. So Eric just mentioned you need to be asking for referrals. So if the doctor leaves that KPI call and just walks in on Monday and says, ‘All right, team, you’re going to start asking for referrals,’ and they don’t know and they’re not comfortable asking for referrals, they’re not going to do it. So now you have your team calls with your coach, helping guide them in how to have those conversations organically and in a comfortable way. Then you can start to hold them accountable for that particular thing. That goes all the way through. Every time we identify something in those KPIs, we go, okay, our next team call, let’s talk about cancellations. Let’s talk about preventing the cancellations with your team so that they have the verbal skills to be able to lay down the foundation and build that urgency so that it’s not just a cleaning anymore. It’s an appointment, a reservation. They don’t have that same verbiage anymore.”

Alex Nottingham:
“Well, this is the beauty of the way we do coaching and the way we do mastermind because coaching has two pillars, right? You’ve got to deal with the visionary doctor and make decisions on where we go—that’s the KPI performance and leadership coaching part. And then now we’ve got to get it done. And the toughest thing and barrier for every dentist is the team because if they can just do tasks, they’re happy. But now I have to motivate people and I have to translate that to the team. That’s where the team aspect comes in, and same thing with the mastermind. We have the visionary aspect of mastermind, the team leaders part of the mastermind, because you need both. That’s rocket fuel. We talked about the visionary integrator, the co-visionary, to be able to make that happen. So we talked about the KPI, the performance coaching area—that’s one set. Now we’re coming to you, Shelly, which is team. And again, our coaches, they do both. I’m not saying that only you got—just for the purpose of this discussion where I’m giving one question to each. But now that you did their KPIs and performance coaching, you’re seeing what they need to improve. Now we’ve got to deal with the team, right? We have to motivate in spite of the team. So tell me about the team coaching. What is it? Does it help? How do you do it? And then lastly, how do you overcome resistance? Because that happens too.”

Shelly Van Epps:
“That happens. You know what, sometimes it’s a matter that the resistance isn’t going to be overcome depending on the particular team members. So we can help you in the KPI discussion on if that might be happening. But when we’re focusing on the team meeting or the team coaching sessions, it can be anywhere from your entire team and the doctor; it can be a specific department that needs some support or additional support. It’s really, again, customizable. But in general, we’re talking to your whole team, and we’re basically laying out the foundation of an ideal patient experience—from the phone, answering those phones, asking for the referrals like Eric was just talking about, all the way through the entire experience from check-in to check-out—so that we know exactly how that process is going, and every team member knows what the steps are. They can step in for one another, and there’s cohesiveness and cross-training actually organically occurring because they’re all present in those meetings. As the coach, we guide it, and there are times with breakout sessions where they say, ‘Turn to your partner. You’re going to role-play this particular verbal skill right now. Right now you’re going to do it.’ And it’s not a matter of you’re going to do this later because we know that it’s not as likely to happen.

I can say I’ve been that office manager. I’ve been the one trying to encourage and get my own team going. And then another coach comes in, and they say the exact same things that I’ve been saying. And all of a sudden the team thinks, ‘My gosh, this is the best idea that I’ve ever heard in my whole life. Never heard this before.’ And as the office manager, I thought, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me. We’ve been talking about this for like the last three years.’ There’s power in having a coach say it so that the doctor or the office manager doesn’t have to. We’re on the same page; we’re encouraging in the same way. It’s just a different voice, so it’s not feeling as personal when you are pointing out some of those things. People tend to take a little bit of a step back and say, ‘Okay, they’re talking about—a lot of people have this issue. It’s not just me. It’s not just our practice.’ Everybody is doing this; a lot of teams are doing it, and now they start to have a little more of that buy-in. And once they start practicing it and they hear it and they see it—I had one team just yesterday; we started the emotional exam. I said, ‘How’s it going?’ They said, ‘I can’t believe how connected I felt with my patient.’ I went, ‘Nice,’ and the doctor’s over here doing a little dance behind the scenes because he’s been trying himself to get them to do it because we hadn’t had a team meeting on it yet. And he’s like, ‘I want to get there. I want to get there.’ I said, ‘We’ve got to go through the steps, and we’ve got to prep them.’ And now they’re off and running, and it’s very exciting to see that starting to happen and for them to start owning it.”

Eric Vickery:
“Yeah.”

Eric Vickery:
“Yeah, I think it’s important—just picture in your mind—your coach is meeting with you at the beginning of the month to do KPI analysis, and in preparation for your growth coaching, you’re creating an agenda with the doctor. The doctor and the coach create an agenda: ‘Okay, this is what we’ll be covering with your team. This is what we covered last month. How are they doing implementing that? What do we need to do to follow up with them?’ And so it’s just like this nice flow from month to month of accountability to action, accountability to action. And step back, let’s go back over that, review it. All right, let’s put that back into play because the communication is going to disappear. And if you don’t have boots on the ground, people running forward with the things that you’re talking about, it’s just going to be like you had this meeting and you listened to someone and nothing happened. You’ve got to have a team who want to change, who want to improve, and want to grow. Shelly and all the coaches have great stories about how clients do the skills that we train, and they come back with amazing testimonies and just go, ‘I can’t believe that worked. And I’m so excited now to keep doing this.'”

Alex Nottingham:
“This is why growth coaching is—I really discourage doing one or the other, meaning doing just KPI or team on its own. I will say there are times when KPI performance is appropriate. Maybe you’re in transition with teams or you’re just not ready yet; you need more help from a coach to get ready because there could be some issues with the dentist and the team. I do see benefit to doing that as a starting point potentially, but I would not just throw a coach to the team on its own and you’re not there. There’s a magic to both of them working. We’ve been doing this for over 10 years because you need to see how—that’s why I wanted to have you guys—how it works together because you could have only KPI and only leadership, and there’s benefit to that because you’re coaching the visionary, but it’s—I look at the team part as the booster, not on its own, because the booster now—now you’re actually getting action happening. You’re getting the exponential effect because you could talk about it, but then we have to implement it. Right? But on its own, it’s not as powerful. Together, it’s powerful, and it’s only two calls a month. That’s it.”

Eric Vickery:
“Yeah, you mentioned something scary, Alex, that us as coaches will go, ‘No, no, don’t do that,’ where the doctor goes, ‘Yeah, meet with Shelly. Team, go meet with Shelly. You guys need coaching.’ This is a real problem. We don’t allow this. This is a deal breaker. If you want us to coach your team, guess who’s also part of the team? The doctor. The doctor’s part of the team. And if you say, ‘I’m above this. I don’t need coaching,’ what you’re saying is you’re perfect. And the team’s looking at you going, ‘No, you’re not perfect.’ And if you don’t need coaching, we don’t need coaching. And that’s a recipe for disaster. The doctor’s got to lead by example here. Got to lead by example. They’re looking to their leader to say, ‘Are you in on this, doctor?’ ‘Wow, doctor’s in on this. Okay.’ Yeah. And honestly, if you’re a team member who’s stubborn—and let’s be really frank—if you’re stubborn, if you have high ego, if you think you know it all, and therefore you don’t need a coach, don’t work with a coach. Because there’s nothing more frustrating than a coach trying to help you and support you, and you’re going, ‘No, I’m okay getting the results I’ve always gotten.'”

Alex Nottingham:
“Yeah, my mentor Chet Holmes over at Tony Robbins would say, ‘I don’t want to waste your money and my time.’ And so I know often, Eric, Mr. President of Coaching, you’ll say to the coaches, ‘Listen, if you encounter a coaching client like that, we’ll just kind of try to wrap that up,’ and we’re good about that. I mean, we want to make sure it’s a good fit. If somebody’s not coachable, we don’t want to be coach. So let me kind of wrap this up a little bit because I think you guys did a great job explaining a lot of the issues about growth coaching—that it’s both the KPIs with the doctor and the practice owner typically, and then it’s also having the team coaching combined. That’s the most powerful coaching that we do. Again, two calls a month. Shelly, you want to say something? Yeah, please do.”

Shelly Van Epps:
“Can I clarify? Yeah. Can I clarify one thing before you wrap it up? You’ve mentioned KPI, and we had Eric talking about KPI, I’m talking about team. I want to make sure it’s very clear: you’re with the same coach for both of those things. And we have a whole team of coaches. And what’s really amazing is that because we have a team of coaches, we have people with all different experiences. And so we work really hard to make sure that that coach is a good fit for you and your team and your practice. And so I just want to make sure to mention that, that it doesn’t look like you have one person over here doing your KPI and you have a different person working with your team. It’s the same coach.”

Eric Vickery:
“That’s right.”

Alex Nottingham:
“No, I’m glad that you—I did mention it earlier in the segment, but I’m glad—it’s important that we reiterate that. Eric?”

Eric Vickery:
“And some of us aren’t able to take clients right now. So I know that maybe Shelly and I are on here. We have a team of great coaches. We’re just representing the culture of us. Don’t call up and say, ‘I want Eric or Shelly to coach me.’ We have a maximum allowable clientele that we’ve both reached. And this is really about coaching overall.”

Alex Nottingham:
“That’s a good clarification, yes.”

“Well, I want to be clear that both of you—this is very important—both of you are not taking new clients because part of it is the clients that you do have, they stay. And that’s also one of the—I joke or not joke—but one of the issues we have is because the way we designed our system, the coaching, it’s affordable, something that you can stick with a long time. People love their coach, and they stay for a while. The President of Coaching is always working with our COO in bringing on new coaches and making sure they’re trained because here’s the thing—I cannot, we cannot assign a coach, will not assign a coach that is not trained, understands your self-funding program. They spend six months minimum to get trained, to work with clients, shadow, and know everything back and front. We have a system that’s successful, but we have to demonstrate that these coaches are someone we would be coached by and we will assign. So it means we’re often on waiting lists for coaching. So when you find a coach, stick with them. We’ll do the best we can to make it work for you. Definitely reach out. We’re always in the process of onboarding some great coaches. But yeah, you’re not going to get these executive coaches. But that’s okay. We need the leadership there.”

Eric Vickery:
“Well, and that doesn’t mean there’s something that you’re not going to get, right? You’re going to get exactly the same as you get with us. It just happens to be that we have a full caseload right now. You still have access to me or Shelly if need be. But our coaches—I say this all the time—we’ve got coaches that are better coaches than me. I say this all the time. We’ve got phenomenal coaches. I bring coaches in with clients because I need help.”

Alex Nottingham:
“This is true.”

Eric Vickery:
“In specific situations, I’m doing that with Larissa with a client right now. So yeah, I want everybody to hear this: just because we’re the two that are representing the coaching division here doesn’t mean you’re calling and asking for Eric or Shelly. You’re calling and asking for the coach that’s the right fit for your situation.”

Alex Nottingham:
“And this is something we talked about—you guys are hearing some of this—this is why it’s nice in this podcast format that when you hear the banter behind the scenes, we set out that we’re going to find the right people and pour into them, that it shouldn’t be—it has to be Eric and Shelly. That means we have not done a good enough job. That means it’s people-dependent, not systems-dependent. You have to have a certain level of people. Shelly and Eric are amazing people. Every coach that comes in is an amazing coach, and they pay to be trained. It’s not like where we’re—you know, it is a process. They have to—and they’re not guaranteed. So they’re good people, and they’re smart, and the system is what does it. If you have a good, smart person, which all they—they follow a system, then it’s just personality. You may not like Eric and Shelly. They sound good on the podcast, but, you know, they’re tough to work with, okay?”

[They laugh.]

Shelly Van Epps:
“Okay, now I will say I had a client. I transferred them to Cheyenne, and I did that because I felt she was the better fit for that particular practice and what they needed. Yeah, and she’s amazing. And I knew that in working with them, I’m like, ‘You know what? You need some of what she has that I might not be the best person for you.’ And it’s okay. And it’s okay if it’s the reverse too, and you’re looking at your coach like, ‘Is this the right fit for me?’ That’s why we have a team, and it’s so awesome that we’re open to that. We want to make sure you’re getting what you need.”

Eric Vickery:
“Yeah.”

Alex Nottingham:
“And we always say this for clients that when you start with All-Star, if at any point you’re like, ‘This coach isn’t for me’ or something—and it rarely happens, very rare—but when you say it, if you don’t say it, it happens. If you say it, it doesn’t happen. But as long as you set things up and you understand that if anything happens, you have access to the President of Coaching, you have our COO, and we can always see if there’s a reassignment that’s necessary. Sometimes it happens. It’s rare because again, we train them; they’re all similar in terms of great people, and they know the system. You’ll be happy either way. And there might be after a few years, you’re like—like you said, you’ve had clients for some time, they’re like, ‘You know what? It’s time for a change.’ And sometimes the coaches might suggest, ‘Why don’t you try a different coach for a period of time? We’ve done a lot together,’ because we’re a family. You don’t see this behind the scenes, but Eric leads every month, and he does one-on-ones with every coach every month. We do training all the time, plus not just events. Every month we do training with all the coaches. We do events with them. And they share ideas. It’s a happy family, and we want to—they’re so passionate about getting results for you because here’s what happens—and I’ll go a little bit off the deep end, we’ll wrap it up here—but what happens is in any situation, same dental office, the patients may not feel comfortable coming to you, and they end up leaving. And that’s unfortunate because they weren’t able to express. So we at All-Star, no matter what you’re doing—hiring, coaching, online training, mastermind, events—if you ever need anything, reach out. We want to make sure that you’re comfortable, and we put the vision—we put what we’re looking to serve over our personality. Because to us, if something has to ever change or improve, but it makes you happy, it’s always about you. You are the hero of this journey. All of you are dentists, and we love to talk with you. And so lastly, I’m going to put this with—well, kind of the next step—Shelly can help us with that. But essentially, a couple of ways: if you’re interested in coaching, you can reach out depending on where you’re viewing it. Sometimes you’re able to purchase it online right there, a package that makes sense for you, or you can ask us to talk more about it. I think that we talked about this as well, that you can always upgrade or downgrade packages. We basically have two: it’s the one call or two calls. Occasionally people want to do more—that’s rare—but it’s available. We have on-sites that are available, but 80% of our clients are doing the two-call; some are doing the one. That’s enough because we’d rather you be able to stick with it consistently over intensity. We built All-Star to last. It’s something that you can do—come to coaching, do the online, come to events—and you can do it year after year and enjoy yourself. Make the money, as Eric was saying, you’re going to make a return on money, return on happiness. That’s our passion. As Eric said, transformation is our passion.

Unless you guys have anything else you want to get in there. I know you clarified you coaches do all of it. I get it. It’s not one or the other. Thank you, President of Coaching Eric Vickery, COO Shelly Van Epps. I really appreciate it. And yeah, share this video, this podcast with your friends. They need to know about coaching. It’s really important. Everybody should be doing coaching. And until next time, go out there and be an All-Star.”