KPI Dental Coaching

Transcript performed by A.I. Please excuse the typos.

00:00
Hey, All Stars, it’s Alex Nottingham here, founder and CEO of All-Straight 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 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. Well, what is, before we get KPI coaching.

00:30
What are KPIs? 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.

00:56
You wanna know how well you’re converting new patient phone calls. You wanna know how many new patient phone calls you’re getting. You wanna know your case acceptance rate, what percentage, what dollar amount. You wanna know how much open time you have and the cost of that. You wanna know are you collecting what you produce, how much you’re writing off. You wanna 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.

01:21
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. 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. That’s true.

01:51
it may not be useful at information. So you have to be able to really understand what you’re looking at and what impact does it have. 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 break an appointment or how to schedule a new patient properly, it’s gonna throw everything off. I just looked at a, sorry Shelly, Eagle Soft clients reporting, and this will happen to any practice management software. It told me that the doctor saw 500 and.

02:20
69 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 at Practice Management 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. Oh.

02:46
your perio percentage is low. We know what verbal skill and system is attached to that perio system as an example. So Shelly, why are KPIs important? What’d you say? 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.

03:16
to help improve those particular numbers. So if we find a failing spot, it’s like putting a band-aid on it and figuring out, okay, we’re gonna fix that particular area, which is gonna improve the health of your practice overall. And I think, Eric, you wanted to comment on that. You’re taking notes as we go. 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,

03:46
is meant to create action. But the gap between those two things is accountability. That’s where the coach comes in and says, oh, we’ve seen this 100 times before. This number is low or high because this is happening in practice, isn’t it? Oh yeah, here’s the system that you can follow to do. And now it’s about implementing a verbal skill or a system. Okay. 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

04:15
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. Go ahead. I just thought this 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? I just feel it. Alex, I don’t go by feel.

04:44
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- Numbers don’t lie. 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.

05:11
for every office that you do and they gotta keep the tracker and utilize it. What, just a couple, cause I wanna keep this brief. I know the disc profile C’s are gonna 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? 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.

05:39
and slowly start adapting your normal routine to that client’s needs. Where you’re not really short cutting 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 throw this out there, are you collecting 98% of what you produce? And that gets into a whole conversation of,

06:09
Well, am I producing the insurance fee, or 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 are you writing off? And…

06:34
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, Shelley’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.

07:02
but you can literally see the growth over five years that we were a part of in creating to sell his practice. Well, let me add this. Shelley, 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 then?

07:31
Why is this unique with what coaching we do? Yeah, so self-funding coaching is essentially, just as it sounds, essentially 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.

08:00
to start to see that happening so that we can take a deeper dive into your practice over a longer period of time. So within the first 90 days, we anticipate that we can see that ROI very quickly. 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,

08:30
That is a huge opportunity for many practices. Yeah. I want to just know that last time. Yeah. And ROI is return on investment for those that are not familiar with the terminology. The other thing I like to point out 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 at Tony Robbins coaches is to be able to self-fund coaching. Cause if coaching is paying for yourself, you’re going to keep doing that. And that’s, and then

08:59
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-Fund. He wasn’t calling it that. He had a very affordable process that you can stick with over time. That has become the All-Strong Academy coaching program. And the idea is that you can coach

09:26
for many, many, many, many years because it’s self-funding, it’s affordable, it’s something that you can stick with. I know many of you know, love the book, Atomic Habits, it’s consistency over intensity. And that’s something that we do here at Ulster Dental Academy is 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.

09:52
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 a 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 a little results that keep you engaged.

10:20
And then you get the big ones here and there, but that’s not what keeps you going. Eric? And 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-days, 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

10:48
It makes a huge, huge impact for their life. I think I think of a story. So we have a client in Oregon who was able to, you know, work longer than eight hour days. And so I did three 10s, they decided to go to three 10s. 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 work week because we put systems and verbal skills and just communicating the right way to patients and scheduling the right way.

11:17
And so you’re right, Shelley, you can 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. And I think that, and I do wanna 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 gonna suffer.

11:45
or you’re not gonna 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. Now let me ask you this, Eric, is, so we talk about KPIs, and is that all that you’re doing?

12:12
Cause 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? No, we’re doing, I mean, Shelley and I both have a background and the co as do the coaches in and leadership training that we’ve been through. So we’re also helping the, the entrepreneur side here and as well as the leadership side, those three hats, we talk about them wearing. So artist, entrepreneur, leader.

12:42
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 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. We’re even helping doctors when we have that meeting

13:12
how to have work-life-family balance. Maybe there’s therapeutic coaching we need to refer to. There’s, nothing’s off the table. Shelly, anything you wanna add that’s being done besides KPIs on these calls? Well, 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

13:42
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.

14:12
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. 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 philosophy that this is the only way it’s gonna be done. And we’re gonna strip you apart like a military, that was the old way, military work.

14:40
It’s forget all that we’re doing 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. 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 very important distinction, Eric. Yeah. The, I want people to hear this. We are…

15:09
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?

15:37
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. So tell me, Shelley, 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 wanna hear from either of you, how many calls are we doing? What’s the commitment in terms of time?

16:06
So with the KPI coaching in general, it’s a doctor or the owner, 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,

16:37
We welcome that. We just wanna 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.

17:05
Um, communication that way in between those particular set reserved times with, with their coach. And then with, okay. So we said once, did somebody say like how many times we do it once a month, right? Eric calls it. Just want to confirm. I know, but I want to hear from you. Right. So, yeah, once a month, once a month. Yep. Yeah. And I coaching once a month. And I think, look, we do have high performance coaching.

17:32
You can go every 10 days and meet with a coach. 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.

18:00
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. You know, I think about the 80-20 role 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,

18:29
the one KPI call, which is second in popularity, that’s gonna 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…

18:58
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, they’re overachievers. Of course you don’t want to be an underachiever. And let me ask you this, uh, Shelley and, and Eric, and I kind of maybe alluded to it. I talked about coaching versus consulting, just really briefly. What’s the difference. You want to go president? No, it’s yours.

19:25
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 in there telling you in a set way. I, 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.

19:54
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, 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.

20:24
I think there’s a 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 gotta, just bear with me for a second, okay? There’s some laundry out here, the 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, oh no, okay, how are we gonna recover from that? And they’re going, I shouldn’t have done that. Had a client come in, I was like, yeah, I hired this person, came from over here.

20:53
friend, niece, don’t like or 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 gonna be in conversation with you about business decisions, not that we have all the say or telling you what to do, but it’s really nice to sound, you 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 it, you don’t know, you’re risky.

21:22
You’re risky at best. It is very risky to, you know, especially, you know, 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 mastermind with other coaches. They see what’s happening in the industry and you’re, you’re get, you want to have that knowledge. So if you’re serious, you’re really, if you’re serious, you’re coaching and the fortune 500 found that coaching is one of their top three factors to success.

21:52
So maybe you can go example over example, great athletes and so on. If you’re serious, you wanna 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 is really important.

22:22
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 Shelley? Well, Shelley, you do operations, you’re a best with. So what would be next step for those who are interested in KPI performance coaching or growth coaching where we add the other call and I will do a video on that. What is the next step? So like, I want to do this. What would be the next steps? I would say we need to get you on a call with Heather and she can help determine, help determine if.

22:50
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 wanna definitely be talking to Heather. There’s a webinar available to learn more.

23:19
Um, if, 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. Um, but otherwise we need to get you on the phone with her. 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, cause the online is something that’s a requirement for coaching and then depending on where you’re watching us or viewing us.

23:44
that there 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, 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 talk about D and disc profile, you know what you want, you do it, you get it, you move, others who want more information.

24:14
You can get a lot of information. Heather will, in 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, COO of 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.

24:43
demystify what that’s all about. And until next time everybody, go out there and be an All-Star.