All-Star Practice Spotlight with Dr. Michael Setter

Transcript performed by A.I. Please excuse the typos.
00:00
the dental all-stars. I’m Eric Vickery, president of coaching at All-Star Dental Academy. With me today is my friend and client, Dr. Michael Sutter, a periodontist from Portland, Oregon. And we’re doing our All-Star Practice Spotlight. So welcome, Dr. Sutter. How are you? Thank you. I’m doing great. Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here. I’ve been asking for this for a while now to get you on here. finally was able to get you and convince you and twist your arm enough.

00:29
The concept of the focus of this is you’ve got a very wonderful practice. mean, your practice is just crushing it. We talk about this monthly when we review our KPI numbers. And I just find that the more we share in dentistry, the better we’re going to bless dentistry and other people are going to learn from each other. And so I thought, let’s get you on here. Let’s talk about what makes you guys tick, what makes you successful, what’s your secret sauce. And let’s see if we can help others out there who are looking for the same sort of outcome.

00:59
So talk about your practices for a minute. Just give us a 60 second overview of just where you’ve been, how you got here, and what your targets are, what you’re hitting, whatever you’re comfortable sharing. Sure, absolutely. So I have a private practice dedicated to periodontics and dental implant surgery in Portland, Oregon. I’m a solo practitioner and I have my practice here established since 2011.

01:27
I bought an existing periodontal practice from a retiring surgeon back in 2011. And it was a very, very small practice, but you know, it was the height of the financial crisis. I had just gotten out of school and so it was a very interesting time to come out into dentistry. But fortunately it was, the practice was small, manageable. The debt was not too exhaustive and overhead was manageable. think that was

01:56
a very big key at the beginning. And so I’ve just grown it over the course of now, guess, almost 14 years. And it’s been great. We’re a referral based practice. And so we market to the community of General Dentists and other practitioners around. We don’t do a lot of direct to public marketing at this point. So it’s all been sort of a traditional specialty model. When you purchase that practice in, wow,

02:25
So you just missed, I think probably the roughest time in dentistry that I’ve ever been through. And then you went through COVID with the rest of us that were dealing with that. the second, for me, second hardest time that I’ve ever been in dentistry in the last 27 years. So when you started out, how different was it? Was it insurance? Were you in network? Were you out of network? Was it always out of network? Give us that kind of viewpoint as well.

02:53
Yeah, absolutely. So the previous practitioner was basically fee for service, with the exception of a premier level provider with Delta, I believe at the time. And fees were acceptable, you know, for a profitable practice at that point. The previous practitioner, previous surgeon had practiced there for 43 years actually. so he was 72 when he retired, very successful career.

03:21
And at that point was I think practicing two and a half days a week, still love what he did, but it was not a primary income source at that point in time. he still wanted to make sure he ran a good business with clean overhead and good numbers, but he was definitely winding down over the past five to 10 years of his career. So

03:48
You’ve never had to say, I’m to go out of network with insurance because you’re still a Delta provider, right? Your fees are acceptable. We’ve looked at those and they’re nothing to be concerned about. For whatever reason, you’ve got a great reimbursement rate. In your vision, do you ever foresee that changing and maybe Delta makes some changes and you’re like, okay, we’ve got to do that or you feel comfortable with it? Where are you with the participation level with Delta right now?

04:14
Yeah. Very good question. Um, as far as participation with Delta, I was able to get in early right off the bat with their premier level reimbursement program, which from what I know they don’t offer anymore. so we can’t get, we couldn’t get the fees that we get now. If we were a new practice to over. so starting over, that’s not available. And so, um, you know, I would say that for many of my procedures, um, my Delta fees are within.

04:44
10 to 15, maybe 20 % of my actual fee. And as a periodontist, it’s a little bit different than general dentistry. You know, when we’re doing a procedure, we have a lot of different codes that go into a procedure if we’re doing periodontal surgery. And in private practice fees, we might not charge or bill for every single code because we figure out a fair fee for that service, for that patient, and we agree to acceptance for that.

05:14
for the Delta or insurance, we would then do every fee of what we’re doing, of course, but we would include every code to make sure that we get as close to our private practice fee for service fee. And When I look at your numbers, yeah, it’s crazy, because your production or patient and your write-off rate don’t concern me. And so not only do you have a premier level type reimbursement rate, which is harder to do these days because you’re prior to 2012, but you are-

05:43
able to build things differently on the perio side, which is awesome. If they were to make a change, I would, there’s no question. would just go strict fee for service because it’s always been a dedication to the quality in my practice and the highest level of service. And I have to be able to afford to do that. I’m not willing to compromise my care, my standards of care, my materials, my staff in order to save the dental benefit company money or

06:13
anything like that. yeah, yeah, it’s good. So that is all pretty much the same, but you’ve been able to grow. You’ve been able to really, I mean, I’ve been watching the numbers last couple of years in just incredibly what, if you had to go, like, do you think that was the right timeline? Or was like, Oh man, I wish I would do this before. Like if you had a chance to go back to your yourself, you know, now 11 years ago and say, Hey, these are the things I want to make sure we do over the next five years instead of 15 years.

06:42
What would be some things that you would say to yourself, give advice to yourself that like, this is important to do. These are important things for you to pay attention to as a business owner, as a, as a, as a dentist and maybe, maybe two or three things that are key points there. Yeah, absolutely. It’s a good question. I mean, I believe that dentistry is and practice management and small business ownership, I’m sure as well is it’s a journey. So you don’t enter in at the top.

07:11
And you have to appreciate room for growth. You have to grow as a leader. You have to grow as an employer. You have to grow as a practitioner, as a manager. And so if you enter in at the top, there’s no room to go higher. And so I think if I was talking to my younger self is just stay the course, stick to your vision, stick to your goals, constant improvement, constant growth, learn, always try and be better.

07:37
And so that’s one of my biggest mantras is every year, even when we’re successful, it’s like, okay, let’s celebrate what we did well, where are rooms for improvement? You know, how can we deliver better customer service? What little things can we tweak or change so that we’re constantly evolving? And that’s always been a culture in my practice for my, for my team and myself of never get complacent, always be improving. Um, so you’re, constantly getting better, but you’re also appreciating the growth.

08:05
So I think that’s one thing is stick to your vision and, uh, and make sure that you’re constantly reassessing, uh, your growth and change, and you have to do it as a leader, your, your successes and your failures start and end with the leader. And so you can celebrate those successes and any shortfalls here say, okay, that’s part of the game. What can I do better next time? Yeah. The second thing, I mean, I struggled like anybody else. think, gosh, when I,

08:34
first started, I don’t remember the numbers off the top of my head, but I want to say that annual production before I bought the practice was something like $350,000 a year. And so he was only working two and half days a week doing some of his own hygiene. And so it was definitely a retirement level practice, but I had a lot of growth to do needless to say. I remember I didn’t pay myself for the full 12 months.

09:00
So I put every dollar back into the practice investing in technology and upgrades. There was no internet in the practice. There was no email in the practice. was no digital anything. by 2011? Yeah, yeah, seriously. I know there were things I had never seen before, ledger cards and like it was running Windows 97 with like a QuickBooks check writing program. That was the only digital dentistry we had was it printed checks off a computer. We had a pencil and paper scheduling.

09:30
And so I was really starting almost from scratch practice, which allowed me a lot of opportunities to install what I wanted. But then I remember at the end of the year, I finally wrote, asked my CPA, like, can I write my check self a check? And I think it was like $60,000 at the end of 2012. Like, yeah, put that in your bank account. And I felt like, oh my gosh, look at how big this is. Like, look at this check $60,000. And

09:56
but I had appreciate all the investment that I put in the practice throughout the year. And then we’ve had pretty steady since 2011, um, probably 10 to 20 % growth year over year over year. And so we’ve been very fortunate. And I remember thinking during that difficult time, if you can be successful in these hard financial times, imagine how much better it’ll be when things get easier. And so,

10:21
Just keeping your focus. And then the third thing was, if I would tell myself is make sure you try and fight the find the right team. Try and find this team that’s going to support you and you support them. There’s mutual respect, mutual work ethics, similar values and vision. And you have to, know these are not revolutions in dentistry, but you have to make sure that the people you have on your team are all

10:49
aligned with your vision and what direction your ship is sailing. with either either rowing with you or they’re an anchor and it’s hard to row as a team if you have an anchor. So you have to pull the anchor up and get another rower to make sure the ship is going in the right direction. all right. I just like someone’s listening to this right now and a couple of things are happening. First of all, I want to I want to commend you guys.

11:15
You already have a successful practice. You grew at 20 % last year, which is incredible. So you didn’t add number of days. You didn’t add another provider. You guys crushed it with case acceptance and with production per patient and getting people healthier. That’s what was amazing. So I’ll just put a little icing on the cake there for those listening, but I got to come back to this team thing. So anchors and rowers, I love the analogy. Tell us about a time when you didn’t have that with your team. What did you do specifically?

11:44
Think about that moment where you’re not wanting to drive to the office. You’re like, don’t wanna go into work. I know that’s not the team you have now. So what did you do? Tell us about your process. How did you handle that? It was a challenge. There was one day that I had, one of my assistants was planning to move back home and take care of some family members. It was a planned.

12:11
a planned departure, we had a celebration like a goodbye party. And then I had two assistants at the time, just myself two assistants, one hygiene, one front desk. And that that assistant left on that Thursday. And then I came to work on Monday morning. And there was a note on my desk saying I also am leaving, you know, from my other assistant. So I got to work that day and I had zero assistance. And so it’s like, okay, that was probably the

12:39
like a low point of my entire career is being like, try and invest, try and do the best I can for everybody. And I just felt like, what am I doing wrong? How am I, how am I failing or not succeeding, I guess, maybe not failing, but not succeeding at cultivating a team that isn’t as invested as I am in each other and success in practice. And so I just went and reevaluated myself. I reevaluated the things that I find important and

13:08
Um, I wanted to be stricter in my hiring and onboarding programs. think over the course of time, the practice got a little bit better with team, a little bit better, a little bit better. You know, of course there’s always comings and goings, um, but always trying to seek that improvement so that, that, know, if somebody leaves that next person is going to do X plus Y. so, um, and also sort of asking for help, you know,

13:36
Asking other people, other practitioners, other resources like All-Star, hiring service, coaching to try and see. There are people out there that can take that load off. We can’t do it all. can’t be a doctor, the business owner, the HR, the onboarding coordinator. You know, we can’t do all of that. so, or at least as well as you want in order to be a hundred percent somewhere, you have to take away from somewhere else. And so being willing to ask for help.

14:04
and support from the community and resources out there, I think was a big thing for me. And now it’s the best team I’ve ever had. So when I have the best year I ever had, I have the best team I’ve ever had and they’re committed to the success of the practice and each other. And so we, finally reached the mountain top and it probably took me, uh, let’s see, it probably took me at least eight years of, of, I don’t say struggle, just

14:33
constant ups and downs in order to kind of crest it. Get to those people. mean, I typed, I typed out what a great team you have right now. I mean, I met with them yesterday. You, you, weren’t there and they’re engaged in coaching. They’re, they are looking to get better. They have this ownership mentality, which I think is so hard to maybe it’s, really hard to teach, but you have to find that person who wants, who really has some,

15:00
They want the equity in the practice in a way, somehow. It’s not a job. It’s not even a career. It’s actually level three. It’s actually their passion about it. You can see that in their eyes. leaning in on the meeting. You’re not even there. You guys email me. I don’t have to ask you. You guys email me a list of your goals for 2025. I got this email from you. Just so you know, I forwarded that to all my coaches. go, nanny, nanny, look at this office. They send me their goals.

15:29
There is a, gosh, I think some people who are listening to this might feel stuck with what they’ve got. And so, what were you telling yourself? How did you, I know you mentioned hiring service, I know you mentioned coaching, but what were you telling yourself? Were you feeling like, there’s just no good people out there, there’s just nobody to hire, or did you have a different mentality, or did you have a different type of search, or did you just get lucky?

15:56
How did you, this ups and downs, how did you get here with the team? Because they are incredible. a great question. They are, they are. I’m very fortunate. You’re only as strong as your weakest link. you know, our team is strong, top to bottom, front to back. Everybody has equal investment, equal opportunity to for growth and success. And the biggest thing that I have learned, and I was very fortunate, I grew up in a dental household. My dad was a periodontist. And so I absorbed through osmosis.

16:25
a lot of strategies and things as I was growing up, just seeing how he ran things. And so I had a mentor for many, many years, unfortunately, passed away a number of years ago. And so, but I had a great foundation to grow from that. that always having those core values for the first thing. one of the biggest things that I learned from my father and my grandfather actually was empowering your team, that it is they are not they are employees.

16:53
Only in payroll alone. are team members. are equally qualified to make decisions in my practice. They are equally empowered to provide extra customer care to a patient to deliver services at no charge. If that’s the right thing to do. I we have, I empower them for growth and I set the baseline of the vision and we come up with our core values together and just say, Hey, I want to hear from all of you.

17:23
And what are your ideas for 2025? How do you feel in your in your position? How do you feel growth? What do you want to do in five years in your position? What do you what skills can I help you and support you in learning? And another resource is a book by Michael Avershaw called It’s Your Ship. And that was a really good resource for me to see it’s a it’s about the the the worst ship in the Navy. And he gets in charge of the worst ship in the Navy that then becomes the best ship in the history of the Navy.

17:53
And so it’s all about changing the culture of the ship with the same exact sailors, the same team. went from bottom to beyond top. so, um, so that’s a big thing. And so far as far as the team, you know, um, I think that, that I hold myself to five things. have a, uh, a notepad next to my desk every day that, uh, you have to have a smooth running practice. have to have good systems.

18:21
that respects everybody you want your day to be as with as little stress as you can have. mean, obviously, this is not a no stress present profession, but a smooth running practice, you have to have exemplary leadership, you have to lead by example. So I if the dishwasher needs emptying, if something happens, like I will be in there to do it as much as anybody else, there’s no that’s not my job in my office at all. And it’s starting with me, you have to foster a positive environment, positive culture.

18:50
They want honest and transparent communication. very honest and transparent with what our goals are and what we’re trying to do as a practice and fair compensation. In order to get better candidates, I always set my salary and my hourly rates higher than people are looking for because I expect and hope that we’re delivering higher than everybody’s looking for. So fair compensation is a big part of attracting that initial talent.

19:16
but then it’s a good onboarding and interview process to make sure you have the right people. So I want to talk about that for a moment. I love that. So fair compensation. I have some clients that will tell me, look, I want to know what the going rate is. And I went through the top of that rate. I I never want my team members thinking like I’m trying to just get away with something. I love that. And then I’ve got some offices like I can’t afford that person. Well, I’ll look at like, well, cause you’re in network insurance or, you know, we’re going to have case acceptance at this level or whatever.

19:46
Was there a time where you looked at it like, okay, I can’t afford that person, but the only way I can afford that person is if I hire that person so I can afford that person. You know what I’m saying? Did you ever have that sort of transition or what’s your belief on that? you like, okay, I can’t afford it, but I need this person to get me to that place. Has that ever been a part of your process? You know, you’re investing in the future. so, you know, if you’re a football team,

20:16
And you have an opportunity to get a premier quarterback, but he’s asking for the number one salary in the league. Well, do you want to win a world championship? You better have the best quarterback in the league. so if you’re looking for a front office assistant hygienist, you want the number one person in the league. And I’ve always, I’ve never said to myself, I can’t afford that person. We will find a way to pay the best because we want to lead the pack. so, know, it’s.

20:46
If you look at somebody might want X dollars per hour, say $40 an hour and the going rate is 35. Well, that’s $5 per hour. Can I find $5 in an hour in my practice to improve? No, can find probably 50 or 500, a scale of 10 or a hundred. I can find that with the right person with a more efficient assistant. can be at least 50 % more efficient.

21:13
with proper scheduling and training on the phone, you can bring in new patients and have more efficient schedule. Five, I don’t look at $5 an hour. That’s, that’s nothing. mean, you can, in your efficiency, you can make that up 10 or 10 X or more for sure. Yeah. So our minimum would be four exit. So, you know, if you’re going to give someone a raise, you thinking, okay, 25 % of, of our revenue is payroll. So yeah, four X that and go, all right, they want $2. Can I

21:42
Can I do it? And you’re like $2 for every team member. All right, that’s $10 an hour. We gotta grow at $40 an hour minimum. Can we do that? You know, and works again. This is why you have to be growing constantly. If you’re not growing, you’re declining. You alluded to that earlier and you’re, just really are the poster child for, uh, just continuous growth, having a growth mindset, having a champion mindset. mean, you’ve had your things to go through. You had your challenges to go through and, and yeah, everyone’s got.

22:12
We’ve got personal life that same person’s walking in, bringing all those things with us. so team obviously a huge asset. It can also be an anchor. I think that’s important to point out. What advice would you give to somebody who says, have 80 % of my team is phenomenal and I have this anchor, I have this one person and he or she is phenomenal X.

22:38
but they continue to either make this mistake or they continue to drive everyone crazy or I’m losing team members because of this person’s attitude. You know, you got that, I got some bad apple. And they say, there’s nobody else out there. I can’t find anybody. What would you say to that? Would you just put up with that person? Would you have the stress of not having that person and not be able to find someone? Would you just train them? Where do you lie?

23:06
It’s a good question. And it depends on what, what, you know, bad apple, what’s the core. If the core of the person is good and their values are aligned and you can’t train and change attitude. can’t train and change motivation. You can’t train and change core values. If you have those, you have clay you can mold. And so if it’s a bad attitude, it’s not getting along with people, bad motivation. I’ve, I’ve had employees like that and I’ve had to let them go. There’s no question that attitude.

23:36
That’s a non-starter and there’s a famous saying, if you’re not fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm. Yeah. And so, yeah. And so I’ve, I’ve always tried to hold myself and I have held onto employees too long. Uh, I’m all guilty of that. But if you have somebody who’s struggling with a skill or maybe feeling complacent or not feeling valued in order to get a one X improvement in that skill, in that, in that.

24:05
excuse me, in that team member, you’ll have to put in at least three X, you’ll have to put in three X energy into that to get one X result. And that’s just, I think the nature of the situation, but at interviewing more meetings with them and say, Hey, I really value his employee. It seems like, you know, how are things going? It seems like you may feeling less enthusiastic these days, what’s going on? How can I support you? So that goes back to that honest and transparent communication. And if you show them that you’re not threatening,

24:35
You’re in this together. You’re in there to support them. Hopefully they’ll be in it to support you. You’ll see improvement. You just figure out what is that spark that they need. Are they looking for a different opportunity in the practice? Maybe they want to take on a marketing role. Maybe they want to take on a social media role or something that lights their fire. Because if you can unlock that potential, you’ll have unlimited potential and you’ll gain a long-term employee. think and hope my team knows that they’re not

25:03
it would be very difficult or impossible to find an office that’s like ours that they could go and find the same. So that’s huge right there. Because are you betting on yourself? you betting on your culture? Are you betting on your team? Like, do people really want to be a part of you? And I’ll tell doctors all the time, your culture has a dollar per hour value in your and they’re paying your team members. And some people have a negative dollar per hour culture. So we will have

25:32
a huge dollar, like, I want to work here. I know I don’t get X because I work here, but this is where I want to be. that’s something that the leader has to create. then what if the core is not what you want? if you’re like, I know this is not a good fit. It is attitude. Are you okay with going separate ways with an employee and being without a team member or?

25:58
Are you looking while you’re like, okay, I’m just going to put up with this while I’m looking for someone. How do you handle that? That’s a great question. Um, I think it would depend on the situation, but definitely I would make sure that I try and be as fair as I could to that employee about setting the reasonable expectations and plan to work through it and say, we’re going to set a 60 day evaluation period or a 30 day evaluation period. And here’s what I’m hoping we can see and achieve together.

26:26
You always want to keep it positive. you always want to make it seem like the carrot is just not in their court. It’s in my court too. I have to be responsible for making sure I hold up my end and making sure they’re successful too. So if there’s things that that employee needs, I want to be seen as an ally in providing that as well. So it’s not just them. It’s both of us trying to achieve a result. And if we can’t, then you have to move on and you can say something like,

26:55
You know, we get 30 days of evaluation period, but in order for the practice to be prepared, I want to make sure that if it’s not going to work out that I have to be ready to, you know, put put it feelers out there for another person or something like that. I don’t think there’s ever a perfect timing situation. You’re either too early or too late, too early, too late. And whether it’s adding an associate, whether it’s, you know, team members moving or going on maternity leave, you know, it’s so complicated to be a small business owner because

27:24
you really can’t afford to carry excess weight in your business model and have, we’ll just add another assistant then. We’ll just add another ad person, you know, when they go. And so dealing with that is, it’s always nice to have a, whether it’s a mastermind group, a mentor to talk with, a coach, whatever’s discussed those things, because I don’t think there is one size fits all. I love your answer. Right. There’s not. And that’s why I originally found All-Star Dental Academy in the first place was

27:52
You know, it after my dad passed away and I lost sort of that mentorship role. And even though I had ideas of where I wanted to grow the practice, it’s always helpful to have that sounding board. And that’s where coaching has been beneficial for me is have that ally on your side who’s cheering you on, celebrating the successes, finding deficiencies. And I was never as good at metrics. So I wanted to always dedicate to hard work.

28:17
delivering customer service, delivering a high quality of care and communication to patients and referrals. But how do you, I was not good at measuring and evaluating that. so having a framework for coaching of looking at these, at these KPIs, how are you seeing this and how can you measure this, quantify these to see you can see the growth, not just feel it or check your bank account, which is, I don’t feel like that’s a successful way because then

28:42
All of a sudden, if that’s your metric, your bank account is like, wow, that’s not where I wanted it to be. That doesn’t tell you anything. That doesn’t tell you why or what’s going wrong that’s causing that. It’s, your production per patient dropped or your cancellation rate has increased. You have to keep those KPIs in mind and monthly check-ins with that are key to success. Yeah. Yeah. Very, very well said. All right. Let’s shift here for a second.

29:09
For the periodontist listening or the specialist listening, think that fits in an honest ortho, yeah, oral surgery. What would you say is the number one thing you do that has completely been the reason your practice is where it’s at? Something that boosted your practice. You’re like, wow, that was a lever to pull right there. That really one thing, and it’s probably hard to pick one thing. You can give me a couple if you want.

29:39
If you had to hang your hat on something, what would you say that would be some advice to give out there? Yeah, it’s, um, you know, in, in the world, they always talk about the, Ritz Carlton service, you know, going above and beyond and customer service. As far as surgery outcomes, of course you have to treat patients well, you have to get good results. Um, but I think above and beyond that is how we’re delivering care to patients and referrals and the community beyond where they can get anywhere else.

30:09
You know, making sure our systems are efficient. Their time is respected. Nobody waits in my office. I don’t have a waiting room in my office. I have a reception area. So patients don’t, they don’t wait there. We respect their time. We have efficient systems. The team knows what they’re doing. Everybody’s in lockstep and it seems smooth and organized and it’s transparent. So a lot of these values go to the patient as well and the referring offices. So they want to make sure that we are an extension of them. When they make a referral or a recommendation, we want to.

30:38
meet or ideally exceed their expectations. Uh, so that we are a good reflection of them. Oh, hey, I was really nervous to see Dr. Setter and gosh, they were just, the surgery went so smoothly and I really appreciate everybody in that office. And we want to make sure that, uh, we provide a level of care and customer service, uh, to patients and teams beyond what anyone else can expect. And that’s by far in a way, number one, and all my team knows that, uh, you know, just like the Ritz Carlton team members, they can do anything.

31:08
for a guest that will enhance their stay within certain parameters. And my team’s empowered to do that as well. that, excuse me, that’s the way number one and communication is number two. That goes hand in hand with that is they need to make sure that patients are communicated in their treatment plan, the costs, the timing, the expectations and setting the parameters for how is this going to go, what to expect and we’re gonna deliver just that. And same thing with the referrals.

31:37
Here’s the treatment plan. Here’s the timing. Here’s when you can expect the patient back. Here are the results you can expect and then sticking to or exceeding that. communication is key for sure. I love both those things. with your customer service and with your communication, you’re not only worried about how it goes with the patient, you’re worried how it goes business to business. And you know, your customer is, is your referring office and dealing with their demands and how they want to do things. So

32:07
your phone skills gotta be incredible. So I know some doctors will bury their head in the sand and not wanna listen to those calls. Did you ever go through a process where you listen to calls or did you coach your team up somehow on customer service or phone skills or what did you do there? I know all-stars played a role in that, but in addition to that. In addition to that, I think we want to always tackle the challenges as they come up.

32:33
What questions are you uncomfortable answering on the phone or when you’re face to face with a patient? sort of challenge are you getting that we can help support you in brainstorming? You know, do you take my insurance? Okay, how do you answer that question? One we’re running into right now is my new patients are booking out farther. So how do we handle that uncomfortable thing of Dr. Seder is fortunately in high demand and I like to spend 30 to 40 minutes face to face with each new patient.

33:02
And so we have to build the value in that visit for the new patient saying, you know, it’s not just we were a sloppy office and we’re looking out far and you should call and find the shortest wait time. There’s a reason that our office is unique and people want to come and see me because you’ll get that customer service. You’ll get dedicated face to face doctor time. And I dedicate, you know, certain times I’ve never late for my new patient exams. My team is very well trained. And so.

33:29
Um, we have to make sure that we’re able to, um, overcome those challenges as they come up. And so we all, we, dedicate three hours a month in team training, one, two hour long session. do an hour of coaching with you. do an hour of coaching outside of that with you. And so, um, it’s dedicating the time and making sure everybody it’s useful time and empowered time so they can all bring up questions, challenges. last Tuesday, we had this difficult conversation.

33:57
How can we better handle that? What sort of verbiage? The other day, my hygienist, I was walking down the hall and I overheard, have some new technology in our office at delivering better care for our patients. she’s like, oh, we have this new tool to use today. And in the back of my mind, I mean, like as a patient, that tool is unknown to me and could be perceived as scary. Tools are scary in a dental office. So then I met with her and said, hey, you know, wouldn’t it

34:27
What would you think if we called it technology instead of a tool? We have a new technology that we’re going to implement here for your visit today. Technology sounds exciting. Sounds like, wow, they’re investing in things that I’ve never seen before. Tools sounds scary. So little tweaks like that, that you can always pay attention, always head on the swivel in the office. So that’s great. You took the words right out of my mouth. I literally typed out how much team meeting time are you setting aside each month? Cause I’ll hear from doctors all the time. I don’t have time to meet and train. It’s a waste of time for me to cut out production.

34:56
And so would you say that, I mean, I’ll tell them, you know, four hours a month would be ideal one hour a week, two hours every other week. Do you think I’m in the ballpark and suggesting like, you’re not going to get there unless you’re working on it. You know, football teams aren’t great on Sunday without a bunch of practice all week long. So do you think we’re in the ballpark on the four hours a week? It sounds like our four hours a month, you’re doing three hours a month.

35:18
It’s working for you. a month, a dedicated set aside time. And then we have our huddles. do additional training meetings on top of that. So those are less regimented, I guess. It’s like, where can we fit in a 15 minute meeting or discussion on this? And so I think three to four hours a month is a reasonable target. Um, and I think the biggest thing is if you have a challenge of, how do we do this? The team’s like, where do we do this? It’s like, where do we do this? We want to stay a little bit late. Do we want to dedicate a lunch meeting per month?

35:48
Do we want to come in on a Friday and just dedicate three hours to a longer meeting and see what the team comes up with? You know, those challenges, if it’s solved together, I think you’ll get more success and less, um, negative emotion attached with that. And of course we look at that and say, boy, I’m getting booked out. We should really cancel a meeting and fill that with patients. No, can’t do that because then you’re just burning people out and your fingers not on the pulse. If you’re not checking your blood pressure, how will health, how do you know if you’re healthy or not?

36:18
And so that’s where the staff meetings come in. That’s your finger on the pulse. That’s giving them their voice to the team. And so we make sure we respect that time as much as possible. Yeah. So good. Yeah. Your second thing, communication. For me, I say often, the answer doesn’t lie in communication. The answer often lies in effective communication. Instead of effective communication means I’ve got time set aside to train my team.

36:45
I’ve got time set aside to do a one-on-one with every single team member once a month for 15 minutes. I’ve got time set aside for morning huddles. We will not be effective in our eight to five, know, patients without our hours of training to make it run smoothly. You can’t just expect to show up and have it run smoothly. And I think that’s where leaders, they bend to, you know, the team that maybe doesn’t have ownership.

37:13
and they don’t want to meet and they don’t want to have team meetings. They don’t think it’s valuable. And then you end up stuck at some point and your growth stops. I couldn’t agree more. exactly it. And you said like it’s a commitment to change, even though we’ve had, you know, very, very fortunate success, uh, year over year and hitting production numbers and exceeding collection numbers. And there’s always that dedication to, okay, we celebrate that success, but how can we get better?

37:42
And it doesn’t come down to making more money. You know, the goal in my practice, and this is my, our core value as a team is work hard, treat patients well. And that’s the, that’s the end of the story. You know, with looking at dollar success, that’s the measurement, you know, that’s the value that you can actually quantify, but you can’t quantify, you know, how many happy patients did you have last year? You can’t really measure that.

38:07
How many happy referrals do you have that are happy with your customer service? You can’t really measure that very easily. so, but if you dedicate to yourselves, to the care and the service, um, of your patients, your community and your referrals, the growth, the numbers show up. And so it’s when we do these meetings, it’s not, can we make more money next year? It’s how can we achieve more, better efficiency? If we hit our numbers, how can we take more time off? You know, how can we, um,

38:37
How can we achieve this next level of success? If you’re not constantly measuring and checking in on that, then the staff meetings are the only way to do that. So yeah, that’s absolutely essential. If you’re going to keep pushing for it, unless you have the most amazing team, everything’s running perfectly and has been for six months with no problems, there’s no stress, then maybe you just put the cruise control button. But if you’re not growing, you’re shrinking. so the cruise control just keeps you at the same speed. I don’t ever want cruise control.

39:07
I want constant acceleration. yeah, yeah. Well, they’re going to, they’re going to ask for a raise. The dental supplies are going to go up. The rent’s going to increase, you know, cost, costs are going to go up. We always have to be ahead of that. Yeah. And oftentimes there were, were well behind where were lag measures, uh, behind that. So we’re looking at last year going, okay, well, this is what you did last year. We need to grow 10 % this year. Well, that might just be enough to, to cover those costs that increase. So well, listen, I think it’s more about, um,

39:37
It’s if you’re looking at 10 % growth is how can we get more efficient? How could we treat one more patient a month? How could we eliminate one cancellation a week? And so if you’re, if you’re tackling those little efficiencies, the growth comes shows up. measure growth. Growth is a lag measure because it’s all retrospective. And so what can we do tomorrow? That was better than yesterday. And if we do tomorrow, even 5 % better than yesterday, that’s 5 % growth. love it. Love it.

40:06
Yeah, I’m looking to grow 1 % every day. I’m looking to learn something new every day that’s going to help my clients, going to help me improve. It could be mindset, it could be attitude, it could be systems, it could be verbal skills, it could be technique and skill that way. So always be challenging yourself. Well, I appreciate your passion. I appreciate your willingness to be out here and share with me. And thank you for joining me today on the All-Star Practice Spotlight.

40:32
No, thanks for your partnership and all the assistance you provided and thanks of course for the invite. Appreciate it. For those listening, thank you so much for joining us on this podcast recording. you’re following us in all the places, make sure you share it, subscribe, pass it on to someone who you think could benefit from using this. If you’re interested in learning more about how we support our clients, just send an email, heather at allstardentalacademy.com. She’d love to talk with you and just see how can we support you and your growth.

41:02
Moving forward. All right. Thank you guys. Take care. Yep. Thanks Eric until next time go out there and be an all-star