All-Star Practice Spotlight with Dr. Ted Knight

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

00:00
Welcome to Dental All-Stars. I’m Eric Vickery, president of coaching at All-Star Dental Academy. And with me today is my friend, Dr. Ted Knight. And we’re gonna do an All-Star practice spotlight. This is something that we do monthly, that we bring in key leaders in our organization, All-Star, key clients who’ve made a real difference in their practice, all for the purpose of benefiting our listeners. We want you to hear exactly what they’re doing

00:29
to make their practice excellent. And so before I even let Dr. Knight get the microphone, I’m gonna share some things that I’ve seen him accomplish over the last several years. So since 2021, he has gone from a 65 % in-network insurance-based practice that was riding off $41,000 a month on average to now riding off

00:58
almost zero, no more write-offs for insurance, which is amazing, which meant basically, hey, that production that you were doing is now being collected. And to really get into the weeds of the practice, I’ll just say this, we saw 40 % growth on a very successful practice when it came to collections. And that’s kind of crazy to see. to be fully transparent in 2021,

01:26
Your average collections were 161,000 a month. And now I’m going to use last year just because it’s finished year in 2023 went from 141 to 212,000 a month. So an incredible difference. And oh, by the way, you had a hygienist move away and you didn’t replace her and you’re not working more hours. You know, there’s, no more doctors working really. I mean, you’re looking to add an associate. And so

01:55
All that success and you’re not saying, I’m satisfied. I’m done. That’s, that’s not what we’re doing, but we are having conversations all the time at our coaching sessions about where are you going and how are you growing? And so what I want other people to think about is how does this solo doctor with three hygienists make this happen? And not only where you were three years ago, but how did you get to this place? And so I’m certain there are a few things that those listening would love to hear. What’s your secret sauce?

02:25
You know, Hey, how do I tap into what it is that’s making you successful? And we want to just pull the veil back and let people in on that. so, you know, another way to, uh, I guess put perspective on this is if, know, Dr. Ted Knight, 2024 was talking to Dr. Ted Knight, 2004, 20 years ago, what would you be wanting to know? What, is it that you wish you knew earlier? And I know timing is, what it is, but not if you had to do it over again. That’s not what I’m talking about, but

02:53
what advice would you give to the younger version of yourself? And so I guess I’ll leave it, just open mic to you, Dr. Knight, for a while and then I’ll ask you some clarifying questions as we go. But what are just a handful of things that you think you do so well in your practice with your team that’s making the difference in your ability to get patients healthier faster?

03:15
Thank you, Eric. Uh, you know, as I listened to some of those numbers that you put out, one of the things that makes me reflect on is there have been times throughout the decades, I’m, I’m, I’m at the end of my third decade of practice. Now there have been times where I said, I can’t grow anymore. There’s, there’s no way I could grow more than I have, than I am, you know, I’m, I’m maxed out as far as I can go. And then somewhere along the line.

03:46
we find a way to grow a little bit more. And so when you ask me, what is the thing that most contributed to that? And it was a conversation I had with a mentor who said, bring in consultants, you know, and they’re, know, you might not use the same one for 30 years and I haven’t, but at different times in your career, they’re going to have a perspective.

04:15
that allows you to think, allows you to challenge yourself and allows you to grow. And add one more crown in that day, add one more big procedure, take some classes and learn how to do this. You know, be it implants or ortho or root canals or whatever, whatever you enjoy, you know, and the nice thing about being a general dentist is I don’t

04:42
have to commit to one thing for my entire career. Early in my career, I did orthodontics for maybe 10 years and I just didn’t enjoy it. And I just stopped doing it. And I dabbled a little bit at that time in implants and I just found it was going to be difficult to be really good at orthodontics and really good at implants. And I had to make a choice on which one I wanted to get better at. I

05:11
chose to go implants and prosthodontics. Yeah. think younger docs, doctors who, know, obviously we, none of us know, don’t know. We don’t know. We don’t know. And so when we look at your practice and I have the tracker, I have the data, I look at all the numbers with you guys all the time. And so I can see like what you’re doing. It’s like that matrix. I don’t see numbers anymore in the tracker. just see, we’ve decreased cancellations. Oh,

05:40
We’ve increased our production per patient here or there. What I typed out was, would you say it’s the clinical knowledge and training that you’ve been through that’s made the difference? Would you say it’s a niche that you’ve put yourself into and, this is just what we are? Or is it leadership? Is it your team? Is it your systems, is it your verbal skills? Is it all of the above? What do you circle on that? Yeah.

06:10
But I it’s all of them. I think it’s how you sequence them that makes a difference. mean, if you try to grow a practice and try to over-promise and under-sell, meaning you can’t do what you’re promising you can do, you’re going to have a lot of people who are upset. So being able to…

06:39
do the things that you say you can do in a timely manner will help to make that difference. And the chair side conversation that, know, of compassion, trying to be a relatable person, you know, you don’t always have to have the exact interest as your patient. You know, we’ve talked about before, be interested, not interesting, I believe is what we’ve said. So if.

07:07
You know, you can sit there and, know, within dentistry, you can’t have a lot of conversation or else you’re not doing dentistry. So your conversation comes at the beginning of the appointment. Um, you give your patients tools to be able to communicate with you without verbally having to say things. And then you have to honor those. You know, if you tell a patient you’re going to stop, if they raise their hand, you need to stop if they raise their hand. I mean, if you don’t, you’re just eroding your trust and.

07:37
It erodes their respect for you and those are patients that usually will not stay with you long term. It is such an all of it. I look at your practice and I go, man, the team gets you there. And other teams always intact, right? Like you could be missing a person and it puts stress on people, but you’re in pursuit of it, which requires your leadership hat. So it does take all of it.

08:05
But thinking of a young dentist out of school listening to this, they’ve probably gotta have their foundation, their clinical expertise first. But when you think about it, and I’m watching dentists like you, being a coach for the last 20 plus years, you’re constantly pursuing your clinical, I guess, mastery. And that never ends. think sometimes people, dentists I hear,

08:31
and younger age, they think, Oh, I can’t do that yet because I haven’t got, you know, I’m not going to be there yet because I haven’t done that. And, and really that’s, that’s not really the case. You’re going to do what you know how to do and do as much of that as possible as you progress in that training. And it’s going to get bigger and better as you go. And I’m making sense how I’m trying to explain this. I’ve had, I’ve had a young dentist in recently that I’ve been mentoring. And one of the things I asked him to do with, the age of digitizing,

09:00
We don’t have models that come back of teeth and crowns. You really just get the crown back. And what I’ve asked him to do is, you know, turn that crown over. So you’re seeing the internal aspects of it and take pictures of that and start to think of what does an ideal prep look like? Does, the internals of that crown look like that? And if it doesn’t, what do you need to do for the next time?

09:29
to try to get to that point, to always be getting closer. I don’t believe in perfection. I believe in striving for perfection. But you have to constantly challenge yourself to do the best work that you can and not just say, that’s good. Whatever your standard is gonna be, is gonna be the standard of your staff. There’ve been times we went through and have placed a restoration and we take a radiograph of it.

09:59
And it’s just not the way we want it to be. And I just tell them, go, we’re, we’re going to get this right. So we’ll take it out and do it again. Sometimes you get behind in the schedule, but they understand that I’m striving for perfection. And, uh, after years of working with, uh, some of my, uh, team members, they know if they look at something, they’re like, he’s going to want to redo that or he’s going to want to.

10:27
make that better than what it is. you know, staff members will sometimes come to me and say, can you look at this radiograph and tell me if it’s okay? And I go, I don’t need to, because you’re coming to ask me for permission to say that it’s okay. So you already know it’s not okay. That’s good. So that’s good. know, when we, and it’s not, it’s more of a challenge to, uh, do your very best work. You know, again, it’s not perfect. don’t.

10:57
I don’t think you can get there. mean, I don’t think there’s any such landing place. You’re constant, right? It’s constant. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We say two things. We’re not very satisfied with it though. Okay. Yes. So we’re, not perfect. We’re in pursuit of excellence. And we also say we don’t fail because we didn’t get the intended outcome we wanted. It was a learning opportunity. It was practice. And so if we can learn from it and acknowledge that it wasn’t the best X-ray, it wasn’t clinically what we wanted.

11:27
Can we receive that feedback and improve upon it? Otherwise, it is failure. All right, good. So you mentioned your team. You’ve had some team members for a really long time. I think you have some really strong team members as well. I know a lot of people out there are thinking, man, I keep having to hire here. And not that you don’t have to hire people, I get that. But you didn’t put your finger on. Yeah, hiring right now, that’s right.

11:55
If you had to put your finger on how you keep team members long-term like you have, what would you say is one or two things that you pride yourself in on employee retention and keeping the team together?

12:12
addressing small issues early and not letting them build up into maybe a bad habit that a staff member’s creating and all of a sudden it gets to a point where you have a blow up. And all of a sudden that blow up makes them feel insecure.

12:38
Uh, unappreciated and within that small timeframe, they’re kind of looking around, Hey, maybe there’s something else out there I should be working at. Uh, and if you can, uh, if you, if you make a mistake like that and, I’ve done it I’ve done it recently, we come in, we have a conversation. If you were in the wrong, make an apology. Let’s figure out a way where we, uh, you know, what’s a perfect day look like.

13:07
You know, we had our staff meeting yesterday and when we finished, said, you know, we have some time here. I want you to break up into your groups, break up in the hygienist, break up new assistance, break up in the front desk. What is your ideal day look like? Okay. And so it’s different for each one of those groups. As we start to figure out what an ideal day looks like for each one of those groups, how do we come back together and see how these can amalgamate so that everyone has a great day?

13:36
Many times people that work in hygiene don’t understand the difficulties of how the front office has to schedule those patients. If we’re making treatment plans with the assistants and the doctor and it’s not clear that that front office person has to interpret that stuff. If there’s not a clear route slip coming back to the hygienist or to the assistants, you know,

14:05
we sometimes are not going to have setups the right way for the experience that the patient’s going to have coming in. All of a sudden it looks like we don’t know what we’re doing. Again, we can lose trust. So the more we can communicate with each other, the better off it’s going to be for everybody. And ultimately we don’t have one person having a perfect day. We have nine or 10 people, whatever your staff level is, having a perfect day.

14:34
So heard a couple things in there. One, I heard effective communication, not just communication. I heard effective communication that you work through. I also heard that you have team meetings. And sometimes we run into doctors like, don’t have time to be having team meetings. We’ve got to produce. And yet here you are at the level you guys are getting patients healthier, faster, collecting enough money, you’re growing. And yet I hear you saying you’re carving out time away from patients to

15:05
meet with your team. Why do you do that? How much time do you do? Why do you think that’s important? Is that a part of the recipe here? Absolutely. In the past, we were trying to do this, Eric, in an hour at lunchtime. And it just got to be too tight. mean, maybe a patient runs over. Patients are coming in for the afternoon appointment.

15:31
You know, if you, if you don’t have a dedicated space that you can isolate away from this, from patients as they’re coming in, created a problem for us. So we ended up opening it up to two hours and trying to create a little bit of a buffer on the front end. And then if we had more time on the backend, we could talk about, uh, I mean, there’s a list on in the staff lounge, um, where they can write down concerns they have and.

16:00
And we discuss them at the end of our staff meeting. What do we need to do so that team members are feel like their concerns are being heard? But the other is don’t come with a problem that you don’t have a solution for. Yeah. Yeah, that’s so true. So you do two hours how often?

16:21
Every, mean, once a month. mean, we do that two hour meeting once a month. And, uh, every day we do staff meet, we do, uh, morning meetings that are 15 minutes. It used to be 10. Now we make them 15. Just gives us a little bit of time. So, you know, for 30 years, I’ve, done a morning meeting. We can go through the schedule. Uh, mean, today we had, uh, five new patients coming in, you know, what are their ages? Who’s related to who?

16:51
Uh, meaning is it a new, uh, mother and child, uh, have already seen one of their spouses before. Uh, is it somebody who is a returning patient? Maybe we haven’t seen them 10 years and all of a sudden they’re coming back. Maybe they moved back to the area or maybe they weren’t getting the communication that they wanted from their, um, current dentist. they said, Hey, I remember I, I enjoyed my experience when I was at Dr. Nines. Yeah.

17:19
And they left because you resigned from insurance and they came back. So I also, I’m hearing something frequently and actually when we were just getting started, your team corrected you on something. So twice now you said staff meetings, but I heard your team say something earlier. What are they, what do they say? Team members. Team members. It’s a team meeting, not a staff. We’re not an infection doctor. I heard them telling you that. So team member lounge. Team member lounge. member lounge. Oh, it exhausts me. know, staff lounge.

17:48
It’s easier to get to. All right. So what I’m hearing is two hours a month. Now I would say we have some teams that are maybe not even the size of your meeting. They’re doing that twice a month. They’re like, have two two hour meetings, but they might be at a different level of growth pattern. They’re trying to really have a steep incline in growth. They might need more communication, newer team members. Has there ever been a time we had more than that? Or has two hours been like, that’s been the sweet spot for you guys?

18:16
we’re probably going to have that now. have a new team member for our front office staff that we, you I really started to decide to hire on personality rather than on dental experience. You know, I’ve had people come in with a wealth of dental experience, but they are the face that’s communicating with patients as they walk in the door or on phone. And some people

18:41
uh, aren’t really interested in listening to the customer service format that, uh, I came across with All-Star to try to make that experience better for the patient. you know, they have a way that they’ve done it in previous offices. They think it works well. We try to, you know, show them why this way can be more effective. Uh, they don’t really get on board with it. And, um, and I just found that was frustrating. So.

19:09
When I have somebody come in and maybe they don’t have any dental experience, but I recognize that they have a good personality. Sometimes they come from the food service industry. They don’t like those hours anymore. You know, they look at my, you know, nine to six or eight to five days. They’re like, Hey, that’s what I’m looking for. And other people who have had that career are like, Hey, I want Wednesdays off too. And I’m like, well, that’s, that’s just not what we do.

19:37
So this is our schedule. Um, you know, our current person, uh, that we’ve brought in as a team member, uh, was excited about that schedule. She was excited about how she’s been welcomed in, uh, picking, picking the right team members. Uh, when you start to get beyond three, four, you know, you get up to 10, you need to make sure you’re picking the right personalities that can work with each other. And if they’re, this is a heavy topic. All right.

20:05
You’re opening a can of worms now. No, I know. how do you know? I mean, how do know you’re finding the right people? What have you seen? I always bring people in for a day on the job to just see how we interact with each other, see if it’s something they want to be a part of. And if it is something they want to be a part of, then we start to look at is their personality traits going to be effective for the role that we’re trying to put them into.

20:35
So, you you and I’ve talked about it before and we’ve utilized different strategies for identifying strengths in personalities. How somebody accepts communication, you know, certain ways you can talk to someone and it’s effective, certain ways you can talk to someone and you shut them down. Yeah. Approach matters. Engagement matters. Here we are back to effective communication. So I’m taking good notes.

21:03
And I want to touch on something. We have a conversation that the doctor has with a new hire. Every time we bring someone with experience on board, maybe, you even if they think they have great ideas, the cautionary tale here conversation is you bring on Betty. She’s got a ton of experience and the danger is you already have a way you’re doing it. She comes in with all these ideas and yet she’s not really in the team yet.

21:30
And so what we ask the new team member to say is, we would love for you to journal and write down all the great ideas you have on things you’ve experienced in the past. And you’re going to meet with me, the doctor, once a week, and you’re going to share those ideas with me first. And we’re going to talk about those. And some we’re going to park. We’re just going set aside for a moment, and we’re going to come back to later. And I share with them, say, because we want you to really experience how we do things and see how those results work, just because it may not be a way you’ve done it before, doesn’t mean

21:59
It’s wrong or right, it just means that’s how we’re doing it. And once you’re really in the team, and everybody gets to know you, and you’ve earned their respect, there’ll be more opportunity then for us to learn from you at that point. And I’m not guaranteeing you that we’re gonna adopt your ideas that you’re bringing with you, but I do wanna hear them. There’s just gonna be a time for them to show up. About three months into this deal, we’re gonna then approach those ideas. And there’s so many reasons why. But, you know.

22:25
new person on the team trying to tell everybody who’s been there for years how to do things. And I’ve got a better way. It just doesn’t work very well. And also, I think new team members like to feel valuable. They like to feel like they’re bringing something with them. And they feel this need to justify the hire and really prove themselves to the ranks. And that’s not the way to do it. Actually, the way to do it is to say, oh, I love what you’re doing there, team.

22:52
I’m gonna try that out. I’ve never done it this way before. This is great. Write down the way you like to do it, the way you did it before, and you and doctor can talk about it. This will prevent so prevent so much rubbing of the wrong way. know, where all of sudden team members just don’t quite, like, oh, she’s really, really bothering me the way she’s telling me how to do things all the time. You know, just ingrain yourself, you know, get in with the team first before you start teaching. That’s the first thing you got me thinking. The second thing is,

23:21
You mentioned training. So over the years, there must have been some training that you’ve done. And we could work from most recent to backwards maybe. Maybe there’s training you wish you were doing 20 years ago. But when you think about training and training your team, what would you say is some of maybe three or four things that have, and maybe more, that have really stood out to you over the years that you’re like, okay, this is a no brainer for a practice. Oh, geez, Eric. I think, mean, you’re looking at development of just the doctor. I mean, there’s…

23:50
There’s that level, you know, clinically, you mean? Well, clinically and, know, when you go to dental school, you learn how to do clinical and, um, you’ll vary that over the years. You don’t learn anything about business. So you’ll get a number of doctors who say, you know, as an associate, I want to be an owner. I want to, I want to own a practice. Well, if all you do is run out and get a loan and buy a practice.

24:20
You’re an owner who doesn’t know what they’re doing. And, uh, and I, and I fell in that category. I mean, I, I bought my practice at 26 years old. Uh, I was fresh out of school, probably six months. Um, not quite a year and you’re managing people and I’ve never managed people before. I, I was very lucky to have an accountant who took me in and I sat down with him every Friday.

24:49
for probably two years and we would go over the numbers, your AR numbers, your accounts receivables, me, your numbers on new patients, what are the procedures you’re doing the most of? You start to figure out how your practice actually runs. And then you have to have the other side of incorporating the whole staff. So you need to get the staff the treatment they need, especially at the front desk area where

25:18
How we answer the phones, you know, what’s an effective way to do this? Are you just going to somebody gets on the phone calling your office and they’re like, you know, how much is a crown? How much is a filling? And all you do is, know, get a question, answer it, get a question, answer it. You’re not really building a rapport with the patient. You’re just sometimes giving them numbers where they say, I’m not coming there. You’re too expensive, you know, because you didn’t take the time.

25:49
to try to understand the individual who’s calling you. What is their concern? And oftentimes, once you start to develop a relationship with them, just with that initial phone conversation, and then it gets repeated when they come into the office, and they get it with the hygienist, or they get it with the assistant, and then they get it with the doctor, they start to develop, this is the home I wanna make my dental care treatment at.

26:16
And it takes a lot to do that. It doesn’t just happen. Sometimes people want to get confrontational. Oh, yeah. Yeah. What I’m hearing you say, a couple I just want to summarize here real quick. The summary of training, if we had to summarize, let make sure I got it right. It’s just that on your business, get your clinical training on your business and then communication with your team. Is there anything else you would add to that, that, whoever, you know, I know you said get a consultant or a coach.

26:46
I heard you talk about mentor. I know you’re in our mastermind group. It seems like you’re really constantly working on yourself and that’s kind of shedding off on your team too. Look, if the doctor is working on himself or herself all the time, well as we think, know, team, hey, work on yourself, right? Constant pursuit of growth. there any other thing in that recipe that you would say is important for people to have? Well, with working with All-Star, the thing that you have is access to learning

27:16
kind of on your own timeframe. know, there are, there are segment videos, you know, areas that you can work on specifically for an individual team member. mean, they’ve got the All-Star MBA. So, you know, if you’re trying to learn how to control business as far as what are fixed costs, what are variable costs, how do these things work? What can I do to.

27:43
counter or affect some of those things that affect our economy. But then also how do I get my staff to understand what our team philosophy is? And when they’re available, you know, we did a challenge where everybody went through and finished the entire unit. And then we had a huge, you know, five course gourmet dinner that we shared together and talked about different aspects of how we got to.

28:11
What were the avenues that we took to try to finish these modules? You know, sometimes you’re at home doing stuff at your house and you can listen to these Sometimes you need to actually be watching the videos But you know, it is still the information that being taken in to understand what is the direction we want to practice to go Yeah, and the training oftentimes

28:36
You know, we talk about the great call process all the time on All-Star, which Heather does an amazing job. All the trainers on there are amazing. And I think sometimes clinical team members here, oh, great call process. It’s not for me. I don’t answer the phone, but if you think about great, greeting, rapport, engage, ask for the appointment. If you think about chair side, I’m a hygienist. I’m gonna greet my patient. I’m gonna build rapport with them. I’m gonna engage with them. I’m gonna ask for them an appointment for them to get healthy again in the future.

29:04
the concepts, even though we might take a focus of the phone call to start with, we’re actually putting this into the customer service window, and then from there, the coaches are bringing on the case acceptance and the systems and the practice management side and the KPI side, the leadership training, all of that. And it sounds to me like you’ve done a really good job at taking from here, taking from there, almost a picture like a spice rack. You’re just taking the right amount of salt,

29:31
You’re taking the right amount of pepper and you’re putting in, you’re not putting all your eggs in one basket. You’re not just like doing one training for your entire career and going, I’m just going to do this. I’m going dig my heels in here. You’ve had a lot of variety in your career that’s gotten you this point. That’s this recipe you’ve put together to make this beautiful cake that I see in your practice. It’s an amazing practice. And I think sometimes people are saying, okay, what’s the missing link in my practice? So I’m see if I can summarize. Okay.

30:02
You’ve got to have a team. You’ve got to have a team that’s effective. And it sounds to me like you’ve.

30:09
early on made the decision that, if they’re not a good fit with my existing team that I know is really healthy, I’m not just gonna keep a team member just because I’m worried about I might not find someone else. Is that fair first? That would be correct. Okay, that’s correct. right. Number two, obviously you’ve got your, I’m setting aside clinical, by the way. Forget about clinical. You’ve been mastering your clinical. That’s a big no-brainer. Keep working on your clinical. But number two, you’ve worked on your business. You understand your numbers. You know where your numbers are.

30:39
the best of them. If I asked you, you don’t have to answer, but if I asked you what your collections were last month, you know what that was. You know what last year you were doing, you know what this year you were doing. Sometimes I ask doctors, I’m like, hey, what was your numbers last month on collection production? I don’t know, like they don’t have a feel for it all, they don’t have a gauge on it at all. Not only do you know your numbers, but you know your goals. You know your daily goals. You guys have really mapped these things out and your team is on board with those things, right? Yeah, I mean, again, you know,

31:07
Where does this come from? It does. It’s kind of an evolution. I mean, when you’re younger, you’re focusing on yourself, your personal development, and then you bring it back to your staff. Then you start to get your staff members involved. And then I think, I think it was two years ago that I had where I brought everybody, you know, and that was the first time I think I’ve ever done that, you know, where you take the entire staff because. Yeah, describe that. So you took them where? Tell me what you, what you did.

31:37
Uh, well, you know, we had the, uh, the annual meeting that we would be down in. Well, last year it was in Florida. Um, yeah, all-star main, yeah, the all-star live event. it. Yeah. So this is the first time last year you took everybody. Okay. Got it. Yeah. So you have the all-star live event and, and your staff gets an opportunity to meet other staffs and then they get an opportunity to see some of these speakers yourself included there live.

32:06
And then they get challenged by, uh, you know, just trying to understand what are other offices doing? What are we trying to accomplish? Uh, there’s an uncomfortableness to learning how to do some of these things because it’s different than what they have been doing all this time. So you get that uncomfortable uncomfortableness because it’s, it’s like wearing a pair of shoes that you feel are too big.

32:34
And then you start to realize how you can function in them. then, you know, all of a sudden, Hey, these are better. I, know, I do feel better when I’m in these. And, uh, and then it becomes just a habit and you’re doing it every day. And then you’re seeing it translate into, um, the acceptance for, uh, treatment for patients. And, um, everybody at that point, everybody wins, at least the way I’ve tried to do it, where is if the office in, in, uh, in our community is doing better.

33:04
I share that with my staff. You know, I want them to not just come in and do the hard work, but also reap the rewards of why we’re doing it. One, providing excellent care, feeling good about what we’re doing for patients, but then also seeing the response they have to what we’re proposing. And then as we have those patients in year after year or, you know, month after month when they’re coming in for their prophylaxis and

33:34
You’re seeing healthy tissues, people who are looking to keep their teeth for their entire life. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you’re sharing a lot of mission that our vision or, or I guess desire of a lot of doctors. They just want to get people healthy and what does it take to get there? So for everyone who’s listening, who may not be familiar. So, so Dr. Ted Knight, he is enrolled in All-Star Dental Academy’s online training platform. That’s what he’s describing. You do that at your own pace. It’s 24 seven access for each individual team member.

34:03
You can do that over a team meeting. We recommend 20 minutes a week, constant improvement, constant pursuit of improvement. You’re also in coaching with me. You’ve had Coach Shelley and Coach Robin in your practice over the years to have them physically in place. So you and I do virtual leadership coaching, KPI coaching, but I also work with your team every month for an hour at that team meeting you’re talking about. And then you’ve also had in addition to that, you’ve had coaches come in and

34:31
and evaluate what’s going on and then do an all day intensive. You’ve had the coach come to you, but you also mentioned you’ve been to our events. You’ve brought your team to the event on training and you’ve been through level one case acceptance mastery. You’ve been to our annual live event with your team. You’ve done level two case acceptance mastery this year with your team. And you’re also, you yourself are a member of the Titanium Mastermind Group, which allows your team lead

34:59
April I believe is in on the team member mastermind, the diamond mastermind as well. So, know, yes, you have your clinical training over here, but you are really all in doing a lot of things to make sure your practice is successful. And obviously the ROI on it must be worth it for you to be investing all of this in your team and training. Sometimes I think doctors look at it they go, I can’t afford that, or I can’t do that money.

35:26
It was like a patient saying, I can’t afford to do a crown right now. I’ll wait to extract it or something. Did you, were you ever at a place where you felt like you couldn’t afford it or were you always reinvesting in your practice with education and training? I think there are times where you look at it and say that is going to be too expensive. mean, it’s, it’s, what happens is you can be saving that money, saving that money and be frustrated and.

35:54
Uh, the office kind of works clunky, you know, things aren’t communicated well from area to area. Uh, there tends to get to be back fighting, you know, she’s not doing this, you know, she’s not doing this. need this. And, and it’s because of ineffective communication. mean, you’re communicating something. It’s, it’s that you’re unhappy with where you are. And how I treat my staff is how my staff is going to treat patients.

36:24
And that’s what’s going out to the public, you know, and, and, uh, right now it’s very good. It’s, know, people I just had, you know, again, I was saying I had new patients this today and I said, how’d you hear about us? And she’s like, I heard about you on the internet. And, um, you know, I would say I don’t do a lot or in the past, I have not done a lot of advertising and done those things.

36:50
Uh, but I did branch out just to kind of communicate what are the things that we do here, you know, and, can we do, uh, composite veneers for patients that, you know, change their smile and change their confidence. can do those things. Um, I could do those things before I advertised them on the internet, but, you know, nobody know about it. You know, it’s, was really more word of mouth. That’s right. Yeah. But they want to in and. Yeah.

37:19
They want to come in and they want to see is the person they heard talking in that, you know, uh, Google commercial or, or whatever it was on the internet. Is that the same person I’m talking to when they come into the office? Yeah. And you know, uh, we’ve known each other for a long time. I try to be the same person all the time, you know, as much as I can. don’t, I don’t try to change my personality for, for the group that I’m in with.

37:49
I have my beliefs. I believe in good dentistry. I believe that to be caring for my staff, caring for my patients, and if I’m caring for my staff, they’re caring for our patients, and everybody’s winning. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. You’re so selfless in that. You’re very humble in the fact that you have a very successful practice. I’ll point out.

38:14
You’re not doing like all of a sudden, you’re not doing like 50, $60,000 cases to get there by the way. I want to point that out. You are in hometown USA and you might do large cases here and there, but that’s not the regular thing for you. You’re not using expanded functional dental assistant where you drill and get out of the room and leave and see 4,000 patients a month. You’re doing regular dentistry at this rate is phenomenal. I do tell you, you’re pretty fast. You are a very efficient clinician. I could tell by the numbers, but

38:43
I just want to say that because I think sometimes people hear the numbers and go, that’s unreachable. And I don’t think we share the numbers enough in dentistry to know, hey, you know what the reason why you can’t pay out that school loan or that debt or that practice loan or pay your employees more is because we don’t understand what the potential is. What are the possibilities of dentistry? And we’re not gouging patients, you’re not overcharging them. You know, we do a fee analysis every year and you’re right in that healthy place where it’s just right. It’s not too much, not too little. So I just wanted to get you on here.

39:12
We want to do the All-Star practice spotlight with you and we wanted to let everyone see the possibilities, but also have you just share some insight that you don’t have to be crazy over here or over there. You just, you could just be really, really good at what you do and stay consistent. And I appreciate you coming on and being willing to share with others. So probably have you on again at some point down the line, but thank you Dr. Ted Knight for being with us. really appreciate it. Eric, thank you for having me on. I love to share what my mission for dentistry is. mean,

39:41
You know, I’ve got a lot more to say about where I want to see dentistry go. And I want to see dentistry for the dentist. If you have a happy, profitable, productive dentist, patients are going to get good treatment. If we continue to go down the road where it’s high debt coming out of school, they’re, they’re shackled with insurance limitations.

40:07
these students are not going to be able to thrive. They’re going to get jaded and that jadedness trickles down and it trickles down in the patient and I don’t want to see that. Love it. Love it. Such a good heart. I appreciate you. Thank you for those. Thank you for those that have been listening. You know, we spent some time talking here, so I really appreciate you for joining us. I do have a request. If you listen to this, one thing I would say is will you please share this?

40:35
with someone who’s new to dentistry, someone who really is looking for like, what am I missing, what’s the missing link, and just share this with them. And do me another favor, if you’ve already done that, please leave a review on the podcast. Just go, scroll right down the bottom, leave a review. Just let us know, give us some feedback. We’re paying attention to those. And of course, subscribe. If you want more information, just go to allstardentalacademy.com or send an email to our favorite person, Heather at allstardentalacademy.com. She loves to talk with you guys about

41:05
how we can support you to practice and just meet with her. All right. Well, thank you guys for listening. Until next time, go out there and be an All-Star.