Dental All-Stars: Jay Shorr & Alex Nottingham discuss the Business Growth Formula – emphasizing training, service, and patient experience.
Resources:
About Jay Shorr
As the CEO and Founder of Shorr Solutions, a national and award-winning practice management consulting firm, Jay Shorr, BA, MBM-C, CAC I-XVI coaches aesthetic practices in improving the operational, financial and administrative health of their business. Through his first-hand experience of owning a successful multi-million dollar plastic surgery and dermatology practice and 30+ years of industry expertise, he coaches aesthetic medical practices in increasing efficiency, boosting revenue and decreasing their costs. Jay serves as a trusted speaker for over a dozen aesthetic medical industry organizations.
About Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA
Alex is the CEO and Founder of All-Star Dental Academy®. He is a former Tony Robbins top coach and consultant, having worked with companies upwards of $100 million. His passion is to help others create personal wealth and make a positive impact on the people around them. Alex received his Juris Doctor (JD) and Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Florida International University.
Episode Transcript
Transcript performed by A.I. Please excuse the typos.
00:00
This is Dental All-Stars, where we bring you the best in dentistry on marketing, management and training. Here’s your host, Alex Nottingham.
00:14
Welcome to Dental All-Stars. I’m excited to share with you an interview where I was a guest on Jay Shor’s podcast, which I’ll put a link in the show notes. Let me tell you a little bit about Jay. Jay is a national award-winning practice management consultant specializing in the operational, administrative, and financial health of aesthetic, cosmetic, and surgical practices. Jay is also a faculty at Florida Atlantic University, teaching in the executive education department.
00:42
lecturing on medical business management. Jay lectures for the top medical and aesthetic conferences in the US and writes articles for numerous publications in the industry. Please welcome Jay Shore. It’s my pleasure to introduce a special guest today, Alex Nottingham. Alex Nottingham is the founder and CEO of All-Star Dental Academy, a leading dental practice management training company.
01:11
a colleague of mine in the dental space. And it’s very interesting because Alex is also an attorney. And I can’t say this about many of my guests, but I knew Alex from a young man. I knew Alex when he was in high school, actually, just getting out of junior high school, high school, through his undergraduate studies, through law school, and then came back. I knew him before he got married and had a family.
01:39
So it’s a very special guest to me because I’ve known the family for many, many years. And now Alex is a colleague of mine. So we commiserate back and forth. We throw ideas back and forth. So Alex, thank you so much for being a part of our day. I’d like to say a couple of words, introduce yourself. Well, as I often affectionately refer to you as Uncle Jay and
02:06
You know, so what’s also interesting, Jay, is that you are the inspiration or you know the inspiration to All-Star Dental Academy. He’s a good friend of yours. My father, you play golf with him regularly. And I just wanted to note that for many who don’t know my story is I got into, because that made me wonder, well, your law school MBA, why dentistry? Why do it? And the stuff that Jay does, right? So
02:35
My father’s a dentist and he was facing financial difficulty and that was, you were there during that period of time and both of us helped, you know, at different periods and we’re telling the same thing. But after I stopped working or I was still working for Tony Robbins doing business coaching at my MBA, my law degree, and his practice was in trouble. And so I offered to help. I was able to send a lot of business to his office through marketing, but they weren’t converting.
03:02
So you know the importance of customer service. I brought Heather, my wife now, at the time my girlfriend, and she was a Bloomingdale’s trainer, a sales manager, and we took a $1 million practice, brought it to 2.4 million in 18 months through phone skills and scheduling, which is our bread and butter. And so that’s a little bit of how I got into it. And I said, this is amazing. How can I scale this and help other dental practices? And that’s how.
03:31
Also, dental academy was born and since then we offer an online training program. We have coaching, we do events. We have a hiring service which was inspired by you, Jay. And I love your quote, never stole an idea I didn’t like, but it wasn’t a total steal, but we talked about it. And you said, Alex, you should do this in dentistry. I said, okay. So we do that as well and it’s very popular. So that’s my origin story, if you will. And you were around, you’ve seen it all.
03:59
Wonderful. I love seeing things grow from the very, very beginning. I love being an inspiration and a mentor to young professionals. As I’m on my way out someday, you are the rising star and the all star and now all star dental academy. So what I want to speak about will be several different topics. And we’d like to go with business growth because you mentioned about getting your dad’s practice. And that’s kind of like what SureSolutions does.
04:27
We take practices from the very, very beginning startups and we help them in their inter and intraoperative phase. And then finally we end up with the exit strategy and succession planning. But you’re in this business growth and that’s how you helped your dad. And it’s a very remarkable, great story. I was in that with you from that beginning. And then fortunately your dad had the opportunity to sell his practice and semi-retire, all right? But let’s talk about
04:56
business growth, all right? Because when we talk about business growth, I really wanna know what is the business growth formula? Is there a real formula? Is it just words? Define what that means to you. So the business growth formula, we talk about this. I do a webinar a few times a week and it’s part of the webinar. And this formula was adapted, listen.
05:25
I’m borrowing your line again, you know, never stolen a deal. I didn’t like, but I’ll use a different word, a different phrase. When I was working for Tony Robbins, who would teach us model the best in business and we worked with Jay Abraham over there at Tony Robbins for many years and Scott Holman. And there was a, a model that Jay say same name. And he had this formula that he used in terms of how businesses grow. And so I adapted that for dentistry.
05:54
And it’s, it’s so I’ll kind of give you the formula, kind of how it works here is, and there’s only, I don’t know, four or five steps. So the first step in any business, and again, you can apply it to medical as well. You got to have some sort of marketing coming in. It’s going to be internal marketing, or it’s going to be external marketing. Right? So internal marketing is referrals, external marketing, SEO, pay-per-click, websites, what have you.
06:24
And then if you do take insurance, so if you’re medical or dental, you take insurance. If you’re not in that industry, don’t worry about it, there’s other ways. But that can also be a marketing source, a way of getting new patients to engage. Now, how do they typically engage you? What’s the first step?
06:44
Well, usually, well, either by phone or by email, they’ll find you either on social media, they’ll find you on Instagram, Facebook, your website, you know, that’s what you have been very instrumental in helping practices like that, then they’ll call or send an email. Right. So, and what was interesting is at the dental office for my father, we would get a lot of emails too. It was amazing. The emails didn’t convert as well, but you still, the emails are a subset of them.
07:13
But even the email is they haven’t crossed the threshold. I think that once you could say the email is kind of gray area, but we can lump them together email conversion, but ultimately there has to be a conversation. We’ve got to have a phone call or some interaction to then cross the threshold into we’re going to have an appointment. We’re getting there. The first step is a phone call. And that’s where 80 to 90% of the magic happens of the conversion from marketing.
07:43
And just think about it. If we start and I’ll give you some numbers to this as well. I’ll give you numbers in a moment, but you have to come with a phone call. That’s your biggest step. Then after the phone call, they got to show up. We have my head instructor at All-Star. He’ll lose his mind when it comes to broken appointments, but they happen and they’re killers, they’re production killers. Because you’re losing production and you’re paying the providers. Then they show up.
08:13
Now the goal is that they accept treatment. Now we provide them treatment to help and the goal is to have them accept. So we have case acceptance. And this is the same, because I know you play a lot in the aesthetics medical, so we have these big, big deals that are going on.
08:33
We call it the conversion cascade. We have the cylindrical conversion cascade, which is market to call, call to consult, consult to treatment, treatment to re-treatment, and it goes to referrals in that circle. Right. And this is similar. I have it going in the visual on the webinar goes this way. So case acceptance, then referral, and then that’s revenue, and then the referrals kind of circle. But actually, technically, yes, the referrals can go back into the marketing bucket.
09:02
But the way I do it from an analysis perspective, let’s just do some basic numbers here. Let’s say you have a million dollar practice, whatever that might be, medical or dental. And let’s say that 35% of phone calls convert into an appointment. And that, based on call tracking research that we’ve studied, that’s about the number of 35%. And maybe the.
09:30
different in medical, let’s just say 35% for argument’s sake. So you start with $5 million in opportunities. And 35% of $5 million is $1.75 million, which means all the rest, what is that, $3.25, is gone. Yes. It’s gone. So you have the opportunities, because you had to get somewhere. So now you’re at $1.75.
09:58
Now only 85% we find, and that’s being very generous, show up for appointments. So now that 1.75 drops to 1.5. Now we’re still dropping, but you can see the biggest dip was phone skills. That’s why we’ve positioned ourselves as the phone skills experts in dentistry. This is so important. Then just 60% will accept treatment, Jay. So now we dropped to $900,000.
10:27
That’s a good number. If we get 60% or better, we call that a good number. Exactly. Yep. So we’re on the same page. Again, these are all research numbers. And then we see about 15% will refer on average on really good companies or good offices will be more. But let’s say 15%. So now that bumps us up to $1 million, just for easy math. We started at $5. And for all these dips, we ended at $1 million.
10:57
Does that make sense? So yeah, of course it does. So in that conversion ranking, which I call the conversion cascade, you know, in order to get a greater market share, there’s only a certain amount of dentists, oral and maxillofacial surgeons, all in that dental market for you. We’re more penetrated because we have doctors and we have estheticians and we have nurse practitioners and physician associates. So there are more…
11:27
actual practitioners in our marketplace to treat. Now you’re speaking hopefully more on the cosmetic side. Yep. You know, and that’s the route that I took with your dad and my wife did, you know, that’s where this comes in, you know, so you have to end up in order to get a greater market share. It’s either one of two things, and I call it the pizza pie scenario. And that’s, if there’s only a certain amount of market share in there,
11:56
Your competition is going to take a piece of that. How do you increase the market share? I say make a bigger pizza, all right? Because there’s only a certain amount of people that can get that. What did you, how did you design this business growth formula? Well, like I said, it was borrowed, modeled from Jay. And I just looked, I have the numbers, right? That are, that we know from the research that we’ve seen.
12:26
And then we just say, what’s the, really it’s the patient experience journey, essentially. You say, what was the journey? We know we have to convert the phone call. We know they have to show up. They have to accept treatment. Okay. And then they refer. Those are the key points of training that we do. And we say, oh, that’s the patient experience. Notice that the business growth formula is the patient experience monetized.
12:53
Because often the patient experience is just this nebulous concept, but we’re monetizing it. Now, I’m not saying that the business growth formula is something that you’re going to use as your key performance indicator necessarily. It’s a very gross example, but it gives you the idea from the macro perspective of what can happen. So let me give you a couple examples here just to put the magic of the business growth. If we can improve each area by a net…
13:22
5% only this is the power of incremental improvement. Okay. That 5 million in opportunities, instead of being 1.75, we convert 40% from 35% to 40%. Now we’re at $2 million. That’s a quarter million dollars more of the next step because of we improve phone skills. Then each area we’ve improved 55%. So showing up is 90%, 1.8 million.
13:52
65%, 1.2 million for case acceptance, and then 20% refer, 1.4 million. So Jay, I know you’re pretty good at math. What was the difference? We were a $1 million practice, now we’re 1.4. $400,000, which is a 40% increase on that. And here’s my thing. When you do that, the net net
14:19
profit is going to be substantially higher because your fixed costs are already being paid. So what you on that incremental revenue substantially to the net profit is going to be greater because you don’t have to pay the fixed expenses that are already there. All right. That’s right. It may be a little bit more on the cost of goods sold, but let me ask you, does it work for all businesses?
14:48
and not just dentists. Let me ask this question because in aesthetics, which I’m in, we have so many variables such as surgical, non-surgical on the surgical side, we have face and body. On the non-surgical side, we have the neurotoxins, the dermal fillers. We have
15:11
the radio frequency treatments on the dental side. And there’s a lot of dentists now that are involved in the neurotoxins and the dermal fillers as well. Does your formula work for dentists and aesthetic? Yeah. This formula works for every business. And that’s what I say at All-Star Dental Academy, what we teach can work for any business. I have medical practitioners, I have plexigens surgeons that do it. It’s a small percentage.
15:39
I’ve had physical therapists, I still do, that use the program. Um, they can work for anybody, but we’re specialized in dentistry, our coaching, our language. That’s why when I have a specialist come to me, a periodontist and the donnas, we have a lot of them. They go, we’re different and you are different, but are you a business? Yeah. Do you make money? Yeah. Do you provide customer service? Yeah. We can help you. And we just will speak in your language, dull dental stuff. We call it.
16:09
So you’re comfortable, but it’s all the same with respect to it. So yes, it doesn’t matter, dermal fillers, perio, maintenance protocols, or even dentists are doing botox. I mean, you’re lumping, these are the big macro numbers. We’re just saying that bottom line, we have these opportunities and it’s this funnel, whether we call it the business growth formula. I have one that I had fun with called the black hole.
16:39
where I took the business growth formula and I built it as a black hole and you see it funnel down and everything as you make these mistakes on these patient experience, it just sucks the money away. So what this demonstrates is training is so important and the phones is even more important than case acceptance because if you can’t even get them the case acceptance, that’s where the big drop comes. So
17:08
That’s where we talk about this and why it’s again, it’s very safe for dentists and, and, and, uh, physicians to invest in clinical and they love it, but it’s your team. That’s so important. It’s training them. It’s role playing. It’s providing customer service. That’s why people buy. I mean, you have, you know, you know, Mark too, my, my other uncle, right. And, uh, he always says, look, if you have, you have MD at the end of your name, that’s all that matters.
17:37
And if you can provide a great experience, that’s what separates you. Yeah, let me just talk about the main priorities. Number one, medicine and dental is a science. It’s a way to heal the sick and injured in our worlds in aesthetic cosmetic dentistry and aesthetic cosmetic medicine. It’s the way to look and make people feel beautiful and look beautiful.
18:03
It’s one of the most respected professions today, whether you have MD, DO, DMD, DDS, whatever those titles are, because it’s an elevated level of education, but never lose sight of the fact that medicine and dentistry is a business. And unfortunately, I preach all the time. I just came back from Las Vegas at a major conference and I’m heading to Columbia next week for another meeting.
18:31
But people don’t treat it like the business it is. And they love when people like you and I come in and share that the patient experience is great. But I don’t hire receptionists. I hire directors of first impressions. Because when somebody calls a prospective patient slash client, and somebody answers that phone, and they call and they’ll say, Dr. So-and-so’s office, how can I help you?
19:00
No, I like to rephrase that and say, you know, dermatology, plastic surgery, this is Jay, and I can help you. A closed ended question versus all the other terms that you hear people say today. Please allow me to be the first to welcome you to our practice. It is something different than most people do versus how can I make your day and how can I make your smile more beautiful, things like that. But number one.
19:30
Patient safety and employee staff safety is paramount in our business. And protection of our practitioners licenses is number two. Have fun. Make money because we have to treat it like the business it is. And Alex, how do you explain this to staff who may only be staff associates? They’re not business owners. They may not feel the same way about the almighty dollar.
19:58
Because all they see is the incoming money, nothing that goes out. Right. Well, I’ll answer that question. And remind me to tell you what happens when we increase the business growth formula by 12% net. That will be fun. So with respect to your question, it’s so an associate that’s not looking for ownership is a team member. And I think that it goes back to the leadership of the office.
20:28
that really, it’s interesting. I did a webinar with Robin, which we spoke to, our director of hiring. And we did a webinar, we did a podcast on recruitment versus hiring. And it was just because they’re kind of synonymous. And I looked up the word recruitment and I really liked what it meant. Hiring is more of an act, recruitment is the bigger picture. Recruitment means to bring somebody to your cause, and ooh.
20:56
I love that stuff, the cause, right? So we have to always be recruiting and even recruit while we have people that are employed. We have to recruit them to our vision. They have to drink the Kool-Aid. Not everybody’s motivated by money. You gotta pay them enough that they’re happy, but they’re gonna spend a big part of their time in the office. And so we wanna make it enjoyable. We wanna make it with this personal growth. We all agree, what is our goal? And it was interesting.
21:26
90% of dentists and physicians at the level that we’re talking about, aesthetics, they’re all about customer service. That’s what they want to do. They feel good about it. They know it makes money. It makes sense from a money perspective, but they feel good about it. And if we all rally behind that, then we’re going to make those changes. We’re going to role play. We’re going to come to events. We’re going to be coached. We’re going to do all that because it’s to the patient’s betterment.
21:55
And it’s also to our own personal growth. And that’s what I see. I know both of us do events and you see the transformations happen with people when they’re coached and when they’re coming to the events and they’re interacting. And that is the goal that the leaders have to take in making that investment and that commitment. Because if you’re just gonna say, you know, I want you to show up and be just as enthusiastic about me or about the office as I am, and they’re not making, they’re not getting the
22:25
the net income, they’re not, uh, it’s not their baby. If this come in and do your job and go home, they’re going to lose that enthusiasm and I’ll leave you with this. People that are part of it, like I run a tennis league in south Florida. Okay. And the vision of the league was not just about winning and losing. And it took me a few years to get this through my players skulls, but now they’re seeing it. They’re like, this is a fraternity. This is something important to me.
22:54
the mission, the vision, right? And as small as that, you’ll see your team be more interested in their tennis league or their sewing club or whatever they’re doing. And you want that same mentality when it comes to the office. It’s like a club for them. We’re working, but we’re working towards a vision. We’re passionate about it. Yeah, there’s several stages in that recruitment. And as we start, there is the recruitment to get
23:24
good team members, but it’s the recruitment first, then it’s the interviewing, then it’s the hiring, then it’s the training, then it’s incentivization, and then it’s retaining. Because in the world of quiet quitting, and I didn’t invent this term, quiet quitting, I laughed because I was watching something on one of the major news channels last week, and I was seeing how people, it’s the younger generation, they record a video.
23:53
of them resigning and sending it on to their boss. I also heard there was somebody in Wal-Mart that got on attention shoppers. This is Jay Shore. I quit. And I’m thinking the nerve of somebody to actually do that. But they’re not feeling the love that we felt many, many years ago. And everybody is really worried about the dollar versus how these people.
24:21
make a difference in your business. And Alex, comment on this, if you will. They have always said that money is not necessarily the number one reason that people stay. Young people don’t understand that. When you gave me that example, first of all, that person would not do that to their tennis league or their rotary club or what have I know you do a lot with charity. They wouldn’t do it for the charitable institution. And I did a
24:51
I have a, uh, a YouTube channel, both for also dental academy and for just my own musings on wealth and, and mindset and productivity. And what I did was on the six human needs by Tony Robbins, my mentor. And what I hear from this guy, there’s a need called significance. We want to feel significant and not everybody has a different way of expressing that.
25:19
and this person that’s saying, I quit, they want significance. They want that attention. Okay? And so their need isn’t being met. Is it any different in your marriage? It’s true. It’s true. And the more that you can touch on these human needs, significance, certainty, variety, growth, the more you can touch on these needs for your employees,
25:45
see, Tony says if you can get four or more of these needs met, it becomes an addiction. So if you can give people certainty in your office that they know that their paycheck is safe, if you can give them variety, something new to do, if you can give them significance, they feel good about what they’re doing, if you can give them loving connection, they feel connected to the practice and growth, they would never do something like that.
26:16
They’re hooked. It’s a drug. And so we joke, drink the Kool-Aid. That’s what it’s about. I mean, we use the word, there’s even books written about this. You take the word cult, you back it up a little bit, and that’s what you want. You don’t want the crazies, but you want people that love what they’re a part of. Does that make sense? You know, yeah, of course it does. We talk about training and your mentor is Tony Robbins, mine was Steve Jobs. I love Steve.
26:44
You know, he, we talk about training and he gave an example when I was listening to him and somebody said to him, well, training because he lets everybody teach him, not he teach them. And I thought that was a great way to run a business. Somebody said to him, well, Steve, what happens if we spend all this money in training and they leave? And he sat back for a second and he looks like us with the hair, right?
27:13
And he says, but what if I don’t train them and they stay? And I thought that was probably one of the best things I’ve ever heard. Because if you don’t train them and they stay, you’ve got an uneducated robot. All right. If you train them and they leave, don’t so be it. That at least you got from them what you put into them at the time. All right. So let’s talk about marketing.
27:41
All right, because marketing is what- Well, Jay, let me, first of all, let me just say, I love that quote. I gotta write that down. You’re just the endless sea of these great wisdom and quotes, that’s a good one. Because I talk about that a lot too. I never stole an idea I didn’t like on the first day. I know, and I want that one. And I know you’re so happy for me to take it. That’s a good one, because I do talk about that. People say, well, I’m gonna wait to train because I don’t have the right team. Well, is it better to have the wrong team not trained or the wrong team trained? Which is exactly what you’re saying.
28:11
I yeah, and I can try in my former practice, we had training every week. Yeah. And people said we would close a half a day Wednesday, and then the following week, a half of a day on Friday. And other practitioners used to say you spend an awful lot of money in training. I said, I don’t spend anything I invest. That’s right. Because the money that it costs me to train that I invest, I’m getting back
28:39
tenfold in their ability to properly secure. So I said marketing. Marketing is the cool aid that started this conversation, all right, because the marketing is what drove the phone call as you went through all your scenarios of what percentages of the people actually will answer the phone once you went to the market. That’s even the worst. They call, they leave a message.
29:09
or the marketing that you’ve spent and they send an email and nobody responds. And if you think that that patient is only calling you, you are sadly mistaken. That’s right. Well, they, they, they, they might be calling multiple people or they might’ve called you, but if you, if you didn’t convert them, they’re going somewhere else. Is that simple? So let’s talk about what should we spend in marketing in our business?
29:38
Is there a percentage? Is there a dollar? Is there an average? I know you would say, yeah, the number, the number is about 5%, uh, two to 5%. And if you want to be really aggressive, 10%, that’s, that’s high. Uh, we kind of joke when it comes to insurance companies that insurance companies say that they’re marketing, but insurance companies, you’re writing off 40 plus percent. I would never work with a marketing company that I had to pay 40%. So that’s not good marketing.
30:07
But 5% is a safe number. All right, so what marketing sources? Now, let me just ask for a second because don’t laugh. It’s gonna show my age. Years and years ago in our former practice and you know it well, was in your neighborhood. Great practice. I spent $12,000 a month, don’t laugh, in Yellow Pages. And it worked. It’s not a problem. Yeah, of course. It worked.
30:36
It was the only gig in town. Can you imagine what $12,000 a month in past future to the future value dollar would be in website a month, website and PPC and Instagram, Facebook marketing? Where should I invest my money today? Yeah, that’s a good point. Where to invest? Well, I’m not gonna claim I’m a marketing guru anymore. I used to be, but.
31:05
I mean, you got to do look the basics and this is this is pretty sad. You have to have a website and some don’t. It’s crazy. So you’re way behind if you don’t. So you need a responsive optimized website. I like WordPress platform. I know some say they have a retired proprietary platform, but I like WordPress because I can own it. I would own my own website, have my own servers, hire marketing company to, to work with it. You can change themes. I would have a separate tracking number on.
31:34
everything that I do so that I can measure how many calls are coming in from each source. And I would own that. You can use call tracking metrics or at All-Star Dental Academy for our dentists. We provide a service that they can do that where they can track. They do have, you have voice over IP, but unfortunately, which is important, which is fine, but voice over IP will not necessarily track unless they have that additional service, every little out inbound call, they’ll just track everything. So you want to be able to segment.
32:04
Here’s how things are going. You gotta optimize your website. Sorry, you gotta do it. You gotta compete on SEO. Google is the big bear in the room. YouTube is number two. You should be on YouTube because YouTube’s the second biggest search engine. So you gotta be putting videos out there. You gotta be doing social media. Social media may help you, but it can hurt you if you don’t do it. You gotta be on all the aesthetic platforms like Instagram.
32:34
Facebook, if you want to play with TikTok, people are there. It doesn’t hurt. You can do, you can actually, not a lot of companies will do this for you, but you can post one place and it will broadcast in multiple places, interact, I would do it. And if you have a team, like I have somebody in my team that loves social media and she’s doing it and doing amazing, find somebody on your team that can do it and comment or hire it out.
33:00
So those are the traditional, and then you have billboards. And I think at the end of the day, it’s this simple. Look, I would try many things, but I would track everything and do what works. So if Yellow Pages still works, do it. I don’t know if it’s still around. But billboards, for example, and direct mail are known as a more traditional source of advertising or TV. They may still be viable in your market.
33:30
Always test, test and track. And then you look at your ROI. If I spend X, what do I get? But the baseline is, I would just say, Jay, is you gotta have a website. You gotta be doing SEO. I’d probably do some pay-per-click and social media, local search. Those are all the things you just have to do. Everybody’s doing it and you have to compete in that area if you wanna be a top dog. But then there’s the other areas to kinda keep hunting for. But this is something that isn’t, I know people might feel overwhelmed
34:00
Oh, that’s so much I have to do. But it’s little by little incremental. Just take the next step. Keep working on it. Just keep your attention on training. Keep your attention on marketing. Yeah. If you don’t manage what you’re doing, you’re going to be spending a lot of money. When we’re talking about the phones and VOIP, there are several platforms. There’s like RingCentral. Weave is a special one that I like because they…
34:27
have payment systems. If you missed a call, it texts you, at least to let you know that they’ve received the call. It is a VOIP platform, and that’s a whole different topic. I’m doing another lecture on AI next time, and I’m speaking on AI and VOIP, which is the newest thing out there today. And when we talk about marketing, don’t throw your money away. If you’re gonna do it, do it right, but you have to manage it, and you have to.
34:57
analyze it. So many people have websites, and I call it the unbalanced scale. When you’re just creating your website, you’re going to need pay per click. Once you have organic and the SEO, the search engine optimization, that’s able to pick up, unbalance the PPC. But you’ve got to be seen. And you’ve got to get known because your competitor will and you know, it’s the amount
35:25
It’s that you throw enough spaghetti against the wall, whatever sticks is when I’m going to get there. Alex mentioned in the very beginning, the amount of declining percentages from what you don’t do properly. That’s right. The amount that you’re losing is actual physical dollars, which is more profitable because your fixed costs are already spent. That’s the thing is I think that many practitioners don’t realize they’re bleeding money. In my webinar, I call it the silent killers.
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in your practice, phone skills, scheduling, turnover, or actually disengaged team is what I call it. You’re bleeding. Now, here’s kind of as we kind of get to the conclusion of our vision here of the podcast. What happens if we add a net 12% to the business growth formula? And you can, well, I’ll run it through you so you don’t have to trust me. You can hear the numbers here. The 5 million, if you’re a 47% conversion.
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you’re at 2.4 million. If 97% show up, 2.3 million. 72% accept treatment, 1.6 million. 26% refer, 2 million. So Jay, our mathematician, we were a million dollar practice. We improved each area by net 12%. The revenue is now 2 million. How much did we grow? A million dollars. We doubled our business.
36:53
That’s why I was able to more than double my father’s business because we killed it in a good way on the phone. And people were showing up. They were accepting treatment. No wonder you. So the point is you got it. You got to play on each level, but I know many practitioners will say, throw money at marketing and say, help me out of this hole when you’re just kind of leaking water somewhere else in the ship. So you better be training because.
37:21
If you do what I say you do, and Brian Tracy, who I had the great pleasure of writing a book with, he always says that when you have a business, to really build a great business, think about you never have to market, could you still survive? And so if you do what I’m saying with the business growth and your training and your converting and people referring, you’ll never have to spend a dime on marketing. That’s your baseline. I still would invest in marketing.
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but you know that you have a solid core and you’re not beholden to having to buy your way out of things. You’re just investing in something great you have. The only concerns I have with that is that you will have incremental growth revenue on upselling the upsell and referral, but you’re not really going to generate new growth. I have a saying, you can steal this one too. Let’s hear it. I like to eat what I grow.
38:19
People use the expression, well, you have to eat what you kill. I don’t eat what I kill because when I kill it, it’s dead. I eat what I grow. I like that between an annual and a perennial. I want it to keep generating and regenerating because the more new people you get in, the more referrals that you will get in, which arithmetically progress. And that is where I’ll tell you, I have practices.
38:47
that cannot spend on marketing. They had to shut it down because their log is six months. They’re getting so much activity from referrals and from people that continue to come back. Because again, what’s a little difference with dentistry depends on like, because they keep coming back for re-cares, right? So they have that ongoing revenue and then they’re doing cosmetic work that they’re just so, so full.
39:14
And you see some of these great plastic surgeons that you work with. And remember, when you say there’s no marketing, of course they have a website, they’re on local but they’re so well known. People are calling and you don’t have, like my father for example, he’s retired, he works part time, he still has the website, he’s still getting phone numbers. I haven’t touched that website and it’s still generating phone calls. So the point is, I like what you say, you should grow what, eat what you grow and still invest in marketing.
39:44
It’s just good business to do both. Now, obviously, you can hurt the patient experience if people are calling and you can’t get them in. So you can dial it down. But also, there’s this line that everything is marketing. So you gotta keep that, again, it’s just keeping that in mind. But the beautiful thing about the Business Growth Formula J that can put a lot of people to rest kind of at ease is that I can double my business without having to spend a lick.
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on external marketing. Theoretically, I still believe both of us agree, you should invest in marketing. Both. That’s just good business. But you know, you’re not beholden to it.
40:29
Thanks for listening and remember to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube, get episodes as they are released and share with your friends. Until next time, go out there and be.
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We hope you enjoyed this episode of Dental All-Stars. Visit us online at AllStarDentalAcademy.com.
