Join us on Dental All-Stars where Dr. Paul Goodman discusses the ABCs of successful dentistry (Always Be Connecting) and more! Join us at the Practice Growth Summit in May!
Resources:
- Practice Growth Summit 2024
- Dentist Job Connect
- All-Star’s Hiring Service
- Practice Growth Guide Download
- Dental Practice Growth Webinar
About Dr. Goodman
Dr. Paul Goodman is a practicing general dentist and the managing partner of a group practice with two locations along with his brother, Jeffrey, in Mercer County, NJ. Over the past ten years, Dr. Goodman has acquired three dental practices and has transformed his father’s general practice into a dental group that employs multiple general dentists, specialists, and over twenty team members in two locations. Dr. Paul Goodman is also known as Dr. Nacho. Founder of the Dental Nachos Facebook group dedicated to helping dentists and teams increase their success, happiness and most of all, have more fun dentisting.
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.
00:03
Welcome to Dental All-Stars. I’m Alex Nottingham, founder and CEO of All-Star Dental Academy. And with me is Dr. Paul Goodman. Dr. Paul Goodman is the Nachos guy. He’s the CEO of Nachos, which is one of the biggest Facebook groups for dentistry. He’s also the CEO of Job Connect, and we’ll talk a little bit about this. And this is an interview that’s part of a collection of interviews focusing on business and personal growth. And Dr. Paul’s gonna be with us at the Practice Growth Summit coming up this May.
00:32
and he’ll be talking about how to find, inspire, and train an associate. So, welcome, Paul. Paul Thanks for having me on, Alex. Love doing these, love sharing. Really, it’s awesome that you take the time to put all this value out into the dentisting world. That’s why I call it dentisting. Full contact arch and crafts on people that don’t want to be there or pay for it. That’s pretty much what we do. So, I really appreciate you having me on. Aaron Norris Great to have you. So, before we get into the subject matter, because you’re going to be one of our speakers there at the Practice Pro Summit.
01:03
In terms of growth, how do you define growth and why is it important? Yeah, I really like that question. I mean, it’s got a little bit of the Goldilocks syndrome to it. You know, too much is too much, too little is too little. What’s just right for everyone. I think every business owner that, you know, changes throughout their career. I’m a big fan of Gary Vaynerchuk, Gary B. And he talks about
01:26
Friends who own businesses that did $3 million a year and they were happy and they grew it to $10 million and they were miserable. So I think that growth can’t go on unchecked and not, but I think it’s important, you know, growth represents that you’re doing more fun things. You’re helping more people. And to me, it means that you are able to go into your practice every day. And first of all, make sure you’re doing patient centered care. And one A to that is it as productive as possible.
01:52
And are you able to build the team to keep helping more people? And helping more people in your dental practice, Alex, to me is not just the patients, it’s your team members who count on you for their livelihoods. It’s other dentists that you hire and bring into the practice. So I think growth affects the three major players in the dental practice, the patient, the team, and the dentist. And it’s an awesome topic that we don’t talk enough about in dental score at all. I love the way you define that because
02:18
growth can be a problem, right? You don’t also want cancer as a growth too. So you have to be careful how much growth you have. A little bit of sales is good, too much is bad. But also like you say as well, sometimes you can over bloat the business or you’re too much focused when it comes to the revenue side, but are you taking care of the happiness side? And you have to balance that as well. That’s why we’re saying the whole point of Practice Growth Summit is business.
02:47
and personal growth. So they’re kind of, right, we want our business to work for us and that’s gonna be part of what we discussed today because often dentists, here’s the deal, here’s the problem, dentists get a business and really, they’re just buying a job. And what we’re talking about, what we do at All-Star and what you do at Nachos and Job Connect is how to give dentists that freedom. And just with some background as well, besides Nachos, talk about Nachos.
03:15
which all of you should be a part of and probably some of you are listening right now on Notches, so that’s one aspect. The other is Job Connect. And I want to kind of link this with All-Star in a sense because just like you, we both saw a need. I had, we do online training, we do coaching, we do events, whatever you need to compete with the big corporate players and be one of the fighters there.
03:44
And we found that we would have practices that said they couldn’t train and do the things they knew they should do, because they didn’t have the right people. They don’t have people, they’re understaffed. So about four years ago, we unlaunched our hiring service. Okay, so we hire for all positions from start to finish, okay, except for associates. And because associates is a whole different can of worms here. And they’re both areas have been very difficult now.
04:12
And what’s great about you, Paul, you have Job Connect that helps with dental associates. How did you end up getting into that? I mean, you’re a dentist, you’re not just, how did you get into cog? Yeah, how did that happen? My team, I mean, you guys are amazing sponsor, but they just reached out to your team because we are looking for a hygienist. Because these are the things, one of the things I started off many presentations with Alex is sometimes one of the best things to happen to someone else is one of the worst things that happened to you.
04:39
So when your hygienist comes and says, hey, guess what, I’m pregnant. That’s great for your hygienist, right? But now you have this challenge on your hands to how are you going to figure out how to keep your business running? And I just think what they don’t teach you in dental school is the life events of people that work on your team have a major impact on your success and sanity. So we’re connecting with your team about hiring a hygienist right now. And I think what you do is awesome for that. I also wanna share part of the associates part is,
05:08
You said so many great things about balancing happiness and profit, right? And one of the things I’ve written about and talked about, you know, you welcome the name of the podcast episode. This is where does happiness show up on your PNL? Because everyone asks about your PNL and says, what’s your EBITDA? What’s your EBITDA? I have the shirt here. Alex, I’m always working on my EBITDA and biceps, but you know, I made up a term called CBITDA, which is stress building inside towards dentist annoyance. And I think, you know, that is a term that, you know, when you say to many dentists,
05:36
you could make $100,000 more next year, or you could be 23% less annoyed. They go, I’ll take that one, the less annoyed one, right? And I think what you shared there was so key. The associate part to me is, so Dental Nachos, started as a Facebook group in 2017, never in my wildest dreams, I think it would grow to this. I thought it was gonna be a thousand people talking about implants, practice management, and being kind to each other. When people see me on the streets wearing a nacho shirt, and when I get U1 out, people say, what is Dental Nachos?
06:05
I say, that’s a good question. Dental notches is like a Mr. Rogers neighborhood for dentists because dentists are really good at being nice to patients and not so good at being nice to each other. So we help them with business and collaboration, but from ideas always spawns other ideas. So, you know, we’ve had amazing sponsors like you on our Facebook group, we’ve done events, we do CE, I’ve done coaching, we do buying and selling practices, and we would help dental practices hire associates. But that became such a key pain point.
06:33
that it became its own company called Dentist Job Connect. Because one of my favorite podcasts is Entrepreneurs on Fire by John Lee Dumas. And I think you have a similar one, it’s 25 to 30 minutes. And he kind of talks about focusing on one task until completion, getting your team aligned and Dental Notches is awesome, I love it. Just like my children, I have two children, I have two companies, but Job Connect is solely focused on helping the solo GP, the group practice owner, the large group.
07:02
hire their first 10th or 100th associate dentist. We collaborate with people like you for hygienists, assistants and front desk team members, just to build a fence around it. If your listeners, maybe put this in your show notes. Alex, How to Speak by Patrick Winston is one of the best pieces of speaking content I’ve ever listened to. It has 17 million YouTube views and it’s dentist’s favorite price to listen to. Alex, it’s free, it’s free. So- What’s it called? How to what?
07:28
How to speak by Patrick Winston, it’s phenomenal. It is a, passed away a few years ago. He was teaching MIT students how to present themselves for a job. And he talks about building a fence around your idea. Tell people what your idea is not. So Job Connect is not high level recruiting where you pay 10 to $30,000 to hire an associate. And I believe high level recruiting has tremendous value. Dentist Job Connect is not also posting on your Facebook group for free. Some dentists, they don’t understand algorithms Alex,
07:58
I’ll tell you about our ID in a second, but I’ll say, hey, Dr. Alex, we can help you find an associate. We have a platform. We put it on Instagram, put it on Facebook. We put it on LinkedIn. We throw it to our text audience, all this stuff, right? Some dentists, there can be dentist G box. They go, I don’t need you. I’m gonna post it on my own Facebook page. And I go, who’s gonna apply? Your aunt? Is your aunt gonna apply for your job, right? So we are not a free Facebook poster ad anywhere. We are an affordable and awesome.
08:27
platform where currently at the time this dentist dental practice are paying between 1295 and 2695 to list their associate position, they get access to our resume database, they get guaranteed. That’s fantastic. I appreciate that very much. Guaranteed applicants, not guaranteed success. One of the things I say about high-level recruiting, listen, if I need a position at my company and someone can help me find them through high-level recruiting and I have to pay them 10,000, that could be well worth it. But what I’ll share with your audience.
08:56
is that sometimes high level recruiting, they’re like, do you want to meet Dr. Bill? And after you meet Dr. Bill, I’ll introduce you to Dr. Sally. But first meet Dr. Bill, right? I’m not saying all of them do that. So I don’t want any high level recruiters to get mad. But what we do is we give our dental practices like here’s the whole platform, connect with as many as you like. We’re not going to find out if they like the color blue. Yeah, we’re not going to. So it’s been a lot of fun. I really think it’s been one of the most exciting things to build and I really feel like I’m making a difference.
09:25
I think that we both share, this is what’s a fun discussion, we both share a similar situation. So in terms of, we’re here to support the dentist, but it’s like the expression, you can bring a horse to water, but you can’t get it to drink. And it’s frustrating because what they’ll often do, like you said, they’ll post on Facebook, they’ll do themselves, the whole do it yourself process. So
09:54
I mean, let’s just go there because that’s where it came to my mind. But I have other questions with respect to that. But you’ll see there’s a model where, and this is for business people all across whatever you’re going to do, this is what you’ve got to run through, which is, am I good at it? Okay. Do I like doing it? And is it a good use of my time? Right. And it’s highly unlikely. And I think if I heard you right, I think my team told you.
10:21
You, the master hirer, the CEO of Nachos, is using a service, all-star service, to help hire a hygienist. Yeah. So, you have the humility to know, wait a second, that’s not a good use of my time. I don’t like doing it. Okay. So, I’m going to get the professionals to do. And so, I think dentists listening, you got to have a modicum of humility and with respect to this. And that’s just good business people. I know.
10:49
And Paul does as well. We know what we’re not good at. And we know what we’re, we think we know what we’re good at. We focus on what we’re good at and what we love to do. At least we love it. Whether we’re good at it or not is all that. We love doing it. But if you don’t love it, you don’t want to step over dollars to get pennies. Because all that time, you’re supposed to be producing 500 to a thousand plus an hour, not to mention, and this is a very important point. Well, I’ll have my team do it. And they’re at $25 an hour. Doesn’t matter. Everybody in your practice,
11:18
A, are they good at it? Do they love doing it? That’s a whole other thing. But the reason why it’s not good news of their time is you are running a multimillion dollar machine. And everybody’s a part of that. When you take somebody off the machine to do something they’re not good at, they don’t love doing it, not a good use of your time, you’re taking away. That’s why hiring costs are so expensive. It’s not what Paul and what All-Star hire, what Job Connect and what All-Star hiring hire. It’s cheap. The issue is the loss of production.
11:47
The issue is the inefficiencies. The issue is the patients aren’t getting the experiences. So this is where I wanted to go with this, Paul, because dentists, I’m sorry, and just human beings, we don’t, we’re only motivated, we motivate when it’s painful, okay? And it’s painful out there. When you are not using the tools available to you, because it always starts with the dentist. And if you don’t have the right perspective.
12:12
to be, and we’re trying to get you to be better business people, better thinkers, to have a better life. And you, and you know, and Tony Robbins, my mentor, would say, model the best. What are the best doing? They’re not doing that. Okay. So, so, so I just wanted to pick a little bit on, on, on that situation. Now on the, so any, does that make sense? I love it. And also I’ll kind of add, you know, a couple of things about that. Just last night, I
12:39
post a lot of questions in my group and it said, which financial mistake did you make early in your career that you regret? So I tell dentists, when I’m at this all-star amazing event and I get to be one of the speakers, but I’m just as excited to learn from the other speakers. And I’m sitting there and talking to people. And this doesn’t matter if you’re 26, 46 or 66. I say the best question to ask people is not, are you happy with your job? No good, because people are just gonna lie to you. They’re not gonna tell you the truth, right? Because they’re gonna say.
13:03
Am I going to disappoint this young dentist and say, I’m not happy? No, this is what you ask. What do you wish you did sooner that you regret you didn’t do sooner? I believe it is the best question. As a parent, as a practice owner, I’ll share what mine was. What I regret not doing sooner as a practice owner, Alex, is hiring a coach to look at my numbers. I hired a coach early in my career to help with the people management. And I was very tuned in to the people management getting along. But I did not hire a coach that would look at my numbers. And I stayed in network with bad insurances too long.
13:33
I operated on too many feelings instead of facts when it came into money. So I’m just authentically sharing. I’m Paul Goodman, I wish I did that sooner. Well, someone last night said, I wish I got a coach sooner. I wish I hired someone like you guys sooner. They didn’t specifically hire you. And I said, why? He said, because I was so busy and I was so stressed and I finally hired someone and they unlocked in me the ability to be more productive, but more so have a sane life. So when we come back to this associate world,
14:03
Alex, one of the things that just drives me nacho nuts, technical term is, if you say to a dentist, you have a front desk position, you’re gonna interview one person, they go, no way, I’m gonna interview three or four people, I wanna find out who the right fit is for my patients. Okay, cool, thanks Dr. Smith. You have an assistant opening with your periodontist or surgical person, you’re just gonna interview one person, they go, no way, I’m gonna interview four or five, that’s an important position. Then when I say, what about your associate, they go.
14:29
My brother’s friend’s cousin is graduating from dental school in a year, so I’m just gonna wait till they graduate. I go, this is arguably the most important position in your practice. A human being is a dentist who treats your patients, and you’re not gonna give yourself four, five, six, seven options so you know what you want and don’t want, but here’s one of the things, Alex, when someone doesn’t know how to do something, they don’t show competence doing it, and that’s me included. So because they’ve never hired dentists before,
14:58
They don’t realize, hey, I should interview six. The ones that get it do, you know, my friend, Dr. Andrew Vallow, who’s working with us at Job Connect, he had 43 applications to his position, 43 in Tampa, through Job Connect and Indeed, 43. He gives them a little test. He breaks it down to this. He gets, brings some people in. So he gets the best person possible. So my hope is in delivering value to your listeners now and in the future is for really important things in life, get as many options as possible. So you wind up.
15:25
with the best solution. Well, I will say, I think it’s ubiquitous because even on the front office side, we’ll typically get the first one that piques our interest. There isn’t this, because I think in anything that’s being done, what’s lacking is the intention, the vision. What am I looking to get? And what happens is we get excited, or we just want to fix the problem.
15:54
And whatever will fix Band-Aid will do it. But we have to ask, we have to make sure, and that’s where the coaching comes in, Paul, too, is we need the support system, which is coaches, which is Nacho, which is a bunch of things to be able to support us and say, okay, take a breath. You know, are we following what we wanted to build? Does this person fit the mold? Did we even know what the mold is? How we thought about it? How we written it down? So we don’t even know, we’re all over the place.
16:24
with respect to that. And it’s difficult, I acknowledge that. I don’t want to just say, look, I do it too, Paul does it too. In anything in life, we’re just like, ooh, I want that. But why do we want that? What specifically? And the more important- One of my phrases is, just to add to it, is desperation causes disaster, right? So one of the things I’ll share with your practice owners at the summit, and listen, I’ve role modeled many of the annoying mistakes that I caution people onto. You know, I mean, waiting too long. You know, some of these-
16:54
practice owners who are running one, you’re probably someone listening right now who does $1.7 million a year, you know, working four days a week, has a nice practice, and they have no dentist exit plan, or even not even any exit plan, the board plan. And you know what, I’ll say to Dennis, do you like your team? I love my team, I love my team. Do you care about your patients? I really care about my patients. Are you looking to hire an associate dentist? No, I’m not ready for that. So then I say, what happens when you’re at a tough mutter race and you hurt your shoulder? What happens there, right? That’s a good point. What happens if sadly,
17:23
you know, sadly, my own father passed away suddenly as a full-time dentist in 2016. There’s sudden death of dentists, sudden injury, catastrophic injury. Good point. You’ve now left your team that you love and the patients that you care about incredibly vulnerable as to what happens next. And it doesn’t mean hire a full-time associate, Alex, and ruin your profit. It doesn’t mean- Oh, that’s a good point. Maybe you hire a part-time associate. Maybe you bring someone into mentor, right? I mean-
17:51
If you are not attached to another life, dentistry is a crazy complex profession. When I am, I just want to share with you, I made up this company in my head called dental nachos. So when I’m sick, if I can’t make it into work, everyone can keep working, connecting with sponsors. And if I’m a solo dentist and I can’t make it into work, nobody can work. That’s a great point. You know, as I’m listening, it sounds like an insurance policy in a sense, at the very least having a, an associate.
18:18
I mean, even, and I like how you already addressed that issue where you say, you can have a part-time even associate. Like you have to obviously, the numbers have to justify it. You got to have enough to support, but having a connection with an associate or support with that, you’re right. You injure yourself, what’s going to happen. Now you’re desperate in what you have to do. I know, I connect them with you. I got, I scared my friend, Dr. Bob D, who runs National General to this. So he did this because of me, because I said,
18:45
Bob being an associate, so his wife agreed with me and he hired a two day a week associate because he realized he had no insurance policy and that’s what he calls it. That’s great. The other thing is I wanna share, and this might seem crazy to everybody, every dentist who’s always thinking about EBITDA. I don’t know if the numbers have to justify the way they think. Just so you can define, somebody not know what that means, earning before interest taxes, right? Depreciation and amortization, yeah. So basically that’s the profit of your dental practice if an associate worked for you, right? So if you did a million dollar practice,
19:15
and your practice makes $400,000 a year, but the dentist would make 300. Now there’s 100 left over, so that’s 10% EBITDA. And one of the things I’ll share is most of the dentists who are thinking of hiring an associate do over a million dollars a year. Most of them are making, for the sake of this quick podcast discussion, over $300,000 a year. So you know what? They hired an associate for 75 days a year, even 100 days a year, and they guarantee them $600 a day, and they have a $60,000 expense.
19:45
I don’t think the numbers even have to justify it. I think their morale does. Now I don’t want to sound like someone to throw something at their car because they said, Paul DeGroemmen doesn’t care about numbers. You know I’m not meaning that. But what I’m sharing is we talked before, dentists go to a conference and they come back with a hundred thousand dollar piece of equipment and they don’t trust any of those numbers. So why not say, hey, this human being is a dentist can get me take vacation, cover my practice, help with emergencies. Why don’t I try it for a year?
20:15
put a number like $100,000 on it, see how it goes. And then if I don’t wanna do it anymore, I gotta tell the associate there’s no more position for you. It’s true. And I feel very comfortable because you know what these dentists do, so you guess what Dr. Bob D is doing already, more time from their associate. So these dentists just start out, I want one or two days a week, very quickly they go, I want three days a week because they love being able to run their practice and not have to do every job. I love it. I love the perspective.
20:45
on having an associate with respect to that. No, it makes sense. It makes sense. I feel bad often, you know, sometimes I’ll think about it’s nice having a business business, like All-Star or Notches, where people can run it with, I mean, it runs without us, right? I mean, we’re the visionaries, so we come up, we do these things, but we’re not necessary, which is good. We’re necessary to create new things, but the company can still continue.
21:10
But with a dental, and this is business 101. I mean, if you look at any business building, because a dentist have to, I always say you have to have two hats. You have to take the dentist. So Dr. Paul Goodman works for Paul, okay? The business person. You have to separate those. Once you commingle, never let a dentist run your business. They will destroy it. And what I mean is the dentist within you, that’s the one that goes and buys a CEREC machine and says, if I build it, they will come. Doesn’t work that way.
21:39
It’s nice to have shiny objects if you can afford it, if it makes sense, but you have to have the proper foundation with respect to that. But can you build a business where you have, Dr. Paul works for you, right? And then you have another as well. It’s a business, because there’s another cool business saying or principle. It’s the problem of one. You never wanna have one. If you have one dentist or one producer.
22:06
That’s very problematic. You’re an injury away from total disaster. Disaster, yeah. And also, if we take it away from disaster, now we go more towards dreams, right? Okay, I like that. Many people say, dentistry is a great profession. My dad included, you know, my dad was an amazing dad. I wanna be a dentist, doctor, a lawyer. He never forced me to become a dentist. He just said, hey, Paul, I like being my own boss. I like helping people and I get to coach your sports team. It’s an amazing life for him. But at the end of his life, he’s like, this profession and business has become wildly complex, right? Yeah. So,
22:36
One of the things about the dreams of dentistry is they say some things in life, Alex, nothing’s 100%. Okay. They say nothing’s 100%, but I disagree because here’s something that’s 100%. I’ve never met a dentist who worked four days a week and then they went down to three days a week and they ever wanted to go back to four. I’ve never seen anyone make that move the other direction. Four to three, three to two, two to one. So maybe your dream is to own your dental practice, be able to do two days a week of dentistry instead of four.
23:03
and have another, but you cannot do that without another dentist. So, it’s whether, you know, we talked about avoiding disaster, but making your dreams come true. Is dentistry such a great job if you can’t take off for your child’s game? Is dentistry such a great job? How many dentists have never taken more than a one-week vacation? It’s sadly many because they think I got to get back to the practice. Now, my friend, Dr. Todd Fleischman, who I encourage to hire an associate, he’s taken more vacations. He’s having his office open when there’s so I’m not here to…
23:32
I’m here to help hope your listeners think man, I get all the latest equipment, I invest in coaching, I care about my patients in practice, I probably should think about connecting with another dentist to see how it fits into my life. And as you’re speaking and you mentioned this, it’s almost like a prerequisite, like to make that success, it’s really important to have a coach and mentors to support you with respect to that. So I think that’s as critical.
24:00
It’s almost like in job connections, we have coaches in to help interview the associates, which I think is awesome. That’s wonderful. I mean, you know, coaches become, you know, very important. I had a coach this morning for job connect. He’s a very important relationship in my life. Right. And, and if I was going to make a huge hire equivalent to an associate dentist, not only would I talk about it with him, I might have him help with the interview process because he knows me well. And it’s, and it’s, you know, it’s leveraging, it’s just leveraging people. It’s people capital.
24:30
It’s intelligence. We talk about like artificial intelligence. What about real intelligence? We still require people intelligence. Emotional intelligence from Daniel Goleman’s book, right? Oh, emotional. Well, that’s a whole nother level, right? And hopefully your coaches have a high degree of EQ. And EQ, emotional intelligence, is a higher predictor of success in intelligence because you could be the best dentist, right, clinically, but if you can communicate emotionally.
24:59
and connect and make the right decisions emotionally, then you will not be successful, at least in the terms that we decide, right? Which is that balance in life, right? I think it’s for you, you said it in the beginning, I made my brain popular, use the word freedom, right? I say an associate unlocks freedom, free time and fewer hygiene checks. Those are my three Fs, you know? Freedom, family time. And you know, I wanna ask you this. One of our recent Dentist Job Connect clients,
25:28
Alex, he collects $3 million a year. He earns a million dollars a year, and he works three days a week. He said, Paul, I got to make a change. I can’t keep doing it this way. I think to maybe a young associate, I think, oh, if I was that dentist, I would be 100% happy. He said, I cannot run this schedule anymore. It’s way too much on me. He’s hired one associate coming to us for our second associate. He may.
25:56
He’s growing, you asked about growth, he’s gonna be on track for four million this year, but likely he’s taking home less, but happier. And that’s the whole thing. It just occurred to me, and whether this is important too, ultimately at the end of, towards the end of your career, you start thinking about your legacy, what you make a difference in the world. And I think it’s also a great thing that for dentistry, when you are bringing in dentists and cultivating to a good way of doing dentistry, the way that All-Star and…
26:25
Nachos are purporting and supporting. So it’s important that we continue to cycle with respect to that. It helps you, it also helps them as well. That they get to learn, they’re not gonna learn all this in dental school, but they’re gonna learn from somebody who did it. Now the corporate behemoths is a whole different model. They’re doing associates because associates become our widgets. You know, they work them, they get paid well, but they’re gonna produce a product. For the…
26:54
for the private practitioners, you’re cementing your legacy. It will live on through these associates that you start to bring in and improve. So I know it’s quite aspirational, but something that may resonate with some dentists as well to be able to engage with that. Anyway, I always say the nachos mantra is ABC to FLA, always be connecting to feel less alone. And Todd Fleischman.
27:19
When I interview him about this, he’s a close friend of mine. I don’t remember all these. I was a stranger. Forget my keys and AirPods at all times. So I just, but when I interview him many times after these shows and he thinks, he goes, you told me so Paul, stop giving yourself credit. I should have hired this associate. But sometimes he just says this. He doesn’t say he makes more profit all the time. He doesn’t say he takes more vacation. He says, I will never go back to practicing alone. I will never do it. That’s awesome. I will never go back to practicing alone. And that is a feeling.
27:48
That’s an emotion that doesn’t show up in your Vietnam. That’s a great point. I know my dad, for example, so he retired, sold his practice, but he still wants to work. He likes doing it. But he loves the camaraderie, working with other dentists. And there’s something nice, you’re right, because often dentists report they feel like they’re on an island alone, you know, there. Okay, sure, and also, you’re the team guy, Ox, and I say this, I would say this right when my team was there.
28:13
You ever thought about this? Dental offices are like families, right? And by mean that they care about each other and they also fight on vacation, right? Cause if you go on vacation with your family, they go, my dental office is a family. I go, oh good, three days into vacation, you’re fighting over who took the last cold brew from the fridge that was usually me. But my point to this is, and I’ve never really put it this way, assistants are like their own little mini friends, right? And then the hygienists are their own mini friends and the front desk are their own mini friends. And then they’re all friends, right? And then the dentist.
28:43
They’re kind of on their own, right? Even inside of this family. So when they get that associate, they speak their language, right? This patient wasn’t open, this crown didn’t fit. So the assistants create camaraderie over shared pain and positivity. And that’s what I think Todd’s talking about. I don’t wanna be alone in this office anymore as the only dentist. That totally makes sense. Totally. I love it, Paul. Thanks. I love it, love it, love it. Let me ask you this. So you’re speaking about this topic at the, I mean, we’re just,
29:12
tip of the iceberg. So tell me, what are dentists going to learn when, if they’re going to be able to come to the event, bring their team? So I want you to ask, tell me about that. What will they learn? And why should dentists and team members come to the Practice Growth Summit? I mean, some might be local, that’s easy. Some might be traveling. Why do this? So I’ll break each of these down. So I want to start with why come to these things. And I’m running an event in April.
29:41
One is no one really likes the dentist. We may as well like each other. So one is come and hang out with your people. Dentist, team members, hygienist, assistants, see how other people do things. Have coffee, have wine, be at gyms. There is just magic in those connections at events. Whenever I, you know, I was just at the Rocky Mountain Dental Conference, I’ve been in Arizona, there is just magic. And one of the things I’ll share with.
30:06
Everyone is, you’re always glad you did it when it’s over. You’re always glad. So take the time, block off your schedule. Who cares if you have hygiene that Friday? Just change them, right? You know, I actually have to share. I would just digress for a minute. The whole book, the six month hygiene. Oh, you digress never. I don’t love it, okay? The whole book, the six month hygiene in advance. Of course I love it, because it keeps up momentum for health for my patients. Of course I love it, because it keeps up momentum of productivity. And yes.
30:35
it’s likely better than just saying come in when you want. And not but, it makes these practices crazy. I’ll be like, oh, do you wanna do something with me on August 21st that will change your life forever? Like we have six hygiene patients booked. I’m like, just move them. Just change the time. So I’m telling your people out there, even if your hygiene’s booked, shift them to a different time and be there. What they’re gonna learn from me, I kinda come up with this fit and associate into your office, find, inspire, train.
31:02
and they’re gonna come at it from every angle. So how does the associate, how does the associate practice affect the front desk team, the assistant team, the hygiene team? You know, this is very challenging. You bring a new dentist into the, a dentist that’s new to the practice. It may not be a new dentist. And the hygienist says, Dr. Nacho is gonna come in and, you know, check your teeth today. Where’d they go to school? Are they any good? Do you guys trust them? Sort of tough conversations that I can help people answer. To the dentist, how do they find the right fit for them?
31:31
personality wise, philosophy of care wise. And then also the magic is, you know, I want to share Alex, like the brag in this moment, nothing in my office ever goes wrong. Nothing ever goes wrong. Not one thing goes wrong in my office, but a lot of things go off script. So we don’t say wrong in my office, we say off script. Lab cases in here went off script. So how to deal with things when it goes off script, when the patient refuses to see the new dentist, how do you deal with that? And my hope is to give everybody the tools that they can go back and
32:01
Treatment plan their own happiness, maybe hire their first associate, maybe start thinking about it, maybe analyzing some of the numbers for it to make sense financially. You know what I think you said, Alex and I love this podcast, instead of saying, oh, I need to hire an associate and it has to make sense financially, I don’t know if I agree with that, but I agree with.
32:21
I have to hire an associate and it can’t not not make sense. So I know that sounds like a double hundred, but like, you know, you can’t be doing $400,000 a year and say, I want an associate because that’s just impractical. Right. So what I want to share is also give some fundamental tips on facts that see if it’s a fit for you now. So that’s what they’re going to learn. I’m thrilled to come down there with the other amazing speakers. I love this new way of seeing, you know, pack in the day, people say,
32:46
Paul, you wanna speak for the whole day? And I said, great, but then I don’t learn anything and it’s kind of a lot. So I love going to these summits and these events where not only do I get a chance to speak, I get a chance to leave as much learning myself as well. Well, the CEO, president, founder of Dental Nachos and Dentist Job Connect, so happy to have you on and to find you guys. I mean, Dental Nachos is so easy to find on Facebook.
33:13
I want to let everybody know that, and I’ll put all the links in the show notes, that our summit is alls alls You can see the agenda. We only have a, depending on when this podcast drop, we’re near sold out, so hopefully we have seats left. If not, then you’re waiting on this for next time, but we’d love to have you if there’s an availability. So check that out. Like, subscribe, comment, stay on script, and in.
33:40
Share all this with your friends. We’ll put this on nachos. We’ll put this on All-Star. We’ll put this out there. Until next time, everybody, go out there and be an All-Star. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Dental All-Stars. Visit us online at allstardentalacademy.com
