Bulletproof Dental Practice Podcast Episode 11

Host: Dr. Peter Boulden

Atlanta Dental Spa

Guest: Dr. Steven Rasner

Realizing the Dream

Key Takeaways:

• If you're young, you should invest first in yourself by mastering a specialty.
• Meet with the top people in your top department regularly and discuss your company's challenges and strategies.
• Create something that will inspire people to come to you
• Build relationships with your patients
• Get your oral sedation certificate in your local state
• Two skills to learn: (1) atraumatic extractions and (2) implant dentistry
• Create an atmosphere where dentistry becomes easy
• Do a 5-point exam than a comprehensive exam
• Offer dental x-ray for free if you can to be able to get them to agree to a complete exam
• Give people a chance to see how it is to have complete dental treatment
• Increase acceptance by requesting the significant other to be at the first visit
• Speak honestly and sincerely to patients
• Create scripts that work and memorize them
• Treat all patients equally and with respect
• Don't beat yourself up as a dentist and work in as many places as you can to gain experience

Resources Mentioned

Book: Success Principles by Jack Canfield

Tweetables:

"Be good doctors and be right with people. Treat your patients with respect." - Dr. Steve Rasner

"Every successful person in the world has mentors." - Dr. Steve Rasner

Bulletproof Dental Practice Episode 10

Host: Dr. Peter Boulden

Atlanta Dental Spa

 Dr. Dick Reid spend most of his career focused on NOT growing a large practice.  Nope, he knew that is wasn't how MUCH you collect, but rather how much you KEEP of that collections.   Over his career, Dick was able to drive his overhead to around 43%- as general practicioner.  This is pretty much unheard of, so when I did catch wind of this I wanted to find out his "secret sauce" so that maybe some listeners could gain insight on how to emulate that - to a certain degree.   By keeping such a low overhead to his practice, Dick was able to retire early on his timeline.  

Guest: Dr. Richard (Dick) Reid

DentalTown article

Contact:  630-800-6191 or rjrdds50@gmail.com

Key Summary:

• Dr. Reid spent only 43% overhead in his dental practice.
• Read and understand how the dental economy works.
• Listen when smart people speak and use them as mentors.
• Save 20% from your practice and do not live above your means.
• To maintain low overhead expenses, keep your office small.
• You can analyze your numbers by simply looking at your patient schedules.
• To start minimizing overhead, you should “cut the fat” everyday.
• Tip: Move patients around so you don’t have any gaps in your patient schedules.
• Tip: Only have 1 front desk personnel.
• Tip: Ask patients for referrals. Ask for new patients. Don’t be shy.
• Keep adding money in your pension fund in order to build it.
• Advice: Start modestly. Try to stay modest.
• Streamline your personal spending so you can save for your pension.
• How to reduce an already high overhead - consider starting over or letting people go
• Pay attention daily and continuously to your practice to make it healthy
• Get business experience from reading business-related articles and pay attention

Resources Mentioned:

Dental Town - Doug Carlsen DDS

Lean and Mean - Rick Kushner

WhiteHall Management - Greg Stanley

Dental Economics - Brian Hufford

Tweetables:

“Our patients love us because we love them first. - Dr. Dick Reid”

“There’s nothing more encouraging than seeing the money you plough into your pension fund grow and appreciate and see the light at the end of the tunnel. - Dr. Dick Reid”

“Make it. Save it. Then keep it. -Dr. Dick Reid”

Bulletproof Dental Practice Podcast Episode 9

Host: Dr. Peter Boulden

Atlanta Dental Spa

Guest: Darren Shaw

Founder & President of Whitespark

Email: darren@whitespark.ca

Darren is literally the authority when it comes to LOCAL search.  He's a frequent lecturer to others SEO's in the industry.   Darren's company - Whitespark is almost completely focused on how to help businesses rank better locally.  As we know, local search is what most brick & mortar businesses are concerned with.  Ranking nationally is great but as dentists we have geographical limitations (i.e. we have to do business in our office and not online).  There are some AWESOME tips and advice in this episode.  I have know Darren and consume his articles and content but I was still taking notes during the podcast!

Key Takeaways:

• Local SEO is about making sure your business appears in local search.
• Google has become better at showing you relevant search results that are near your location.
• Google is mobile-first. You need to design your website for mobile by either having a mobile-specific site or have a responsive site.
• Organic SEO is based on the content and the links on your website. Local SEO adds reviews, citations (listing in business directory) and Google My Business listing.
• Citations
  • Citations is anywhere in the web where your name and business address is mentioned. Be careful not to overdo or it will appear spammy.
  • Note: If you use Yext, cancelling it will have major impacts to your listings.
• Reviews
  • You can ask people to write reviews for you in Google by sending them a link.
  • For Yelp, only ask active Yelpers for review. Otherwise, the review won’t be credited. Tip: Connect your Yelp account to your Facebook account to find active Yelpers among your friends.
• Tips on how to check your local SEO
  • Ask your customers to write reviews for you in Google.
  • Build your listings online in the Top 50 directory website.
  • Claim your business in Google.
  • Increase relevant content in your website.

Resources:

Google Review Link Generator by Whitespark

Book:

The Orenda by Joseph Boyden

Productivity App:

AHRefs

Tweetables:

“Reviews have massive impact on your business, not just your ranking. - Darren Shaw”

Bulletproof Dental Practice Podcast Episode 8

Host: Dr. Peter Boulden

Atlanta Dental Spa

Title: Top 7 Tips for SEO in 2016 / 2017

Subtitle: How Dentists Can Grow Their Practice Through SEO

Key Takeaways:

• SEO is now based on the user experience, the freshness of your content and the authority Google gives your site.
• In the past, people can gamify SEO using spammy link building that creates no value in the Internet. This has changed.
• Google has become smarter with their algorithms and has focused on content that is actually relevant to consumers.
• Tip 1: Focus on social media strategy. Think outside the box. Social content will become more prominent for Google to quantify who is relevant. Becoming social and getting mentioned all the time online by legitimate people will increase your search engine rankings.
• Tip 2: Maximize the use of video. Videos will become increasingly powerful and will become the mainstay. People are captivated by videos even by strangers. You can even use your iPhone to shoot videos.
• Tip 3: Optimize your websites for mobile. Mobile optimized websites will become crucial. The dominant device of consumers to view websites are now mobile phones and tablets. Also, check also how fast your website loads. Design beautifully for mobiles first then desktops next.
• Tip 4: Use long tail keywords. Voice search functions will soon become the norm due to the advent of Siri, Cortana etc. Long tail keywords are normal sentences people will speak when searching for something online. They are very, very specific to what you are selling.
• Tip 5: Learn about local SEO and the things that drive it. Local SEO will become more important. There are many ways to drive local SEO - citations, reviews, direction guides, etc. Aim for Google to show a map listing of your site when someone makes a local search.
• Tip 6: Focus on the user experience. This is at the core of Google’s algorithm changes. Make your website useful for your visitors with good design, videos, useful content and engaging social content. Decrease your bounce rate and try to increase the time of your visitors on your site.
• Tip 7: Create good and substantial content. Go deep with your content by including pictures and videos in the topics you discuss. Go deep before going wide (having a lot of pages).
• Become knowledgeable with SEO or enlist a company to do it. But it’s better to become knowledgeable and then collaborate with the company you enlist to handle your SEO.
• Optimizing your website for SEO takes time but it’s rewarding.
• SEO is the new norm. If you want to grow your practice, invest in it or else you’ll be left behind.

Resources Mentioned

Page Speed Tool by Google

Google Analytics 

Tweetables:

“You need to be intimately involved in the creation of your content. It can’t be outsourced but it can be a collaborative experience.”

“SEO is the new norm and if you don’t do it, you will be left behind.”

Bulletproof Dental Practice Podcast Episode 7

Host: Dr. Peter Boulden

Atlanta Dental Spa

Guest: Rob Bay

President, Dental Intel

Key Takeaways:

• Dental Intel is a cloud based software which can be used as a practice management and financial management system.
• Dentists are busy with their practice so they have no time to pore over the data presented. So Dental Intelligence learned to take the data and turn it into reports that dentists can easily understand. They provided action items on the things dentists can do in order to improve.
• Causation data is understanding what is causing the managerial data being measured.
• The next and deeper level of data is called action items. It tells you what you need to do with the data you have. It tells dentists specific things that needs to be done in a specific time to specific patients.
• Dental Intel takes the data and processes it into actionable items that can be assigned to other people - not necessarily the dentist himself.
• Caring about your patients and understanding the numbers should not be mutually exclusive. They can blend together and go hand-in-hand.
• Dental Intel measures things that allows dentists to provide exceptional care for their patients.
• Patients, on average are only accepting 25% of what is being presented to them. Usually, this has to do more about the practice and the systems than the patients.
• Dental Intel can help by measuring this data in order to increase cognizance of the issue. This leads to improving the issue.
• Understanding data increases awareness of what your practice is doing right and wrong.
• Do not focus on the negative but rather view them as opportunities within your practice.
• It is not an emotional decision, it’s a binary decision. It’s just data.
• Utilizing data and information to make decision can make you a better business owner and help you provide better care to your patients.
• Ask why the numbers are where they are even if the numbers are good. You want to replicate the good thing that is being done.
• Dental Intel, or a data analyst, can help a dentist become accountable with the data being measured.
• Dental Intel provides correction but with recommendation. They make it optimistic.
• Dental Intel Rule: Find 3 good things (celebrations) before giving a helpful observation (correction). Highlight areas of success and build up on them instead of focusing on the terrible things someone, who was never measured before, is doing. Let the number do the talking instead of pushing down a person.
• Dental Intel Goal: Help individual dentists become successful in the midst of corporate dentistry boom.

Resources:

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

Glip - by Ring Central

Intercom

Tweetables:

“In measuring and tracking things, you can modify things.” Rob Bay 

“Using data and information to figure out how systems can be improved is a replicable skill.” Rob Bay

“There’s nothing more powerful than having everyone in your practice do one little thing everyday to bring in more production.” Rob Bay

“If you don’t know your numbers, you don’t know your business. If you don’t know your business, you’re putting everyone at risk.” - Dr. Peter Boulden

“When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported back, the rate of improvement accelerates. - Thomas Monson.” - Rob Bay

“It’s not emotion, it’s just a binary decision about changing x to get to y. It’s just data.” - Dr. Peter Boulden