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

Bulletproof Dental Practice Podcast Episode 6

Host: Dr. Peter Boulden

Atlanta Dental Spa

Guest: Kent Miller of Dentagraphics

kent@dentagraphics.com

Key Takeaways:

• You can identify the specific place to best establish your practice using demographic data.
• Dentagraphics can provide the best place by measuring saturation of dental practices, income of the population and demand of the population.
• Dentagraphics can also help you identify the competition in the area and their profile. They have a proprietary software that verifies legitimate practices in the area.
• Rural, Town and City areas: There are opportunities in all types of areas but the best are in rapidly developing areas where the residential area has started to grow and commercial areas are starting to develop.
• Dentagraphics can provide reports that are customized based on your needs. You can login on your account and access an interactive report that you can adjust to your needs.
• Dentagraphics also gives personal recommendation where you need to establish your practice using the demographics they identify plus your business strategy.

Resources Mentioned:

Book:

The Submission by Amy Waldman

Productivity Tool:

Google Drive

Tweetables:

“Competition increases when the median household income increases.” - Kent Miller

“There will always be strength in the cottage industry, relationship-based dental practice.” - Dr. Peter Boulden

Bulletproof Dental Practice Podcast Episode 5

Host: Dr. Peter Boulden

Atlanta Dental Spa

Guest: Dr. Craig Spodak

http://www.spodakdental.com/

Facebook: Craig Spodak

Instagram: Craig Spodak

Email: drcraig@spodak.com

Key Takeaways:

• Dental profession can be improved by sharing best practices with each other.
• Dentists go through the same things - there will always be bad times. It’s how you deal with it.
• Idea behind Spodak Dental Group: have a dental practice with everything under one roof rather than having a single practice all on it's own.
• In order to have the best practice and best resources, you need to share everything with other dentists.
• Idea about Spodak’s spacious area: in order to make patients and dentists feel more comfortable and add value to their visit / practice.
• You need to be conscious of the entire patient visit from their visit in your online channel to their visit to your actual dental clinic.
• On Social Media:
  • Social Media is about engaging with your patient's’ social network.
  • If you have amazing content but no one is engaging with it, then it becomes more spam than an effective ad.
  • Think of engaging content for your social media channels which may even be non-dental. Balance it with what you actually do.
  • How to manage social media in-house: Find the person who is in your office and who is already in the social media channels and tap them for your social media initiatives. Create an internal page where everyone posts something interesting and the designated social media person picks the best one to share to the external audience.
  • Social Media Content will be hard to outsource. It is best to channel that budget to internal social media advocates.
  • Social Media training is a better investment than outsourcing it.
  • Tip: Ask patients to check in to your practice. It is good advertising. Incentivize them for doing this.
• Advertising Tips:
  • Other advertising initiatives: selective seminars with catered food for affluent communities.
  • Advertising Tip: A mortgage for a highly visible practice can make up for big advertising budget.
• Efficiency Tip: Consider mobile payments where the patient doesn’t have to interact with random people they just met for payments.
• Business should not just generate revenue. Learn to give back and do the right thing.
• Construction Tips
  • Have a purpose behind it. There will be setbacks so you need to understand why you’re doing it. Doing so will help you pull through.
  • Hire a dental design firm who can specialize in designing your big practice.
  • Plan how your patients will interact with your office.
  • Being LEED-certified is the right thing to do. It’s not just good for PR. Think of it as giving back.
  • Going for LEED-certified building increases productivity in people and shows you care for the patients.
• Business Expansion Tips:
  • Vision Tip: Write a vision you have for yourself even before it happens. Believe it even if you don’t know if it’s reasonable or not. Others will catch on the vision if you believe it really well.
  • You can achieve so much and be unfulfilled. Achievement and fulfillment are not always related. Do something because it fulfills you not because you want to do more.
  • Do not grow for the sake of growing and when it doesn’t make sense.
  • Identify your why. It has to make sense and it can’t be selfish.
• Stay productive. Don’t run after retiring then consider it as the time to start living.

Resources Mentioned:

Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz

Books

Rocket Fuel by Gino Wickman and Mark Winters

Multipliers by Liz Wiseman

Productivity Tool

Calendar

Tweetables:

“It improves our profession by being open and transparent to each other.” - Dr. Craig Spodak

 “We can only elevate our profession by sharing.” - Dr. Craig Spodak

“Social media is not about push advertising, it’s about pull advertising.”  - Dr. Craig Spodak

“The most effective advertising available to us now is free. (This is social media).”  - Dr. Craig Spodak

“At the end of the day if you’re blessed enough to be successful, you have responsibility to share it.”- Dr. Craig Spodak

“When you push yourself way outside the comfort zone, that’s where the growth happens.” - Dr. Craig Spodak

“If you risk something and you fall flat on your face, it is a learning experience.” - Dr. Craig Spodak

“Achievement and fulfillment are not always related.”- Dr. Craig Spodak

Bulletproof Dental Practice Podcast Episode 4

Host: Dr. Peter Boulden

Atlanta Dental Spa

Guest: Jeff Hopeck

Killer Shark Marketing

Title: How to Get Conversions from Advertising with Jeff Hopeck

Subtitle: Creating a System for Answering Calls To Track Missed Opportunities

Key Takeaways

• Advertising is important but must lead to conversions.
• Dentistry is an untapped industry when it comes to online advertising. There are tremendous opportunities for referrals in dentistry.
• Call trackers are great tools to help identify missed opportunities.
• The challenge: Listening to phone calls at the end of the day is not ideal for dentists who have a full practice during the day.
• A possible solution: Killer Shark has a proprietary software, Shark Talk, that listens to every call and categorizes them for your dental practice. Then sends missed opportunities to your email inbox.
• You can be missing opportunities by not recording and listening to every call even if you are doing well as a practice.
• People don’t call your office and just book an appointment. They call and ask questions to qualify your practice versus other practices they see online.
• Training is important for everyone including your reception service.
• Most practices have scripts but don’t have management accountability.
• Sometimes you don’t need to do or spend more on marketing. You need to identify how to solve missed opportunities.

Tweetables:

“It’s not just about picking up the phone and answering the call, it’s about executing on this data.” - Dr. Peter Boulden

“Data is nothing without execution.” - Dr. Peter Boulden

“You can’t fix something that you don’t know is broken.” - Jeff Hopeck

Resources: 

Website: sharktalk.me

Books:

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Productivity Tool:

Google Calendar 

Bulletproof Dental Practice Podcast Episode 3

Host: Dr. Peter Boulden

Atlanta Dental Spa

Guest: Dr. Marvin Berlin

McKinney Dentist.com

Email: drberlin@gmail.com

Title: Having a Sought After Dental Practice with Dr. Marvin Berlin

Subtitle: How to Grow a Large and Sustainable practice

Key Takeaways:

• Control your attitude and effort everyday.
• Be willing to do what others are not willing to do.
• When at work, focus on your patients.
• Execute the systems that you create everyday.
• Same Day Dentistry: some patients have needs that has to be taken care of on the same day they walk into your clinic. Just offer to do it for your patients instead of letting them walk away.
  • Treating patients immediately shows that you are willing to work around them versus the other way around.
  • McKinney System: Every new patient is booked in the hygiene department for exams, X-rays, etc. and gets the service they want on their first visit.
• Investigate where you say NO to your patients’ requests and find ways to change it into a YES. This may involve changing certain systems and practices.
• Categorize marketing into two: those that cost money (like TV ads, magazine ads, direct mails, etc.) and those that don’t cost money (like waiting room videos, etc.).
  • Tip: Go local. You can show your TV ads in local theaters for more targeted audience.
• Call your patients at night.
• Ask patients to leave reviews for your practice online. Make it easy for them.
• Ask for referrals from patients you like.
• Engage with your social media fans.
• Create valuable online content that patients can use i.e. ebooks.
• Follow up interested patients with personal touch points i.e. personally email them.
• Have a mentality to take care of emergencies.
  • Useful Strategy: Visit nearby pharmacies, give them cards and tell them to give the cards to anyone who buys medicine for toothaches.
• Remove barriers for patients to visit your clinic i.e. online / virtual consultation.
• Be emphatic to patients. Learn to read their body language.
• Being bought by a large corporation has a lot of advantages such as marketing and administrative support.
• Young dentists can benefit from affiliating with large practices.
• Things are changing fast and it’s good if you can get corporate support.

Tweetables:

“When you work, work hard.” - Dr. Marvin Berlin

“If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.” - Dr. Marvin Berlin

Resources

Waiting Room Videos - www.waitingroomvideos.com

Book

Bible

Wealthy Barber by David Chilton

The Gray Men by Mark Greaney

Productivity App

iPad

Bulletproof Dental Practice Podcast Episode 2

Host: Dr. Peter Boulden

Atlanta Dental Spa

Guest: Dr. Mark Costes

Founder, Horizon Schools of Dental Assisting

Founder, Dental Success Institute

Author, Pillars of Dental Success

Title: Expanding Your Practice Through Acquisitions featuring Dr. Mark Costes

Subtitle: How to Expand Without Getting Burned Out

Key Takeaways:

• Not having the right systems in place results to burnout and breakdown. It causes exhaustion.
• Building multiple practices can help you predict a good return but you need to put the correct systems in place.
• Investing in dentistry business puts you in control.
• First time buyers have to consider a lot of things before buying their first practice such as demographics like strength of practice, physical location, etc.; history and reputation of the practice.
• Do not expand before your flagship practice is the way it should be.It should have reproducible systems that are ironclad and that you can replicate in your remote practices.
• Consider the pros and cons when deciding whether to use brand extensions or keep the original brands of the dental practices you’re acquiring.
  • Pros can be that the acquired dental practice can piggyback on existing reputation while cons can be that it’ll be harder to sell in the future and reputation management is more critical.
• Determine your exit strategy in order to know your buying strategy.
  • There are 3 definitive ways to sell a practice: sell to corporations, sell to private equities and sell one practice to one time buyer. Each have different returns and different criteria.
• A dental practice that is run well can earn huge profits.
• There is no template way to determine if you need to rebrand a dental practice. It depends on the situation.
• Things apart from the P&L to consider when buying:
  • Purchase a dental practice that is near where you’ll live.
  • Consider buying a more expensive practice with good history of revenues.
  • Buy a practice whose dentistry services are something you like or know how to do.
• When buying, consider if there is an opportunity to grow. Consider an underperforming practice. Look for the upside such as ability to market digitally.
• Podcasts are great way to learn how to improve your practice.

 Tweetables:

“Begin with the end in mind and re-engineer, otherwise it will be re-engineered for you.” - Dr. Peter Boulden

 “We [dentists] are the luckiest in the industry because of the tangible asset we have.” -Dr. Mark Costes

“Determine your exit strategy in order to know your buying strategy.” -Dr. Mark Costes

“Build your company as if you’re selling it even if you’re not.” - Dr. Peter Boulden

“Dentistry is the darling of private equity right now.” - Dr. Mark Costes

Books To Read

Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink

The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes

Apps

iPhone Calendar

Dr. Peter Boulden shares his goals for the Bulletproof Dental Practice Podcast, and what listeners should expect to hear and learn.