Bulletproof Dental Practice Podcast Episode 39

Hosts: Dr. Peter Boulden & Dr. Craig Spodak

Guest: David Harris, founder & CEO of Prosperident

Watch the full video of interview by clicking here!

Key Takeaways:

• At least 60% of dentists will be embezzled from, but the actual percentage is probably higher.
• Understanding WHY people steal will help in profiling an embezzler. People steal for 2 reasons: need & greed.
• Thieves want to be alone when they steal. Keep an eye out for employees who are coming in early, leaving late, or otherwise coming and going at strange times.
• Be familiar with your practice management software’s daily and monthly financial reports, and run / print those reports yourself. Don’t give anyone the option to report selectively.
• The Office Manager generally has the most opportunity for financial theft, but anyone at the front desk can be capable as well.
• Any form of wealth transfer to you can be intercepted; cash, check, ACH, sale of dental supplies, time, you name it.
• Most embezzlement is not found through audits, but by watching employee behavior.
  • Look for staff members who have money issues, compulsive behavior, who never take vacation, staff members who always resist change, who are territorial, resistant to outside advisors, resistant to upgrades, etc.
• Less than 1/3 of embezzlement is discovered through a financial anomaly.
• The other 2/3 of embezzlement is discovered based on watching employee behavior.
• Many dentists feel ashamed about finding they’ve been embezzled from, but in reality it is not the dentist that caused it, and there is no reason to feel ashamed.
• There’s no way to totally safe-proof your business, but you can work to catch embezzlement early on. Shift your attention from prevention to detection.
• Proper background checks during hiring are the BEST way to safeguard your business from embezzlement.
• When hiring a new employee, talk to all previous employers for the last 5 years. Don’t call the phone number given to you by the potential new hire, instead google them and call the number found there.
  • Ask for exact start date and exact end date, compare those to the resume. You’re looking for discrepancies that may indicate hidden jobs.
  • Confirm job title.
  • The best question to ask is, “Would you rehire this person again if you had a job opening and they were available?”
• 1 in 4 adults in the US has a criminal record.
• Prosperident offers a range of products designed to help you put systems in place to aide in preventing embezzlement, and they also offer investigation products should you suspect an embezzler may be at work in your business.

Bulletproof Dental Practice Podcast Episode 38

Hosts: Dr. Peter Boulden & Dr. Craig Spodak

Guest: Dr. Jonathan Abenaim, founder of Smile Syllabus Training Institute, owner of Jonathan Dental Spa

Key Takeaways:

• Use the 80/20 rule to determine which patients are best for your practice.
• Make sure your house is in order first before you invite people in.
• Make sure you have the right team and that the team believes your vision.
• Your hygienists’ first objective should be creating relationships with your patients and how you empower them to have a healthy mouth.
• The beauty of dentistry is that you don’t need that many patients to make a comfortable living.
• A lot of dentists think they can skip the process of mastering analog dentistry and think a computer will fix everything for you. Dentists need to start taking responsibility for what they’re doing.
• Digital dentistry isn’t about changing the analog concepts, it’s taking those concepts and streamlining them.
• Nightguards are the hidden money-maker in 3D dentistry.
• DSO’s are coming for the general dentist. If the general dentist doesn’t find ways to differentiate themselves they’re going to get gobbled up.
• Changing the public’s perception of dentistry isn’t a paradigm shift, it’s a paradigm cliff. If you’re not ready for it, you’re going to fall right off and die.
• Middle of the road solo practitioner is going to disappear. Medicaid practices will get more powerful. Service-oriented dental practices will thrive tremendously. Labs who embrace digital technology will be successful.
• Digital dentistry will reinvigorate the whole profession.

References

The Trust Factor by Jonathan Abenaim, DMD

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey

Register here for Digital Dentistry to the Max, Jan 18-19

Tweetables

“If you focus on the money, the patients will see right through you.” Dr. Jonathan Abenaim

“Digital dentistry deletes the questions marks you have every day in your practice.” Dr. Jonathan Abenaim

“A loyal customer is worth 12 times their initial spend.” Dr. Jonathan Abenaim

Bulletproof Dental Practice Podcast Episode 37

Hosts: Dr. Peter Boulden & Dr. Craig Spodak

Key Takeaways:

• Listen to part 1 before proceeding!
• Operations manuals are created so you can focus on your highest and best use
• Silo 1 – Clinical systems
  • Create manuals for the various positions within the clinical team; dental assistant, hygienist, doctor, etc.
  • The manual should contain all processes and procedures – documented.
  • Include pictures, diagrams
• Running through a comprehensive checklist frees up the brain to focus on tasks at hand.
• Silo 2 – Business Operations
  • Create manuals for the various positions: front desk
  • Include processes for everything these team members do within the course of their day
• Silo 3 – Marketing
  • For mature practices, this silo is one of the most important silos in growing the business
  • Practice owners should know enough about marketing process to be able to have intelligent conversations with outsource vendors
  • You can have the most well-oiled systems-dependent practice in the world but if the growth is entirely predicated on word of mouth, be prepared for slow, linear growth
  • Topics within marketing you should be aware of:
    • Online reputation management
    • Website experience
    • Video production
    • Content creation
    • Paid ads on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, etc.
    • Press releases
    • Social media
    • Magazine & print
  • If marketing isn’t your passion or best focus, try to outsource to someone within your team
  • Jeff Bezos said, “The balance of power is shifting toward consumers and away from companies. The right way to respond to this if you are a company is to put the vast majority of your energy, attention and dollars into building a great product or service and put a smaller amount into shouting about it, marketing it.”
• Silo 4 – Metrics & KPI’s
  • This silo is important primarily so you know how well all your efforts are working
  • Lag measure – measures ultimate goal of what you’re trying to accomplish, but is always in the past
  • Lead measure – is predictive, and influenceable
  • Look at 5 growth metrics:
    • True growth of your patient base
    • # of patient visits
    • Dollar amount per patient visit
    • Collections
    • Overhead (variable costs like supplies, equipment, marketing, etc.)
  • Review your google analytics

Tweetables:

“Everything is marketing.” Fred Joyal

Bulletproof Dental Practice Podcast Episode 36

Hosts: Dr. Peter Boulden & Dr. Craig Spodak

Key Takeaways:

• What does it mean to work ON your business instead of IN your business?
• A lot of dental practices aren’t really run like business at all. Ignorance is NOT bliss.
• The e-myth (entrepreneurial myth) is that most people who start a business are entrepreneurs, when in reality, most people who start a business are technicians.
• Because we have a high level of understanding of dentistry, we think that uniquely qualifies us to run a business that provides that dental work.
• Most dental practices are set up as people-dependent practices, when the focus should be on a systems-dependent process. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
• People-dependent practices are dependent on specific people in the office, whether it’s you or an employee. Should something happen to that person the office becomes very vulnerable.
• Corporations are process-dependent business, which is why independently owned practices have something to fear. They are far less vulnerable.
• Working on your business means one thing; creating a system for everything so you can get superior results consistently, predictably, and with a lot less stress and work.
• Everything you do should be documented in a manual, a video, a checklist, etc. Create the system intentionally.
• If you’re “too busy” to step back from the drill and devote real time to creating processes, then you can’t expect a different result.
• Having a systems-dependent practice means you’re ready to scale and amplify effortlessly.
• Thriving business have three roles in common; the entrepreneur, the manager, and the technician.
  • Entrepreneur is the visionary who thinks ahead, keeps planing for the future, and setting the GPS for the team
  • Managers establish order and create consistencies, and hold everyone accountable
  • Technicians (hygienists and dentists) do the technical work
  • Everyone at their core is better suited to one of these roles, but ideally you should be able to do all three in equal amounts, especially in the beginning
• In order to run a successful dental practice, you have to give up doing all the dentistry yourself to allow yourself the time to grow the practice.
• Three practice stages:
  • Stage 1 – Glorified Job
  • Stage 2 – The Eager Stage
  • Stage 3 – The Mature Stage
• First, we must assess where we are in the process, and situational and personal awareness are way undervalued in our professions
• Tips:
  • Take some time and truly look at the pain points in your operation
  • Create and optimize your practice operations manual
  • Act like a patient, or hire a secret shopper and have them document their entire interaction
• Make a process for everything, assume you’re writing it for a 5th grader
  • Silo 1 – Clinical operations
  • Silo 2 – Business & admin operations
  • Silo 3 – Marketing, growth & online reputation operations
  • Silo 4 – Metrics & KPI’s

Part 2 coming soon!

Bulletproof Dental Practice Podcast Episode 35

Hosts: Dr. Peter Boulden & Dr. Craig Spodak

Guest: Brett Judd, Your Practice Therapist

Key Takeaways:

• Key areas of dental burnout and stress:                                 
  • Staff issues
  • Cash flow issues
  • Stress in general
• Burnout starts to set in at approximately 7-10 years
• Divorce rate is systemic in dentistry, and averages about 46%
  • Divorce is going down in general population, dentists have a higher rate of divorce when you look at divorce rate by profession
• Studies show when our core relationships are strong we’re better entrepreneurs, better at our craft, more creative and resilient. When they’re in distress those key skills diminish.
• First step to turn around burnout is to realize you’re not alone, and to put together a self-care plan to help ease stress and reduce bad energy.
• Four W strategy helps you normalize and immediately differentiate yourself from the chaos:
  • Why do I care?
  • Who says?
  • Whose issue?
  • What can I do about it?
• When you feel tension rising, run through the four W’s to chip away at accumulated beliefs.
• Work on building a true, autonomous, self-directed team, as compared to a well-managed staff. A truly self-directed team will have the ability to run without a manager. It frees you up to do an amazing amount of core work without the stress of managing.
• Empower your people to excel in their scope.
• The last thing you want to do is be a manager. Parts and pieces can be managed, but humans are not manageable. Build a true leadership based plan, give authority and expertise over to your team.
• Purpose is the primary personal motivator for millennials.
• Constructive coaching is great for high-stress patients or underperforming employees, it’s a very effective way to develop leadership:
  • Praise (The way that you… I love it when you...)
  • Ask (Can I show you…)
  • Teach
  • Enable and empower
  • Validate

References

Freedom Founders Mastermind

Marriages Worth Millions

Your Practice Therapist

High Production Teams For Dentists / Facebook Group

The 21 Irrefutable Laws Of Leadership by John Maxwell

Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

The Self Journal

Tweetables

“Give your people the parameters in which they can excel, then step back and watch them succeed.” – Dr. Peter Boulden

“Dentistry is not a dictatorship.” – Dr. Peter Boulden