Episode : #1,165: The Perfect Quarterly Calibration

Podcast Description

Re-releasing a Dental A-Team favorite…

Ladies and gents, he’s back. Dr. Dave Moghadam is again on the podcast, this time to talk with Kiera about quarterly team calibration. While there’s no silver bullet A-to-Z cookbook for how to operate a practice, an outline certainly helps. Dr. Moghadam shares his outline for setting up the ideal quarterly calibration meeting:

1. Start with the why (review practice’s mission, vision, and values)

2. Align over treatment, planning, and diagnosis

3. Review what makes your practice stand out

To keep things exciting each quarter, Kiera and Dr. Moghadam also chat about ways to shake up the meeting.

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Transcript:

Kiera Dent (00:00)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera. And today we are bringing you something so special. I am so excited because this is one of our most popular episodes from the archives. Whether you’re hearing this for the first time or catching it again, I am so excited because it’s jam packed with a ton of takeaways that you can start using right now in your practice. We have released thousands, literally thousands of episodes. And I wanted to start bringing a few of these amazing episodes back for you. So I hope you enjoy. And as always, thanks for listening and I’ll catch you next time.

on the Dental A Team podcast.

speaker-0 (00:32)

and you guys, I am so jazzed to welcome back one of my favorite doctors, an office that we coach, and he just thinks outside the box.

This man is brilliant. He’s grown a ton. I’m so proud of him. We’ve worked with him for quite a while. So welcome back to the show, Dr. Dave Moghadam. How are you?

speaker-1 (00:47)

I’m doing wonderful Kiera. Thanks for having me. Super excited to be there.

speaker-0 (00:50)

my gosh, absolutely. Well, when we were doing our last podcast, you were somebody that I just admire. One, you’re a doctor. So you give a different perspective than I do. Two, you’re brilliant. And three, you’ve got lots of cool topics that I’m excited to share. So I am Jazz. When we were on our last podcast, you came up with a few more. Today you just came up with another one. Guys, I will tease that one out. It’s not today’s podcast, but we will do it again. It’s gonna be I T F U. So I hope you guys are excited for that.

I’m excited.

speaker-1 (01:17)

That’s the the closest I think I can get you to swearing.

speaker-0 (01:20)

It

is the closest. but today we’re gonna kind of dive into team quarterly calibration, which Dave, I will say, is probably one of my top doctors that thinks in systems, but not just thinks, actually executes. And you see massive growth and evolvement of your team. You were one of the offices who literally called me during COVID and said, Kiera, I’m gonna train my hygienist. What do you have on hygiene training? And I was like, Who are you? Fantastic. We have our hygiene training course. Like, here you go.

Try it out. We’re beta testing right now anyway. But kind of let’s take it away, Dave, on this team quarterly calibration because it’s so needed. And I love that you’ve actually created a system around it that you’ve proven to be effective in your practices.

speaker-1 (01:59)

Yeah, for sure. So I actually I I got the idea from another office that you work with that’s in up upstate New York. Wonderful, amazing doctor. Really, I mean, really, really just drives home that aspect of really just thinking outside the box, having a crazy drive and really just executing. Really has a wonderful team in place there. Let’s be real.

speaker-0 (02:20)

He’s

far away. Dave, you know he’s far away. And I’m gonna say this like out loud because I know exactly who you’re talking about. And I actually mentioned this to another doctor I was talking to today, and I said, let’s be real. He’s far away, and I visit him four times a year. Like we’re talking opposite coast from me. And I said, and I truthfully do it because this man I think is such a brilliant leader, and I selfishly go to coach them to learn from him. So agreed, like just massive kudos want to bring this on. And you were mentioning he had a word document.

He’s just brilliant and I’m so jazzed that you took some things that he did and spun it to your own. And I wanna point out, everybody listening, take what Dave’s gonna share. He took it from somebody else. I don’t think there’s anything wrong in taking items, mimicking them, mirroring them, and recreating them for your practice. So please, please, please, like do exactly what Dave did. Take it and shout out to that office in New York. Thanks for paving the way for so many great ideas.

speaker-1 (03:14)

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I think that’s the best thing. I think when we all go ahead and, you know, take take ideas and expand on them and share them back and forth, you know, things really kind of get going. I’m always happy to, you know, help help out others in in the same way. But at the end of the day, I’ve tried to explain to people that I’ve shared, you know, a lot of my systems, my processes, my my things with is just because it’s it good for me doesn’t mean that it’s gonna be good for you. You have to do the work, not because I want you to not, you know.

reap the the rewards of this, but because it it has to fit for your office and it has there needs to be some some ownership, some authorship from from your team and how things work as well. So I mean taking the concepts and expanding on them and making your own is gonna be the key in, you know, anything that we’re gonna talk about today or just in in general, really.

speaker-0 (04:00)

Totally agree. And Dave, you just drove home a really, really good point because I don’t think that there actually is a plug and play. I don’t think you go to the store, buy a system, come back to your practice and say, Okay, let’s put it in, put the batteries in, read the instructions. I genuinely think, like you said, it’s a concept, it’s an idea that then needs to be transformed into your own practice. And I think so many offices get frustrated that they don’t see momentum because they literally try to say, like, well, this is what Dave did. So take it, move it into my practice and hope that it goes on autopilot.

But they don’t realize the countless hours you put in to making this work for your practice. So I love, love, love. And I hope all you guys heard that because I’ll give you guys systems all day long on this podcast. It’s what we do. We come to your practices and do it. Bottom line is there’s a reason we don’t have an A to Z cookbook as a consulting company. I don’t believe it works. I believe you have to customize it to your practice to get momentum.

speaker-1 (04:49)

You

can have an you can have an outline because even even even with making this, I mean, spoiler alert, like I made this, but then you know, six months later, a year later, like, you know what? Like, we should probably do this like this. It’s a never ending, it’s a never ending thing. It’s just the way that things go. And I don’t mean that in a bad way. I mean it’s it’s one of those things as you you grow and you learn. And the other thing that we’ll get to is as as your team becomes more comfortable and they start to go ahead and give

their input about things, that’s when it really kind of, you know, starts to hit its straw.

speaker-0 (05:20)

Right, right. I agree. So we’ve teased it up enough, guys. So we’ve got this awesome team quarterly calibration. So Dave, kinda take it away again, and like you said, this is this is as of today, but I promise you, give Dave six months to a year and it will look it will look different. It will be fine tuned again. so I’m excited. Take us away.

speaker-1 (05:40)

Yeah, so I I think the first thing is like ever every office, you know, in starting to create, you know, why you’re there, what you’re doing, all that stuff. In in one way or another, you sit down and you and you figure out your mission, your vision, your core values, like all these key concepts in, you know, any business. And that was something that we did really early on, as I was actually five, five years ago, probably right about now when this podcast is gonna air. first thing I did is I sat down and we kind of all talked together about what

What are we going to do? Why are we going to do it? You know, why are we here? So kind of reviewing those key concepts. And we we kind of cycle through, you know, reviewing those things on a weekly basis, but it’s a good time to kind of highlight that in the beginning. of like, well, why are we here? What are we actually trying to do? Why are we going to make the decisions that we make on a daily basis? So that’s the first thing. The other thing is like, well, what are the practice philosophies? Like, how are we going to treat and plan? Why are we doing things in that way? You know, this kind of stems off of that. And then

you know, we move towards, you know, in discussing things with patients, what’s the way we’re going to do that? You know, so the key concepts I always kind of bring out is, you know, what do we see? You know, what’s going to happen if it’s if it’s not treated? What are the best options that, you know, you we can give somebody? And, you know, why is that better than other options? You know, so these are always the key points that I I want in the back of, you know, our team’s mind when we we’re talking about situations and things that we see.

And then other than that, I mean, I think it’s two other big, big topics here. You know, what conditions, you know, are we going to encounter? And you know, how are we going to discuss those things and what is treatment planning generally like? And then what makes our office special? You know, really highlighting those things, like talking about these concepts. So this is, even though it was only a few minutes that I just went through that, if we’re going to really go through everything in detail here, I mean that’s a it’s it’s a couple hours. and

I mean, the point I’ll I’ll I’ll get to here is, you know, maybe the first, second, third time, great, but at the end of the day, sometimes it becomes a lot. So you have to kinda eventually figure out ways, well, how are we going to mix things up? Because if you’re lucky enough to continue to have the same team there for a long time, you’re all gonna be sitting there twiddling your thumbs, being like, Okay, like I get it, but you know what’s going on.

speaker-0 (07:46)

Yeah, no, you’re exactly right. And I think that that’s why a lot of people love us because we’ll bring in and shake things up and add some excitement. Cause you’re right, it can get monotonous and tedious. But that doesn’t mean because it becomes monotonous and tedious that we shouldn’t continue to do it. Just change how we’re doing it, look for ways to innovate it, and make it even better. So if I broke that down, Dave, it sounds like we start with kind of the why. Why are we doing this? What are our core values? Let’s assess that, make sure those are aligned because that’s gonna be the

the launch pad, if you will, to the next level. Then it sounds like it was treatment, planning, how we’re diagnosing things, making sure that’s all aligned. And then the third piece would be on what makes us special, what makes us different, what’s our wow factor, if you will. And those are kind of the three points. And please feel free to add in any gaps that I left out because I don’t know your outline. So I’m I’m learning right along with the listeners, right?

speaker-1 (08:35)

Yeah.

So I mean that that’s the basics of it. The one thing that’s kind of like a little bit misleading is like with the treatment plan and stuff like that. Like what I’ve done is kind of gone and I’ve gone off of that that doctor’s kind of like general template and added more is like condition by condition. You know, so maybe like 10, 15, you know, things that you wanna list out. And you don’t have to you’re never gonna hit everything. You know, so you want to kind of get, you know, 80% of what we’re you know, what are gonna encounter on a daily basis?

And I think the way to really think about this is the the concept that you guys really drive home very well is what would doctor do? Yep. That’s kind of like this is like that on steroids. The problem is when you do that like this much, at a certain point it becomes kind of like hiring. So I think it’s nice. We now we kind of quickly will go through some of this as a review, but I think a way that we could probably improve more is if let’s say, you know, once a month or so I kind of just did a smattering of, you know, some examples like that to kind of just really freshen things up.

And a lot of times, you know, some of these things are like, yeah, these are the cool things that we’re doing. But a lot of the pictures, a lot of the things that I share in this section is kind of like, hey, we thought it was going be like this, but guess what? It’s like a bomb went off. Because I think it’s very hard for somebody who’s not, you know, in the the trenches in a sense, with a lot of these situations to really understand the extent which is actually helpful. Cause rather than, you know, let’s say in in the the hygiene room, like

You know, when we’re treatment planning, telling the patient, no problem, it’s not going to be a big deal. We kind of say, you know, this is what it looks like in certain situations. We’ve seen things become like this, just you know, you know, so setting up that kind of worst case scenario, and that’s like one of our and when we talk about like the philosophies that we talked about in the beginning, it’s underpromise and over-delivered. Right. You know, we always want to talk about worst case scenario. We want to talk about the fact that, you know, in situations where we think that, you know,

further treatment like a root canal may be necessary. But that’s that’s a discussion even before an appointment is scheduled. Mm-hmm. That all has to be there. You know, it’s nice to to to be positive and everything, but it’s not nice when you you do that and then it’s a it’s a mess later.

speaker-0 (10:36)

No, you’re exactly right. And I, you know, my mind obviously went into system mode as you were talking. And I’m like, Dave, I got this great idea. take all your conditions and things that you look at, make them into twelve of them. Then every month on your quick check-in calibrations, you could have all twelve of those. So throughout the year you go through them and then each quarter you highlight maybe the three things you’ve gone over. That was my instant like, hey, this is how you could like keep it on a system on a regime.

or bring case studies every quarter that that you then would take because they’ve already learned for three months, then six months and n nine months and twelve months. but I I’m curious and I want to dive into the kind of nitty gritty of it. How do you set up these quarterly calibrations? Because I’m hearing like we want to talk about it, like you mentioned, like this treatment planning. It should be a discussion. but I also have watched and I know myself, I can sit and listen all day long.

But then when I’m asked to repeat or I’m asked to implement or I’m asked to talk about it, I go back to what I know. Even though I just heard it, I might catch one or two phrases. So do you role play it out? Is it more of a like C discussion and we all discuss how we’re going to discuss like kind of walk me through what and do you do you block it out for a full day? Is this a one hour over lunch? Like, how does this kind of kind of look? I feel like I’ve got a general like outline of it, but then how do you actually execute on this?

speaker-1 (11:57)

Yeah, so we’ll so we’ll we’ll block out a a a couple hours, two or three hours, depending on you know the situation. Well, we and I’ve tried you know a bunch of different ways as far as like a lot of the things that you mentioned. I think the things that are that are most effective and most effective in general, which you know I used to do more so in the beginning, not so much right now, is really just kind of randomly like calling on people and kind of being like, Okay, like let’s like this is the situation, like let’s kind of talk it out. And it’s a little uncomfortable at first, but it kind of, you know.

makes it really gets somebody involved in it. Now what I would do early on is kind of like pretend like you’re you’re the doctor. But what I’ve done to kind of mix it up a lot of times is kind of getting a couple of people involved where it’s what it’s fine. It’s whatever their role is in the office, let’s say in this situation, you know, sometimes we’ll do that or we’ll mix it up, but we try and go through the the different stages of let’s say, you know, we found this as an emergency patient, let’s say.

Yep. So you’re gonna be the assistant, you’re gonna be the doctor, and then you’re gonna be the the front office person. You know what I’m saying? And kinda, you know, go through that step by step. So we can kind of work on the the workflow, like you know, the the basically the the timeline a patient would go would go through the office and everything in in that. So that is work well. Honestly, like as as I’ve done this longer and longer, sometimes it’s just kinda like

It’s like going through the motions and it’s just kind of like, okay, you guys know this, let’s go through this. And that really hasn’t been so effective. So sometimes I’ll kind of take a pause and I’ll just even, you know, hop on you know, open dental and you know, think of like, okay, who have I seen like lately where this isn’t just open up like the x-rays and kind of do examples like that. I think that’s been a little bit more helpful. The hard thing is, I mean, it’s you know, we’re all busy. It takes a lot of time to try and go ahead and do all this stuff. But I think if I was able to get a little bit more

regimented in in mixing it up. But for the purposes of, you know, everybody listening, I think if you get a good, you know, outline together, you get things together, you know, this will afford you, you know, the ability to do this at least a couple of times and still be really effective. I blew the first handful of times I did it, even though it’s like the same kind of thing, it’s helpful and you you mix in some other stuff, but then it becomes kind of stale after a while. So you want to make sure you’re bringing new examples or shaking things up or, you know, just kinda everybody kind of knows like, okay, yeah, we’re gonna

calling you you randomly pay pay attention.

speaker-0 (14:14)

Right. No, I love that. And it’s funny that you said that because that’s actually my trick in offices. People are always impressed that Kiera Dent can learn names very quickly in a practice. And I’m like, guys, the bottom line is the only reason, not the only, but one of the main driving reasons I learn names as soon as I go into a practice is one, people tend to like me a lot more if I remember their name. Two, I believe that if I’m gonna ask them to do something, I should at least know their name. And three is when I get to team meeting, you better believe I’m going to impress everyone and dazzle that I know your whole names.

But then I’m going to randomly call on every person and they’re like, she now knows my name. So I think it’s really wise. I was also thinking, Dave, it’s fun to to hear your ideas and then also flip into consultant care mode too. And I’m like, gosh, like let’s just take this and expand on it. some fun things for that excitement that making sure everyone’s on their toes is you can actually like have them draw straws. So like here’s the case study, everybody draws straws, and it’s a doctor, it’s a hygienist, it’s a treatment coordinator and an assistant.

So they all have to draw straws and so it will if there’s a natural excitement and terror and adrenaline rush real quick of here’s the scenario, we’re gonna role play this all the way through, draw straws of who’s going to be who on this scenario. So then it’s a constant shakeup. I also love the surprise and delight of asking people on the fly. But I really also love like and I was thinking like some way you could make this pretty simple for you quarterly is if you know that there’s a a patient that that

you’re working on that you’re like, this would be a great example. Maybe have your assistant mark that appointment in red or something. So that way you are pulling those constantly, which I’m sure you’re doing, but thinking of offices of like, how could you be building this up for the next month or two? Just highlight some appointments, bring those to the table, or I’ll be honest, I just did a what would doctor do with a a practice the other day. ironically it’s actually the same office we were talking about earlier. Funny, funny coincidence there.

But I just pulled up some FMXs on Google. Reason I did that was because sometimes if we know the patient, people get weird and they say, but that was Kiera and she’s got a funny bite. And they have a thousand excuses versus just a FMX or just intraoral pictures maybe can help them see it. So Dave, it sounds like you guys I I love also hearing it’s two to three hours, so that’s helpful to know. Probably a couple case studies. Love the idea of different people role playing out different parts of that procedure.

And I will say

speaker-1 (16:34)

Remember the so we didn’t do straws when you kind of taught us this concept. Do you remember what we did?

speaker-0 (16:40)

I I think I just like put like name tags on people. I don’t I don’t remember exactly

speaker-1 (16:45)

So you got you ran out to what was it? Like I don’t know, Michaels like some kind of Yeah. So we did that we did that one time too. I found them on Amazon and I got just to just to kind of mix things up. we basically got snowballs and you know, you people would kind of toss to the next person in the the line of the the patient experience. Yeah. Sometimes you just gotta do stuff like that to to to mix it up because otherwise, you know.

speaker-0 (16:51)

Was it the snowballs? Yes.

Yeah, right.

speaker-1 (17:13)

To sit there for more than like half an hour, yeah, everybody’s either gonna fall asleep or you know, bang their heads against the wall.

speaker-0 (17:20)

And I also think it’s important, like another way I remember when I was in practice as an office manager, I got real sick of having to create all these because it like you said, it’s a lot of time. But also if I’m always the teacher, how can I test my team’s knowledge base? So also flipping the role and having some of them come of like, hey, here’s here is the the piece of the treatment plan that we want to go through. So maybe it’s root canals, maybe it’s crowns, maybe it’s implants, maybe it’s on period.

And have somebody come with how they explain it to to also double check their knowledge base. So like set them up. Like you’re gonna be presenting on this part, you’re gonna be teaching this part. I think is also a really fun way to shake it up. But those snowballs, that was funny. It just happened to be what we found at the store. But guys, if you ever want a snowball that actually feels like a snowball, they’re pretty it was actually pretty fun. I I do remember that actually.

speaker-1 (18:10)

Pretty good. The ones that I found, not not so great.

speaker-0 (18:12)

I think I actually found them, if you wanna know. Go scope in in Christmas time, holiday time. I think it was like Walgreens or like I think that that ’cause I had to just run to the store real fast and I was like, these look great. but I love that, Dave. I love that you’re getting your team to I think the big piece that I’m hoping offices are taking away from this is there’s consistency in calibration. And you have a set time. So every quarter

you know you’re going to calibrate on some topic. We’ve got the why, why are we doing this? We’ve got the whole treatment plan and the procedures that we do in the practice, role-playing that out from start to finish. And then also you’re doing the what makes us special. I really think that that cadence is brilliant. Even though it might feel routine and mundane, I might guess what working out is routine and mundane. But the long term effects of it when done consistently are health.

and wealth and growth and drive. And so yes, you’ve got to shake it up. Everybody gets into that workout like suck and it just becomes very boring and you don’t want to go work out anymore. So you shake it up, you come up with new routines, you find different trainers, you find different ways to do it. But at the end of the day, you’re still working out. Just like here at the end of the day, you’re still calibrating. You’re still training. So how does your team feel about this, Dave? Like do they, do they look forward to it? Do they say like, calibration? Like how does it tend to go?

That’s my first question, then I’ve got a follow up to that one.

speaker-1 (19:32)

Yeah, I don’t know. I think I think it’s hard to say. I think it’s it’s it’s a mixed bag in a sense. You know, some people have been with me for a really

know a a lot at times with with stuff like that. I think it’s nice to to kind of you know break up the schedule a little bit though because a lot of you know we do have our our weekly meetings, but still, you know, they’re they’re pretty short now. you know, given that we’re not like we used to like eat while we were doing it. Now we kind of you know break that up, you know, based on our our protocols and everything like that. So it’s like the shorter meetings. But it’s nice to have a little bit more time in my mind then. but the other thing too that I that I wanted to to mention

is I think the way that I that look at things is is a is a little bit different now. So I think it makes it a little bit less in intimidating. I think when I kind of first started out with this, it was very much like, this is the script, like you gotta say it exactly like this. And I realized that that’s insane, for lack of a better terms, because really at the at the end of the day, like the important thing in my mind is like the the the key concepts are there, that the points are coming across the right way, but it has to sound like Pira.

Right. You know what I’m saying? It has to sound like Dave. It has to sound like like an actual person. Like if it sounds like it just like a script, that like that defeats the purpose. The point of kind of us doing that is to have some uniformity in the concepts that are that are coming about. And so it builds trust with the patients. But if something sounds

phony, that’s the opposite of it. So I’ve kind of gotten away from a little bit more of like you need to say this exact word like this to kind of like, you know, these these are like the concepts. And if somebody says things in like a way where it doesn’t kind of, you know, do that, it’s kind of like, hey, that that’s great. Maybe, you know, this is like the point we’re trying to get across, you know, next time try it like like this a little bit. but you know you you’d be surprised, just like with a lot of this stuff, you know, sometimes, you know, it really comes across super well the way somebody says something and it’s completely

Unlike what we have written down, but it’s the same idea. It just sounds like them.

speaker-0 (21:26)

Totally. And I’m so glad you brought that up because again, I’m gonna tie back to why I don’t believe in an A to Z cookbook. I believe in systems and processes, but I also believe in in change. Because yesterday I was interviewing a new consultant for Dental A Team and on our collection call protocol, she almost had the exact same style that we did. But she literally said, we we do a kind call. So we call the patient in a kind way. And I was like, my gosh, that’s brilliant, because it just gave this whole new feel.

To a collections call versus like, I’m calling to collect money, and she called it a kind call. So to your point, you can actually find better verbiages, better ways when people do it their own way. But also don’t be afraid to tell people if it comes across different because we don’t hear ourselves. Dave, you’re hearing me. I I can think and assume of how it’s landing, but you’re the one who’s ultimately experiencing my words coming out. And so giving people feedback, some some some

I giggle because I’ve got some team members and like Kiera, I said it just like you, and I’m like, No. What I said was this. What you said is like that they’re stupid and they’re incompetent. Like that’s how it came across. But they don’t realize it. So I’ve even had certain team members record themselves. and then in a loving way, a very safe space where it’s not judgmental, like playing it back. So sometimes even one on one, because that way they can actually hear themselves. So maybe even after calibration, you could spice it up this time, Dave, if you want.

have them role play these things and then have each person at least record themselves one time. you can have voice memos on your phone and have them actually listen back to see how it sounds because oftentimes like Dave, you and I actually chatted about how it sounded when you heard your podcast played back. You were like, I sound a lot different. I said, for my first like hundred and fifty, two hundred podcasts, I felt awkward. I still feel awkward, but it’s becoming more normal. But we don’t hear ourselves as much. So I think like that’s also a piece to it of like

Giving people that autonomy, also some things of having them record themselves, I think can help because then it also helps show knowledge base. And selfishly, I’m also always thinking of systems that actually create a training bank for future employees because you’ve actually got great verbiage, great examples that you can plug in under those certain topics that future hires could actually hear. You could create a really awesome training bank that way as well.

speaker-1 (23:42)

Yeah, I know for sure. That’s one

speaker-0 (23:43)

So fun. Dave, I love it. So guys, I would say try it out. Try Dave’s model. but I I’m gonna ask real quick, give us like a quick synopsis of like going through the why. Like we dove a lot into the treatment, how to have the role play, all of that. How like what’s that why part? Like, does that is it just like a quick quick synopsis of you kind of reinstating the vision, the core values, reminding people why we’re here.

speaker-1 (24:05)

Let me see. Hold on. Okay. So as far as as the why, I mean, we talked about mission, vision, core values, and we get to the philosophies of the practice. So the first thing is, you know, I we want to break down like what’s what’s our mission? So in our in our office, our mission is to exceed our patients’ expectations. So, you know, what we’ve kind of talked about, well, what does that mean? You know, like how are we going to do that? We want to provide.

compassionate and practical dental care. That’s the second part. So like what does that mean to everybody? We want to provide outstanding customer service. So once again, like, you know, what does that mean? How do we interact? Are we providing information up front? Are we staying on time and respecting people’s time? What many amenities we’re providing, you know, how are we doing follow-up? You know, all these things. And a lot of this is like, you know, we have it written out, but it’s a little bit more of a discussion. And then the other thing too, our the last part of our our mission at our office is remaining at the forefront

Clinical advancement. So that’s one of those things where when we first made this up, that was a big lie. I mean, everything was like analog paper, whatever. But you know, the then about, you know, a few months in, I got the itch and decided to to make some questionable financial decisions and just you know, go all in on everything because that’s the way that I wanted to practice. So

speaker-0 (25:23)

Yeah. I I

actually love that you broke that down. I love that you because sometimes as leaders when we build these visions, what we’re envisioning is different than what our team actually does. So I love that you break it down like what does excellent customer service actually look like, feel like, what’s the experience? Because then it becomes more tangible versus just words on a paper.

speaker-1 (25:42)

Yeah. So that’s that’s the first chunk. The second chunk was what we talked about underpromise and overdeliver. You know, I think that’s that’s a big part of it. The third thing is what we kind of talked about of like, you know, how uniformity, you know, builds and maintains trust. And so there’s that fine line of like, yeah, we want it to sound similar, but also not like it’s cookie cutter and bake. Right. And then, you know, a couple other things. Like, I think pictures really helps or you know, pictures worth a thousand words. We want to take good pictures of what

we see so we can help explain something really well. And then the last chunk really is, you know, there are different types of of treatment. So there’s stuff that’s, you know, very important, more emergent, there’s stuff that’s preventative. And then, you know, the more elective, you know, cosmetic category of things. So we kind of talk about that. And that helps us, you know, figure out how do we want to, you know, prioritize everything. Sure. So that that’s that’s the the first big thing. And we dive into all that, you know, before we go into like the well how

speaker-0 (26:39)

Yes. Which I actually think is really important. I’m I’m big on sequence matters and I love that you first go through who are we as a practice. Let’s kind of give some tangibles on it because that actually can spur people to think differently of how they would explain treatment or explain how they’re gonna talk to a patient on certain things, which I really, really love that you did that. So now looping all the way to the end, Dave, you said you also talk about what makes us special. So what does that look like on this calibration piece for you?

speaker-1 (27:05)

So so basically this was another exercise we did at at some point. It was not one of the I didn’t feel like if I just kind of sat there and I told people like, yeah, like this is why we’re great, like that’s that would be a big waste. Yeah. So I really we kind of we kind of sat down there and I said, like, let’s just like get into it and you know, just call on everybody and say, Well, what do you think makes us stand out? You know, and we kind of just went through and and kind of really, you know.

speaker-0 (27:18)

Sure.

speaker-1 (27:31)

put together well, you know, what r what really sets us apart is as as an office. What are the things that we we try and do, you know? And as aside from that, even just some of the the basic stuff that a lot of offices have, even, but we want to make sure that we we’re, you know, mentioning like, you know, like membership plan in in your office. Or if you do anything like, you know, like we do something that a lot of people do, like a whitening for life thing where it’s basically they pay once and as long as they’re coming regularly, you know, here you go. Right. You know, stuff like that. Just kind of like little things that, you know,

patients may may ask anybody in the office and be yeah, I don’t know what that is. Like that that would be very like that would be not good.

speaker-0 (28:07)

Yeah, absolutely. Well, because it’s one of those things it’s always funny. Offices, I I giggle a lot when offices tell me, Yeah, Kiera, I don’t know what to do. Our patients, like, we do Invisalign in our practice, but they’re still going to someone else. And I’m like, Because your patient doesn’t know. Like, if they don’t know all these things that you guys do, they will go somewhere else. They think you do their cleanings and you do their fillings. They don’t realize that you do implants and ortho and sedation and Botox and all these other things. So I love that you

constantly remind your team of what makes your office special because in doing so, that’s then what they’re going to translate to the patients. It’s like, I I heard a great quote that said, repetition is the mother of skill. And I love that because we can talk about it one time, but if we’re constantly repeating it, like why do we get so good at our morning routines? Well, because we repeat it every single day, to where it’s it’s second nature for us. We don’t even have to think about it. So I really love that you

You dive through the whole practice in a quick two to three hour thing. I love that it doesn’t take all day. I love that it breaks out and shakes it up pre-scheduled out because this calibration is paramount. And I’m like, shoot, Dave, I’m like, I’m gonna go back and listen to this podcast. I’m gonna write these things down because I was thinking of consultant calibration. I have one once a month, but we don’t go through the nitty-gritties of everything as consultant teams. And I’ve been watching as I’ve been doing client check-ins, that each consultant kind of has their own variance from office to office.

If we could start to bring those in, hear what the other people are saying, how they’re saying it, similar to doctors, if doctors could hear how different doctors are diagnosing different ways that they’re explaining treatment, it helps elevate your entire practice and patient experience. And I think at the end of the day, that’s what this ultimately is all about. Because if your patient experience is awesome, coming from an awesome team experience, the whole practice is just going to elevate and everyone’s going to feel much happier, less stressed and all around great. Cool.

speaker-1 (29:56)

Yeah.

So I you know, all this stuff is is helpful. I mean the the the take home message is if it can’t it can’t get stale. So it always requires time and effort to to try and mix it up. And that’s always hard to be able to do. But you know, you you you do what you can and and really at the end of the day, I mean, you know, the more you can do with this stuff, the better. The other thing that you were you were talking about, how our patients don’t really know what we do and everything like that. I mean, I can’t I can’t preach that enough.

I mean, I think there are things that we can do way better to do that. simple thing that we did is we for a long time had like spear education videos looping in our waiting area. and it just really opened my eyes to the fact like sometimes like patient would come in and be like, I saw that video about that. Let’s do that. my god, like this is like this is amazing, you know. So what we’re what I’m working on right now is

We try and put together basically like a little little slideshow in the background that part of it will be kind of things as far as you know, some of the clinical things that we do. Part of it’ll be like, you know, getting to know team members better. So like little fun facts, things like that, you know, other things that just like you know, somebody may see in the background and find interesting, you know, kind of like a little subliminal in a sense, but we want to try and find a balance where it’s not like so in your face. But the important thing there is really.

People see this and they may not necessarily, you know, need the, you know, the the treatment or have the conditions that they see on the screen. But, you know, husband, wife, you know, mother, daughter, you know, who knows? And they may say, Hey, you know what? I saw this at at you know, my dentist, and the way that they do this looks pretty amazing. I’ve never like seen or heard of anything like that when they, you know, it seems like it was so much more involved. So that’s that’s a little project we have working on.

And it’s a little project that I personally am not dealing with, which I’m very, very happy about. So we’re slowly, slowly getting everybody to help.

speaker-0 (31:48)

That’s awesome. Well, and like you said, I think it’s just an awareness piece. I think the more your patients can see it because the guys, I don’t I don’t need implants. Thankfully. my teeth are really straight. I hate my ding dang lateral number ten. If somebody wants to, you know, take me on as a patient, it just needs a quick rotation. That’s all I need. but nobody ever asks me about it. But the

And Dave, I’m sure on Zoom right now is like looking in, like, here, let me see your tooth. but the bottom line is like it’s an awareness piece, just because I don’t need it as a patient. I am connected to a lot of friends and family. So if I hear it at work or I hear it with my family and they’re like, I need somebody to do ortho. I’m like, my dentist does that. So again, it’s just an awareness piece for your patients. So, Dave, so many pieces you pulled in here. I love going through the why, actually going through the pieces of your practice.

Then going into the tangibles of clinical, having case studies, examples, having people role play it out on different positions, and then going into what makes us special and reminding our practice of the things that we do offer. So it’s a constant awareness and I love that you have this on a quarterly cadence. I think for all offices, I don’t care how you do this, if it’s once a year, if it’s every four every three months, so four times a year, if you do it twice a year at retreats. I don’t care, but I would strongly suggest each of you at least try to get this in. We’re ending the year out. So I would say

At least w at a minimum one calibration. I would strongly suggest that four because again, repetition is the mother of skill that can really help out. So Dave, as always, brilliant podcast. Love learning from you. Love hearing the great things you’re doing. It’s been fun to watch you evolve as as a leader and as an owner and as a clinician over the years that I’ve known you. So thank you again for your time today. It was it was just awesome. I loved it.

Kiera Dent (33:24)

Dental A Team listeners, I hope you loved revisiting this episode as much as I did. I hope that you found the nuggets, the pearls. You can see why we re-released this one because I truly want you to take away the best of the best of the best of the best. This episode truly hopefully sparked some new excitement, gave you some new ideas. I know sometimes when I go back and I look back on things that I’ve learned in the past, I’m able to re-implement because like that famous quote says, no man steps into the same river twice because neither he is the same man.

nor is the river the same. You are not the same as you were before, nor is your practice the same as it was before. Different things, different ideas, same principles. And I really want to highlight and hopefully you took today that sometimes all we need to do is simplify and put into place or to refine things that we’ve already been doing really, really well. If you love this episode, don’t keep it to yourself, share it with a colleague or leave us a review and help more practices find the Dental A Team podcast. As always, thanks for listening and I’ll catch you next time on the Dental A Team podcast.