Episode : #700: Seven Ways to Go From Good to Great

Transcript

0:00:05.8 Kiera Dent: Hey everyone, welcome to the Dental A-Team Podcast. I’m your host, Kiera Dent and I had this crazy idea that maybe I could combine a doctor and a team member’s perspective, because let’s face it, dentistry can be a challenging profession with those two perspectives. I’ve been a dental assistant, treatment coordinator, scheduler, filler, office manager, regional manager, practice owner, and I have a team of traveling consultants, where we have traveled over 165 different offices, coaching teams. Yep, we don’t just understand you, we are you. Our mission is to positively impact the world of dental, and I believe that this podcast is the greatest way I can help elevate teams, grow VIP experiences, reduce stress and create A teams. Welcome to Dental A-Team Podcast.

0:00:49.8 KD: Hello, Dental A team listeners. This is Kiera and you guys, Oh my gosh. Do you know what today is? ‘Cause today is an awesome day. Today we’re celebrating 700 episodes on the podcast. What the what.

0:01:06.4 KD: Guys, I cannot believe that we have been together for 700 episodes. Do you realize that you could listen to the podcast more… Like if you listen to me every single day in a year, [chuckle] you could listen to me a lot, there’s 365 days in a year, right? That means after I record 30 more, you could listen to me every single day for two years, two years. That’s insanity. So I just wanna say thank you guys. Thank you so much for being here, for being a part of the Dental A team family, for being a part of my life. This podcast has meant so much to me to be able to meet a lot of you in person, to be able to consult and coach you in your practices and to change your lives and to help you believe and change and expand what you believe is possible. It’s been fun for so many of you to become pen pals with me, I love our pen pals, so if you wanna become a pen pal with me, [email protected]. I’d love to have you there, but truly, I just wanted to say thank you so much for listening, for giving me the reviews, for sending in topics and ideas for being on this journey with us.

0:02:22.4 KD: Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would hit record 700 times. That’s nuts. How many things do we do 700 times? We tie our shoes, we brush our teeth, we get in a car, but things that aren’t essential in day-to-day living and part of our job, it seems insanity to me, so, I just wanted to say thank you. And I know that there are several of you who have been a part of this since day one, so if you’re one of those faithful listeners who has literally listened to all 700, I want you to email me and I’m gonna make a 700 Club where… And guess what? You can be a part of this, if you go back and listen to all of them, but I wanna make a 700 Club because I just think it’d be fun, so be sure to email me [email protected]. Don’t worry. If you know anything about me? I enjoy a good time and I enjoy celebrating. So email me 700 Club. We’re gonna make our own club of the 700 Club, and any time that you get to that, any person, whether you started with me from day one, which kudos to you, or if you’re someone who has gone back in the archives and listened, there is so much wisdom and knowledge in there.

0:03:24.2 KD: And the good news for you is, you got a lot of hours in a day. On average, our podcast are about 15 minutes, so in 24 hours, thats 60 minutes, right? Which is going to be 1440 minutes in a day. If we divide that by 15, which is the average length of most podcast, that means you could get through 96 podcasts in a day, so if you wanna take on the seven-day challenge [laughter] all day all night, you could realistically, seven days almost. You’d have to go to eight days. Eight days. If you went eight days, could you imagine listening to me non-stop, that’s all you did for eight days, you could listen to all 700 episodes, just some food for thought I’ll make a 700 Club and or do you want me to give you 10 days, the 10-day club I realistically I think the eight-day Club, ’cause that’s how many days it would take you to listen to me non-stop for 24 hours. Someone out there, I guarantee you, is going to be the eight club, and I will probably fly out to see you, it would be a good time.

0:04:24.9 KD: No promises, it depends on where you live, but if someone wants to become part of my eight-day club. Could you imagine? Eight days, the eight-day Club, you’re gonna have to listen to me non-stop, you’re literally gonna have to listen to me while you’re sleeping and not let the podcast Stop. I didn’t say you had to be cognitive for all of them, I just said you could get through all 700 episodes. Is that insanity? Well, I’m not sure, but I can’t wait to meet the person who does the eight-day club challenge and listen to all the episodes, there have been so many fun things, so many guests on the podcast, So many of you joining us, we’ve shared from offices to vendors to sponsors, to brilliant people in the industry, and so today, I thought it’d be really fun for number 700 to give you guys seven themes. I’m not doing 700, that’s insanity. Seven themes of podcast topics of different things that I feel have made dental practices go from good to great. Okay, so for number 700 today, again, The 700 Club email me. [email protected], the eight-day club. I would love to meet you. It’s gonna be really fun. I know somebody out there is gonna take this challenge and I’m truly giddy to meet who you are, I’ll probably do consulting for you, like I don’t know what we’ll do, but whomever you are, I can’t wait.

0:05:37.6 KD: So [email protected], the 700 Club, or the eight-day club. But right now, I wanna kick it off with seven themes from good to great, quick intro, this is me putting a plug. Please, right now, for my 700 episode wish. Go leave us a review. Could you imagine if we had 700 reviews on our 700th episode? It would literally make me cry. [chuckle] Because I would know that there were all of you out there that have been touched, that have been blessed. Just so you know, I tend to look on the Apple’s iTunes won the most for reviews, so if you really want me to see it, but it would mean the world to me, if you guys could help us get to that 700 reviews, could you imagine it would just be an unreal dream come true for me, so if you guys could help me out on that, please go do it. I don’t care what, when you listen to and then tag us, it would be really magical to have 700 of you also post tag and respond today, so please don’t think that, “Oh, everyone else will do it.”

0:06:31.4 KD: I need you. You listening right now, I need you, and that would just mean the world to me, so it could be magical to see a massive uptick of 700 reviews come through on our 700th episode, so I would love it if you guys are open to that it would mean the world to me. So seven themes from good to great, so the number one theme that I feel and the probably the number one most downloaded podcast of all times are any time I do a podcast on billing basics. So if I was you and you didn’t wanna be part of the 700 Club or the eight-day challenge, head on over to the dentalateam.com and go to our podcast page, and what you’ll do is just type in billing, and if you listen to all those podcasts on billing basics, from insurance verification to how you run your AR, what a healthy AR is, to how we actually submit claims and get them paid, We have so many people on there, but really the good to great practices are those who have the billing basics down to where we’ve got clean information going in and clean information coming out, so every patient, we’re verifying their insurance cards to make sure that they’re accurate, we’re updating their addresses and phone numbers and their spouses, to make sure that when we send claims are going out clean, that we have the correct attachments to them, that we have our interns verified to know the downgrades and they’re entered incorrectly.

0:07:43.6 KD: So when we send a claim, we get it paid quickly, and with many minimal problems. Billing basics are one of the things, and again, I didn’t say billing greatness, I said billing basics because from good to great, you’ve gotta have billing basics down and consistent, period. And I know this sounds annoying, it sounds annoying to have to do insurance verification on every patient, the answer is It is. But the good to great are those who have their billing in check that run their AR, that have a healthy AR, which is less than one to one of last month’s collections. I prefer it to be less than that. You guys know my themes. 0-30, I don’t care about that. 16-90, should be less than 15% of your last month’s collections. 60-90, less than 10%. And over 90 should be less than 5% of last month’s collections. You should also be having it where it separates out your oath on your bill and your membership plans and payment plans, so your AR is clean and you put those on a different billing type. If you don’t know how to do that, go listen to the podcast, but you’ve gotta get the billing basics down and have clean claims going in and out to ensure that your billing basics are there.

0:08:48.1 KD: So that’s tip number one, from good to great. Tip number two is, overhead, knowing your numbers. The practices who really are good, but go to Great, know their overhead forward and backward, so right now asking team members, doctors, anyone listening, do you know your overhead? What is it today? An overhead, remember, are the expenses out of the collections, so if we collected 100,000, if our expenses were 50,000, we are at a 50% overhead. If you don’t know that number and you don’t know what our percentages on how much we’re spending on supplies and labs, and how much we’re spending on payroll every month and rent and utilities and legal, if you don’t have that broken down, you need to know those numbers, period. It’s not fun. It’s not sexy. Don’t worry. I do my numbers every single week. I’m tracking it. I’m looking at it. I almost honestly always look at it almost every single day. You’ve got to know your numbers. And when I do podcast on overhead and profitability of a practice, I know it’s like wamp wamp, this is not wamp wamp, this is truly the sustainability and lifeblood of your practice, so you’ve gotta know those numbers, and if you need help with that reach out [email protected].

0:09:54.9 KD: We do have an overhead thing that really does help. We just did it at our summit and people loved it. It was the number one topic that people loved the most, ’cause I literally had them go grab a P&L, plug it in, see where they’re falling see where their percentages are high, so that way they can actually make it more accurate and that should be done every single month, so Know Your Numbers. The third tip from good to great is, white noise time for all the different positions in the practice, so doctors and owners especially, you’ve gotta build this white noise CEO time and I’ve talked about it before, this is when the great ideas can come, so I’ve got two things, I’ll say white noise time/CEO time, which they’re two different things. White noise time is when you literally disconnect from the practice, so all team members need to have white noise time, where we go, and we’re fulfilled with our families when we’re hiking out in nature, whatever your jam is. You’ve gotta have white noise times so the best ideas for the business can come to you. If you’re just laying all day thinking about it all the time, you don’t have the space to allow the best ideas to come to you, so you’ve got to build that in for you, and on the flip side, as a CEO or admin time, every position needs this, we need our front office to be able to call the re-care and the unscheduled treatment plans and do the insurance verification. That has got to be able to happen.

0:11:12.9 KD: But if we don’t have that happening, we’ve gotta build it in. Office managers, you need one to two hours blocked, uninterrupted time every single week, not to answer emails, not to submit payroll, but to do the most important things that will move the business forward. Dentists, same thing, hygienist or our lead hygienist, they need that. We often don’t prioritize this, and the offices are truly great. Do prioritize this because they know that one or two hours a week is going to radically push them forward. It’s like a workout going so fast. You are accelerated. It’s the time where it’s like condense compact and you’re not interrupted at all. So sometimes people actually do that off-site, off-campus. If you need a good book around that, Deep Work is an amazing book that really helps you understand the purpose of that. So that’s tip number three. Tip number four that I’ve seen for good to great offices are they consistently do a one-on-one with each team member every single month to ensure that they’ve got good open communication working on The Five Dysfunctions of teams from Patrick Lencioni, making sure we’re building that trust and open communication and vulnerability amongst team members for healthy debate.

0:12:22.4 KD: That is paramount, and if you don’t know your team, at Summit, I did this whole score card of different things you should know about each team member, if you can’t answer those right now, you don’t know your team. Do you know their love language? Do you know their greatest human need that they’re driving force? Do you know their emotional home? Do you know where they go, where they wanna go in their one, three and five years? Do you know what their greatest accomplishment in life? Do you know those things about your team, and do you have human conversations with them, in addition to business conversations with them? Are you driving them forward on the business along with their personal lives? The great practices do this consistently, every single month. They prioritize it. They don’t run through it, and they’re able to make it become something amazing for them.

0:13:11.3 KD: The fourth thing is they set annual goals, so the whole team knows where we’re headed, financially and systematically whatever we want as a practice, but they set goals that are about three every single year that are set, and then they’re running quarterly traction meetings. So guys, you know I’m obsessed with Gino Wickman Traccion. It’s been a while since I’ve done a podcast. I’ll bring one in for you guys again, but this is run every single quarter. If you have not read the book, if you’ve not implemented Traccion, we are incredible at implementing this into practices. We do Dental A teams version of it, which is dental specific for you, but this literally builds the momentum and the traction to get your practice going where you need it to go. The great practices prioritize this, they have meetings on it, and they follow through on what they commit to each quarter.

0:13:57.2 KD: It’s insanity to me, when people don’t do this, when we don’t plan, when we don’t take time out. And I was at business for a long time, and I realized if I’m gonna become a great business, not just a good business, but a great one, I need to implement that. So the annual goal setting that and then having quarterly meetings to ensure we’re on track for that, we’re digging into the problems, we’re solving them, really is going to help you guys be successful, so that’s tip number five of my seven tips or themes from good to great. Number six, you have leadership teams in place. The great practices have amazing leadership teams that actually track KPIs every single day or week pending upon the KPI and report in and review it every single week, period. We’re tracking our hygiene escape, so I’m gonna read to you guys some KPIs that I love. I’m gonna pull up a KPI score card, and this is literally reported every single week. Every single week, this is going on. So with that, the KPI scorecard, this is some of my favorite things, and again, it’s dependent upon you and upon your practice, but we’re tracking our production. Are we on track to meet our goal? What about next week’s production? What about our hygiene hourly? What about our hygiene re-appointment? Year-to-date production, year-to-date collection, the year-to-date collection percentage, what is our case acceptance?

0:15:20.0 KD: All of our billing outstanding claims AR 0-30, 30-60, 60-90, 90 days total. What is all of that? These are things that we’re looking for. You can add in hygiene fluoride. You can put in your doctor treatment. All those different things, but if we’re not tracking our KPIs consistently, we’re never going to get there. So that’s something that I really want you guys to be looking at of, are we tracking these and does our leadership team know how to look for this? I have an office, shout out to them, they track so many things daily, and this one hits their goals every single time. So they do the hours work for other doctors, the production, production per hour, the scheduled production, the scheduled versus actual. And then they do their recalls, their scheduled appointments or no-show, their doctor no-show and their hygiene no-show. Then when they build all that out, they can actually see how their doctor is doing. They break down their doctors on all the different types of procedures to see what kind of procedures we’re doing, they’re looking at their case acceptance. They’re looking to see what our hygiene are doing. They build KPIs for their hygienist of production of fluoride, whatever is going to move your practice forward…

0:16:29.2 KD: These offices are doing them and the leadership team, so a lead hygienist, a lead dental assistant, a lead front office, an office manager, a lead doctor, are actually ensuring that their departments are taking ownership of those KPIs that they’re coming up with solutions to hit them and making sure the entire practice is moving forward. Tip number six, and probably one of the top tips that I could give you is get that leadership team and those KPIs in place, or they’re empowered and they’re trained and their coach on how to be these amazing leaders. And then number seven, from good to great is a raving fan culture, offices that have a great, have a raving fan culture, and that doesn’t mean that there’s just fun all the time, it means that they actually can be empowered to make decisions that each department takes ownership that they have team members that love to work there, and they work hard and they enjoy being there, that our patients feel a sense of satisfaction and ease within our practice, and there’s a culture that is thriving and not dying.

0:17:33.7 KD: So as you go through that, billing basics, how are you doing overhead and knowing your numbers, the white noise time/the bonus of the CEO time or the admin time, one-on-ones monthly, annual goals with quarterly traction meetings in play, a leadership team tracking KPIs every single day/week, and then having a raving fan culture, those would be my top seven themes, seven tips from the podcast over all 700 episodes that I really feel encompass it. And under all of that are great leaders, great owners, people who really care. To me when I look at that you also have to have the additional piece of being a fulfilled person, of making sure that you are fulfilled as a leader and as an owner, and that you’re living your life that you wanna live, and I feel like as a whole capsule of 700 episodes coming to you, like so many fun moments like, I have laughed on the podcast. I have cried on the podcast. I have had so many guests on the podcast. I’ve talked to you guys while I’m driving, anyone remember my speeding ticket podcast? That was really crazy. I have been podcasting through border patrols, so many different things of where this podcast and this family has come with me.

0:18:46.6 KD: To today, to where I were to go to seven themes that I feel will make you go from good to great, those would be the seven that I would pull through. There’s so many other ones like don’t break up with me and urgency like the important versus the non-important, and just so many things like morning huddles and case acceptance and new patients and marketing and good night. There’s so many out there. But those would be the ones that I would say today for the 700th episode are seven themes to take you from good to great. Now, if we can support you, so many of you listening, and I would say stop listening and start executing. If we can help you with that, join us. [email protected]. I would love to have you or go to our website and just book a call, I would love to talk to you, I’d love to see if you’re a fit, because at the end of the day, our clients are successful, period. Dental A-Team clients are successful.

0:19:38.1 KD: Dental A-Team clients live their dream lives. Dental A-Team clients have raving team cultures. Dental A-Team clients are not perfect from day one, but they keep working towards that and chipping away and becoming better and better and better. Dental A-Team clients feel a sense of ease. They feel a sense of success. And if you want that to be you, I would love to have you. So come join us [email protected]. I cannot wait to hear my 700 Club and my eight-day club email us [email protected], you will personally hear from me and I cannot wait. Guys, this has been an incredible journey for 700 episodes together. Thank you for you. Thank you to you. If you weren’t listening to me, I wouldn’t be hitting record. Thank you for wanting to positively impact the world of dentistry in the greatest way possible with me. Thank you for sharing this with colleagues and co-workers and team members. Thank you for the team. Shout out to the office that I know is here locally and Reno, that ran into one of our team members and said You have a whole team chat or you share Dental A team topics and podcasts, and you’re constantly talking about…

0:20:42.7 KD: Thank you for the teams that play our podcast at your team meetings. Thank you for those of you who have driven with me across the country and across the globe. Thank you for those of you who have reached out and have been part of our family. Thank you for those clients, for all of you who have decided to join us in our Dental A team family. Thank you to you. Thank you to all of our team who’s made the podcast happen from Alex to [0:21:03.7] ____ to all of our consultants who have put on content to all of the sponsors, guys it takes a big team to make this happen. Thank you to my entire Dental A-team people who have helped to make this podcast a reality. Thank you to those who inspired me and were mentors at the very beginning from Mark Costes to Richard low, to George Harari to Paul Goodman, who really inspired me to make this podcast be reality. Without them, I wouldn’t be here. And guys, you guys wouldn’t be here with me. So thank you for being a part of it. To all of you, cheers to 700 and let’s do a 700 more. Go leave those reviews. Come join us if we can help you. And as always, thank you so much for listening, I’ll catch you next time on The Dental A-Team Podcast.

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0:21:51.9 KD: And that wraps it up for another episode of The Dental A-team Podcast. Thank you so much for listening and we’ll talk to you next time.