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Tiff and Dana start their first episode of the 2025 focused on getting the entire practice team on board with goals. This doesn't mean just the numbers or just the patient experience, but all the pieces of the puzzle. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Join Dental A-Team Consulting Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:01.926) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. I am so excited to be back here today. We are recording quite a few podcasts today, Dana and I, and this is our second up, so we should still be super fresh for you. Just kidding, we're always fresh. Dana, your hair looks amazing. You guys know it's hair and leggings and workouts, apparel and... protein bars for me. Like she is my girl who shares all of my same hopes, dreams, wishes, and desires in life. So Dana, your hair looks amazing today. I love it. Yeah. I used my... Dana (00:33.454) Well, you know, I'm podcasting with Tiff. I had to put a little effort in. The Dental A Team (00:38.46) Well, thank you. went and straightened it real quick, but I used my my crimper thing yesterday. I've used it quite a few times on my new haircut. I wasn't sure how it was going to work, but it worked. For all you male dentists out there listening, just give me a stitch. I'm sorry. Dana (00:43.854) Let's go! The Dental A Team (00:51.26) Dana, made her, this is like a year and a half, two years ago now, something like that. I made her give me a tutorial because she was doing this weird thing with her hair and I was like, my God, it looks so good. I need to know how to do my hair like that. She's like, just get this thing. I'm like, yeah, but I don't think you understand. I need a tutorial. So she literally did a tutorial for me on how to wave my hair. And it is actually really cute with my new cut. So thank you, Dana, for stepping up my game, my hair game. and all of the other games. Your Tip Tuesdays, I'm always like dying to see what it's going to be. I have protein bars because of you. I have so many things. So thank you, Dana, for having all of the tips and the tricks in your back pocket every single time. Dana (01:36.022) can't take credit for it, I'm constantly asking my girlfriends, hey, what are you guys doing? Give me all the products too. So a lot of them are tips that have been shared with me that I just pass on. The Dental A Team (01:46.182) That's what this world is about, right? Everything we share on this podcast are things that we've learned along the way, either on our own from exploration or because we learned it from somebody else. And that is the beauty, I think, of life and really being able to have that community and that camaraderie where you can share those things. So you have your girlfriends, our doctors here at the Dental A Team have each other. We have a... An amazing doctors group that I feel like is just like that, Dana, where I see things go off all the time on the little texting app and they're like, my gosh, what do you guys have for this? Or what new bond are you using? My bond sucks. Or cosmetic stuff. So I think that's... That's how we do it. That's how we move along and that's how we were meant to do it. We were never meant to do life solo. We were meant to do life in groups with incredible, amazing people. And we are here for it every single day. We love our clients. We love you guys who are our clients and we love you guys who are not yet our clients. And we have those communities for you. So look for them. Instagram, Facebook, we've got all kinds of communities there for our clients who are listening. If you don't know what I'm talking about with this doctor, collaboration sucker, you better be texting me right now. Same with Dana. If you are our client and you don't know what I'm talking about, you better be texting me right now. Let's get you in there. Awesome. Dana, today I really wanted to talk about teams and how doctors and leaders, so doctors and probably office managers, business administrators, can really utilize the team to help push goals. I think oftentimes we have clients that come in, they onboard, and I hear a lot of the time, and Dana, I think you might as well, I don't talk to my team about numbers because I don't want them to think that I'm numbers driven. And I think it's super freaking common in the dental world because we have a really hard time differentiating black and white numbers and emotions. And The Dental A Team (03:44.13) I always like to say that emotions are fleeting, the way I felt when I woke up this morning, drastically different than how I feel right now. And that was like six hours, seven hours ago. Like within a day, I've had so many emotions come and go that if I'm constantly weighing out if something's working right or not, or if I'm growing or if I'm happy, if I'm sad, I'm just constantly trying to weigh out what that looks like based on my feelings, it's gonna be very difficult. But dentistry, we are in the care profession and we are saturated, luckily I think this is an incredible asset to all of us, we are saturated with emotional beings, highly emotionally intelligent human beings that are keyed in first to how we feel. So bringing in that numbers aspect can feel cold and sterile and it can feel like, Tiff, I'm here for the patients. I'm here for the patient experience. I don't wanna talk about the numbers. I've literally had a doctor say, I don't wanna look at the numbers. I don't wanna talk about them. And I said, okay, you don't want to yet, but we're gonna get there. Now Dana, I know you've had that as well. What do you feel is the reason that you've seen or reasons that you've experienced that doctors or business administrators might not want to talk about numbers? Dana (04:58.923) Yeah, I think a lot of it comes from a fear of when they talk about numbers, the team sees that only as profit, right? Or dollars, dollars, right? When we talk about numbers and dollars that go directly to the doctor or to the owner. And so I always feel like The Dental A Team (05:08.433) Yeah. Dana (05:16.692) Yeah, we want to talk about production. We want to talk about collections. We want to talk to dollars. We also want to talk about expenses, right? You want your team to have a full picture of numbers, not just the dollar, because when they have a full picture of the numbers and they also know what those numbers tell them in relation to patient care and patient experience, and all of those are part of numbers. And so I feel like you can't talk about numbers without talking about those other things too. And you can't highlight, like you have to highlight what the numbers tell you about those pieces, which are the The Dental A Team (05:22.214) Correct. Dana (05:46.808) that usually rally up the team that they really care about that are the reasons why they are there. And so when you make those connections of, yes, these are dollars, but these dollars tell us about patient care. These dollars tell us what an amazing patient experience we're creating for our patients. These dollars tell us how great we are at getting our patients to accept the treatment that we recommend to them. And these dollars come with expenses. And so they aren't just profit. They aren't just dollars that are sitting in a bank somewhere and accumulating interest. The Dental A Team (06:10.789) Yeah. Dana (06:16.384) and making you as the owner, right? And you as the owner should you take all the risk, right? So don't feel guilty about that either. You take all of the risk. It is all of your license. It is all in everything that you've created. So also don't feel guilty if you make a healthy profit from your practice. But I think when you have a full picture. The Dental A Team (06:21.498) Yeah. Dana (06:33.334) of expenses and what they tell you and all of those things numbers become really easy to talk about and team members can start to get behind those numbers when they understand what those numbers are telling them about the things that they care about. The Dental A Team (06:49.692) Totally agree. I 100 % stand by everything you just said. One thing that you made me think of is, because you're talking about this profit piece, gosh, I think a lot of dentists, you all want the profit, but I think a lot of you feel almost guilty for the profit, and especially when it comes to the numbers. That's why sometimes you don't want to talk about it. I totally understand that. But I think what you forget to see in that, is how much decision making becomes easier when you know the numbers. When you know that you're truly profitable and when the practice knows you're truly profitable, the team meaning that it makes it much easier to make decisions. So can we take an extra day off next month because there's a festival in town and we all want to go to it? Can we buy the ultrasonic or the autoclave or the cavatron? how many cavatrons do we get asked for at the end of the year you guys? I just had one, I just had a call today. Dana (07:41.003) you The Dental A Team (07:44.966) They're like, hygiene department needs a cavern shot, and we need an ultrasonic, we need a sterilizer, and I'm like, cool, we've got to figure out where that's coming from. But the team, I mean the team, I just had this call with this doctor this morning, he's one of my favorite doctors I talked to, him and his wife. We have... like tenfold changed their money and their financial situation and their practice and it has been incredible. They went from like an 82 % overhead to typically they're like 57 to 62 % right now. They're profiting, they're able to put money aside. He has a CE bucket I make him put money in, all of these different pieces. He's just bought a new practice to expand. It's huge. All of this stuff has happened in the last couple of years but it's because we were willing to start looking at the money. Well, his team sent us this laundry list of like wishes and it's fantastic. And the office manager has gone through and she's priced everything and she's done it all correct so that now we can say, okay, well, what are the educated decisions based on the finances prior to working on this with them prior to working so hard at getting that, that overhead down by at least 20 % over the last two years. They weren't talking numbers a lot with the team. They were just going through the motions. The only number that they really talked about was where's our production and are we at 98 %? Collections are higher, which are two fantastic numbers to talk about, but they weren't watching other pieces. They weren't watching the AR. They weren't watching necessarily the new patients super closely and what was happening is their AR was being padded with overpayments and so what was happening, profit was down, their overhead was high because they actually had a ton of money still outstanding, but it wasn't showing up in the initial reports. know this, they didn't understand this, we had to break it down, we had to pull backwards, we had to start moving money around, all of these different things had to come into place and once the team understood what the numbers meant, what they could control, they were on board. They were like, my gosh, this is a disaster. Like how do we positively impact this? Because you guys, they care about your business too because they care about you. This specific practice, this team loves this doctor. I mean, I love this doctor and that's why The Dental A Team (10:00.998) like they are incredible human beings. Most of you guys out there are incredible human beings with teams who want you to do really well. When you do well, your team does well. And your team does well and can help promote that, like Dana said, when they know what they're going after. Does your team know how to win? Because emotions are fleeting and I might feel like, gosh, today was a fantastic day. It was so smooth and it flowed so well. And you're leaving the back door complaining because we had $1,200 worth of treatment today and I'm like... Today was great. Today, I wasn't running around like a chicken. It seemed to flow really well. And you're like, no, I couldn't even pay the people that were here today based off of the money that we brought in. That's the difference. And your team needs to be able to see that, to see where they can go. And Dana and I chatted earlier about really seeing those overarching goals, but then seeing how does my individual position in this practice add to that goal? So what is the goal of my position? And how does that goal, that metric add into the larger metrics of the practice? So if I'm a billing representative, how does the work that I do directly affect profitability of the practice or overhead of the practice is probably easier to talk about, right? And Dana, I know we were just talking about this. So what are some other spaces like hygiene's an easy one because they're providers, right? But even as far as like treatment coordinators, billing or front office representatives, like what are you seeing with the practices you work at? work with, not at, that you work with, that you're having those leading measures that are really, really contributing to the back end full arch goals. Dana (11:45.622) Yeah. And I think that that's, that's, it's, it's knowing what your other numbers tell you, right? Or what adjunct numbers then to look at that feed into some of those larger numbers like production and collections. So if I TC, right, how would you impact collections? Well, you would help increase production by getting more treatment accepted. And it's just breaking it down and making those connections for them. If I am the scheduler, well, how do I impact collections? Well, if I have a full schedule where we can produce it, then we're able to collect it. Right. So just breaking that all down. If I'm a The Dental A Team (11:50.747) Yeah. The Dental A Team (12:12.24) Yeah. Yeah. Dana (12:15.488) dental assistant, well how do I affect production? Well you make sure that you're as efficient as possible so our appointment lengths can be as short as possible and you're part of reappointing right? So making sure that you get the next thing on the schedule, making sure that you're teeing things up for the doctor, all of those things help build production but sometimes it's difficult for team members to make those links or to see wow yeah like me doing that really does impact that. number or that larger overarching goal. And so almost every number in the practice, each individual seat can contribute to it in some way. We just sometimes as leaders have to make those connections or draw those links for team members to see. The Dental A Team (12:42.588) Thank you. The Dental A Team (12:53.308) you Totally agree. I was working with a pediatric practice last week and this was most of our meeting was spent on this and we spent at least two hours really diving into each department from the overarching goal standpoint and really the daily production that they're looking to hit to hit the monthly production and how does every department and each individual within that department control that and one of the most interesting pieces that was pulled out for them was the dental assistance and the dental assistance you guys that is usually the toughest spot to like really pull something out of it. Same day treatment for sure, conversions like all those pieces but this one was really…
Full show notes at the publisherHappy New Year! Instead of setting resolutions to start off 2025, Kiera tries a different route: identity changes. What fights can you stop starting in your personal or professional life in order to become the best person, the best dental hygienist, the best doctor, the best _______ you can be in the new year? Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Join Dental A-Team Consulting Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent (00:00.878) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and happy 2025. I feel so honored to be with you on New Year's Day today. I mean, I'm calling 2025 the year to thrive and no longer survive. Like, let's get real. Let's get on this. Let's stop surviving and let's start thriving. And so to kick off New Year's today, I was thinking about it. And usually on New Year's around this time, we're all setting our goals. We're setting our resolutions. And I actually want to give you a different spin. Are you open for it? Like, let's start 2025 on a different note. And that is maybe instead of setting resolutions, let's set identity changes this year. Resolutions are fighting. Let's change that verbiage and change how we think about that. I'm so excited. I love this podcast. I love all of you. And I was thinking about resolutions and resolutions are like, you know, I want to lose weight or I want to be this leader or I want my practice to be there. And I think resolutions are different than goals and changing an identity is actually the fastest way to do it. One of my favorite quotes of all time is the need to stay like the greatest, like the greatest driver within the human being is the need to stay consistent with who we believe we are, not who we actually are, but who we believe. And so changing identity, is actually the fastest way to grow and to evolve and to hit the goals and to hit the resolutions. It's not just setting a resolution like up like a sticky note on a wall. Like I want to be this. Okay, great. But if we don't believe we are so like there was an example and they said like, I don't know if I can stop smoking. I've been a smoker. I am a smoker. You know, I'm gonna try really hard. Well, in their mind, they're still a smoker. So trying to put it up there, I'm gonna stop smoking is actually fighting against who they believe they are. And that's a fight rather than a flow versus saying like, I'm not a smoker. Like I'm an identity. I don't smoke. I'm not a smoker for me. I've never smoked in my life. I'm not a smoker. That wouldn't even be a thing. Like, but I take it on of I'm not a smoker. And so oftentimes I love the book by James Clear, Atomic Habits. There were things I liked about things I didn't like about it. The overall piece that I really, really loved though, was when he talks about sometimes getting to these resolutions means we need to start thinking as that person. Kiera Dent (02:20.942) So if maybe today I don't feel like I'm not a smoker and I'm trying to get there, it would be like, what does a person who doesn't smoke do? And we start to act like them. And I have a really great example of my mom. My mom, she went and met with her doctor and her doctor said, you've got to start having more exercise in your life. You're not getting enough steps. You're not having any of these things and you need to start hitting 10,000 steps a day. Well, my mom, I was watching her and her and I started doing it. I had like, I'm just... I enjoy a good challenge. And so when we were in Tokyo, I got several days in a row of hitting over 10,000 steps and there was a badge of hitting 30 days in a row. And so I was like, sweet, I'm going to hit 30 days. Like I'm to hit 10,000 steps. Like we're just going to do it. And my mom was doing it. I'm like the doctor told her she needed to do this. And it was really interesting. I remember meeting up with my mom one day and she's like, Kiera, how are your steps? And I was like, great. I've got like this, I did this earlier today. I set up my schedule. Like I went for my walk or whatever it was. I was like, well, you know, maybe I'll get it tonight. Maybe I won't. And in that moment, I thought like, my mom has this is just like a hope and a wish rather than an identity. And not to say I was better than her. It was just for me, I had already decided like, this is what I do. This is who I am. And I'm going to hit this like, period. I don't care what I've got to do. If I've got to walk at midnight, I'll do that. In airports, I'm like rolling my suitcase up and down and walking just because it was something I was committed to. I remember my mom and I were talking and I said, mom, Like I pulled James, James Clear into the equation. said, mom, like, what would a healthy person do that would hit their steps every day? And I said, maybe just consider that. And so my mom started actually asking herself the question. She's like, well, like, what would a healthy person do? They would start taking a walk on their lunch break. And I was so proud of my mom. My mom started taking walks on her lunch break. And then my mom said, like, a healthy person would get up in the morning and they'd go for a walk before they'd go to work. So my mom started getting up and going for a walk at work or before work. And then my mom, was interesting. I was listening to her and she's like, you know, I've already been prepping like it's going to be winter time and it's going to be like rainy and snowy. And she's like, I don't like the cold. And so she's like, what would a healthy person do with that? They would go walk at the mall and they would plan their schedule to be able to go do that. And I was so proud of my mom because she went from someone who was like, maybe I'll get this AKA setting a resolution to this is who I am. This is my identity. I am this healthy person. Kiera Dent (04:42.466) but she had to get there by thinking of herself as this other person. What would this person do? And so when we're looking at our businesses and we're looking at our goals and we're looking at the things we want to do, what would a doctor who produces 3 million a year do? What would a CEO who owns a $3 million business, what would they do? What would an office manager who runs a $2.5 million practice, what would they do? How would they start their day? What things would they actually work on? What things would they delegate? What things would they not do? What things would they, how would they present their cases? How would they close their cases? How would they follow up with their cases? If it was a hygienist who produced 3.3 times their pay, what would that hygienist do? They would be looking at their schedule every single day. They would be checking for comp exams and for x-rays when their x-rays are due. They would be looking for fluoride and adjunct services, sealants. They would be tracking their metrics. They would be tracking their numbers. They would be adding these things to their patient schedules because they're obsessed about their patients and want their patients to thrive. What would a dental assistant do that could add same day treatment every single day? They'd be prepping their schedule. They would be talking to the treatment coordinators of how do we up our, how do we talk to the patients about this? They would be figuring it out. They would be looking at their schedule all the time. They'd be talking to the patients. They'd be helping the patients realize this is better for them and they don't have to come back for multiple visits. What would a biller do that has 98 % collections? And they don't spend all day doing it. They would be prioritizing their time, they'd be doing their insurance verification in batches. They would be calling patients instead of sending statements. They'd be proactive with that. They'd be collecting balances when the patients are in the chair. They'd be working their 90, 60, 30 days. They would be having set aside time. They would have a schedule set up to where they actually followed through on this. They would not make excuses for it. And they would own their results. And I think if we think this way and we change our identities, and again, maybe we're not there today, But as we're setting these resolutions, what would someone who has great family work-life balance do? Well, they would set up their date nights for their spouse. They would set up their kid time. Those would be the first things. They would have their work schedule in there. If they know that they only want to work four days a week, they then build a schedule with block scheduling. And they start to realize that they might add additional treatment in, higher dollar treatment, whether it's cosmetic or implants or sleep or different things like that. They would look at it. Kiera Dent (07:06.06) A CEO of a practice would be looking at their numbers every single day, if not weekly. The reality is you've got to know your numbers forwards and backwards. They would love numbers and obsess about numbers. They would love to solve puzzles and crack codes. They would make sure that they empower their team to make decisions and that they're focusing on the top pieces. They would hold their team accountable. They would have agreements. They would make sure that this team is actually operating at the highest level. And if they don't know how to do it, they would hire people to help train their team to do it. a doctor who's producing three million. They're confident with their presentations. They aren't afraid to tell patients what they need. They're very good with their case acceptance. They're really good with their handoffs. They're really good with their comprehensive diagnosis. If they're not good with that, they would put in AI, so Pearl or Overjet, to use on their x-rays to make it easier for them. But they would actually get confident presenting treatment. Now, what does a confident dentist who presents treatment look like? They go in, they have a great rapport with the patient. And if this isn't you, I have some doctors and we change their names. So we have like Dr. Marvelous or we have the confident guy or like whatever it is for you. I don't care. Choose your name. But that person walks in and they're confident with the patient and they would have a rapport with the patient and then they would ask the patient, I lean you back in? And they would say yes. And they would say perfect. Can I do a comprehensive exam? And the patient would say yes. they're the patient up to say yes to them and they show them healthy teeth and not healthy teeth and they're able to go through a comprehensive exam with them and show them what they need to do. They're not using little league words and major league situations. They're being honest with the patient of what they need and they're being confident with their diagnosis and what that patient needs. They're using our perfect NDTR handoff of the next visit, the date to return, the time needed for the appointment, making sure their re-care is scheduled for every single patient and they consistently do that and if they forget they tie a string of floss around their finger or they have this little sticky note underneath the patient's chair. I literally have doctors do this when they're so committed to doing it, but they hold it consistent. They review their cases with their treatment coordinators every single week. Where did I crush it? Where could I improve? They record themselves. Don't worry, you keep it HIPAA compliant, but they record themselves and they actually watch back their treatment cases to see what did I say? What did I miss? How could I say this better? They tee it up with their hygienist. They do what would doctor do with their hygiene team? And they say, Kiera Dent (09:24.472) All right, this is how we diagnose it. This is how we preheat the oven with our hygienist. They help their hygienist and they do CE with their hygienist about perio and how we treat our patients that way. They work with their whole team and they do whatever it is, full team handoffs or morning huddles or case acceptance, but they're doing those items. But what they're really doing is they're picking the one, two or three items that are actually going to move their practice forward the most with the least amount of effort and the greatest amount of gain. And they're really great at prioritizing. And what I'm doing is I'm describing to you doctors that I work with. I'm describing office managers that I work with, hygienists that I work with, people within our consulting company that are doing this ridiculously well. I'm telling you literally, these are what these people do. A successful CEO, they block themselves. They have at least two to four hours every single week dedicated to working on the business. And they're doing it within working hours for two reasons. One, they believe in a healthy work-life balance. And two, they know that if they put it during production time, they're actually going to use that time productively because they know if they're producing 500 or 750 or a thousand or $5,000 per hour, if they block those two hours, they need to ensure that those two hours are giving them at least, let's say they're at 500 an hour, at least $1,000 of benefit. If they're at $5,000 an hour, it's at least $10,000 of value in those two hours. You instantly start to think about yourself differently, but notice. Well, what we've done is we've changed your identity. We've asked the questions of what would this type of a doctor do? What would this type of a CEO do? What would this type of an office manager do? And then we start to become that person. And we stopped fighting against, I hope and wish that I'll become this person. Instead, we started to be like my mom. My mom does not miss her 10,000 steps anymore because what my mom is, is someone who consistently hits 10,000 steps every day. Rain or shine, good health, bad health, whatever it is, because my mom is so committed. to being that person, just like the person who's not a smoker. And they've taken on that identity of I don't smoke. That's a person and it's crazy because we can't change that. And it's like the fastest way to change is to become and to change our identity. And the way we change our identity is start to ask, what would we do in this instance? And so for you, would think, look at your goals and ask yourself, what do we want to achieve as a practice? Hopefully you've set them up. If not, or if you have, come join us January 31st. Kiera Dent (11:48.814) We are actually doing thriving in 2025 with maximum momentum and I would love to have you there. It's a Friday. It's going to be a couple hours for you guys. Don't even stress about it. Two hours. So from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. Pacific time. Come join us. I would love you. Let's get that thriving in 2025 and we're gonna help you actually set your goals for this year. We're gonna help you actually build the momentum with you and your team. And as you're building this, as you're crafting it, ask yourself, Who do I need to become to make these goals a reality? Who we are today, we need to rise above. think about like as gross as it is snakes. Snakes slough off their old skin. They outgrow it. They literally slough it off and leave it behind and they emerge a…
Full show notes at the publisherOn this final day of 2024, Kiera gives listeners a series prompts to reflect on the past year — personal, professional, and many stops in between. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Join Dental A-Team Consulting Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent (00:00.964) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and happy New Year's Eve. I cannot believe 2024 is wrapped up. We're done. Like chalk it up. We're done. Can you believe that it is 2025 in less than 24 hours? You'll be ringing in that new year and I hope you do it with Dental A Team. Of course we'll be there celebrating with you. But 2024, 2024, can you believe it's wrapped up? It's done. It's packaged up. We can't go back in time. We can't change things. All we can do is reflect and celebrate and look forward to next year. And so I'm so excited. I thought I'd just pop on quickly today of let's do a quick reflection. Let's think about how it was. I love New Year's Eve. And this is probably 1 of my favorite holidays because gosh, like a few, man, this is before I got married. So we're talking 15 years ago. I only been married for 13 years. So I'm guessing 13, 14 years ago is how long ago it was. But I remember. sitting there and I said, I love new days because new days are brand new days with no mistakes. And I thought about that with new years and like how much excitement is there of like, it's a brand new year with no mistakes. It's a brand new year. It's a clean slate. And how beautiful is it that we get to have this every 365 days most years to be able to clean slate, to be able to say, all right, that's who I was in 2024. And this is who I'm going to emerge into in 2025. And I think people who really are very consistent on doing this and Spending a little bit of time on today New Year's Eve where we sit and we actually journal So I'm gonna give you a few journal prompts if you want To reflect back and I know I've had a few podcasts over the next couple over the last few months about reflection But today's like the pinnacle day of it So if you've already done this amazing if not, I'm also gonna give you some personal things to think about too So of course technical and life life and dentistry like I said life is my passion dentistry is my platform and so Let's just think about today as we're going through. Number 1, I want you to think about your personal life. I want you to look at your physical body. I want you to look at your health and I want you to rate yourself on a 1 to 10. How is your physical body? How is your health compared to where you would like it to be? Is it a 10? Like I'm 10 out of 10. I'm perfect. I'm a nine. I'm an eight. I'm a seven. If you're on the path there, be generous with yourself. Don't be too hard on yourself. But let's look at our physical bodies. Okay. So 1 to 10, how are you doing on your physical body? Kiera Dent (02:24.33) 1 to 10, next 1. How are you on your personal relationships? Like, let's start with like your marriage or your intimate relationship. 1 to 10, is that like, if I were to go talk to your spouse or your boyfriend, girlfriend, whomever it is, your significant other, if I were to ask them how, like on a 1 to 10, how are they showing up for you? What kind of a relationship do you have? Is 10 like, it's off the charts. We have incredible, incredibly passionate relationship. I feel like they support me, they love me. Where are we at on a 1 to 10 with your, and that's how are you showing up for them? And also like, how are they showing up for you? But we really, we can only control ourselves. So let's rate ourselves on how are we showing up? How is our relationship compared to where we want to be? If you're not in a relationship, great, it's not a 10. How are you on that? 1 to 10. Next up is how is your personal relationship with yourself? What's your self talk to yourself? Is it positive? Is it negative? How do you view yourself? Are you proud of yourself? Are you someone that you would want to know? Are you not? How is that? 1 to 10. Next, how is your mind? What do you do for your mental health? From meditation to mindfulness to stillness to having control over the thoughts that come your way. 1 to 10, how's your mind? All right, let's move on to how is your fun in life? We'll put travel. I think travel is an easy 1. 1 to 10, how did you do on your vacations and the travel you wanted to take this year? 1 to 10, was it 10? Like it was off the charts for me and Jason, it was a 10. We had an incredible year this year. We traveled, we saw so many incredible things. We made so many memories. It was amazing. 1 to 10, how are your hobbies and things outside of work? How is that? 1 to 10. For me, it's like a five. Do a lot of hiking, but not as many hobbies as maybe I would like to do. Okay, so we've got quite a few things on your personal life. How is that, we can also put in there like your expansion, your growth, so like reading books and expanding your mind, listening to podcasts, maybe not necessarily dental, but things. How is that? 1 to 10. How are you doing on that? Now I want you to dig into like, let's talk about your wealth and your financials. How are you financially? And we can talk in two different levels. So could have two different 1 to 10s on here. How are your financials as far as your take home pay? Where is that at 1 to 10 of where you'd like it to be? Kiera Dent (04:48.548) And then your next 1 would be, is it on your, you're setting up for your financial freedom for longterm. 1 to 10, how are you doing on that? Are we saving for retirement? Do we have our 401ks in place? Do we feel like when we want to retire that we'll be able to retire and do it with ease? Or are we not on track at that at all? And team members, this is for you too. Doctors, this is a great 1 that you can share with your team. Okay, so we've got our personal life. We've got our health. We have our... Our expansion, have our finances. Now let's look at our business. How was your year this year on a 1 to 10? 10 was like, it was freaking awesome. We hit our goals. We had a ton of fun. Like I'm just living my life. It's like, you know, we're getting there. 5 is like, whoo, like treading water some days, winning some days. 2 is like, I'm treading water every single day and I don't know if I can do this anymore. Where's your practice at? 1 to 10. How about your team? Let's do your team. 1 to 10. How are they? Is it the dream team, everyone you want? Do have a few bad apples in there? Just some people you know you need to get rid of and you haven't? How's your team? 1 to 10. And I know you like everybody. I know you love everybody, but how's the team getting you to where you want to go in your practice? 1 to 10. How's that going for you? Next up, let's talk about your practice. How are your systems? 1 to 10. Are things like smooth flow and easy going, we got this dialed in? 1 to 10. How is that? How are you doing on that? 1 to 10, or are you like, shoot, we don't even have systems. you have our operations manual done? Do your dental assistants know how to set up for every procedure? Does your front office track the calls that come through? Do we have a system for our scheduling? Do we have a system for our treatment tracker and do we review it? Do we have set KPIs for every single position? Do we review those? Do we have set mating cadences? Do we have morning huddles? Like what do we have going on within our systems? Do we have hygiene trackers? Does our hygiene team, are we tracking our perio and our fluoride and having meetings around that? How's our training and onboarding? How's our firing process? How's our HR compliance? How are all the systems within the practice? How's our leadership? How's our management? How are all those different pieces? And of course, you can go through each department and rank each department if you want to go further down of how's our office manager 1 to 10, realistically leading, guiding, having the profitability, being basically the COO of the business with you. How's your office manager? What about your front office team? Let's talk your scheduler 1 to 10. How's your schedule? Kiera Dent (07:13.988) What about your TC's? 1 to 10. What about your billers? 1 to 10. What about your dental assistants? 1 to 10. You can break them out by name if that's easier so you don't lump them together. What about your hygienists? 1 to 10. What about your doctors, including yourself? 1 to 10. How's their clinical suite? How's their production? How are they doing on that? How's your bookkeeper? 1 to 10. How's your lawyer? 1 to 10. How's your financial advisor? 1 to 10. How's your marketing? 1 to 10. How is your CPA on taxes? Do they prepare you for them or do they not prepare you for them? I understand me asking all these questions. You can not go back in time into 2024, but you can go forward into 2025 and make changes. So now we've gone through, we call it the yes model in Dental A Team. You as a person is the why I did that first with you. E is for earnings and profitability. S is for systems and team development. So as you look through that, look to see how many tens do you have. nines, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, 1 zeros. There might be some zeros. Maybe you don't even have that. You are welcome to add any other category. And then how's your fulfillment? Like this is kind of 1 that I might just put overall. How happy are you? If you looked back in 2024, how many days of the year? Like we can't know. So this is just an assessment, right? Like there's no right or wrong. I'm not going to grade you. You can only do it. more of a feeling. On a 1 to 10, how is your fulfillment this year? On a 1 to 10, how many days? So like, was it 100 % of my days I was happy, 90 % of my days I was happy, 80 % of my days I was happy, 70 % of my days. How many days were you super happy? Going to work, living your weekends, how many days were you super happy? 1 to 10. So how fulfilled for you? How happy were you? How content were you? How much fun did you have? 1 to 10? Did you have more laughs or more cries this year? How depressed were you? How many friends did you hang out with? I just want you to really, really assess. And I know that it's New Year's Eve, but if you'll take the time to journal, and then I want you to write about, let's do your wins. What were the wins from this year? Write them out, celebrate them. Like, let's think back. Let's go back to January. What were some of the wins you had in January? What about February? What about March? What about April? What about May? Kiera Dent (09:42.532) I hope you had fun. That's my birthday month. So I hope May was great. What about June? July? August? September? October? November? And December? How did all of those go? What were the things that you remember? Like I can think back and I'm like, my gosh, January was a blur. February, I was in Whistler, Canada. It was freezing gold, but a ton of fun. March, we went to Bora Bora and I had a blast. April was summit. It was a wild time. May was busy. did pairs with Taylor Swift with some friends and then we went to Disneyland as a company retreat. It was a ton of fun. June was the hardest month of my entire life that I've ever experienced. July, I felt like I was numb and all of July was very numb, but I went boating and I had a lot of fun and I have almost landed my 360 wake surfing. August. August is interesting. My little sister got married, so that was really fun to have all my family together for August. September. Gosh, September was my husband's birthday and we went to Tokyo with his niece. So that was a lot of fun. October, October was our anniversary. Had a lot of fun in October. I think it's a magical month and we had a lot of growth in our leadership team. November was Thanksgiving with my husband's family and a lot of fun things. And then December, of course, just magic all the way around. But how were they for you? What things stand out for you? For me, there's some dark times. There's some really happy times. But like, did we blur through it? Can we even remember what we did? How intentional do you feel like you're being with your life? Are you creating your life or are you managing your life? How are you doing with your business, your practice? Are you creating it or are you just freaking managing it and hoping it gets there? Are you so proud of where you are? And I hope you just say yes, no matter where you are. Do feel like you should be further along than where you are right now? Have you looked in the mirror and been like, gosh, Kiera. I really thought sitting at 38, I'd be further along. If you have, it's okay. All of us feel that way, every single 1 of us. But my question is, what are you gonna do about it? What things as you're rolling into 2025, where I feel like it is a brand new slate, it's a canvas, people literally make like heroic changes in a short amount of time. What are you going to do for 2025 to be a smashing success? What does success even look like for you? Kiera Dent (12:04.62) I might encourage you to write a mission statement of what success is for you. How do you know if you're winning 2025? I might also suggest you have quarterly reviews to reveal. I might suggest that you get your team kickoff in January. I might suggest that you have a community of people around you that keep you accountable personally and professionally. I might suggest that you take massive action in whatever areas are lower numbers and commit to getting those higher. Whatever you need to do, commit to that. I would maybe encourage you to have some accountability personally and professionally. I might encourage you to get some help for the departments or the areas that you don't know as well. And I might encourage you that if it feels hard to do it on your own, then maybe you join the Dental A Team. We're doing this quarterly, literally setting it up here, setting all your goals. We kick it off with your team in January. We have quarterly check-ins. We have in-person retreats for you and your leadership. And then we have quarterly check-ins as well. where we literally keep track. And this year I'm so committed to doing your life and your practice. Because I believe that if we're successful in 1 and failing in the other, gosh, like we've literally had it like life without fulfillment, like success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure. And so helping you realize what is fulfillment? What is success? I had a hard turn this year where I realized no amount of money will ever make you happy. It's like money can buy a lot of happiness, but the reality is you've got to be happy with you. Having those relationships, having people that you love, having a practice that's thriving, but not just feeding your ego through significance, but truly thriving, having a leadership team that can do this with and without you, building up a practice that runs on systems, not on you, having a relationship that's incredible, spending time doing the things that make you so fulfilled, fishing, dancing. doing creative things, reading books, going to book clubs, traveling the world, going to CE, hiking, being in nature, going surfing or boating, going with time with your children, becoming the best mother or father of the year. All those things are possible. And so as we get to ring…
Full show notes at the publisherDid team members in your practice have to have any hard conversations this year? Maybe about dress code or drug testing? Did that new PTO policy work? Were there uncomfortable topics with patients? Tiff and Dana give advice on how to go about updating your handbook as 2024 comes to an end, so you can be more ready than ever when 2025 begins. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Join Dental A-Team Consulting Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:01.422) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. We are so excited to be here with you today. I have Dana. You guys know I love podcasting with Dana. She's my girl. Dana, thank you so much for being here with me. know we have, it's Friday, and so we're super excited about that. We have fun things in our lives coming up and we have so many podcasts to get recorded today for all of these people and I'm so excited because it means I get extra time with you. Dana, how are you today? Dana (00:27.746) Doing good, doing good. I'm just as excited to be here. I love this time too. The Dental A Team (00:32.202) Awesome. Awesome. And we just sprung on you guys, only asked for your permission, but we sprung on you a little meetup for the consultants here in a few weeks. And I am so excited. You guys, you listeners, I know you guys know we are all kind of like super close by. Some of us are further away in other states, but we're a fully remote company. And so we don't get to see each other a lot. And so the culture that we're able to build with our company, in my opinion, is freaking incredible because we're rarely ever together but we are going to do a consultant meetup in a couple of weeks and we do a Live To Give every single year where Dental A Team just kind of goes back to the the communities as best we can and we do angel tree shopping or one year we dropped off coats for homeless shelters and women's shelters and kids shelters and all these different things. We just really love to give back and so we do a live to give shopping spree basically. So in a couple weeks Dana, I'm so excited. You're gonna be here. Kristy's gonna be here. Britt is here already, but I actually will see her. Kiera's flying in. It's gonna be such a huge event and I'm just so excited to get some time to crunch some things, figure some things out for the future for us. and do the Live To Give and get some shopping done for some kiddos. anyways, how excited are you for it though? We sprung that on you like yesterday. Dana (01:57.814) You did. I'm truly so pumped. Anytime I can, and I say this from the bottom of my heart, get time with my consultant crew. It's some of my favorite time and they're some of my favorite people. So I would have moved heaven and earth to make that work. The Dental A Team (02:14.302) No, thank you. I agree. It's so much fun getting all of us together and Just getting some fun out there and getting some brainstorming. I feel like we brainstorm the best when we're side by side and I'm excited for it. Well, on that note, it's kind of our end of year wrap up is what our meeting is about. Like what is next you're going to look like and part of those this is HR Britt is what I like to call her. in our company, she handles our HR pieces and part of what I want to talk to you guys about today is really the employee manual and towards the end of the year making sure that it's wrapped up and ready to Dana (02:28.972) Yeah. The Dental A Team (02:50.132) to go for next year. So Dana, you had some really great ideas, you always do, on updating the employee manual and where to go about those things. And one caveat I have, number one, I love talking about companies like CEDR. They're fantastic. C-E-D-R, you guys. If you need an employee manual, if you don't know what needs to be in there, like we have options, we have ideas, we can definitely help you through with that. But CEDR does a really great job at pulling all of your state's laws, all of those little pieces that we don't necessarily always know you might not know. So I'll always say that. Reach out to CEDR if you use them or if you need one from scratch. Updates wise, same thing. Like what does CEDR have for your state? Right now towards the end of the year, we pretty much know what the new laws are going to be coming into effect for the next year, this next year, I know what year you're listening to this in right now. But this next year is 2025. So most of those state laws have already been passed or any federal changes or laws to employee sanctions and different pieces have already been passed. So they're already there, you just got to find them. And you've got to make sure that they're all encompassing that you've grabbed all of them. So CEDR does that for you any employment lawyer, Most of the lawyers you guys retain for most of your business pieces can usually snag that information for you too. So just double check. know, states like California and New York have really strict employee policies, so you just want to make sure you're always on part of there. So that's like the first layer of updates for me and the easiest space to really tackle and hit. But Dana, I loved your idea and really like looking back on the year to project for the future. Will you walk us through kind of your thoughts on that and what you used to do when you were in practice. Dana (04:37.142) Yeah, sure. I think the end of the year is a great time to just kind of reevaluate. Did I have everything in my handbook or did situations come up throughout the year that man, I really wish I had had something in writing for that. So, you know, I had a couple instances and practices this year where like they had to like have some hard conversations around like drugs or dress code, right? And they didn't have those things defined or they didn't really know what to do because it's like, well, can I ask them to take a test? Can I ask them to wear something specific because I don't have it in writing. So if you happen to have to have some of those hard conversations or make some uncomfortable decisions and you don't have it in writing, now is the great time as you are updating for laws or you're getting your handbook in place to begin with. Just considering throughout this year, was there anything? Did my PTO policy work? Did raises come up at times I wasn't expecting them? So maybe I put in my handbook like when I evaluate for raises or that raises are based on performance or that I follow a tier raise structure. The Dental A Team (05:26.414) I'm stop. Dana (05:37.664) you know, maybe we had some team members who they asked for some last-minute PTO, so like maybe we need to get in writing a little bit stronger of what the process is for getting it approved and what kind of notice they need to give. So just looking back through the year and did anything happen that man I wish I had had something in writing or this was uncomfortable because I didn't. The Dental A Team (06:00.686) think that's fantastic, I love that whole structure there. I love that you pointed out like drug policies, things like that. Those are things I think we forget to think about often times when we initially make it because... I mean, we're all here with the mindset that people are naturally good human beings and that things are, which not to say that they're not naturally good human beings, but sometimes what we feel like is intuitive or known or like just natural thought process just isn't the case. And we find that in literally every aspect of life. So not forgetting that when it comes to the employee manual is true as well. And making sure I think Dana, as you're talking, I'm thinking like getting so granular with it that it can't be confused or misconstrued. that it's insanely clear that from the smallest level possible and the biggest level possible, we can understand this entire makeup of whatever this rule or whatever you want to call it is. It made me think too about smoking breaks and where are they allowed to indulge in a cigarette if that's something that you may have a team member on your team who does that or vapes or these are all the real things. These are all common factors of everyday life. Where are those things able to be handled, be done? I know for me, my practice I worked out for years, we had that it could not be on the premises at all because we didn't want patients walking into it. advocate it for our patients for their health and their overall you know teeth so we had to make sure that they weren't walking into it and they weren't seeing any team members who may be on the team that did partake in those so it had to be off-site completely on their lunch breaks or what have you so I think though that's something that we tend to miss until like you said we get to the situation and we're like great awesome I actually don't have something for this so carry on and we'll fix this later making sure though I The Dental A Team (07:56.116) think too, we're having those conversations with those people. Because I can say that maybe, you know, when updates come around, and they're like, pointed, right? And then you're sitting there like, is that because of me? Did that? You don't want to make your team members feel like you're attacking them or a situation either. So I think making sure to have those conversations with them like, hey, we know that this happened. We know that this was a situation. It wasn't something I was prepped to handle. We handled it together and we did our best. We handled it beautifully. Moving forward just so you know, there will be a policy in place for it. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. It was obviously something that I had not known I needed to put into place, but I'm really glad that it was you and we could have this conversation and get through this. I think it's better, and Dana correct me if you think I'm wrong, then like, guess what? It kind of feels underhanded, like slighted, and that's just that space of not having the ability to have what might be deemed as a difficult conversation and it doesn't have to be difficult. Dana, how do you feel that you advise your clients because you do have a ton of clients and it is time to update those employee manuals and you just said you know you had a couple of these things come up for some of your clients this year. How did you handle that? How did you have them handle those situations as they arose and how are they going to put those into place next year? Dana (09:17.038) Yeah, and it did come down to just like a hard conversation and hey, I don't have anything in writing and we're navigating this fresh and new together. And I'm going to set some expectations on the spot. and you know we're going to come to an agreement and how we're going to handle this and what solutions we're going to come to and then I'm going to make sure that I have it in writing because having it in writing doesn't mean we don't have the conversation just like you said it just makes the structure of the conversation a little bit easier and there are written out measures that you can default to so I love how you said like just go ahead and have the conversation anyway it's much more awkward than just like here it is and everybody kind of knows so it is just we got to admit we don't have anything in writing we really are going to handle it together. It is a new thing. We're just going to communicate and we're going to get through it and move on from it and make sure we've got it documented so that if that ever happens again there is that structure put in place. The Dental A Team (10:10.092) So how did those conversations go for your clients that you worked with? one you mentioned is a pretty, that's a pretty strong policy to have to put into place. And I do understand like there are some, you know, recreational things that are out there that have been passed as laws for that it's okay for a lot of the state. So it makes it kind of difficult to navigate those pieces, but it's still considered a drug. But how did that, how did those conversations go for those clients? Dana (10:16.238) you Dana (10:37.154) They went well. think that they were just open and honest and that the bottom line is I have to protect my patients and I have to make sure that things that happen on the premises don't affect the way that we care for patients, the way that we speak to patients, the way that we handle patients. At the end of the day, that's what I have to protect. So these are the things that we're gonna put in place. We're going to make sure that those things don't happen again and we're gonna move forward. But at the end of the day, we're gonna protect the practice and the patients that sit in our chairs. The Dental A Team (10:42.507) Mm-hmm. The Dental A Team (11:02.87) Awesome. that. I love that. And I think that's a space too, where we have to not only protect our patients, but we're protecting each other and our business too. Because if you guys don't, if you guys don't put these policies in place and protect your business, where are your patients going to go? And if we're not protecting our team, meaning, you know, we can't, we can't deviate from what is considered acceptable for someone. It's got to be fair across the board. It's got to be the same structure for everyone. Because if someone gets that special treatment, the rest of the team feel slighted or confused and then guess what is really really hard to hold accountability in any other aspect. So I really want to switch a little bit, continue this conversation but within that really talk about how important it is to make sure that we're sticking to the standards and upholding the standards that we set into place and set into motion. And from a leadership standpoint doctors, practice owners, you guys are the ones that need to make sure that this is a hundred percent accurate. Your office manager or business administrators may be putting this together for you. They may be communicating with CEDR or your lawyers or whomever, but you guys need to make sure that it's accurate. And then from there, from a leadership standpoint, you, your leadership team, your whole team really needs to be abiding by these. I think the spaces that I see the most frequently misused, like you said Dana, was like the PTO situation or vacation time that's not paid, unpaid vacation time, sick leave, getting to use the benefits or getting paid out the benefits at the end of the year or not. One thing that I saw a lot of clients come up against is expectations of payout when they were let go, when a team member was let go or when they quit, they didn't have it explicitly written at termination. You know, they said at termination you would be paid out, but they didn't have it explicitly written that it was if you decided to leave, I'm not paying you out, but if I decide you're leaving, I will pay it out. And so they ended up having to pay it out. out. But from that leadership standpoint, Dana really like pushing on them to understand we've all got to follow the same rules. And this means your office manager too. And if we have different structures laid out by different positions, that is totally fine. But that needs to be clearly defined as well. I think one of the worst things we can do from a leadership standpoint is put a leader on a pedestal, make them completely different from the rest of the team. They are T…
Full show notes at the publisherKiera invites listeners to consider what gift(s) they provide others — whether it's patients or team members, or in a more personal capacity.
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Transcript:
Kiera Dent (00:01.422)
Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and Merry Christmas. If you don't celebrate, well, happy December 25th. If you do celebrate, Merry Christmas. I love the holidays. I truly do. And this year, my husband and are celebrating with his family, which is so fun because we got married 13 years ago and I'm the second oldest of seven. And so my siblings were very young. I have one sister and she was born...
when I was 12 and another sister born when I was 15. so I really, when we got married, my husband's the youngest of five and I just really, really, really, really wanted to spend holidays with my siblings because they were so young when I got married. And so for the last 13 years, we have been with my parents and my family except for one year.
which was when my brother got married and we were with Jason's parents. And so super fun to be celebrating with his family today. I just hope you guys are with something, someone doing something fun, whether it's family or it's friends or it's by yourself, but that you are just taking this time to celebrate. I think holidays are especially beautiful. And in Christmas, I think Christmas is just a magical holiday in the sense that I feel like.
We give gifts to each other and we give of ourselves and also Christmas is like right before the end of the year and so you might be headed back to the practice to produce or you might be just completely done, but wherever you are today Merry Christmas, and I hope you have just fallen in love with two things number one is Being in the spirit of giving I think that that's something that's so important and parent mount for us that we are truly
giving. I think I've shared this on the podcast before, so some of you may have heard this. For those of you that are new, welcome. I went to a conference and our group's name was Live to Give. And I remember hearing the thing that the secret to living is giving. And so in this holiday season, I know it can feel bustly, I know it can feel crazy, but I think when we take a step back and we look at what is ultimately the season, it's the time where we all give gifts to people. give holiday parties and we give gifts to our team, we give gifts to each other.
Kiera Dent (02:15.23)
We're looking for those perfect gifts, but the reality is, what is our gift that we're giving of ourselves day in and day out to our team and to our patients and to our communities and also to ourselves? And so maybe today you take some time to think about what is that gift? What is my gift that I bring to this world? And I know that that can feel awkward for some people, but I would really hope that I can encourage you to love yourself a little bit more. And what is something incredible that you bring to your team?
In some teams, what I have them do is I have everybody draw. Don't worry, they can write words if they desire. But I have them draw who they are and what they bring to the team. And then Brittany Stone, she took it a step further with a team where inside I have them draw. I remember one person drew a visionary. So it's an eye with a cast of a vision. Another person drew Gumby because they're very flexible. But whatever it is, you draw that. And then what we had our teams do is actually, Britt did this.
And she had people actually write what that person brings to the team outside of it. So for example, in a circle, you could put what you bring to the table. And then on the outside of the circle, your team tells you like what you bring to the table and how you benefit and like what your gift is to the team. And it's crazy because inside the circle, we often are so hard on ourselves and don't give ourselves credit of what we bring to the table. I understand that we're trying to be humble most of the time and not egotistical. But then when we have teams do this, how much they actually share of
what everybody's bringing to the table. And it's just such a lovely experience because people are able to see themselves in a different light. And I think that that's actually like, as you're reflecting today, you're spending time, you're opening presents, you're doing whatever. What is maybe the gift that you bring to this world or maybe the gift that you want to bring to this world next year? Maybe you want to bring more kindness. Maybe you want to bring more humility. Maybe you want to bring more patience. Maybe you want to bring more vision. Maybe you want to bring more fun.
Maybe you want to bring more energy. Maybe you want to bring more balance. Maybe you want to bring more gentleness. Maybe you want to bring more positivity. Whatever it is, what is your gift that you can bring to this world, to your team, to your family, to yourself? And then also, I would ask if you were writing a letter, Dear Santa, what would be something I would ask for three wishes? One, what is the wish that you would have for your team? Two, what is the wish that you would have for your practice?
Kiera Dent (04:37.494)
and patience? And three, what is the wish that you want for yourself? I did this in our doctor think tank a little while ago. And it was so interesting. I asked him like, what do you want? What like what would you guys want? And the group was actually very quiet. And I realized we've forgotten to dream. We've forgotten how to ask for what we want. We've forgotten how to to be vocal about those things. And so maybe today, just look at that and see what would be my wish for my team.
And really like be intentional with this. What would be the wish for my practice? And then what's the wish that I have for myself? And then what I would think is how can you make those wishes come true? How can you bring and give gifts of yourself for your team? And that doesn't mean you have to do it. It means you can delegate. means you can use other people. But what would be some fun things for you? And maybe this year you want to give yourself the gift of health. So you're going to prioritize your health. Maybe you're going to give yourself the gift of a stronger relationship and you're going to
be done on every Thursday at five o'clock and go on a date with your spouse or your significant other. Maybe you're going to give yourself the gift of fun and you're going to plan one day a week or a month where it's just a fun day for you. Maybe you're going to give yourself the gift of a new hobby and you're going to go get into pickleball or something. But like really think about what would be a gift that you'd give yourself because I think that so often we're obsessed with giving to other people, which I agree with. And that's secret to life is giving.
but also let's not forget to give ourselves a gift as well. I think the greatest thing I did for myself in 2025 was giving myself the gift of health. I have been on a health journey. Some people look at me and you just might think, like we obviously have our super, like our preconceived notions. And I have had immense pain in my knee and my hip from years and years of traveling. I ran a marathon. I went from zero running in October to running a marathon in December. So I trained for about two and a half months.
I've had severe knee pain since then and then top like tackle that on with all the years of flying that I have of just being crunched up in seats. And I have had pretty severe knee and hip pain. And this year I just decided like, I want to be 99 years old and still active in spry and I'm hoping that my last six months of my life are going to be the ones where I phase out and maybe that's when my health deteriorates. But if that's what I want my vision to be, thank you to the book of die with zero, it gave me that perspective.
Kiera Dent (07:01.456)
but I've thought about that so many times of, if that's what I want to do, what do I need to do today to be able to have that vision? And maybe when you're thinking about the gift, you want to give yourself paint the vision of who you are at 99 years old. And what does that life look like? Maybe that will also help you figure out what to give your team, what to give your practice and what to give yourself. Because this year in 2024, I committed and I hired a personal trainer and we went to the gym and it sounds so silly, but for me to be able to squat and not have knee pain.
which I have not been able to do squats, any type of lunges, squats, nothing for seven years. Like literally my quads, my hams, my calves were all atrophying. To be able to this year, me, my coaches, my PT, I have an incredible group of people around me. We were all celebrating at the fact that I can do a squat with no knee pain. And that has been seven years in the making. It was an added benefit because I was able to wake surf a lot better this summer too.
But just to feel strong and to feel like I'm taking care of my body so I can be this 99 year old woman who's not frail and feeble but is strong and has strong muscles. I have to do things daily now to be able to do that. I worked on my macros. I worked on protein intake. I worked on eating healthier. I worked on figuring out what the meals were. That was freaking hard and I hated every second of it. But to see how much healthier I am today versus where I was a year ago.
is a gift that I could never get back. I can't go back in time and live my life differently, but I can move forward and we can give ourselves those gifts now. So maybe even today, think about who do you want to be when you're 99 years old? Going into that hundred, I hope I live to like, I don't know, 103 sounds like a fun time. I love the number three, but just thinking about that, what can you do today? What are the gifts that we could give to other people? What are the gifts that we can give of ourselves? What are the gifts that we could give to ourselves?
as we're spending this time, I really love on Christmas to reflect, reflect on the things that have been amazing, reflect on my amazing, just life that I have to be in this season. It's crazy, but to just see the love that's around me, to see the incredible people around me, to see the family, the friends. And I know sometimes this time of year can be hard. I used to actually hate Christmas. My brother came home and I hated Christmas. I literally would not listen to anything Christmas.
Kiera Dent (09:24.626)
went into it and I would just not participate in anything and my heart was so sad and I just felt cold. I felt closed off and what changed for me was I actually worked for a company called the United Way and we did sub for Santa and I remember seeing the spirit of Christmas come to fruition. I remember seeing so many people give of themselves to make magic happen for other people and I realized
That's what society is. That's what our communities are. We need to be more united rather than divided. We need to see how we can give hand ups, not hand outs. We need to see how we can just love people on a deeper level. And it was such like my heart went from ice cold to soft as putty the year that I was, I called myself Mrs. Claus. And I remember just seeing the magic of humanity. And so how can we within our practices, within our teams, within our communities,
give that magic of humanity to more people, give that spirit of love and service and gratitude because we don't realize our ripple effect. One person was able to serve so many different families and then those families were able to go on and perpetually serve other people. And I just think that the world needs more kindness and more care, that we need to give more kindness and more care to ourselves, that we need to see the beauty around us rather than all the negativity around us, that we can choose.
what pair of sunglasses, AKA filtered we put on to view this life. And I would hope that one, you'd give yourself a gift this year of something that's gonna help you when you're 99 or 100 to have the best life today for those future years. I would also ask you to give a gift to your team of this next year. What are you gonna give your team? And then are you gonna give your practice and your patients? And then also let's look to see how can we have more kindness, more love, more generosity as we go into 2025. You guys, this is such a magical time of year. feels like.
the magical clock, like Father Christmas or whatever it is, the magical clock of 2024 is ticking down. And how can we maximize and optimize these magical moments through the rest of the year? But also how can we prepare to invite and embrace this incredible 2025 that's about to be upon us? How can we learn from our 2024? For some offices, I know this was your hardest year. For Dental A Team it was truly my hardest year. It was the year that I grew the most.
Kiera Dent (11:44.164)
It was the year that I was refined personally and professionally the most. was the year my team grew the most and not by size, but by grit and stamina and determination. so for you, what are the lessons we've learned from 2024? How can we like soak in these magical moments as we roll into 2025? And then how can we maximize and optimize 2025? If I can be a part of that journey with you, I'd love to be there. I'd love to celebrate you and I'd love to give you even more opportunities than you could have ever imagined.
But really, I just hope that today you relish in the joy of your life, of you being here, and then give yourself a magical gift. And let me know if you want to email me. I'd love to hear it as always. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. But I hope you enjoy the time with your families. I hope you enjoy this magical season. I hope you remember that the secret to living is giving, and that's giving to others and giving ourselves the most incredible life we can because the ripple effect is magnificent. Like, it's just, it's so magnificent.
of what we as one person can do for this world. And I just challenge you to really, really maximize and optimize that this year. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time. Merry Christmas. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.
Merry Christmas Eve! Kiera talks about how dental teams can apply the excitement and anticipation associated with holidays to their practices and work spaces.
Episode resources:
Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast
Transcript:
Kiera Dent (00:00.856)
Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and Merry Christmas Eve. If you celebrate that, otherwise, happy December 24th. It's so fun to podcast with you on holidays. I love the magic. I love the anticipation. I love Christmas Eve. In my family, it's always been these fun traditions that we have. We do a big breakfast in the morning and then we all go shopping for cereal. It's been the tradition since I was little and we would always, always, always go get a...
cereal and being in a family of nine people our own box of cereal that we got to choose was like the greatest gift my parents could ever give us so and also kudos to my mom that meant Christmas morning it's cereal for breakfast like talk about a smart mom I've got so we'd always go to the store we pick out our cereal and then we would do like sometimes we'd go shopping for last-minute Christmas gifts and then we'd usually go home and it feels like an eternity of countdown of time from that like 11 a.m.
to 5 p.m. And I remember as a kid, it would snow and my dad was very proactive of giving back to the community, which I really love and respected my dad. And we would go and we'd shovel snow at all of our neighbor's houses. And I remember my brother and I were two years apart. We were super tiny. So we were probably like, I was probably eight and he was probably six. And we were shoveling all these yards. And I remember we were laying behind our house after we were done making snow angels.
and we're both in our little snow suits and we look to each other and we're like, it's gonna be forever before tonight happens. I think that that's the reality of how we feel. And then for my family, what we'd always do is for Christmas Eve, we would make waffles, Belgian waffles. My parents again got smart. So it was like, they could feed a lot of boys very quickly. And then we go into like a Christmas program, which over the years, my siblings have definitely like made.
crazy. It's now turned into a talent show and I absolutely hate that part. And if any of them listen to the podcast, I just want to put it out there. I think we should not do this is my trust conversation with my family. I hate the talent show, but they love it. So Jason and are not as talented. So last year we talked about how we do Disney because I love Disney. But like really, it's just this funny thing. But we all get together. All my family spread out with seven siblings. We none of us ended up close to each other. My older brother's in Alaska. I'm in Nevada.
Kiera Dent (02:21.038)
The brother below me is in Ohio, brother below him is in Texas, brother below him is in Utah, sister below him is in Missouri, Kansas City, and then the youngest sister is in Utah, and my parents live in California. So literally, I feel like we just spread all over the nation, but just a fun time of year. And I hope today I wanted to just pop on real quick and give you guys like a quick little noodle thought for you as you're probably getting ready for the festivities or time away from the practice.
But during this time, and I've got something fun for you guys for tomorrow for Christmas as well, but during this time, I think about the anticipation that we have for Christmas and the excitement that little kids have. And my question is, how can we bring that excitement and anticipation to our practices? Maybe not the same, but are we actively anticipating? Are we having countdowns to something so magical and special? And how can we actually do that within our practices? And so a couple of ideas are...
What do we do monthly? And do we celebrate when we are hitting our monthly goals? Or are we just like nonchalant, like it's fine. And there's no magic. Like think about children with Christmas and how like blissfully magical it is to watch a little kid so excited and telling Santa what they want and circling in the magazines what they're hoping and wishing for. And then the like utter anticipation of sleeping through the night and waiting for the next day.
Like how can we create that as adults for us within our practices, within our businesses, within our lives? Like what are you anxiously anticipating waiting? Because I feel like the holidays and the magic that we have right now is what we can actually produce within our practices. So whether that's through bonuses or whether that's through a community outreach or it's adding in new services. I know an office like literally are counting down the days to add in sleep apnea to their practice and make a sleep center within their practice.
But like, are we allowing ourselves to get excited about our practices and get excited about the magic of what we're able to do for patients? Or is it just another day every day? And I think the true secret to a lot of success is creating magic within the day in day out. How can we get the countdown chains out for something within our practice? What do you get excited about? Do you have something that you set for a goal for yourself for next year that utterly makes you giddy? Or is it for me, I love to travel and so within work.
Kiera Dent (04:40.584)
Dental A Team and what I do, I have so much passion and excitement and this year I'm so freaking excited. If you have not joined us in platinum, get ready to have your life changed forever. We, have a, it's, it's similar to what our platinum has been, but it is slightly different and more advanced. And I cannot wait because we are bringing offices together in person. And if you are not a part of it, please email me right now. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com and come be a part of it. I only, we've limited our space for our first year to make sure that we can.
execute at the highest level. But like, that is the countdown. I am counting down the hours, the minutes to March. If you can't join us in March, don't even stress it's virtual as well. And then we have another one in September. And I am just so excited. It's like counting down to Christmas to be able to put on something so magical for clients and change their lives and do life and dentistry. I realized life is my passion dentistry is my platform. And I'm so geeky about dentistry. And I love it. But I love giving you your dream life more. And so for me,
That's something I'm so lit up about within the company, like literally a countdown chain to March. Our team is so excited. I'm so excited about it. We're so excited to have offices be a part of this, like giddy to meet people in person. So if you've been a podcast listener and want to meet me in person, well, it's time. It's time to come and join us. But really like, what are you so giddy about for next year? Are giddy about the goals? Are you giddy about the CE? Are you giddy about the team?
What is the magic where you literally are sitting there like, can't come soon enough, I cannot wait for it? Or do you add in the sprinkles like my husband and I always plan fun trips, so I'm looking forward to something because so often we just need something to look forward to. And I think that that's actually what creates so much magic for us. So as you're filling the magic of this year, which I hope you're feeling, and if this year and this time of year is hard for you, I'm just giving you a giant hug because this time of year has been hard for me too.
And I think when I realized that there's so much magic that can be here even through hard times I feel like Christmas changed for me and the end of the year changed for me and I can see it now with sparkle and glitter and gold Whereas before it used to just be sadness And so I'm here and I'm happy to be a friend to you through it I also am here to let you know that like it's okay to feel sad at this time of year It's also okay to feel happy It's okay to have hard times and to to come out the other side of it and to be happy again
Kiera Dent (07:02.496)
I think the greatest gift that we can give ourselves is the gift of being happy and having something that we're so giddy about. So tonight, maybe as you're sitting there dreaming, getting excited, think about what would get you so giddy and excited in your practice as well. And if I can be a part of it, like I said, I am so giddy. I'm so giddy to help offices literally get their dream lives and their dream practices and to do it with doctors and office managers and have leadership retreats in person and then to have
quarterly check-ins, whereas like kind of like a boardroom assessment where you're looking at your practice and we're really assessing and then do the team integration where we're helping your team. Just really being able to like do a huge lift for these offices. I can't tell you how giddy I am about this. So I hope that you have something you're that excited about. Maybe it's a CE that you're excited about. Maybe it's joining consulting that you're so giddy about of having a different life. Maybe you've already started. Maybe you haven't. Maybe you're excited about.
I don't know, but I just hope that you build some type of excitement and anticipation within your practice that you and your team can literally get fired up, lit up, so excited about because finding ways to make magic within our businesses in the day in, day out is how we keep our stamina. It's how we feel alive. This is where is the power of fun of creating magic.
So go create some magic. you need some brainstorming ideas, email me, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com If you want to pop on a call, click a strategy call with us. I'm happy to chat with it, but truly let's stream up some magic. I don't want to take too long with you guys today. I hope you go with your families. You go do something of service. You enjoy your cereal. You eat your waffles. You do whatever your traditions are for your family. I love to hear traditions. So also if you're bored, email me, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com I know this is oftentimes weird for business owners because we have so much time.
We don't know what to do with ourselves. So I love to dream of my business. I love to get excited. I love to sit there and think of all of my great ideas. So if you need a pen pal, you want to send me some of your fun ideas, I'm happy to pen pal with you. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com But I really, really, really, really hope that you give yourself something that you are just magically so excited about for this next year, where you count down with utter anticipation, waiting for the moments. And like I said, sometimes it is joining consulting. Sometimes it is doing a CE. Sometimes it is
Kiera Dent (09:21.86)
expanding your practice. Sometimes it's bringing on another doctor. Sometimes it's on status quo where we're so giddy that we're taking vacations. I don't care what it is. Sometimes it's even offices taking trips together. But let's find a way to create the utter excitement and magic within our practices. And I'm here to help you every step of that journey. And as always, thanks for listening. Go enjoy the holidays. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.
It's Dental A-Team's last book club episode of 2024! December's book is Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport. Kiera dives deep (heh) into what it means to work with such intensity in a world overrun with distractions, including layers of cognitive focus, an increase in the ability to master topics, the power of routine and ritual, and more. Episode resources: Find the full book club rundown here! Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Join Dental A-Team Consulting Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent (00:01.124) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and welcome to the book club. This is the last book club of 2024. Can you believe it? We are to the last book club of the year. And just as a fun little book club, let's do a year in review of all the book clubs that we've done together this year. So in case you didn't read these books or you need a book or you need to remember the book clubs we did, January, we did the Go Giver. February, we did Crucial Conversations. March, the Noticer. April, buy back your time. May, high output management. June, come up for air. July, you can heal your life. August, your next five moves. September, die with zero. October, the power of fun. November, who, how. And December, deep work. This is our last one. And like talk about a really fun year that you guys have actually gone through of all these different books. And I hope you've enjoyed them. I hope you've read them. I hope you've enjoyed the book club. I'm excited to... like, you know, we're doing in 2026, it's still TBD or excuse me, 2025 still TBD. But talk about how many incredible books that you guys have read this year. and just think like that's so much wisdom brought into your life. And I hope you're implementing these ideas. Like I think back to, as we look back, the go-giver remembering to do those simple acts of kindness for people and to notice and to give more value than people expect. Crucial conversations, saying what needs to be said, not like dodging and beating around the book. or the Bush. Wow. the noticer just noticing people. remember the, the, was either the beach. He was sitting on a beach and eating seafood and was like, I'm on this crummy beach eating this like day old food. And the noticer said like, I am eating surf and turf with a view and just looking at things differently. thought was it such a cool perspective, April, buy back your time. You guys know, I'm obsessed with this. What's your dollar per hour? how can we buy back more of our time and do more of what we absolutely love? High output management, figuring out how we can actually maximize and be high output consistently within our management team. Really lovely book. Come Up for Air. You guys know I love this one. This was like leveraging systems and teams. I made my leadership team. I didn't make, I had our leadership team read this book. There was so much goodness with Come Up for Air that I loved. Systems and tools, we've implemented so many of the things from that book. Definitely is gonna be on my consistent books to read here over here. Kiera Dent (02:23.552) The next one, you can heal your life. This one was such a unique one of diving deep into our own personal lives and how can we heal ourselves and heal from the past and letting go of things that are holding us back. Your next five moves, looking at the business strategy and thinking of what do we need to do next and what are the next five moves in our business. Really incredible. Die with zero. I loved Die with Zero. Another book where you literally like live life now. And it's such a controversial book compared to Profit First. I love the controversy. I love thinking of it, but really die with zero and how can we have more fun in life? The power of fun. you know, remember how to feel alive again and the different areas of how we can make fun and play more a part of our daily life. Who, not how. It's going back to buy back your time. Thinking of who can do this, not how can we do this? Who can we leverage? Consultants, team members. Delegating collaborating all those different pieces and now today deep work This book to me is such an incredible Like I love it. I love it so much It was recommended to me by a doctor that I'm obsessed with and their team and he's just someone this doctor I feel is able to get so much done and I was like, what do you do? And he said deep work is one of my biggest things and he goes and hides in the library and he Will consistently like this doctor is someone that I feel is such a high output constantly and just keeps doing it. like his secrets are he's great with time management. He has none of the apps on his phone. So there's no Slack, there's no text messages or excuse me, there's no emails. It's literally just used as a phone. And then he has, he blocks his time. He's very disciplined. He's disciplined with his spiritual life. He's disciplined with his kids life. He's disciplined with his physical life. He's disciplined with his work life. And I'm just so impressed by who he is. And he said deep work was one of his pieces. So getting into deep work, are four rules. number one is work deeply. Number two is embrace the boredom. Three is quit social media and four is drain the shallows. And what I loved about this book is he really talks about like he, this guy, he was like in his room and he realized when he like locked himself in this room, he was able to like exponentially grow in his career and like what he was learning and realized. Kiera Dent (04:41.464) that the reason we don't grow as much as we could is because we're constantly distracted. so within Deep Work, it talks about, we blocking time? And you can call this CEO time, you can call this Deep Work time, but like, we blocking time, distraction free, to work on the biggest projects of our organization? And so Deep Work, like I said, you will see in every one of my calendars, blocking out two to four hours per week is what I recommend for doctors. And I'm really big on blocking it during your production time. So that way you actually... are super focused and super intentional with no distractions. That does not mean you have to be in the office. I actually sometimes recommend not being in the office so you're not distracted, but it's really awesome. There's actually some really cool apps that you can do that lock everything. So when I go into deep work time, you can literally lock everything. So no email, you could set up the apps or the browsers that you're allowed to do. And then literally your whole computer locks out of everything else. So when we get bored, we want to go scroll social media. You can't do that. And that's where it's like the embracing the boredom that I thought was so critical and so incredible is we embrace the boredom. We embrace these different things because when you embrace the boredom, you push through versus being distracted and wasting away our time. so during it, like literally you want to go check your email and it's shocking because you'll see how often you check your email, check your social media, do all these different things. But the answer is like, we're here to have deep work with no distractions and we're training ourselves. to become so effective with our time when we're working on these projects that we actually move the needle forward exponentially. And I love this. I love this so much because we are in such a distracted society that we don't get deep work done. So many dentists are like, Kiera, like, I just can't get this done. I'm like, block the deep work, block the CEO time, office manager, same thing. Like this is, and it's not for us to do the little tasks, like the payroll that we know is going to get done or to check. It's like, no, we need to make a operations manual. We need to get that done. We need to build out new job descriptions and tiers for our employees to move up from one position to the next. We need to go and figure out like it could be CE. For me, a lot of times it's like projections for the next year. It's looking at my PNLs. It's building out for us. Like I've been working, my deep work time has been so focused on building out content for next year's in-person events for our doctors that I hope that you're coming to. If you have not, please sign up. Prices do go up in January. We have promoted the prices through end of year for you guys. Kiera Dent (07:04.42) giving you, want people to have this be a no brainer. So you actually save exponentially thousands and it is a complete tax write off. You get to come be with us in person. You get to network with peers, but we're going to do, like I said, a strip down from top to bottom of your business. And you're going to have a plan every quarter of what to do plus one-on-one calls with the consultant. And you also get us to help with team implementation. So we're working with the doctor and the team. It's doctors and OMS in person. This has been my deep work. This is what I'm working on every single week. This is what's pushing the needle forward. This is how as a CEO who's busy, I pushed the most important things forward. And it's crazy because this is, one of my favorite quotes from Jaco Willings is discipline equals freedom. And so having the discipline to do this deep work that Cal Newport talks about in there is just so incredible to me. because really we've got to be digging in, we've got to be working on the pieces that move us forward. We have to be able to focus without the distractions on these tasks. And so like, It literally allows you to focus and to work without distractions. And they talk about in their like shallow work versus deep work and shallow work is non-cognitively demanding logistical style work often performed while distracted. So think about like how often we submitted payroll while distracted, how often we've answered emails while distracted. We've been slacking like in our company, I make it to where we're in meetings. We have no new standard that... We are present and that means Slack is closed, phones are shut off, all of our emails are closed and we are present here because it's so easy to be distracted. Whereas Deep Work is like a superpower in our increasingly competitive 21st century economy. And so really it's like, in order to produce our absolute best stuff, we have to commit to Deep Work. This is where we have the creative spaces, this is where we have the very Deep Work. Like this doctor I was telling you about who recommended this to me, they have... Six practices they have grown their practices exponentially their practices are producing Multi-millions they have a leadership team the doctors been able to remove themselves from the practice and it's because I believe this doctor has been working on deep work for years Also in deep work It's the ability to quickly master hard things and the ability to produce at an elite level for quality and speed two core abilities for thriving in today's economy because when we When we teach ourselves not to be distracted when we teach ourselves that we're here to work Kiera Dent (09:22.99) There's no distractions. Like it's literally incredible. If you guys didn't listen to my podcast with John Jackson from Defy Ventures, who was a prisoner. I hope you guys listened to that. He is someone who has inspired me in 2024, like top people that I've met this year. And I remember him saying like when he was in prison, there was nothing there for him to do other than learn. He was sitting in cinder block walls. There were no distractions he could have. And he learned and he learned a lot. He learned how to run businesses. He taught himself that and that's why they do this for prisoners, but like, let's not be in prison to teach ourselves how to work without distraction. and in the book, one of the quotes is to learn hard things quickly. must focus intensely without distraction. So if you don't know how to do your numbers, well, are you spending the deep work time to learn how to read a PNL to learn how to do cashflow to learn and listen to different podcasts or books or have a coach or a mentor with you doing this with you. But really it's there. And then they said, your work is craft. And if you hone your ability and apply it with respect and care, then like the skilled will write, you can generate meaning in the daily efforts of your professional life. So, and then I love, say the key to developing a deep work habit is to move beyond good intention and add routines and rituals to your working life designed to minimize the amount of your limited willpower. Nessa Nessa. Wow. Necessary to transition into and maintain a state of unbroken concentration. And when you can master deep work, and I'm not going to say that I'm the best at it. I'm not here to tell you like, I'm incredible. I'm here to say like, I have learned a lot of this. have taken this on and it's true. Like we are so distracted. It's so easy to be distracted. There's even a company called The Brick. And what you do is you can literally brick your phone where like you can tap it and your whole phone shuts off. And it's just a phone like that you can call with. That's the only thing you can do with it. But just think of how much more in life you can achieve, how much more in life you can. accomplish, how much further your business could grow, how much more you could invest in your relationships if we weren't distracted. And that's not to say there's not a place in time for social media and different things. Like, of course there is, but let's do that intentionally, not distractedly. Let's do that because we choose to, not because it's a habit that we haven't been able to break. Let's work on the big frogs of our business, right? They talk about eat the frog first in the morning, the thing you don't want to do. To me, that's the deep work. Like so much of what I put on deep work, I literally dread. Kiera Dent (11:46.264) But now with the use of chat GPT and other things, like you can actually move things in deep work so much faster than we've ever been able to do. And so really maximizing this. So like I allow it to be open, but like it's wild. When I lock everything out, I feel annoyed actually. I'm like, but I also am shocked at how fast my mind gets distracted. so to be able, it's like meditation, to be able to help ourselves be so like to me, deep work. and meditation are training our minds rather than being like, I don't know, it's not manipulated, but guided by a wandering mind. Like I wanna focus and be intentional with my thoughts and with my life. And I'm creating it rather than being managed by it. And I think that that's deep work does is that to me, deep work is exercise for the mind. Meditation is exercise for the mind. It is being able to be this like pristine top performer. for two to four hours a week and to get the big projects done. And just, want you to think about, let's just think about a practice, a doctor and an office manager who do deep work. I guarantee you like bonuses for your hygiene. So hygiene production and bonuses could get done. Operations manuals could get done. Protocols and reviews of the company could get done. The financial piece could get learned in one year's time doing deep work. It probably would be less than that. You could really go through and write protocols and... hav…
Full show notes at the publisherTiff and Dana are here to gameplan your goals for 2025 by starting big and breaking it into smaller and more attainable pieces. They discuss aspects to consider, such as profitability, time management, tracking systems, and more. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Join Dental A-Team Consulting Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:01.106) Hello, Dental A Team team listeners. We are back here today. I've got Ms. Dana with me and we are here to talk to you about numbers today. I'm excited for this one. Practice owners, doctors, dentists, all of you guys out there, this is a really important one and Dana and I have some awesome information to really hand out to you. But before we dive in, Dana, how are you doing over there? How are you? We're wrapping up the end of the year. I know I've seen a ton of successes in so many of our clients. How are your clients doing? What are you working on right now with your clients? Dana (00:34.404) Yeah, it's great. 2024, I think was an interesting year for a lot of practices. I think different than some of the more recent years. But I think in all of that, practices are still coming out with huge wins, lots of growth, and getting patients to accept treatments. So I call that a win for 2024 for sure. The Dental A Team (00:52.836) Yeah, I agree. think there was a lot of... gosh. unknown uncertainties in 2024. I think 2020 we had some uncertainties too, right? We walked into the year with uncertainties, but then it kind of grew from there. And we've had just this massive growth in dentistry, I think since 2020 and COVID shutdowns. And this year, was kind of like, wait, hang on dentistry still doing fine. we're in a, we're in a recession proof industry, but what the heck is going on? And so there were just so many questions I think in outside of of dentistry and financially that it did lead to some oddities that we haven't seen in recent years, like you said, within the dental world. know a lot of my practices have been, I think they're coming out of it now, but we had some issues with confirmations or patients coming to appointments or pre-collecting, kind of making sure that those pieces were really dialed in and locked in, because I did feel as though here in the recent months, kind of September, October. some August really was tough for some practices in case acceptance, but then November hit got a couple weeks into November, how we'll say it and things just started to really turn around again. And I think again, there's so many uncertainties of the world translated into uncertainties within the dental industry and and Dana, I think you saw that too. Yeah. Dana (01:55.438) Thank Dana (02:15.363) Yeah. The Dental A Team (02:16.56) Yeah, well guys, we're on the other side of that. So this is the exciting part and this is one of my favorite times of year. I'm really looking forward to what's to come and we have to look at what was right to know what can be in many cases, but this is the time of year where we really get to dream up what next year will look like and what it can look like and it's just so much fun for me. I love building out goals with practices. I love seeing what it's going to take to get you to that goal and really working backwards. So dream big and then work backwards and make it smaller and smaller and smaller. So today, I wanted to chat about that and Dana pulled in to help me just really discuss how we go about increasing goals every year. And we do this with all of our clients. We look at what does an increase look like for next year? What is it going to create for you? So a lot of our clients will say, you know, I want to have more time at home with my family. We're having a baby this year. We want to take a maternity leave. I want to take a vacation to Europe for two weeks. I had a doctor that took her family to Paris this year. Like, how are we building that into the goals? And realistically, how are we making your business work for you so that you can have the personal life that you want? And so your team members can as well. But really what does the business have to do to afford you those pieces of life that are really, really valuable and important to you? One of those things that we look at is your profitability. And your profitability is key, you guys. That is the extra money on top, that's the kush, that's the, this is really what my business is able to create for me within that. So we do look at that when we build out your goals, but just on average, we wanted you to know what an increase, an annual increase looks like. her practice majority of the time a practice that's already been working off of their BAM. So their bare ACE minimum, right? Your, this is what it takes to pay my bills. This is what it takes to survive plus a percentage to get that profitability. So we typically look at, I Dana and I talked about this this morning, we're usually looking at what's your BAM. So what's your baseline? This is my baseline, just like at home, like this is what it takes to The Dental A Team (04:35.57) feed my family and to pay my bills. This is the baseline money that's going out and then 20 % on top of that. So baseline plus 20 % creates a profitable business. If we're only looking at baseline, you guys, I don't know, I felt Dana like in that conversation this morning that it was a confusing space maybe for people that... That's one of those spots I think where we talk dental. People are like, what are you talking about? All right. Our marketer this morning was like, what's a bloody profie? And I was like, that's funny. So it's one of those spaces that's like, what are you talking about? But Dana, I you do this with your clients to have really that baseline plus that 20%. So Dana, how do you go through that with your clients and really helping them to figure out one what their baseline is, and then what that 20 % is on top? Dana (05:00.716) No. Dana (05:25.09) Yeah. So really it is, it starts with their overhead. So what is their overall practice expenses? Okay. So that's going to be part of their bare ACE minimum. And then what are they taking home? Right. Also to any debt services, because we've got a pair of debt services to be to utilize them, whether it's a practice loan or equipment loan or whatever it is, as far as debt services, we've got to put that in your BAM. Cause at the end of the day, those things have to be paid or business will be shut down. The Dental A Team (05:34.546) Yeah. Dana (05:53.052) Failure to pay those things too So just making sure that you know all of those pieces that go into it and all of that is accounted for because oftentimes actors like well No, I don't put my pay in there. Well, right? You're not being able to live your life and you're not being able to afford like you have to be paid too That's why you are a practice owner. That's why you chose ownership, right? So we want to make sure that is included in there. So Let's just say we know you know, they're they're The Dental A Team (06:05.446) Yeah, yeah. The Dental A Team (06:15.538) Yeah. Dana (06:22.148) BAM is 100,000, because I like round numbers. So 100,000, we would obviously say then, okay, for that 20 % profitability, we need an extra 20,000 each month. So your goal then for that month becomes 120,000. And as long as we hit 120,000 each and every month, that will give you your BAM every month, plus your 20%. The Dental A Team (06:25.735) Yeah, same. The Dental A Team (06:37.339) Mm-hmm. The Dental A Team (06:43.302) Yep, I love that. I think the confusion or to separate statements is we've talked about when we talk about all the time your overhead and Dana, you just mentioned your overhead, right? So we do say your your true overhead. is if someone if someone were to purchase your practice from you today, what would they respond be responsible for taking on your pay your loans and come with you right you they they're not going to continue paying you. So what would a practice owner take from you if they were to purchase your practice is your true overhead. So in order to find your band, you find your true overhead, this is your outgoing money. And then you add in your loans, your debts and your pay. And if your associate pay or whatever else is not included in your true overhead for you, you add that in underneath. This is what you have to make in order to maintain your business as it is. So if you were looking at your personal finances, you would say, great, what are my credit card payments? What's my mortgage payment? What's my car payment? Those go into your baseline for what you need to make as an individual within your home. So you're to think the same thing. What does my practice need to make to baseline to say, We are at a zero zero, right? We are zero zero. We are not negative, but we are not positive. This is what my business has to make. And then we add, like Dana said, that 20 % on top of it. So that's the difference, you guys, when we talk overhead versus bam, is overhead is different. Your bam is going to be everything included. So I think that's where some of that confusion may come in. Now that 20 % can be bucketed out however you want it to be. So that 20 % could be bonuses. I do have a practice that's like, Tip, want, this is our BAM, but I want my practice to bonus every month. I'm like, great, then let's add a percentage after your BAM. The Dental A Team (08:34.276) a certain percentage of that will be their bonus. So they know if they get to this tier, this tier, this tier, but for that practice specifically, you guys and for most of my practices that talk about this, I want you to know I don't go bam plus 10 % and then they get you know, they get that bonus at that 10%. No, I still want bam plus some now it's above above and beyond that. So it has to be above and beyond your profit. Otherwise, now you're bonusing and taking out of your profit for the practice and the for the practice should be going towards renovations, should be going towards new equipment, it should be going towards whatever you want it to be, an emergency fund, like all these things to be reinvested back into the practice, not taking, we're not taking money out to pay people. That's an above and beyond situation. So just clarifying that a little bit for you guys, going into a new year, once you have that settled, you're like this year Tiff, I went off my ban plus my profit, that was my goal. Fantastic. So then next year, going into 2025 goals, we really want those goals to be, I like 10%. I usually say seven to 10 % on top of what you did last year. Super easy math, number one. Number two, inflation has to be accounted for. Inflation on average in America right now is near 7%, right, at least. So If we go above and beyond that 7 % and hit that 10%, again, we're looking for that profit margin. Because if we're only accounting for 7 % inflation, again, we're just status quo. We're not growing. In order to see that growth, we've got to go above and beyond. So that 10 % creates that above and beyond. And again, that's if you've been operating off of BAM Plus profitability. If you haven't, then let's work the numbers and figure out where you should be and what you're able to do next year. but that 10 % should be able to be finagled within that. And creating that space is really fun. Figuring out how am going to get 10 %? A lot of doctors' teams usually will be like, that sounds awesome, but like, my schedule is full. Where in the heck do you want me to get? So we're adding 10 % every day. So we're adding 10 % of time every day to have like, how are you doing this? I'm like, no, it doesn't have to be that The Dental A Team (10:57.736) hard. This is where we make sure you're pulling your financial analytics. Like where are you at for your fees, your fee analysis? Have you had a rep pull your fee analysis? Have you requested fee increases from all the insurances? Have you looked at insurances that you could drop? How do we squeeze more out of the time that you have? Dana, I know a lot of clients come in and they're like, I want to reduce stays, but I want to be more profitable. Fine, absolutely, you guys, can create the magic for whatever you want. If it's unrealistic and we're like, that's a little crazy, we will tell you that too. But oftentimes coming in from, you're working five days or four days and you're like, I really want a half day admin day. Great, we're going to squeeze more dollars out of the time that you have. So Dana, I know you've been working on this a lot with a lot of your clients this year specifically and block scheduling, things like that definitely contribute. But what are some pieces that you've got a lot of clients currently working on for next year to squeeze more out of that time that they have? Dana (12:03.5) Yeah, so one, is taking a look at just each provider in the practice, their production per hour. Because if we're looking to cut hours, then we know exactly how much production we need to make up in different hours of the day. Also, two, helps us see just is there any provider that like, okay, they've got a little bit more opportunity. So we can kind of let's say we look at hygiene, right? And they're not hygiene across the board isn't hitting their daily goal or their hourly goal. Then what can we do there? Can we talk about a The Dental A Team (12:08.765) Yeah. Dana (12:32.452) upgrading our perio protocol, can we talk about adding adjunct services? What can we talk about on that end? On the other side, when it comes to providers, can we look at just efficiency? Are we maximizing and utilizing our assistance so that there is more actual doctor time to do additional dentistry? Another thing that I'm working on as far as building that in and helping to see goals is just cost of procedure versus The Dental A Team (12:58.408) Mm. Dana (12:59.576) time it takes to do the procedure. So a cost per procedure is I'm doing that with a couple of offices just because it does help us see. Okay, if this doctor does this procedure in 70 minutes and this doctor's doing it in 90, like what does that look like as far as then their production per hour and where can we squeeze and those things. So I think it starts by knowing really what you're producing each hour, especially if you want to cut back hours. And then as we're looking at that, who has potential for growth or where do we have potential for growth? And then how do we get there? What does that look like? The Dental A Team (13:30.632) Yeah, I like the breaking it down by cost per procedure and hourly. That's something I think that we forget we can do and that really makes such a drastic difference. The perio space, the hygiene space is huge. You guys, I have a client this year that we were just looking at their KPIs this morning, Dana and I, and they had a goal of increasing one to 2 % on their perio. program, right? So hygiene was going to go from 18 to 19 percent and on average is where they were in 2023. This year they needed to hit at least 20 percent overall production, which means the hygiene department as a whole contributes 20 percent of the monthly and yearly production. So we looked at it this morning and luckily the office manager had filled out November and so for November they're actually tracking at 25 % for their hygiene department which is great. I usually push for goal wise so you guys know for goal sake 25 to 30 percent. Dana (14:23.844) Thank The Denta…
Full show notes at the publisherTo inspire the most effective team for your practice, Kiera shares three key attributes that need to exist among staff members: Trust and vulnerability Healthy debate Peer-to-peer accountability Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Join Dental A-Team Consulting Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent (00:01.05) Hello, Dental A Team Listeners. This is Kiera and I am so excited for today's podcast. This is something that I've been working on with tons of teams and within our organization and just a lot of different fun things for you. So I hope you guys are having an incredible day. I hope you're ready for just some magic here. I hope you're ready for some podcast magic. I hope you're ready for some life magic. And I hope you just remember we are truly so blessed because we get to work in the incredible profession of dentistry. So I hope you just remember that. And as always, thank you all for being podcast listeners. Don't forget to download, like, subscribe, share this, leave the reviews to keep this dental podcast serving all of you practices for free. That's how you guys can help us out is to go and share this with someone to give us those reviews, to share it in those Facebook groups because my goal is to have this podcast in the hands of every single Dental A team listener, every single dental, we need an edit. 52. My goal is to have this in the hands of every single dental practice out there and so you can help make that dream a reality. So please share it, love it, like it, leave the reviews and just know I'm giving you a high five, a hug as appreciation and thank you. So let's get going today. Today I wanted to go through, I've talked about it a couple of times before, but there is a book by Patrick Lencioni called The Five Dysfunctions of Teams and I've talked about it before. It's one of my absolute favorite books. on the podcast. have not booked Club This and I honestly should book Club This, but it's a really great one. And I was introduced to this book and I was told to literally use this book in like partnerships and different things. And if we don't have the core five layers of this, we actually have dysfunctional teams. And so me and some of my offices, we've been working on it and we realized that we don't want to have dysfunctional teams. We want to have functional teams. And what's another word for functional? It's a winning team. And so if you're not familiar with it, I'll give you a quick rendition. I coach this with lots of offices and I think being an outsider, that's honestly why I love being a consultant. We are having the same thing within our company because sometimes just that outsider perspective can really, really help you and your team get on board and get into those levels that you need to have it. And so with Teams, I'll just introduce you to the five dysfunctions of a team or as we call it, we flipped it around of how to have the five elements of a winning team. Kiera Dent (02:20.186) So it's in a triangle and at the bottom, it is actually with the bottom portion of the foundation of this triangle is called trust and vulnerability. And so if we have trust and vulnerability and it's not trust of like, if I delegate something to you, I know you're actually going to do it. Like that's one element of trust, but there's the other element of trust where I trust that I can say whatever needs to be said to you and know that there's not going to be backlash. There's a really great example think about in sports. The quarterback is getting sacked and they go to the blocker and they say, hey, you've got a block for me. I need you to block. And the blocker is not like, the quarterback's so mad at me or the quarterback's feeling this or that because they have the conversation. But we have permission to give feedback and receive feedback. And I think really setting up your office to have those permission to play, permission to give the feedback, permission to have the conversations, permission to say what needs to be said so we can ultimately make our practice grow. Now, of course, within trust and vulnerability, the way we say things and the way we present things will oftentimes make it so much better versus just saying what needs to be said. So I do believe that trust and vulnerability is an art more than it is a science. But if you can get your teams really having that trust and being able to call the shot, if you will, like in sports, because in sports, they're able to do that because they know how to win and they're willing to call each other out. They're willing to say what needs to be said because they want to win. And in Patrick Lanzione's book, it really does give the formula of how we're able to win as a team. And so if we know how to quote unquote, put points on the scoreboard, and that doesn't necessarily mean revenue, it can, but if we know what winning looks like within a practice, then it's easier to have the trust and vulnerability, have the conversations. And I think the more you give your practice the permission to play, the permission to have the conversations, the easier it is. But this is a conversation that needs to be had. I go around to offices and I actually coach offices on how to do this, on how to have these conversations on how to say the things because the reality is this is tricky. And in a lot of offices, this isn't real. If you speak up and you say your mind, you get fired. And so society has kind of taught us not to have this trust and vulnerability, not to say what needs to be said. And I'm here to say, why don't you have your practice be a different experience? Why don't you have your employment be a different experience? There's this whole buzzword of vulnerability and being authentic. And I think this is how we actually can create that as a real true piece within our organizations. Kiera Dent (04:44.27) So once we go up the rung of the ladder, we've got trust and vulnerability. The next layer is healthy debate. So if we have this true trust and vulnerability with each other, we're actually going to have the healthy debate. We're gonna say what needs to be said and we don't come, I really help offices and teams realize we're not coming from our own selfish vantage point. Yes, we bring our vantage point there, but we're always working towards what's in the best interest of the business. And if the business and the practice is the root of what we're doing, then guess what? The healthy debate should be not if you're right or if I'm right. but it's literally what's in the best interest of the business. And I think when offices do this and have the healthy debate and we have the conversations, hygienists bring their opinions, dental assistants bring their opinions, front office brings their opinions. And again, not to be right, but to figure out what's the best for the business and the practice and the patients instantly we're able to flourish, which then leads to the third rung on this ladder of our winning success pyramid. And that is commitment. So whatever we healthy debate, whatever we decided meetings, we as a team actually commit and we're not having these side conversations. I always say, what needs to be said in a meeting needs to be said in the meeting. We're not having it go outside because once it goes outside, we've lost all of our trust and vulnerability. We've lost all of our ability to communicate with each other. All of that's gone. And so say it in the meeting. And if you don't say it in the meeting, that's on you. And you need to take the ownership of that and say, I didn't have trust and I didn't speak up and I didn't healthy debate it. And that's on me because whatever's committed in that meeting, we commit and we move forward, which then leads to the fourth tier, which is peer to peer accountability. And I think what's really lovely in peer to peer accountability is let's go back to that sports analogy. They're having peer to peer, that quarterback's not running over to coach and saying, hey coach, could you tell the blocker to block for me? They're like, hey office manager, could you tell that assistant to have that route slip handed better to me? No, we've given permission to play. We're calling the play, if you will, like block for me. I can't get sacked. We're not going to win. If you don't bring up a route that fully filled in that's, that's hurting me and the patient, the patient didn't get the best experience and nobody wins. And on peer to peer accountability, if we don't have that, we don't have the permission to play within our team. And we don't have the trust where teammates can call each other out so we can win again in a way that's with love and empathy and curiosity and also making it to where the patient wins, the team member wins and the practice wins. Kiera Dent (07:03.234) That's what we're looking for. We want our patients to the best experience. And if we can't call each other out when a route slip is not handed off perfectly, or we don't have a perfect handoff, the patient didn't get the best experience because now they've left and we didn't get the correct information there. The treatment coordinator didn't get the best experience. They didn't win from that. The dental assistant or whomever dropped it off or the hygienist whomever dropped the patient off, they're not getting the best experience because they didn't even know it was a wrong handoff. And this is where we have that peer to peer accountability. And when you can get your practices to have peer to peer accountability, your practice will flourish. And that's at the top of the triangle is winning. And in Patrick Lanziani's, it's the opposite and it's like inattention to results. And so this is the flip of how to have a winning model. And I just want to come on of like, if you can help your team realize trust and vulnerabilities where we should be spending 90 % of our time. So how can we build more trust within our teams? We can do trust exercises. We can be vulnerable. Trust exercises are not like I remember as a kid, my brother. Remember the trust falls where it's like you have to trust that someone's behind you they're going to catch you? Like, yes, you could probably do that. But we're talking more trust of, can we say things? Maybe it's about being vulnerable with our lives of what we've gone through in our childhood. Like, hey, this is where I was born. This is the number of siblings I have in my family. And this is something I really struggled with in childhood. This is something that I really struggled with that made a big impact and a profound impact on me. And just thinking about, are there ways that we can actually get this to where We're sharing and we're more open and the more vulnerable owners are here and the more they have trust in the more we actually call the things out of like, Hey, dental assistants, what's your perspective? I know that there's something there. The more we have permission to play, the more we have these trust conversations, the more we build trust amongst each other, the more we share things, the more we call each other out and say like, great job. was a great, that was a great blocker. That was a great handoff or Hey, I need this information from you. And we're not having the nitpicky, the drama, the eye roll of like, my gosh, Keira just always wants a perfect handoff. Well, yeah, of course I do. That's our standard of winning. If I don't have a perfect handoff, how am supposed to have a perfect treatment plan for these patients and not to blame you? This is just the system that we have. So let's all work together. My job is to make sure I'm presenting perfect treatment plans. And I can't do that if I'm not getting perfect handoffs of the information that was said in the room. So all these little places are how you're able to build a winning team. Kiera Dent (09:25.016) And this is what I obsess about. And this is what I love helping offices have because we focus so much on the skills. So many people are like, here, I want the systems. And yes, I've got the systems. Come, we have it, whether it's on our virtual or in-person. Come, I've got the systems for you. I have operations manuals. I've got the systems of morning huddle and route slips and handoffs and case acceptance and trackers and phone call trackers. And like literally any system you probably have ever wanted, I have a system for it. But that's 20%. It's just like in football, they can have all the plays. But if they don't run the plays, they don't execute, they're not watching each other and they're helping because once you put the plays in action, AKA when you put the systems in action, customers come in, patients come in, people are coming different ways, other people are working, we've got lots of hands in the pot. The way you have the systems operate perfectly is being able to, have a great system, that's 20 % of this equation, but the other 80 % is being able to have this trust and vulnerability, the healthy debate, the commitment, the peer-to-peer accountability, and then we ultimately win as a team. So if this resonates with you, try it out. Have the trust conversations with your practice. Have the trust conversations with your team. Have these conversations. And the more you have it, to me, it's how can we build more trust and vulnerability? So ways to do it, like I said, where are you from? How many siblings? And then tell something that you struggled with. Now, this is where you've got to be vulnerable. This is where you've got to set the stage as leaders. of what's the level of vulnerability that we're going to have within our practice. What's the level of vulnerability? If it's like, you know, I really struggled being popular. That's something I struggled with. Well, your team can't relate with that, but maybe you struggled with weight loss when you were a child. Maybe you struggled being bullied as a child. Maybe you struggled like for me, I cheated in first grade because my brother was so freaking smart and I actually wasn't that smart. And my family was so insistent that we go to college and here I am not passing spelling tests. And so I literally cheated in school. to get my mom to put my paper up on the wall because I wanted to be as good as my brother was. I really struggled in school and people look at me like, how is that even possible? You graduated from Valedictoria. Like, no, I freaking struggled and I had to work really hard at it I would throw my books across the room because I was so frustrated that like all of my other siblings got it and I just didn't. And yet I knew I had to get good grades because my parents couldn't afford to put me through college. And the expectation to my family was that I went to college. Kiera Dent (11:42.244) Like that was something I really struggled with. And so I literally in first grade moved my books away. I put the test words right there. And I literally cheated on my test in first grade to make sure that I could have good grades. And I got called out on it I was super embarrassed. And I had to go home and tell my parents and I straight up lied to my parents that I was just looking at the floor. But it taught me a really good lesson that I'm not natura…
Full show notes at the publisherDr. Brian Harris is back once more, this time talking about how he continued the practice after his father left. He touches on financial considerations (like selling to a DSO), growing pains being part of a first-of-its-kind DSO, and more. Episode resources: Learn about Smile Virtual Listen to episode 840: Easy Way to Get More Patients Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Join Dental A-Team Consulting Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:00.214) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and I am so pumped that you are back for day two with me and Brian Harris. We talked yesterday about partnerships and the different pieces about it. And now today we're actually going to talk about how to have a successful practice after the buy-in, which I think is so important and is not talked about. So get ready and as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team podcast. And one other thing I want to talk about really quick is after you buy in. Yeah, let's talk about that. Well, I just, you know, come like 2014, 15, 16, like, I don't have to practice for long time. And then I start getting to that point where, you know, you're like, I just want to, I want to have full control, you know, and you start thinking like, man, it'll be nice when this is just all mine, you know, and I will tell you, that's the one thing that I did not appreciate that senior doctor that's been there for so long. They're the ones that have all the trust with the patients. They're the ones that they're the they're they're your most predictable producer that you're ever going to find is a doctor. Like you want them as your partner for as long as possible. And when they're ready to be bought out, you want them to stay on and continue to work for you as long as possible. There's that selfish side of all of us that I think we're like, I just want to call this all mine. I just want it to be mine so I can make all the decisions. But it's really, really hard to replace a family member, especially if it's like your father that you're working with. It's going to be really hard to replace them from a production standpoint with an associate doctor, but also the stress of having to worry about somebody else's work and are they doing a good job? Are they being fair? When you have someone that you trust, especially when it's family, you don't ever have to worry about that. You don't ever have to worry about them pissing patients off or saying the wrong thing to staff or, know, it's like, I think that's totally undervalued that there's so much value in having, you know, a long trip partner continue as a partner in the practice and continue as an associate after. Yeah, no, that's brilliant. And also just thinking, as you were saying it, I don't think that we value the wisdom and the mentorship of that senior partner. You can't put a price tag on it and you can't even realize, but I guarantee you. The Dental A Team (02:20.683) Your dad taught you a lot about how to run a practice from a successful standpoint. He'd gone through a lot of things. Like you said, like trusted with the patients. That's what's built a lot of this foundation for you that I think like, yes, agree. I think it's good that we have egos to a point because they drive us. But at the same time, realizing how much you can learn from that doctor, that senior partner before they leave you. Now, of course, there's some senior partners that aren't as great. understand that, so, depending upon your partnership. But if you have a good business partner, if they're good with the business, if they're good with production, if they're great with patients, if they've built something of a legacy, if they want to leave a legacy, I think those partners are just invaluable. And so kudos, thank you for bringing that up because, yeah, I think it is easy to wanna like move on. Like, I wanna take this on, but gosh, there's a... There is a lot of wisdom in that. And also for, I'm sure for your dad and for those senior partners to have a place that they also trust, like to pass it to you and to see it flourish and to be able to continue to work and do their passion for as long as they want, I think is also a gift you can give that senior partner for building a practice that you were able to buy to grow, flourish, just allowing them to finish out their career in a way that they want to, I think is also pretty incredible. Yeah, I agree. How do you navigate the DSO world now? I'm just gonna like dive into like all the like, juices, like, what do do? Because like, you can hold it for a legacy. How do you navigate legacy dental practices versus selling to a DSO that's paying top dollar right now? I just want to ask all the questions, Brian. I'm here for you. Do you know my story, right? Yeah, tell our listeners. Yeah. So I mean, I think it's, I think it's absolutely a conversation needs to be had. One of the things I didn't recognize And I don't even think Scott and I recognized it when we bought my dad out is, you know, we went and paid him what the practice is worth. And then we were like, wait, you know, we have a eight and a half, $9 million practice. Now, who's going to buy into this? Yeah. Who's going to be the other third partner that's going to come in and, you know, and pay, you know, $3 million to buy in just a fraction of ownership and a practice. and so we, kind of got ourselves to this place where we're like, The Dental A Team (04:37.333) we're kind of stuck, you know, and it's a great thing. it's either, okay, good, continue, just continue to do what you're doing and figure it out 20 years from now when we're ready to retire. Or, you know, do you take advantage of joining a DSO? Do you take advantage of creating a partnership now and growing with them? And what does that look like? And so, I mean, we turned down 14, 15 different offers. mean, we would get it. We'd get approached all the time and it just never, it never made sense. And ultimately we were approached by a group. did it not make sense? Explain why it didn't make sense. It didn't make sense for me because it was like, The Dental A Team (05:22.253) I want to say this in the right way. I felt like we had spent a lot of time building like a reputable brand and I felt like it was like selling out. I felt like it was like, you know, it's like we build like this, this elite brand and it's all about patient care and, and quality dentistry and all these things. Then it was like, but we're going to take a big check. And now we're just part of this other group of bunch of other offices. Sure. And And so when Gen 4 had approached me, they sat me down and they basically were like, hey, this is what we've done in the endo space. This is what we did in the oral surgery space. This is what we did with small doctors in the ortho space. And they'd had this track record of forming groups within the specialty industries that were highly respected specialists in their industry. And so, you know, they said, hey, we're looking to do the same thing with cosmetic dentistry and higher end family practices. And when they shared that vision with me and I started to look at it and then I reached out to a handful of my friends that were very, very well known cosmetic dentists, you know, probably 10 years my senior that are that have some of the most well known practices in the world. And and and I said, hey, you know, What do you guys think? You know, is this something you want to be a part of? And when I saw them start to see that same vision that I had where they recognize like, hey, they're kind of in this interesting spot too now where what is their exit strategy? so there's been a ton of us that have joined Gen 4 and it's been a journey. mean, I would feel totally comfortable saying this out loud if the... investors and the partners were in the room like, yeah, there's challenges. There's challenge anytime you're growing something new in an industry. You there hasn't really been a DSO out there to my knowledge that's that's been one of trying to do more higher end, higher quality. And I've, I've worked with a ton of them. And I actually think there are some amazing groups out there that they do excellent dentistry and do very good quality dentistry, you know, but The Dental A Team (07:46.475) A lot of them have started from the ground up, one or two offices, to bring together a bunch of seasoned offices. That's a tougher thing and hadn't been done at this level. So it's, yeah, we've had our own pains, but at the same time, like, it's been great. It's been great to kind of work through that together. I've been part of the group two years now and I'm happy. I really enjoy it. You know, they give me total freedom. I haven't had to change the way that I practiced industry, you I do everything exactly the same. But you know, there's some other behind the scenes business stuff, you know, that I've had to adapt to. but no, no regrets, no regrets at all. And were they a DSO? And if you can share this great and if not, don't don't fill because I know every day is different. were they one where it was like they sold you stock in the business, they took part of it then they keep you on as an associate? Is that basically kind of because I know that's most of the structure of DSO is they'll buy you out. pay you for it where you're at, you get stuck in the company typically, and then they continue to pay you as an associate doctor basically of whatever production. Is that how it worked for you with Gen 4? Or were there different nuances or different ways that they did it for you to keep it within what you wanted it to be? Yeah, the two main structures I've seen, it's like they're coming to buy out half and you stay half partner and then you continue to grow together or they buy you out entirely. and you roll back in some of that money in stock and then you grow as a company. And I've seen both work. Gen four, they came in, they bought us out entirely. And then we rolled back in a percentage of that buyout into stock and the overall company. And I think for me, when I was looking at it, was like, whether they buy out 50 % or they buy out all, like either way, like I'm committed now. I'm not going anywhere. so. I kind of felt like for me, was like, you know what, I'd rather be bought out. And now it's essentially, it's like, I just have ownership in a several hundred dollar, several hundred million dollar company as opposed to just like my own practice. So it's just kind of a different mindset and different way of looking at it. But yeah, that was the structure. And then I get paid a generous percentage of everything that I do. The Dental A Team (10:12.971) You know, it works. That's awesome. And I think, like you said, I feel like the DSO route is so brilliant for larger practices because like you said, who's going to come in and buy us at this eight, nine, $10 million practice. And that's not even on evaluation. That's just on what we're producing. And so you tack on the valuation, like who's really going to be able to come in and also where it's so specialized or you do things that, like, I remember I had a doctor who was looking to buy a practice and we looked at the production and I'm like, I would strongly advise not buying this practice. said, 70 % of the production is stuff you don't even do. I was like, so how are you going to make up that production amount that you're buying when you're not even a dentist that's doing that? And so for you guys, you really did get yourself into not a corner, but like you said, it's either we can sell to someone who can buy us now and continue to grow it, continue to work as long as we are, or our path is we just keep rolling this until we're ready to retire, which then at that point, probably your valuation's down, someone's gonna come buy it because it's less dollars for you, but you had a long-term. And what's great about the DSO route that I do enjoy for practices like you is you have the option to work for pretty much as long as you want. Of course, there are structures that could change, right? Like you were bought by someone else, they could sell to someone, it could change the structure of how it is. So like that is a piece to it. But overall, I think the DSOs currently are playing with, let the dentist keep producing because they love to do what they do. Don't rock that world. And that tends to be the structure I'm seeing right now. So. And there's always a trade off. I would tell doctors like, What you shouldn't do is feel like, well, everyone else is doing it. I just need to do it too. Like it should, you should be able to look at it on paper and be like, this just, this absolutely makes sense. Like it would be silly not to move forward to this because it just makes sense. The deals that I see that, you know, I've, I've seen a lot of people, you know, really get upside down and really get in a bind is where they, they just kind of like, rolling their equity with another group because of this promise of something bigger, or they take a small payout now with this promise of this big thing later and not realizing that's not a guarantee. And in fact, a lot of these don't ever get to that point down the road. so it's just one of those things. You only should do it if you're cash flowing good and you're happy and your practice is going good and your team's happy. Absolutely, there's no reason to do it. I don't think, I really don't think so. The Dental A Team (12:38.443) you should only do it if you're at this position like where we were, it's like, okay, one of the main partners is retiring. We're kind of at a point now where this is as high as we're gonna be able to go with how we're doing now. And the only next logical step is to do this. Yeah. No, gosh, Brian, talk about a fun podcast. I enjoy when my podcast like tickle the brain and make me think harder and geek about all the things that don't get talked about. I mean, like you said, we went from. partnerships to marriage to DSO buyouts and I just I appreciate you Sharing because I think so much of this is not discussed so many doctors feel like they're navigating it alone So many doctors don't know how to do a partnership somebody don't know The feelings that you shared today are normal and they're real and everyone feels them So talk about them and here's ways that you have had success So thanks for like I said last time we talked about smile virtual, which honestly you guys go check out smile virtual. I think it's incredible telehealth Like it's amazing, Brian, I recommend you guys all the time for it. So definitely check out Smile Virtual for it. But Brian, thanks for, thanks for navigating all the pieces. Any last wrap ups you've got things, how can people connect with you? Last thoughts today as we wrap up, truly just enjoyed this really, I don't know, like I said, I love the soul filling conversations and that's what I feel like we had today. So thank you. No, you're welcome. And I feel the same way. And I think that's just so great about getting on here with you is is that, you know, ultimately this is it's not for me. It's no…
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