Dr. John Meis:
Hey everybody, welcome to this episode of The Double Your Production Podcast. I'm Dr. John Meis here with my partner Wendy Briggs.
Hey, Wendy. How you doing?
Wendy Briggs:
Doing great. Trying to weather the winter here in Utah.
Dr. John Meis:
Yeah, it's nice and sunny here in Arizona. And I'm thinking about you with the white stuff piling up there in the beautiful mountains.
Wendy Briggs:
Yes, it's beautiful to look at, but not so much to be in. So what better to do than record a podcast for our listeners?
Dr. John Meis:
There you go, there you go. So we thought we'd talked today about three common myths and three common profitability levers. And so we're going to start out with the myths. So Wendy, we'll just go back and forth here on these and just kind of, you throw one out, I'll throw one out, and we'll work our way through it,
Wendy Briggs:
Right. I think there's a lot of uncertainty out there. And the media's job is to create fear because they want higher visibility on all of their platforms. So right now there's a lot of chatter about rising costs. Inflation certainly has been harmful for people. There's also a lot of chatter about economic uncertainty and the fact that some of the experts out there are preparing us for another recession, and some even have used the words depression. And so I think I'm seeing in a lot of our circles some panic about this. And so I think some things that we need to probably talk about today are how the fear doesn't really get us to a good place to really grow our practices, perform at our highest level. One of the myths that I've heard from dentists embracing or worried about some of these challenges are that the only way that they can really sail through or be solvent through any type of financial crunch is to save money on expenses.
And so they're looking at pinching all of the pennies, cutting benefits to team, cutting a lot of the perks that they provide to have a great patient experience because they feel like this is the only way that they'll be able to survive.
Dr. John Meis:
Yeah. And it is so tempting, right? Because you think that, "Oh, we can make a lot of progress when it comes to reducing expenses," but the reality is that it is far easier to become more efficient and more productive and add to your profitability in that way than it is to reduce expenses. Now, we're not saying don't look at expenses and don't be cognizant of what you're spending and don't not look for economies when you have them. But most offices that we run into run pretty leanly, and the amount of effort to get it to reduce expenses just a little bit is so much greater than the effort it would take to improve productivity. And so we just think becoming more efficient, therefore more productive, is a much, much easier, much faster way to go.
Wendy Briggs:
And much more satisfying, right? I read a post for a doctor that said, "I'm looking to save money on accountant fees, how do I use QuickBooks?" Right?
Dr. John Meis:
Yeah.
Wendy Briggs:
So it's absolutely backwards thinking, right?
Dr. John Meis:
That's so true.
Wendy Briggs:
They're probably going to cost themselves so much more in opportunities that accountants know well to help having a better position when it comes to taxes and all of those things. It's about so much [inaudible 00:04:04] just running QuickBooks, right?
Dr. John Meis:
Yep, yep. Oh, that's so true. And so it's taking someone who can produce a $1,000 an hour and putting them in a job that pays $20 an hour. But we do this, and it is a human mind thing that we do. And I learned the principle from Brian Tracy, and I remember it very, very distinctly. This was maybe, gosh, almost 30 years ago, and I was out on my riding lawnmower, mowing my lawn, and I was listening to motivational tapes. One of them was from Brian Tracy, and he said, "Figure out how much you want to earn and then stop doing any work that you can pay someone less than that amount to do." And so I'm listening to that, and I stopped and I ran it back. Back in the day, I had a cassette tape, an old Walkman. Ran it back, played it again, and I thought, "Oh, that's so true." And so I just turned off the lawnmower and that was it. I never mowed another lawn after that.
And the idea is, save your time, your mental energy, your work motivation to do the highest value task that you can do. And for us dentists, it's taking care of patients. So get rid of all these little hobby things that you're not good at and you don't enjoy and are not very productive, and do the things where you can provide the most value for patients and you'll be way farther ahead.
Wendy Briggs:
Right, so, so true. Another one that we see is dentists think they have to change everything. They're looking for a big fundamental change within their practice to save costs. So I've seen things like doctors talking about going with a hygienist-free model, for example, or doctors saying, "Okay, to be more profitable, I'm going to get rid of all insurance plans," things like that. They feel like it has to be a big massive change to get them where they want to be, and we found that it's not always the big massive changes that have the most impact.
Dr. John Meis:
We use the expression, little hinges swing big doors. And so if we want have a big impact on our practices' profitability, we don't need to do major things. In fact, when we do major things, we usually cause so much disruption and so much turbulence that it ends up having the opposite effect. And so what we find is if you know the right lever to push, if you know the right thing to do for your practice, it's little things that make big differences in profitability. And this is one of the things that Team Training Institute does better than anybody else in the world, and that is identify what these little things are in practices, give you a handful of skills and tools to be able to resolve that. It's not the same in every practice. I'd love to tell you, "Oh yeah, everybody do this." That would be so much easier for us. But it's different in every practice.
So knowing what that is and focusing on one thing at a time, and it doesn't have to be a huge thing. Transformation may be necessary in some practices, but that's not what we typically see. We typically see focus on one particular thing, doing that very thing very, very well, provides more results than trying to do something major.
Wendy Briggs:
Right. I would say. Dr. John, the third myth that I hear, I mean this one's all over the place, the hygienist circles, dental circles as well, is that it's not possible to... I guess maybe not exactly the right words, but I'm hearing from a lot of people that now is not the time to go into dentistry, that dentists today are overworked, unhappy, not profitable. And I'm hearing the same thing on the hygiene side. It's not the time to go into hygiene. Hygiene providers are disrespected, underpaid, undervalued. This is the prevailing chatter that sometimes you'll hear depending on which circles you put yourself into. And I think that's a huge myth because we see the opposite. In most circles that we run in, we are seeing dentists and hygienists both having record success, record productivity numbers, serving more patients, taking better care of their communities, and really realizing the incredible profession that it is in dentistry.
So how does this myth become so prevalent, and why do you think so many of our brothers and sisters in our fields feel this way?
Dr. John Meis:
Yeah. Well, dentistry and dental hygiene are not without frustrations. We also are in a bit of a squeeze right now as we have reimbursement going down and expenses going up. And I think those are weighing heavily on people's minds. But you also see that the number of hours worked per week for both is declining. So I think the last thing that I saw from the American Dental Association was the average dentist earns roughly about $160,000. But name another job or profession where you're only working maybe 30 hours a week and earning that kind of money. So maybe it's not as good as it once was, but it's still pretty darn good. And when I say it's not as good as it once was, we have quite a few members, doctors that whose incomes are in the seven figures. And so well, that's not a bad gig. So to do things in the same way that you always did them is never a good idea. You have to evolve and you have to change with the times.
And I think people are expecting or wishing that they could do what they did 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, and have the same results. Well, that's not the case. We've got to evolve and we've got to change how we do things. And as we do that, it can still be a fantastic, fantastic profession. And the nice thing about dentistry is you get to take care of people every single day. You get to relieve people's pain, you get to heal their diseases. I mean, that is a pretty darn good gig the way I see it.
Wendy Briggs:
I would agree. And Dr. John, when I look at hygiene, hygienists that are burned out or hygienists that are being demanding, there's a lot of that in certain markets. As for once, it seems like there's not enough hygienists. And so some hygienists are really taking advantage of the market where they live. And although I can see the desire to do that, one of the things that I've realized is hygienists who really enjoy their work and have a high level of satisfaction in the profession have shifted the focus from themselves back to the patients that they serve. And I think that's something that's missing in some of these providers. It's super easy to get burned out in hygiene because often we find ourselves in a rut doing the same things, as you mentioned, maybe not challenging ourselves to improve. And so if you are feeling burned out or discouraged or feeling trapped in the op, that's a very common expression, I would encourage you to shift your focus from yourself, shift it back onto your patients and your practice. How can you help them at a higher level? What are you doing to challenge yourself to embrace and offer new procedures, new services to your patients?
And I think that's where the re-engagement, the re-igniting of passions occurs. HubSpot has a great quote. It says, "We loathe selfishness and we love team-ishness." And I think really that is the solution in many of these practices that are having hygiene struggles or hygiene headaches, is we've got to somehow as providers shift our focus from ourselves to our patients and our teams, and make sure that if we're dissatisfied with what we're getting from our profession, we probably need to do a real close look at what we're actually giving to the people that we serve.
Dr. John Meis:
Yeah, I love that Wendy. So well said. We've been teaching the win-win philosophy for a long time. And the win-win philosophy, the first win is that whatever we do as a practice, we have to get continually better at serving our patients. So the first and most important win is the patient. The second win is the team. And by that I mean everybody on the team. And if we focus on supporting each other, helping each each other get better, focus on learning, expanding our capabilities, improving our technology, all those things reignite people's passions. When they just get focused on themselves, when we get focused not on the patients first, then things start to go haywire and they start to break up and they start to see cracks, and then everybody's satisfaction goes down from there. And if we do a great job with patients and we do a great job with the team, the practice is going to win as well. And so that's our win win-win philosophy. And, I have not seen any other philosophy that beats it,
Wendy Briggs:
Right. So on point. So let's shift then, and let's start talking about some of the wins. So let's say we have a practice that is a little bit fearful of the future, and maybe they're feeling the squeeze super hard from rising expenses and rising salaries and cutting reimbursement rates. What are some three quick wins or cash levers that we can help them implement to see big results quickly?
Dr. John Meis:
Yeah. Well, one of them, we kind of talked around anyway, and that is higher utilization of the team. So doctors delegating everything they can delegate to capable team members. And if the team members aren't capable, they can be trained because all of us doctors and hygienists, we learned. We learned, we weren't born knowing what we know. We learned it, and it took time and it took patience of the instructors that helped us build our skills. And so, making sure that we're building the skills of our team and then delegate everything we possibly can so that we're continuously doing the highest value work that we can do. And the highest value of the work varies from practice to practice, which takes us to another lever. So what's another one, Wendy?
Wendy Briggs:
Well, one of the things that we talked about is having systems that endure. So I think one of the common things that we hear when we study really successful companies, and we love to talk a little bit about Toyota, they took the process of building a car, when they built cars and factories, they used to have one or two people that would work on one car and they would put that car together from A to Z. Well, Toyota learned. Ford did the first thing, and then Toyota's built upon that, that when you have systematic processes, you're much more efficient and you can scale. So instead of one or two people working on that one car, you have people that are specialized to do very specific things. And as a team, we produce a car. I think it went from 12 hours to two hours or something ridiculous in the time it takes to actually get the job done.
So we see the same thing happening in dentistry. Practices that have really focused in on systems and a systematic approach, and having a higher level of efficiency are able to realize higher productivity in less time, just like Toyota and Ford first proved in manufacturing. Now, certainly what we do is very different than manufacturing, but we can learn some valuable lessons on delivering care efficiently from that. I think also, one of the key cash levers that we've seen in practices that really work on creating systems is that the whole machine doesn't stop if we lose a key person, right?
Dr. John Meis:
Yes.
Wendy Briggs:
So that keeps the whole practice rolling in spite of turnover or challenges that may come.
Dr. John Meis:
Most practices we evaluate are in some level of chaos, and those that aren't, they're one person away from being in complete chaos. If they lose one key person, the practice really stumbles. And so when we have processes, that helps. And when we're utilizing team members, a very common trap in practices is when someone learns something and is good at it, they continue to be the one that does it all the time. And a far better approach is that person now becomes the teacher that helps other people learn so that we have a broad-based skillset in our teams so that the loss of any one person doesn't create any kind of chaos, doesn't create any kind of stress. We just keep right on moving with the processes that we put together.
Wendy Briggs:
Right. Love that Dr. John. Well, we have one more cash lever that we want to share with you today, so let's talk about that for a minute.
Dr. John Meis:
All right. So the last cash lever that we have is expanding your skillset and tool belt so that you can do higher dollar procedures. And so we see practices that refer out an entire practice worth of procedures that they just don't care to learn how to do. But building your skillset and a very common one, and a very, very easy one, of course, is clear aligner therapy. Very simple to do. The systems are very, very well-developed. The support from the people who provide the aligners is really incredible, and it's a very quick way that you can increase your productivity per hour, which increases your efficiency, which increases your profitability.
Wendy Briggs:
Yeah, I'm so glad to use that as an example, Dr. John, because when you really think about that specific example, it really encompasses all three of the levers we've talked about, right? Practices that do a lot of aligners absolutely maximize their team. We have high level diamond providers within Invisalign, right? They're high level diamond providers. One of our doctors does more than 150 a year. Another one I looked at does more than 200 a year. So they do a lot, and their team does a lot of it. They don't do the scans, they don't do the consult often with the patient when they deliver the aligners, for example. They certainly do the consult and the final diagnosis, but everything else that they can, they've delegated to their capable team members.
And because of that, they have a high level of systems. They're scanning every patient in the hygiene visit. They've actually gotten to the point where they're using 3D printers in the hygiene op and the patient leaves with their first tray. So that's a high level of specialization with systems to focus on efficiency. So that one example actually takes us through all three of those cash levers that we talked about. Now, certainly the same thing also applies with other services, right? We've seen that too.
Dr. John Meis:
Absolutely. It's just that Invisalign is one that you can delegate so much of it, that it really does increase productivity, efficiency, and it allows team members to work more autonomously, which we know is one of the drivers of motivation and one of the things that helps people from falling into burnout.
Wendy Briggs:
Right. Dr. John, I have actually a case study that I was just looking at yesterday of one of our practices that offered Invisalign. But they didn't offer it the way we often help them to learn how to tweak the systems, tweak team delivery. And so this is kind of an interesting thing when we talk about cash levers, because in 2019 before they joined our program, they did about $495,000 in align therapy. That's 2019. I skipped 2020 because we know it was chaos and not a typical year.
Dr. John Meis:
Goofy year.
Wendy Briggs:
It was goofy, right? We started working with them in the end of 2020, beginning of 2021, and in 2021 they did $675,000 in aligners. So they focused on more delegation, streamlining their system. And in 2022, they did $1,047,000 worth of aligners.
Dr. John Meis:
Oh. My goodness, yeah.
Wendy Briggs:
So I love that example because it does show the impact that these can have. And literally two years later, they more than doubled what they were doing in just that one service. Now, certainly the practice as a whole has also improved in other areas, but this just shows you the impact that focusing on the right things can have in your practice.
Dr. John Meis:
Oh, that's a great example. And what amazing results. And that's what can happen when we focus on the right thing. We utilize our team, we build our tool belt. We don't try to change everything. We focus on a few key things at once. The results can be absolutely magical.
Wendy Briggs:
I love that. So one of the things that we want to share with our listeners is this is, something that Dr. John and I and our teams can do for you. If you don't know what your opportunities look like, if you're feeling the squeeze, if you're feeling like you might want to know what your biggest opportunities are, what you should focus your time and attention on, we can actually help you do that. We can do a practice growth report and help you create a roadmaps that you know what opportunities exist in your practice.
Sometimes we talk about dentistry being a very isolating profession because you don't often look outside of your four walls. And that's something that Dr. John and myself and our team brings is perspective, because we look at the data of close to thousand practices every single year. So if you would like to know where you stand, maybe what some of your cash levers are, we are going to go ahead and include a link for you to request a growth report generated for your practice, so that we can have that conversation with you and help you know what to focus on so that you can put yourself in the best possible position to sail through any coming economic storm.
Dr. John Meis:
Makes it so much easier when you know what are the key things that are going to be easy to do and have high impact when you know exactly what to work on. It just gets so much easier. You go into it with so much more confidence. You have results really quickly, so your motivation grows, you have more momentum, and things just go much more positively.
All right. Very good. Well, thanks Wendy for what a great episode. So this will be it for another episode of the Double Your Production Podcast. We'll see you next time.
Wendy Briggs:
Thanks for listening, everybody.
