Announcer:
Welcome to the Double Your Production podcast with the Team Training Institute, the one place designed for dentists and their staff who want to grow their practices by following in the footsteps of those that have done it, who are in the trenches, who know exactly what you are going through. Now, your leaders, the stars of the podcast, Dr. John Meis and Wendy Briggs.
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. How are you doing, Wendy?
Wendy Briggs:
I'm great. Good to see you, Dr. John.
Dr. John Meis:
Good to see you too. We've got some exciting things to talk about today, and we're going to be talking about our famous Annual Champions of Dentistry Summit.
Wendy Briggs:
Right.
Dr. John Meis:
Fill us in, Wendy. What magical news do you have for us?
Wendy Briggs:
It's interesting because I look back, and this is the 18th year that we've held these summits. Now granted, some of the early years, they began as Apogee Summits, and I believe I was invited to speak at one of those, maybe in 2006, 2007, somewhere around there. I'd have to look at historical documents to find out exactly when that was.
Dr. John Meis:
Back to the archives.
Wendy Briggs:
Yeah, that's right. Then soon thereafter, when we decided to join forces and you took over the helm of the Team Training Institute, we started putting them on with combined forces, and they've just gotten better and better and better every year. This year would be the 18th Annual Champions of Dentistry Summit. We're holding it in Orlando, as probably many of our listeners already know because I believe we've done a few episodes about that, but today's episode is to kick off the theme, why we feel this theme is so important in dentistry today, and to share some of the highlights of what's coming, as well as a few little nuggets that everybody can take back and use in their practices right away.
Dr. John Meis:
Fantastic, fantastic. Wendy, give us the magical theme.
Wendy Briggs:
Our theme for the summit this year, being held in Orlando right at the mecca of all things Disney and Universal Studios now where we have Harry Potter World, is "Unlocking the Magic in Your Dental Practice".
Dr. John Meis:
Awesome.
Wendy Briggs:
Whether that's Disney Magic for you or Harry Potter World Magic, there's a lot of lessons we can learn on either side. We did a launch party not too long ago, and we played a fun game, and it was Wizard or Wendy, or Wizard or Dr. John. It was a challenging game because, believe it or not, there's quite a lot of very profound lessons in the Harry Potter book series/movies and all of those things. So that made it a fun game. It was hard just to figure out who said what.
Dr. John Meis:
Yeah, it was fun because some of the things sounded like they would've come out of your mouth or my mouth, but nope, they were right out of Harry Potter. So it was super fun.
Wendy Briggs:
It was, and we'll be taking some of those lessons and tweaking them a little bit, and applying them to dentistry.
Dr. John Meis:
Yeah, absolutely. Leadership, teamwork, growth, great attitude, future-focused, all those things are going to be messages sprinkled with pixie dust throughout the entire summit. Wendy, what's your favorite Orlando memory?
Wendy Briggs:
Oh gosh, it's so hard to pick. When my kids were little, we went and stayed for a week on Cocoa Beach. We didn't stay the whole week at Disney World, but we did go in for a day, and the day that we picked, happened to be one that had a Halloween party that night. So we were all dressed in our Halloween costumes and we did the Peter Pan suit that year. So typically, I was Wendy.
Dr. John Meis:
Who knew that?
Wendy Briggs:
Yeah, of course. Too easy. We had one little girl, she was little at the time, she was Tinkerbell. Then we had Peter Pan, we had Captain Hook, and we had Quinn in diapers at the time was baby Michael in the red pajamas with the flap on the butt the whole night. I think poor Travis ended up being Smee or something like that against his wishes.
The memory was fun in that we were walking through Fantasy Land and who do we see but Captain Hook? He instantly started hiding from/picking a fight with our Peter Pan, which was Keegan at the time. I think Keegan may have been seven or eight years old, and Tate was a few years behind him, and they were just delighted by that.
Dr. John Meis:
Oh, yeah.
Wendy Briggs:
I thought, what an opportunity it was for this character to take kids dressed in costume as your foe and turn it into a little fight. It was really a pleasant thing, and my kids still talk about it. So it was super fun.
Dr. John Meis:
That is fantastic. My favorite memory was at Harry Potter World, and when my grown kids were out of college and we said, "Well, with our businesses and all the things everybody has going, I don't know when the next family vacation we're going to be able to get together is." So we said, "Where do you want to go?" I thought they were going to say somewhere exotic, Thailand or Europe or somewhere because we said, "Anywhere, anywhere you want to go." They wanted to go to the Harry Potter World, which had opened up not long before that. So we went down and we dressed up in Harry Potter characters, and we walked around the park and it was absolutely a riot. We had a ball and we haven't had a family vacation since then.
Wendy Briggs:
It's funny how life has a way of doing that, right?
Dr. John Meis:
Yeah, it sure does.
Wendy Briggs:
Yeah, I've seen those pictures, and they're a treasure. That's part of the fun of Disney. You end up with these photos that bring back the memories of magic and positive energy. There's so many lessons we could teach about Disney, but I do want our listeners to know, we'll have like you said, pixie dust sprinkled in, but the whole theme is not going to be all things Disney or all things Harry Potter World. It's going to be focused on practice growth and what we need to do today to accomplish big things.
Disney is also the stuff of dreams and Walt Disney was a dreamer, and there's certainly lessons we can learn being there and what our listeners need to know is our Champions of Dentistry Summits are always very content-rich, full of real-world solutions that are actionable, things that you can use day-to-day in your practice. So we'll have some Disney lessons sprinkled in, but it's not going to be all things Disney. You're not going to be wearing Mickey Ears 24/7. It is going to be focused on dentistry, but there's some valuable lessons.
Some of the lessons from Disney are profound. I've read many books. I'm sure you have as well. Disney runs business workshops and things like that. So we will have some valuable insights from Disney. In fact, one of our keynote speakers, Mr. Kevin Brown, caught my attention because of a video he had recorded about his family experience at Disney and some of the lessons that he learned. So I know people are going to get a lot of great insights from him as well.
Dr. John Meis:
To go back to the future, their very first summit, number one, was a morning of sharing ideas, and the afternoon, the Disney Institute came in and did an afternoon training. So we started at Disney and we're back learning some of the lessons from Disney and Universal and some of the other Orlando sites.
Wendy, what are we going to be doing with these podcasts here over the next few weeks? Well, probably between now and getting close to the summit anyway.
Wendy Briggs:
We're going to be interviewing some of our speakers. We'll have a series of interviews that will give you a glimpse into who they are and what they'll be talking about. And again, with our podcast, we always try to make it worth listening to every episode. So they're not going to be glorified commercials, but they are going to have some substance and some content so that you can know what to expect for those that are planning to come. I think we always get questions like, "Which team members should I bring? How can my team members that can't travel with us benefit?" We offer virtual tickets as well for those who can't bring everyone along. They can still experience some of those things. So we'll be giving everyone a glimpse into that and taking away some valuable lessons ahead of time because unlocking the magic has to do with patient experience. I think, more than anything, in dentistry in today's world, we need to focus on that.
On social media, we always hear from doctors. The last few weeks on social media have been quite sad to me. There's long-time doctors that have decided to give up, throw in the towel because they're just done with all the negativity and the stress of becoming a business owner or being a business owner and a dentist in this climate. I can say, everything at the summit will be about how to avoid that, for sure. Other things on social media, we have practices that are in dire straits because they followed groupthink and got rid of all insurance, all at once, and now they have no patients. So there's a lot of challenges that are very real in today's world that we'll be addressing.
When we help our practices create their five-year strategic plan, Dr. John, you do this at our GPS events, and those are life-changing for people, and I think the main reason is, they have a plan. They're working towards something and they know what their goals should be. So we'll be talking about some of those things as well because so much on social media, it leans negative, and this summit is an antidote to that. We're going to try to lean to the positive and talk about what's working well in practices today, and how doctors can avoid many of the common headaches that can cause them stress.
Dr. John Meis:
We always think about, when we load the speakers and the content and all the things that we're going to be talking about at the summit, we always think about mindset, skillset, toolset. So first of all, getting our minds and our attitudes in the right place and looking into the future and looking at what's possible, and putting behind all the negative crap that you hear in the news, all the negative crap you see on social media.
Then, start talking about skillsets. What do we need to improve? What are the actionable items that we can put in place? What are the systems and processes that we can use to improve? Then the last toolset, all the things that you may need. So there'll be people showing some of the technology that we recommend in order to automate much of what's been done manually in the past, and that improves efficiency. The more we can improve efficiency, the more we can improve profitability, and in the environment where our reimbursement is going slowly down.
Wendy Briggs:
I'm looking at some of the objectives/lessons from Disney and just for one of the mornings of the summit, the lectures are going to be based on how to communicate effectively with patients, creating a positive impression, developing and maintaining customer service standards, how to plan out good patient experience and customer service. It doesn't just happen overnight. You have to plan that out. And recognizing that patients are people who need our assistance. They're not an interruption to our job, they're the reason we have a job. So focusing in on the patient experience and the patient journey and what patients are wanting out of their experience, and that's just one morning.
There's so many great topics that we're going to be rolling out. So I'm excited about these next few podcasts because it's going to be powerful glimpses into what's coming for those who are attending our summit. If you haven't decided to join us yet, we certainly would love to invite you. We'll put the link for how you can register and get more information in the comments and the show notes so that you can have access to all of the amazing information about joining us in Orlando.
Dr. John Meis:
We know that travel has become more challenging, all things hospitality, the prices have gone up dramatically. The airlines seem to be a little shaky right now. So many practices are bringing some key team members to the summit and having the rest of the team watching in a virtual manner. So that's available or possible and a pretty effective way of doing it as well.
Wendy Briggs:
One last thing before we end the intro today, Dr. John, we've also built in some structured team-building bonding time, so that's going to be exciting as well. We're working on discounted group tickets for those who want to go and experience the park. That's one of the options that you'll have there as you enjoy the beautiful area. I believe one of the main reasons people like to come to meetings in Orlando is, we sometimes are looking for that work-family life balance. So we have heard from a lot of people already that they're taking a few extra days, bringing the family along, and trying to hit two birds with one stone as the expression goes. So all good opportunities for those coming to Orlando.
Dr. John Meis:
Yeah, absolutely. And in every summit, we always build in some fun. We will be having our receptions and parties and dinners and awards and all that kind of stuff. So super excited to be together with everybody and be together in a beautiful place and having some amazing speakers that are going to make a difference in how you think and how we act and how we perform, and how successful we'll become.
Wendy Briggs:
That's right, so gear up. The next few podcasts are going to be amazing, and again, content-rich, but also give you a good glimpse into what's coming the end of April, just a few short months away.
Dr. John Meis:
Very good. Awesome. Very good. Well, thanks, Wendy. Thanks, everybody. That's it for this episode of The Double Your Production Podcast. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye.
Wendy Briggs:
Thanks, everybody.
