Dr. John: Welcome to this session of the Double Your Production Podcast. I am here with David and David is the leader of the Accelerated Dental Assistant Academy. Hey David, how are you doing?
David Roux: I am doing great. It's a great day.
Dr. John: It is a great day and I'm sure your business is very, busy right now. So I want to, first of all, ask, what is it that you guys do?
David Roux: The big picture overview, basically we partner with dentists to open dental assisting schools, inside of their practice. We rent their facility to operate our dental assisting school, within dental offices. Very simple model.
Dr. John: That's awesome. And so from the doctor's perspective, their involvement is what?
David Roux: Our company manages all operations and all costs associated with the school. The doctor's responsibility is, is very simple. They just need to allow us to rent their facility during not operational hours. So typically Saturdays. To allow us to utilize their staff for recruiting instructors and piggyback off their success and marketing. So their actual, the doc the dentist's role is, nothing, tactical or there's an actual labor involved rather than just allowing us to use their office.
Dr. John: So the doctor's role is taking checks to his bank, basically.
David Roux: Yes. Generating some passive income.
Dr. John: Very good. And so that's one of the things that I love about your program. You and I have visited many times before and I set up a dental assisting school in my flagship practice years ago, and it was a tremendous amount of work, to get the curriculum.
We actually bought some curriculum, but it was, but it needed a great deal of updating and improvement and it had to match what we were doing in our office. So that was a tremendous amount of work. Then we had to get it approved by the States and every state has different rules. So because we operated in two States, it was, it just was an absolute nightmare to get it going. Once it did get go away, there's a lot of benefits to the practices.
David Roux: Yes, absolutely. so, really the three major, when we first started about nine years ago, we thought of, by 10 different things, like why this would be beneficial, but over it, now that we have 50 dental assistant schools and we're, partnering, then we pick their brain. Like, why don't you really like this? And they all say about the same three things.
Hey, I'm not utilizing my office. So the passive income is, I like it. And so in our program, they can make up to $24,000 a year. then it's the staffing side of it. So make staffing easy, so obviously they can recruit like the internal recruiting and hiring program. It's actually why we did what we're doing now is we're like you, we, we were having some issues always trying to hire. And so in our dental office, we were like, let's just train our own. and then the third benefit, which is the one that no one really says out of the gates, but after they do it for about a year or two, they're like, this is what I, this is a major reason.
It's the influence in the community, after about a year or two, you become known as that dental practice that educates there. You're an educational resource and it's a little niche. And so it does go along with your name it's that you're giving back. So that's really the top three benefits that we hear.
Dr. John: Yeah. And for us, the middle one was the main thing for us that we got really good team members. They were, going through a, 12 week program and some of these programs are eight, 10, 12, but they all vary a little bit. You will learn more about yours in a minute, but we had a 12 week program.
So we, we got to see them perform. We got to see how they learn. We got to see how they interacted with others. We got to see, what kind of teammate they would be. And so we are able to get the very, best out of the school, the ones that fit our culture, the ones that fit the ones that were, great learners. So we got to know a lot about them before we hired them.
David Roux: Sure. Yeah, absolutely. There's a trait that I know in our, while we hired it, we're looking for, and it's the hunger for growth. it's very hard to, see that in an interview or two, but as we're hiring, we're looking for people that are not just skilled at what they do, but have that attitude of I'm ready to learn and grow.
And so 10 weeks of watching someone, we were the same way, we were able to recruit and go, Hey, this person can develop and evolve. And yeah, we agree that you can't hardly see those traits unless you're able to watch them at the time.
Dr. John: So in a recent discussion that I had with a company that. manages, incoming calls for private practices all across the United States. and they have metrics on calls, received calls, answered calls, converted to appointments, and the length of time between the call and the first appointment available nationally is going way up. And so when I talk to dentists, what's going on here?
The demand is the demand changing. No, it's the capacity, dental practices that is changing because they don't, they can't staff a full office. So I was on a call with a group practice in New York city. not that long ago. And they were at one time, they're a little better now, but at one time they had 16 open positions in their office.
Yeah, the unique dynamics of what's happening in New York city right now. But nonetheless, it's happening everywhere to probably be a lesser degree, but everywhere in the country, that's the first time in my career that I ever remember that there was more patient demand than there was capacity to take care of it. Or the, at least the demand was, catching up with capacity and it's on the people's side.
David Roux: It's a really interesting through this time that we're facing in our country, we were wondering Hey, where are we going to be? And, what we've found as we kinda mentioned, our company is, really exploded during this time, because what we're finding across the entire country is that there's a high demand and a statistic that I was sharing with you is, right now we keep very good records on, who is being hired after graduation.
It's not just important to us because this tape requires the information that's important to us. We want to know that we're actually doing, there's a soft problem with solving throughout the dental industry. And within the last six months and our last course with a very quick turnover, we've had 22% increase and the number of students that are being connected to doctors and being hired, which is huge. And there's, definitely, there is a need out there right now, for sure in that.
Dr. John: And people who go through the dental assisting school, they may work as a dental assistant, but they're often make really good front desk people because now they understand the industry, they understand terminology, they understand what a schedule looks like. They understand you can't put composites next to compile that kind of stuff. They already have, a working knowledge of dentistry. So they're valuable in either place after they've gone through the school.
David Roux: That's right. Yes. And in our program, as you were talking about developing curriculum, honestly, we've built our home and it evolves. I was going to say yearly annually, but we do it every semester now because there's just so much. And now that we've actually used a program called Canvas and we're online as we teach, we can update our curriculum very rapidly. and with that, we've integrated a lot of, front office work, insurance.
Knowing that not everybody's going to be ready or even desire to go in as a dental assistant, some of them are still nervous. And so just being able to get in as a front office worker is really a lot of, a lot of them are seeking that anyway. So we've implemented that in the curriculum.
Dr. John: Yeah. Awesome. So tell me how this works. So let me, typical practice, large practice growing. We know we're going to need more people. We know there's a shortage of people out there. This thing might fit for me. What, how does it work?
David Roux: We call it the accelerated process. This is our proven process. Really, simple. We, if we keep it simple, then people can do it. And so say someone is interested, Hey, I'd like to possibly start a school. We set up a phone call and we determined at that time, if it's a win-win deal, because the doctor him in his office, him and his team, do they want something like this? And we determined if at that time, if the actual demographic, if the market is correct.
So we have a team that goes in and says, what are the odds of us winning here based off all the data that we have. And so I have a team that does that. Once we get those two together. Yes. I'd like a school and yes, we believe it's going to work. Then we move on to the next step, which is Simon signing. Some simple agreements. We hop on a call takes about 15 minutes that determined this. And, those agreements by the way, are from, one term to the next. So everything we do is handshake agreements. we want both bodies to be happy. So from there we go and because the operation is already built, it's just a matter of finding instructors.
So we connect with their team. We do a Zoom call and we explained to their office, Hey, this is what it takes to be an instructor. Here's the roles, here's the responsibilities. And here's how much we're going to pay you. So just on average, we pay our instructors who are typically dental assistants, $300 per class. They teach. And so around the country, this is a pretty good, paper hour. which is about $43 an hour to teach. And so from there, once we get some verbal buy-in, then we start the licensing process. My team takes full responsibility. We gather paperwork and we submit to the state and we do all the behind the scenes work. The office is simply just waiting until that process is done.
The final step is once we get approved by the state, We then get back connected with the office and we fly in or travel in and we start building those personal relationships with those instructors. And we begin the marketing process. We're really good. And we take a lot of pride in training our instructors. This is not, our program was built specifically for dental assistants to teach it. It's PowerPoint presentation. There's lots of engaging activities. This is not designed for a professor. This is assigned for a dental assistant who's 25 years old to come in and do a great job. And so we built it for that person. We train them and teach them in that time period. And then we launched the 10 week program.
And so really the doctor's part is really up front saying, Hey, I'd like to have a conversation to make sure this is a win-win deal. And yes, it is signed agreement. Then we connect with one of his trusted employees to gather the paperwork and go from there. Honestly, it's, as much as I like to build relationships with a dentist, some of them just had a business that were on. They, they closed the deal and then when they want to talk, we talk other than that, it's just hands off.
Dr. John: Yeah, very good. So what are the things that you're looking for in a practice that, you know, what, are the things that make it, really, a, sure thing for, everybody.
David Roux: Yeah. Look I say there's five things that we really look for. number one, we like to partner with dentist who are, growing or have a growth mentality more so than physically growing, with business people. I think we all know that there's. The technician, dentist, and then there's the businessman dentist. And, we found that the partnership usually settles well with, with the dentist, who's "Hey, I want to grow and improve. I want to increase revenue. I want to have an associate."
Or they can think like an entrepreneur, that person usually looks at this model and says, why would I say that? and, that's really the one that we really want to, that's the intangible that we're looking for. But on the tangible side on the office has to be large enough to host 15 plus students in one area, whether a waiting area or, lunch, area. the second is we like to have about five hops. We typically only use three for the course. but usually it three, it could be kinda cramped.
So we like to have five or more ops. And then on the stack, we like to have about three dental assistants that are available, just for observation participation day. So if we're looking for an ideal office area, a whole 15 students, Five or more ops, three, two to three dental assistants who would be willing to teach. And, then someone who is willing to allow us to piggyback off their success on the marketing side. So we've taken some of these extremes, we've taken offices that don't have quite that. But that's that middle range idea.
Dr. John: And w when I had my school, we were very successful in hiring people. The people that didn't get hired by us, they had difficulty getting hired. And so why don't you talk a little bit about the support that you give the graduates in order to help them find a position?
David Roux: Yeah, this is, my favorite part of the conversation. Like we've built this model with the educational side, because we do have our pet peeve. We believe education should be hands-on. This is a skill set here, but that's just why we got into it. The reason why we're doing this, because we want to solve a dentist problem.
Like the staffing issue. So we've taken a lot of efforts this past year, Dr. Meis, I haven't shared this with you. We've actually built. I told you we went on to an online platform, Canvas. Which allows us to do so many things. So we've actually in the last six months built a career service success program. There is a module that they log in class five after hours. And it is, this is how you build a resume and it's physically bringing them through slides, through videos and templates.
They type it all in and it helps them build a resume. It's incredible. I had no idea that this was such a scary situation for a lot of people. They don't have resumes and they don't even know what looks right. And what does a dentist want to see? So we built this to where they can go in complete the module, have a resume. It turns into a career coach. We evaluate it. So it's a very clean process from there. It's what do I dress? what do I look like? What does my social media look like?
And we had trainings on all of that. Do I have, certain type of ring tone was my voicemail. So we bring them through that whole process and we score them. And so they're evaluated and they're seeing the evaluation because they want to be scored high. And then, we have this group of ideal prospects ready to be presented to Dennis. The other side of this is we have now over 700 dentists. In a network that call us and say, Hey, they're not even our hosting dentist.
They're just doctors who call us for, Hey, do you have somebody? You can send me. And of course we play matchmaker. So we have these students that are building this out, the dentist, the need, and we love playing that matchmaker game. So it's actually, Hey, when a student enrolls, we clap, when a student gets hired, we play matchmaker that the entire company celebrates. And so I think that's what sets us apart for sure.
Dr. John: You really haven't figured out from a to Z, to a degree that, I never got as good as what you got, not even close. So you guys really have a good thing. We have multiple, TTI clients that, that are using our hosting schools in their office and they sing their praises. They really do. the reports have been a hundred percent positive.
David Roux: Great. Great.
Dr. John: So if somebody is interested in getting this process started, how would they get in touch with you?
David Roux: The simple way is, was very personal. You just call me on my cell phone, my outside since we're loud and recording, but it's two, two, five nine three three four two nine one. We keep it very personal for the dentist who are wanting to be active. I want them to go straight to the source. and then my email is David at A D O dot U S. once we, once you connect with me, we had a business development team which will set up a call and then we'll collaborate to confirm as a win-win deal.
Dr. John: Awesome. So one more time. Why don't you give your cell phone number? Nice and slow. Two, two five nine three three four two nine one. Very good. And your email address again,
David Roux: David at A D A dot U S.
Dr. John: Yeah. I think, it's a, fantastic service that you guys are providing and you do it at such a high level, and we're really grateful to have you as, a partner to TTI. And, I really believe in what you're doing and I really highly recommend this for people.
It's, so much easier to grow your own than to go out in the marketplace and find somebody.
And I was always of the belief that I wanted. younger less experienced people or not necessarily younger, but less experienced people to join my office because I didn't have to break any bad habits. They didn't have to change their thought process. I didn't have to change anything. And it usually takes somebody that's something that comes out of a, dental assisting academy. It usually takes three or four months before they're able to do most stuff. Not everything, not that complicated stuff, but it takes three or four months before they're relatively functional.
And if you get somebody that you hire from somebody else's office, it might take you six months to get them to cause it's going to take months to get them to unlearn some of the dysfunctional things, the way they talk to patients, the way they treat patients, the way they think about treatment, the way they, the way they're recommending treatment, just there's just so much to be. It's, harder to unlearn than it is to learn from the start. I really enjoyed working with the people that came out of our school. And I can tell you that everyone, that it's really rewarding working with these people. So David, thank you so much for being our guest today.
David Roux: Yeah, absolutely. It's been a privilege and I, every time I get a chance to spend time with, you and Wendy, I, take you up on it. So I appreciate the opportunity.
Dr. John: Yeah. we're happy to be with you too. And we always have good discussions and you're a, really good thinker. So I appreciate the, wisdom that you shared with me too. So that's it for this episode of the w production podcast. We'll see you on the next one. Bye-bye thanks.
