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E17: Podcast: Renee Simone on transformational vs. transactional leadership

June 20, 2017/in Podcast /by Kevin Coughlin

Hello and welcome to Ascent Dental Radio. A program dedicated to the balance between the clinical aspect of health care and the business of health care. And now here is your host, Dr. Kevin Coughlin.

Kevin: This is Dr. Kevin Coughlin. You’re listening to Ascent Radio — Ascent Dental Solutions with a focus on knowledge, consultation, development and training.

Today we have an extremely interesting podcast with Ms. Renee Simone. She’s a small business owner of an outstanding private practice in western Massachusetts called Change Happens, Inc. She’s a licensed independent clinical social worker, a licensed alcohol and drug counselor, a licensed RN and she’s in the process of finishing her clinical doctorate in nursing practice.

’ve had the pleasure of meeting Renee several months ago and over several conversations and meetings, I have found her intensely interesting and I have also found a tremendous similarity of medicine and dentistry. I’ve always felt that they are very similar, but in particular, how registered nurses, doctoral nurses and the entire nursing profession and its effect on health care can be so dramatic.

But in particular, Renee’s forte is leadership and how she integrates with other health care practitioners and the qualities that she’s seen dealing with leadership and how health care teams can be better motivated to really ultimately do the most, which is improve health care and outcomes for our patients.

Without any further ado, Renee, thank you for joining me this afternoon. I’m sure our listeners will be incredibly pleased with the information you can provide to help, not just small businesses, but large businesses. Tell me what you found and what you think the direction of health care is going and how leadership is a critical part of that.

Renee: Sure, I’d be happy to talk with you a little bit about that, Kevin. First of all, I just want to say thank you so much. I have so enjoyed meeting you and getting to know you as well and your work and I think that it’s just so important to have these conversations and I hope to be helpful.

My biggest focus and hope is to be able to serve and to fill gaps and to help folks stay ahead of the curve and to really be a leader also in the highest capacity and a high scope of whatever I’m practicing. So I really appreciate you having me here as well.

Kevin: You’re quite welcome.

Renee: As far as what I hope that the nursing profession can bring to changes in health care, this is a very, as other times in history, it’s a very chaotic and active time of change.

There’s a lot of pressure and I’m sure in a lot of other businesses in health care, the pressure is in productivity and cost savings while at the same time not compromising quality. So I think that can be a very challenging space to practice in.

Kevin: Some would say almost impossible.

Renee: Yes. We were listening to a podcast or a talk for one of our classes on nursing leadership and one of the gentlemen talking there said that he feels it’s sort of like the triple threat of management where you have three hats that you’re trying to balance out; quality, time and money.

And whenever you focus on one of those, the other two suffer. So certainly I think that’s to your point where it can seem very challenging and almost impossible.

Kevin: If you were to review those criteria, are they equal? Is there one that you would put more emphasis on another? I know with the corporations getting more involved with medicine and in dentistry in particular, but that pressure for short term profit and perhaps short term gain but long term failure is always there. Can you address that for our listeners?

Renee: Sure. I think that’s the trap, the question. I think we have to look at what we’re really asking. Because that question; which one is more important, I think it just continues to unintentionally get us sucked into the merry-go-round or the trap of trying to choose.

And that sort of to me has been like an undercurrent in health care that people aren’t really aware of and talking about where it kind of pulls you down. I’d liken it to trying to stay alive or survive when you’re being sucked in by an undertone. It doesn’t help to fight.

What really needs to happen in order to survive and make headways is to learn how to step outside of that current. So I really don’t think there is a solution. And I think the longer we try to kind of go round and round on our minds about trying to choose and prioritize, that’s part of the trap.

Kevin: If you were to tell the listeners out of all the criteria with your extensive experience in health care, what are some of the qualities you look for in people who are excellent in management, excellent in leadership, understanding that they’re really two different topics, two different skills and many times, managers try to be leaders, leaders try to be managers.

And sometimes that doesn’t work and I don’t think in our day to day lives in health care we think that there is a difference. Most of the time, the doctor feels that they are the manager and the leader and many times they are the most ill-equipped to do either of those because they lack training. Can you address that?

Renee: Sure. Before I go onto that, I just want to finish up. This will kind of be a segue into talking about that a little bit. I didn’t intend to side-step the question about which one is more important. What I wanted to do is use that to say that that’s where I think exactly service leadership or leadership in a transformational way addresses the wheel of insanity with trying to prioritize.

So to me service leadership is really a way to step outside of that current and really affect change from that position. Because management — a lot of the literature talks about, in nursing anyways, applying and understanding the differences in types of leadership. So there’s something called Transformational Leadership Style and there’s another style called Transactional Leadership.

Transactional Leadership is really speaking to more of what you’re talking about, that managerial style. That management style. Transactional leaders are really more about developing followers, organizing tasks, making sure the job gets down.

They’re really more task oriented and there’s no place in that with the pressure of productivity and cost effectiveness and instant gain. There really is no place for reflection. We don’t really have time to think, not just in our business world, but in our personal lives often.

So transformational leadership really is more about stepping outside of that current, thinking about what we’re saying, thinking about what we’re doing. And really trying to find ways to be innovative, think outside the box, be willing to take risks, have a vision and helping people follow that in the sense that where people are kind of walking together instead of being directed.

I think of the difference between the image that I’ve seen a lot between a boss and a leader. The world has plenty of bosses and managers. We don’t need any more of those. And it’s not really being effective anyway in terms of progress where health care wants to go. Because bosses tend to be more directive and telling people what to do and managing. And there are some people who like to do that.

Transformation Leadership on the other hand or leadership qualities is more about serving, how can I help you get to where you want to be. And the more that you, I think, empower other people, the more that that power gets recycled back into the relationship and has meaningful change.

Kevin: Do you find that these transformational, is this being taught? Is this being taught in the nursing field, is it being taught in health care as far as you can see or is this something we sort of stumble along and say this works better than that and there’s really been no preparation for it, you just sort of learn by the seat of your pants?

Renee: I think that’s a great question. I’m going to draw on a little bit of what our conversations have been because I think you made an excellent point that there’s really nothing new, necessarily, out there.

A lot of times, we stumble on things because of our own learning curve and our own ignorance and lack of awareness. So from that perspective, actually in my studies, I’ve learned more about what’s out there. Because as a doctorally prepared nurse practitioner, we are more encouraged and trained to accept it when we don’t know the answer to something, but the more important thing is know who to ask or how to find it.

So I’ve been exposed to a lot of incredible information that’s been around for a while on the differences between leaders and managers. I just haven’t looked or known where to look.

And so I think that we’re exposed to it in our training, however, that’s — actually, I’m glad you asked that because one of my core passions is to find ways to not reinvent the wheel, spend a little bit more time looking and talking to one another about what’s already out there and borrowing from each other what’s working.

So from a transformational leadership perspective, I think clinical social work model since its inception — clinical social work was born in 1929 in the Chicago settlement houses. And since then, clinical social work has always maintained a commitment to supervision; clinical supervision, skilled clinical supervision, as a way to develop processionals and help new therapies to be the best practitioner they can be.

Kevin: If you were to talk to the audience listening to us now, do you see the value in mentoring, preceptoring, role modeling? I know for myself, there’s been people in my life that they weren’t intending to be a teacher for me, but they sort of acted as a role model. I saw how they interacted at bedside or chairside, I saw how they interacted with team mates, staff, employees and that combination is how, unfortunately, I learned.

There was no class that I went to through my four years of medical dental training to say, “Oh geez, this is how I treat Mr. or Mrs. Smith or their children.” Is that changing in health care? Do you see an improvement in that area? Are there courses that are out there that are focusing on not just the didactics of medicine, which we’re all comfortable with, but that undertone, that patient care, that ability to teach the people around you these leadership skills?

Renee: Excellent question again and that’s what I hope to offer and to bring to health care because there isn’t really anything concrete, formalized, standardized, operationalized around those qualities.

In any profession that I’ve seen, as you mentioned, a lot of times we learn informally. So a lot of the terminology and language that’s similar in dentistry as in nursing, health care, when you talk about mentoring, precepting, guiding, being a support, I think that health care does those things informally and intuitively.

When they’re a good person, they’re a good practitioner, they want to give back, they want to help, they want to teach, they like to teach, like you’ve said, but there really isn’t much structure around that. And I think that that’s exactly the direction that is coming next.

Kevin: At your business, is that where the focus is? If people wanted to reach out and have you help them, are you doing that? Is that something that you offer? Is that something that you’re trying to pursue?

Renee: Absolutely. In fact, that is all about what my quality improvement project I’m working on now for the doctoral program is incorporating and integrating — because I have a passion for integration so this is just another extension of that — integrating the specific principles from a clinical social work model that apply to supervision.

And helping overlay them and incorporate them into other preceptorship programs from nursing to start, but I think they’re applicable to dentistry, I think they’re applicable to other types of health care, I think they’re applicable to other profession.

Because to me, leadership is practicing at the highest good or the highest level that we can be in any profession or in any role.

We get taught that in nursing school. As leaders the rhetoric is you can be a leader regardless of your role, whether you are a floor nurse, whether you are a charge nurse, whether you are a nurse manager, most importantly, when you are trying to manage or lead or oversee things. So I agree that that’s something that can be incorporated into business.

Kevin: I know from just my own personal experience just in the last few weeks, I’m offering a clinical course and it’s on implant surgery and surgical guides and 3D imaging. And within 24 hours, I got 18 people in my company to sign up because they want to know how.

But it’s interesting when I want to get them together to talk about leadership, and I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but I’ve got probably 400 listings on leadership and I researched 12 factors that were important in leadership. And the funny thing is it’s hard to get people to sit down and talk about that.

My summary of leadership, and I can’t say it’s something that I came up on my own, I probably heard it or copied from someone, but leadership to me means the ability to influence people in hopefully the correct direction.

There’s a lot of leaders that can push you in a bad direction, they’re still leaders. But I think good leadership comes by influencing people in the right direction. Would you agree with that or would you want to comment on that?

Renee: I think that’s true for a basis and a start, is the ability to influence. In fact, one of the transformational qualities, one of the four core qualities is idealized influence. So I think that’s very important. I don’t think that comes with pushing, necessarily, because again you can push someone, however, you don’t know which direction they’re going to go in.

If you pull them by effectively leading and modeling and showing, then it’s easier, I think, because then you’re sort of leading and moving together in the same direction. Then people do see you as a trustworthy, dependable, authentic, competent person.

Kevin: Renee, if individuals listening to us today wanted to reach out to hear more about your style and how you can direct and help them in their own personal lives or in their business lives, is there a way for our listeners to reach out and contact you?

Renee: Absolutely. One of the easiest ways is going to be through the website, which is www.changehappensinc.com. You’d be able to reach out through that website to me through email. My personal email is renee.simone50@gmail.com. And then my business contact information the easiest way to text or call that business number is 919-793-6862.

Kevin: So you’d be happy to go to different locations and put on a seminar to help team members improve in their leadership and just the way they integrate with patients, is that correct?

Renee: Absolutely. That’s something that doesn’t feel even like work to me because it’s one of my passions and I really enjoy giving back in that way. And I think I’ve experienced through the results of the growth of my own small practice or business that the return on investment is just incredible.

Kevin: I want to thank you so much for your time. I do want our listeners to know that Renee Simone also has another business and that business focuses on insurances and insurance needs.

And we hope to get her back because quite honestly, although I’ve been in health care for 34 years and still practice every day, I was blown away by this particular area of let’s say life insurance, but life insurance in a different way that I had never really thought about it. And I would consider Renee extremely knowledgeable in this and I’d like to get you back. Would you mind talking to our listeners about that?

Renee: I’d love to. Thanks.

Kevin: I want to thank everybody for today. I hope you enjoyed. I want to personally thank you Renee for your expertise and taking time out of your busy schedule. As always, I want to thank Doug Foresta. Without his ability to put this product together, we would not be here today.

And as always, please feel free to reach out to Doug and his company if you’re interested in podcasting. I can certainly tell you that it has been a big boom to my career and just to my office and my bottom line. It’s an excellent way to communicate.

You’ve been listening to Ascent Radio. My name is Dr. Kevin Coughlin. If you need to get in touch with me or look for additional information, I can be reached at www.ascent-dental-solutions.com.

Thank you very much for listening and Renee, thank you.

E16: Podcast: Alice Warner on how the W.K. Kellogg foundation supports oral health

June 15, 2017/in Podcast /by Kevin Coughlin

Hello and welcome to Ascent Dental Radio, a program dedicated to the balance between the clinical aspect of health care and the business of health care. And now here is your host, Dr. Kevin Coughlin.

Kevin: Good afternoon. This is Dr. Kevin Coughlin from Ascent Dental Solutions. You’re listening to Ascent Radio which focuses on knowledge, consultation, development and training. Today’s podcast, I’m excited to introduce you to the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

Our guest today is Ms. Alice Warner and she also has some support team members, Dina and Lynn. Good afternoon, Ms. Warner. Thank you so much for taking your valuable time to talk to us about the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Can you give us a little bit of background for our listeners who are primarily dentists, dental hygienists, dental assistants from all over the country and all over the world at this point, can you give us a little background, Ms. Warner, about the Kellogg Foundation and your job in particular?

Alice: Certainly. And thank you, Dr. Coughlin and all of the work that you’ve done, in conversations up to this time, exploring the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and our relationship to oral health throughout the time since our founding. It is a delight to talk to all of the oral health professionals. And I would really, really like to thank all of you for the work that you do day in and day out because our founder, Will Keith Kellogg, in 1930 as he was establishing his foundation created a children’s charter.

He was invited by President Hubert to a national commission on child welfare and development. And during that gathering of about 3,000 professional folks and Mr. Kellogg, he was introduced to a lot of the aspects of what is it that allows children to thrive and to be healthy. He talked about productivity throughout the lifespan and to be happy and educated and he said, “Do what you will with the money, but do something to help the welfare of children.”

So we are about children, he established a children’s charter out of that and I’m very pleased to say oral health is one of those very core ideas that he established in those founding documents. The original grant making in 1930 included a lot of funding for the profession of dentistry and the training and education of dentists, both the graduate dentists as well as fellowships, during the war time, additional dentists that were ready to serve the military and to support our nation in the times of war.

So for us, the $88 million we’ve put into oral health since that time, it included all of the members of the oral health team, whether it’s the dentist, whether it was the hygienist and the development of the hygiene curriculum, we had grant making support for that, whether it was the dental assistance and extended functions. Dental assistance in the 70s we worked with the University of Kentucky about that.

And now we are into a phase where we are looking at an expanded oral health workforce because what in each case was called extending the dentist’s hand, each of those; the hygienist, the afters, and now dental therapists, the dental assistants, all of those folks realized that the number of dentists and the population that needed oral health really was very mismatched, even in 1930s. And in the county I live in Michigan, that ratio has not changed since 1930.

We have more people, we have more dentist, but that ratio which he thought was significant in terms of the lack of coverage and lack of care in 1930 remained entrenched in that same place today. And I’m sure that’s like that in many of the places that you live. So we have been proud to take Mr. Kellogg’s legacy. He took all of his wife’s resources and put them into the foundation when he could have funded a legacy to his family. And this was about the future of the nation and the nation’s children.

Just a few other pieces about our framework and then I’ll certainly stop talking so that Dr. Coughlin can throw in more questions that I know that all of you have about who we are, what we do in oral health and why. But our programming really embraces what it would take for all children to thrive and to achieve their greatest opportunity in their life development. He felt that to do that, there were some core things, elements that need to be present. The first was education and learning.

He felt the best way for any generation to advance beyond the generation before was through education and learning. And clearly that went everywhere from early childhood and maternal child kinds of interactions and different training programs through children providers, through education and training for careers and lifetimes and change of careers and career pathways. So that has remained a piece of our funding as well.

We fund in what we call food health and wellbeing. Which is where much of our health and health care and our wellness kinds of things — public health and prevention kinds of strategies live and oral health is a piece of that.

Finally, we have one area that is really looking at what families need to be economically secure to actually help the children and propel them out of poverty and create conditions where they thrive. So those are the core elements. And through that we work with communities who ask for support in those areas and tell us what kind of ideas they have so that their children and their communities can raise the lake for all of the kids. And so our grants do come from communities. We don’t take a position and then fund that position and look for folks to do that, we basically say what are the communities asking for and how can we support that? Because Mr. Kellogg believed that the communities were self-determining and really understood what would be best for them.

Finally, two core strategies that are our DNA, that go through every grant that goes, is we look for addressing racial equity and racial and ethnic and cultural disparities. And in oral health that is really very, very remarkable. We also support the community engagement in those strategies. And finally, we support leaders. I want to just very briefly come back to that because Mr. Kellogg in his opening documents for the first eleven years of our foundation talked about the importance of dentists both as community members and leaders in the community, as well as being service providers.

So that leadership role and that community stewardship role for the dentists — and it was the dentists who are identified — is very, very core as we look and that is why our strategy has always been around extending the dentist’s hands. So I’ll be quiet and Dr. Coughlin, whatever questions you have, Dina, Lynn and I are happy to answer.

Kevin: Thank you for the wonderful introduction to your organization. Since many of the listeners are new to the Kellogg Foundation, I just want you to reassure them that Mr. Kellogg is the founders of the Kellogg cereal empire. Perhaps you can provide some personal anecdotes about Mr. Kellogg and how he started his business and how that business now currently is a public corporation. I just want the listeners to realize that this is the Mr. Kellogg who is the founder of the Kellogg Corporation. Is that correct?

Alice: Mr. Kellogg founded both the Kellogg cereal company and then he founded the Kellogg Foundation as an independent philanthropic organization. So that we do not have members of our board that come from the company and we do not, while the trust that funds the work of the Kellogg Foundation does contain a minimum amount of Kellogg Company stock, it is not the primary part of our trust portfolio and they are independent entities so that neither one of us influences the businesses. But they are the same founder.

I will tell you a bit about Mr. Kellogg. Mr. Kellogg was a Seventh Day Adventist and evolutionist who moved to Battle Creek, Michigan. And his brother who is probably more famous or infamous, depending on whatever stories people want to tell, John Harvey Kellogg, created a place based on many Seventh Day Adventists’ principles around health and wellbeing and what we would almost call like the scientific healing methods of the day that included a lot of fresh air, it also included a diet that was based without meat, caffeine and sugar.

At that time I believe sugar was in there, but at least I know the caffeine and the meat were not a part of a Seventh Day Adventist diet. And so the people that came to the stand, that was a part of the healing that was offered in that time which was the highest science of that time. And Mr. Kellogg worked for his brother. As the legend goes, the Kellogg cornflakes were discovered and new businesses were started.

Our relationship to that, other than having a common founder, the values and principles that we have came from Mr. Kellogg’s writings, they come from who Mr. Kellogg was as a visionary, as a leader. And the other thing I would say about Mr. Kellogg was that we talk about the children and yet at we read the history of his leadership and his company, he very, very much looked at conditions in the community.

For example, in Battle Creek during the great depression, to keep the maximum number employed, the full time working hours was decreased for that period of time so that more people could at least have a livable wage and jobs in Battle Creek. That was really quite innovative. He could have cut things to the bone and he could have disadvantaged that community, but every move that we looked at that’s documented that he made in his business, he also considered the community and the people and that decision making and the work within them and he just felt that there was a lot of opportunity there.

He’s very much related to the work the Rockefeller Foundation and the Kellogg Foundation were responsible for the early establishment of public health departments in the states and also later one in the community level.

That came out of work that he also supported in that founding charter document around immunizations and the importance of food and farm and water and other kinds of resources. So his wish, his values, his principles are reflected clearly to our work today.

Kevin: Where I would like to go now for a few minutes is for our listeners to understand and the Kellogg Foundation has an enormous amount of data and research to indicate the seriousness of the oral health situation in the United States, and we’ll just focus with the United States for now on this podcast.

But I believe the most significant chronic disease affecting the United States right now between the ages of 2 and 18 is dental caries or cavities. As you alluded to earlier in this podcast, these diseases are 100 percent preventable with the correct policies and processes in place, with a stick-to-itiveness to address this problem, it is very correctabl

And I believe your foundation is the leader in taking the action steps in trying to promote education, knowledge and information to, one, make everyone understand the serious nature of the problem.

Many times, people don’t understand that a cavity may not sound that serious, but the effects of losing teeth prematurely, the loss of potential wages because of the disability of losing teeth, the effects on speech, the effects on the psychological well being of growing up with missing teeth, the children that can sometimes be teased and they turn into teenagers and young adults that maybe were rejected from job opportunities because of embarrassing situations.

All of these oral health issues can be addressed and can be solved and your organization is taking on that task. And I’m looking to work with you to create some positive action to educate the dental profession and the ancillary individuals around our profession to say let’s do better and what are the action steps to make it better. Is there some particular things over the last 60, 70, 80 years that the Kellogg Foundation has found that has been particularly helpful in addressing this problem?

Alice: Very early on, it had to do with the shortage of dentists. And today, Dr. Coughlin, as your audience likely knows better than I, that as we look at the projects, then it depends whose projection you’re looking at, we need 7,100 new dentists to meet the current needs. And by 2025 that is estimated the dentist deficit is expected to double. As I said, in my home county, that ratio has not budged and that is a very, very big concern.

I also want to say that as you described very, very well oral health is the number one chronic disease of children, it’s even more common than asthma. The fact of the matter is we also worked with Dr. David Satcher, then Surgeon General of the United States and in 2000, his oral health report on the state of oral health in the U.S. really spoke to I think was a silent epidemic. And we’ve continued to work around with communities who find that this is one of the most pressing problems that they have with very little opportunity for solution.

We have put together funding that we also recognize that kids, and what brought this current attention to the work that we’re doing around dental therapy, is the disparities where you’ve got untreated tooth decay in 3 to 5 year olds being about 11.3 percent and in Alaska Natives and American Indians it would be 43.2 percent.

When we entered to work in Alaska, their rate was 79.2 percent in the native villages and that’s just really not acceptable. And the fact that we don’t have enough dentists and we also recognize that by 2020 — right now the 50 percent of the children being born are what we would classify as minority children, children of color. That is expected by 2020 and 2025 to be all of the states, 27 will join majority-minority states in 2018, by 2020 nationally that will be the trend. The fact of the matter is we need to have pipelines to get the children into oral health professions as well.

We’ve worked with the American Dental Education Association, we have worked with a number of dental professional organizations around this pipeline and also trying to get dentists into that pipeline and working in terms of cultural competence in that area as well.

So this is a large endeavor, we’re working with the Sullivan Alliance, which is Dr. Louis Sullivan, the former secretary of HHS under the Bush I administration is really looking at the health care workforce, and particularly the oral health workforce and the need for expanding both the pipeline and building career pathways within that that both expand that admission and various entry and we’re going to need more education.

So we are looking at all of that and we are also recognizing that in medicine that looking at the team and extending the dentist’s hand could be a piece of those solutions and we have communities that want to test that.

They feel that somebody coming from their community, that is living in their community and has committed to stay in their community is going to be a provider for the long term that will understand and be there in times of emergency. And that’s what we all would hope for all of our families, our friends and our communities and all of the people we love.

Kevin: First of all, Ms. Warner, my practice is over 100,000 patients a year, I have 14 offices in the Massachusetts region and the one thing that I’ve learned about dealing with people is I know when they’re passionate,

I know when they believe what they’re doing and I can tell spending the last 30 minutes with you that you meet that criteria. I believe Mr. Kellogg and the entire foundation would be extremely proud of your just enthusiasm and your goal to improve. And I want you to know from a grassroots standpoint, Ascent Dental Solutions is behind you. And over the next several podcasts, I hope to delve in to mid-level practitioners, dental license practitioners, expanded duty axillaries, the whole combination in most cases are with problems such as we’ve been discussing, oral health for children in particular.

It’s probably not going to be one magic bullet, but a combination of events to make a positive change and try to achieve the goal that Mr. Kellogg wanted to achieve with his foundation.

And the first step is attracting leaders such as yourself and your team mates, Dina and Lynn, to create a better environment of education, knowledge and mutual understanding so that the dental profession can get behind you, we can work together rather than against each other, and create the positive change that ultimately is going to help this younger generation, which will be our future leaders.

I just wanted to thank you and your foundation for an excellent podcast and I thank you for educating our listeners. I look forward to future podcasts where we can get into more of the nit and the gritty of the action steps that will be necessary to create this positive change. My understanding is you’re willing to go forward with this in future podcast. Is that correct?

Alice: That is correct and we do thank you also very much for this opportunity and the privilege of getting to talk to you about something, you’re right, our entire team, our CEO and president and our board, our President La June Montgomery Tabron, you could choose a person at the foundation to talk about this program and there’s equal passion there.

So the field should be just really delighted that oral health is a primary part of a body of work of a funder and I know that that’s a difficulty for the entire oral health field. So we are privileged to talk to you and thank you for making this opportunity available to us.

Kevin: Thank you very much. And for our listeners, you’ve been listening to Ascent Radio. This is Dr. Kevin Coughlin, Ascent Dental Solutions. We’re proud to have our guests are Ms. Alice Warner. She is the director of policy at W.K. Kellogg Foundation and I look forward to future podcasts where we could come up with positive action plans to create change.

I also want to thank Mr. Doug Foresta who has been the producer of this podcast and without his expertise, this would not be happening. Thank you all for listening and I look forward to our next podcast in the new future. Thank you everyone and have a great day.

E15: Podcast: Ron Sheetz on how to use testimonials in your dental practice

June 14, 2017/in Podcast /by Kevin Coughlin

Hello and welcome to Ascent Dental Radio. A program dedicated to the balance between the clinical aspect of health care and the business of health care. And now here is your host, Dr. Kevin Coughlin.

Kevin: My name is Dr. Kevin Coughlin. You’re listening to Ascent Dental Solutions. I hope you enjoy the following podcast and I’m excited to introduce you to our guest, Ron Sheetz, who is a serial entrepreneur. I’d like to think of myself as an entrepreneur, but next to Ron, I don’t really make the cut.

Ron, thanks so much for joining us this evening. Can you give us a little background and tell us a little something about you and your business?

Ron: Yeah, a little bit about me and how I got into business really, the serial entrepreneurial part, I was about 13 years old and we used to try to keep ourselves occupied when we were kids in our neighborhood because everybody was much younger than I was. And a friend of mine and I decided we were going to put on a magic show in the neighborhood. We went around the neighborhood promoting it and the kids could attend for 50 cents a person and the adults had to pay a dollar.

My mom had known a professional magician so she introduced me and he then introduced me to the world of magic and business and entrepreneurship. Long story short, he became my first business mentor and really everything that I have learned and has formed who I am and what I do was really learned out of that.

So at 13 I started selling tickets to a magic show and then that has turned into a life-long career now of really doing what I call relationship marketing and a large part of what I do is with testimonials. And what we’re getting to talk tonight about is something much different than what people are really familiar with about testimonials. I call what most people do basic testimonials and I have a whole advanced strategy of testimonials.

So just a little bit of background and history on me, and I’ve been involved with the dental field specifically now for about the last ten years.

Kevin: That’s terrific. You also have quite a few very excellent celebrities under your belt in helping their careers. Do you want to take a minute and drop some names to impress us with some of these individuals?

Ron: Sure. In the dental field, one of my most frequent and continually ongoing client relationship is with Mr. Dan Kennedy. I think we’re familiar with Dan. He’s one of the top copyrighters and marketing consultants in the country.

But also as far as what people would recognize celebrity wise, I’ve worked with Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen who are the authors of Chicken Soup for the Soul. I’ve also worked extensively with a lot of other dental gurus and so forth, for instance, Dr. Chris Griffin, Jerry Jones who I believe you’ve had on your show, to name a few. Oh goodness, the list is long.

Kevin: I was particularly trying to guide you towards Kathy Ireland, who I think probably the majority of our listeners would be impressed. I certainly had a crush on her and we could argue I perhaps maybe still have a crush on her. And I also noticed that you’ve done some work with Cal Ripken, is that correct?

Ron: That’s correct, yes.

Kevin: Why don’t we get into the topics today of testimonials? I believe I’ve discussed with you in the past I have 14 dental offices, approximately 150 employees with about 100,000 patient visits a year and day in and day out we have some positive testimonials and we have negative testimonials and I’m never really sure how to use the positive testimonials to my advantage.

Perhaps since most of our listeners here are business men and business women, but particularly are focused on health care and dentistry in particular, can you give us some strategies and some suggestions to improve the information and how we use testimonials?

Ron: Sure. The first is really differentiation of what most people consider a testimonial and what I consider a testimonial. A majority of the testimonials that I see businesses and dental practices getting are what I would call basic testimonials.

Usually the procedure is that you do your case, you have a happy patient, you ask them for a testimonial and they give you a testimonial. And often times that testimonial that they give is what I call rather bland or vanilla. Meaning it doesn’t have a lot of marketing legs. There’s not a lot that you can do with it other than put it out so that people can read it.

I’ll give you a couple of examples that I share in my book. These are some testimonials captured by a dental practice just by asking. One of them was from this patient who says, “I came to this dental office today on an emergency basis and they got me in immediately. This is the friendliest dental office I’ve ever been to in years in all the time that I’ve been alive.”

Here’s another one that says, “This is my first time. The first experience feels great. I feel very relaxed and very well taken care of and it was a pleasant experience.” “Every time I come to the doctor’s office the staff is great, they’re friendly, the service is good and I enjoy coming back.”

Those are what I talk about as basic testimonials. They don’t have a whole lot of marketing legs, meaning things that you can do it or as Walt Disney calls plusing it. How else can we use this to help promote the practice and move us forward?

And really as a dentist you’re in a trust business. You’re really in a trust business and you’re dealing with a constituency coming in who is probably fearful and got anxiety, they are afraid of the price and there’s a lot of anxieties and angst to them coming in and we need to do what we can to elevate them and differentiate ourselves from every other dentist that they’ve ever had experience with or what they think about. These indoctrinations that they have about dental practices.

My type of testimonials, the advance testimonials are much more story-based or what you would consider as human interest story. I’ll give you an example of one and this is actually of a patient that I interviewed and have been using with the dental practice.

This patient in an interview with me she starts off by saying, “I was terrified of the dentist. And by terrified I mean, I’m talking about cold sweat just breaking and running down my face. It started way back when I was a little girl. I had a dentist pull a tooth and it was an impacted tooth and at that time I was ten and he didn’t give me enough Novocaine and he called me a baby.

And I just remember when he started working on me I was kicking and screaming and ended up running out of the room and blood was running down my face and my mother was just horrified. Maybe I just picked the wrong dentist and I’m glad that I finally picked one that’s a winner.” And then she goes into talking about now her experience with this particular dentist that she’s with now.

These are much experiential based stories, those human interest stories. And it’s important because unlike the basic testimonials, these are stories that patients can identify with this person. They can identify having been in their shoe. If they haven’t had that exact experience, they know what it’s like.

And what I talk about in the book is that what we do by connecting prospective patients, possibly new patients with our existing patients, they identify with one another. They can’t exactly identify with you, you’re the doctor and they these, again, indoctrinations as to what that experience is like.

But if we connect them with our existing patients and they connect on that story, on that human level, it creates was I call the transfer of trust triangle. So the prospective patient identifies with our existing patient, they see themselves in their shoes and they come to this conclusion that if I’m like them and you as the dentist were able to help them, then in turn you can help me. And that’s what I call the transfer of trust triangle. Does that make sense?

Kevin: Makes perfect sense. Let me ask you a follow-up question Ron. These testimonials as you just described, these powerful testimonials that tell a story, how do you get that out to the public? And what, in your opinion, is the best way to get that out to the public?

Ron: That’s an excellent question. I’ve actually identified there’s 33 different ways that can be used, but really some of the most immediate are a website or podcast. They can be used and lifted and put onto a website.

The thing that I instruct people to do is not to create a webpage, as most websites have, they have a testimonials page and that’s a page where all of the testimonials from all the patients reside. Well, it’s been our experience that people don’t necessarily go to a testimonial page. Because if you see it in a tab and you go there, what are you going to find? You’re going to find people who are saying great things about you. So it’s a loop point why would I go there because I already know what to expect when I get there.

So what I instruct people to do is take your testimonials and salt and pepper them throughout the website, incorporate them as part of your presentation on the website.

For instance, if you have patients that come to you for sleep asthenia or IV sedation or they come to you for implants or they come to you just for general dentistry, cosmetic dentistry or they’re recapping and you have pages on these different services and these different applications, include them there because what they are now is they’re incorporate as part of the presentation.

They add validation and credibility to what we’re reading on a web page. We don’t have to expect visitors to our webpage to go seek out these testimonials, we have to put them front and center for them. So that’s one way to use them.

The other way to use them that I like the best is in dentistry, there’s this idea that we shouldn’t have to sell our services and you shouldn’t. Nobody likes to be sold, nobody likes to be a sales person, but what we can do is we can take a composite of all of these stories put together and provided to patients before they come into the practice and we actually make them prepared or we make them predisposed to knowing, liking and trusting us before they actually get to the practice.

And what we’ve actually seen in results is when a patient gets to the practice and they’ve already had the chance to get to know us, get to like us and have a somewhat of a trust with us, they find again that transfer of trust angel appearing from our existing patients.

They come to us a better patient, meaning they’re more prepared to hear about treatment plans. They’re less fee-resistant. So we don’t have to improve us necessarily, but we improve the quality for the qualification of the patients coming to us. So they are too really powerful.

You mentioned radio, television, print, advertising. I’ve actually created a full page print advertorials just out of the stories that we’ve captured from patients and turned them into an actual print article. So there’s, like I said, 33 different ways that we could use a testimonial, a story-based, a human interest story in advertising and marketing.

Kevin: Ron, just for the nuts and bolts of it, when the individual gives a positive testimonial, do you recommend you use their first and last name, do you recommend just initials or do you leave that on an individual basis when they sign the informed consent giving the health care provider permission to use the testimonial? What are the actual nuts and bolts in going about that?

Ron: That’s an excellent question. Yes, you do want to get their permission. For instance, when I interview questions, I’m actually getting their formal permission on a release, on a document that lets them know what we’re going to talk about, what we’re doing and how this is going to be used. We absolutely want to get their permission in written form, if possible, in verbal form and documented is the best way to do it to protect yourself from any kind of liability. I’m not an attorney and I’m not giving legal advice, but that’s how I approach it, is always get permission and any due diligence that I can to get the patient’s permission to go ahead and use that going forward.

Then, with regard to your question on how you use it, I always like to use their full name; first name and last name. And if possible, if we have it, we can use where they’re from, so if they’re in a specific city or so forth.

When we’re using that in let’s say a video for a website or a video for a DVD, let’s say for instance I’m in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio and let’s say for instance the dentist is in Cleveland but I actually come to that dentist from Akron, Ohio, which is about 30 or 35 miles away. Somebody who is familiar with the geography and they see that I’m from Akron, what happens, what we’re communicating unconsciously, subconsciously to them is hey, this person travels a long way to get to this dentist.

So I like to use as much information as we can about that patient. Name; first name, last name, where they’re from. Those would be the basics. There’s other stuff that you could add, but that’s absolutely a must so that you’re communicating.

By using first name and last name only, it communicates that this person is real. What I don’t like about using initials is they could be made up. It’s an authenticity.

Kevin: Ron, I can’t thank you enough for taking this evening and talking to us. I can tell you being around health care providers for over three decades, this kind of information is incredibly important to help us improve our image, to improve our business, to provide that thought leadership and expertise that we’re all trying to create to promote the best clinical, didactic and service type practice. \

Can you give our listeners a way to reach out? Is there the best way to get your book and learn the 33 ways to use super testimonials to improve care and service in our practices?

Ron: Absolutely. If you’re interested in the book, you can get that at www.bookontestimonials.com/book. If your listeners have questions and they want to submit specific questions that apply directly to them, they can go to www.askronsheetz.com and there they can post a question and submit it to me.

I get them personally so it’s not done through an assistant, those come directly to me. So those two sources that people can go to either get the book and see the strategies that I lay out, the 33 ways are in the book or they can submit to me directly those questions.

Kevin: Ron, thank you so much for helping Ascent Dental Solutions and helping our listeners improve care and service through the use of testimonials and I should say the correct use of testimonials. I really appreciate it and thank you so much for helping us out.

My name is Dr. Kevin Coughlin, owner and creator of Ascent-Dental-Solutions, with an emphasis on coaching, development, leadership and training. Thank you again for listening and I look forward to talking to you in the near future.

Setting up a good dental practice same as setting up a good business

June 13, 2017/in Customer Service, Leadership, New Dentist, Profitability, Values Over Profits /by Kevin Coughlin

“So how do I set up a good dental practice?”

When I meet colleagues or new dentists, it’s the first real question that gets put to me, after the hellos and “that’s-a-nice-shirt-you’re-wearing” chit chat.

It’s a great question. But sometimes the answer I give isn’t exactly what they expect.

The answer, or at least my version of it, is that setting up a good dental practice is exactly like setting up a good business.

My colleague Steve Parker is responsible for that observation and he’s absolutely correct.

So how do you set up a good business that just happens to be a dental practice?

It comes down to focusing on five areas:

Leadership
TeamBuilding
Money (finance)
Metrics (measurement for the business and systems)

Whether you be setting up a sole practitioner office or one in a DSO or MSO, the principles are the same. A DSO will provide the measurement systems and some of the team building tools. But in the end it’s up to you to provide inspired and inspiring leadership.

But here’s the rub. Most dental school graduates emerge from the hallowed halls of their academe wielding a dental drill like a champion but with a limited business acumen that borders on financial illiteracy.

It may explain why some find the allure of DSOs and MSOs enticing. Much of the marketing and business growth is left to the corporate head offices.

But let’s go back to those factors again, one by one…

Leadership: It’s about the buck stopping with you. It’s about standing behind your team members so they know you have their back. Remember, how you behave sets the tone and atmosphere of your entire practice.

Team Building: Your team can build you up if you build them up. Get them to understand that training is a lifelong pursuit. If one of them learns something in any given day, ask them to share it with the others. Encourage sharing of lessons learned and how they were learned them. In essence, you are their coach, showing them how to do the work, push them when needed and cheer them when they do a superb job.

Money (finance): This one is important if only to ensure a smooth flow of finances to keep the doors open.

Metrics (measurement for the business and systems): This is about where you steer your Good Ship Dental and why you’re doing it. If you decide to focus on getting new children patients, then that is where you’ll point your metrics and determine your success.

Is it really that easy? Well yes and no. Within each of the four areas noted above there are multiple areas for discussion and exploration.

But those four factors are the foundation of setting up a good Dental / Business practice.

If you want more direction on setting up a new dental practice, please give me a call.

E14: Podcast: Steve Parker and what dentists can learn from other industries

June 9, 2017/in Podcast /by Kevin Coughlin

Hello and welcome to Ascent Dental Radio. A program dedicated to the balance between the clinical aspect of health care and the business of health care. And now here is your host, Dr. Kevin Coughlin.

Kevin: Welcome. This is Dr. Kevin Coughlin. You’re listening to Ascent Radio. My website is www.ascent-dental-solutions.com with a focus on knowledge, consultation, development and training. Today’s podcast, we’re honored to have Mr. Steve Parker.

Mr. Parker has been in the dental industry since 2000, but he’s been in business for the last 30 years. He’s considered a thought leader and he’s the CEO of The Profitable Dentist and Excellence in Dentistry.

Mr. Parker, thank you so much for joining us on this podcast. I have so many questions and I can’t wait to listen to your responses. My understanding is you have a program called Five Star Dental Practice Coaching. It’s a program that you’ve been developing over the last 30 years with your expertise. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about that?

Steve: Sure, Dr. Coughlin. First of all, I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you again. As always, it’s a pleasure, and to speak with your listeners. The Five Star program grew out of literally 30 years and thousands of coaching and consulting clients that either I had or Dr. Woody Oakes had.

He’s the founder of Excellence in Dentistry, The Destin Spring Break Seminar, The Profitable Dentist Magazine. He was really one of the pioneers in the coaching movement in the last 70s and early 80s. What we’ve done is in my becoming involved with him and really, for lack of a better term, upgrading a lot of the content and the products and the coaching, was we determined that there were really five key elements that determined a good practice or determined a successful practice.

These aren’t really five elements that determine uniquely a dental practice, they’re five elements that really determine a good business. Essentially, the areas that we focus on are leadership, team building, money; meaning finance, metrics; meaning measure, just measure your business, and systems that you put in place.

So with Five Star Coaching, what we’ve done is try to break it down in more bite-size chunks and keep a dental business owner focused on those elements of their business, and then keep the clinical part of the business separate. In fact, one of the systems is a clinical committee where you discuss clinical things, as much as if you would in any business, you’re kind of discussing the operations part of your business.

We determined was if we could focus on these five things, get an honor to focus on these five things whether it’s a sole practitioner or it’s a small group, I’ve done a lot of consulting with large groups you’ll find that even in a group of 150, 200, 300 dentists, there’s still a business there. And these are really the five core elements that if you understand them, manage them, measure them and make these what you do every day, you have a very, very, very successful business.

Kevin: For our listeners, one of the reasons I was taken by Mr. Parker is he’s been involved, not just in the dental business, but you’ve also been involved with Fortune 500 companies. Can you tell us a little bit about your past experience and that expertise that you’ve now been able to bring to the dental profession?

Steve: That is a great question. One of the things that I learned, and my background is management finance, is business is fundamentally business no matter what it is you’re in. You have resources which are typically time, money and effort that you have to put towards a product or a result that you want for your business.

So if you’re in the plumbing business, the result you want is a lot more profitable plumbing jobs. If you’re a dentist, what you want are a lot more happy paying patients.

I grew up in some different industries. When I was very young, I got into the restaurant equipment industry. And it happened to be the time when companies were franchising; McDonald’s and Hardee’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken and Jack In The Box and instead of being one, two, three little restaurants, it now became 5,000 restaurants. One customer would do an expansion and it would be 15,000 restaurants, 15 new McDonald’s over this year.

You have to approach those differently than 15,000 individual restaurants. The infrastructure the way you approach it, the support systems, the management systems, the knowledge base and talent, all have to be different than if it’s a lot of individuals.

I sold that business and moved into the telecommunications infrastructure at a time when cellphones were just emerging. Again, you would have instead of everybody having a landline, and there were that many landlines around the country, suddenly everybody had a cell phone or two.

I read a statistic that Apple has now sold more iPhones than there are people since 2007 when they came out. So the infrastructure to address that is completely different than it is with everybody having a phone in their phone and a phone in their business.

What I see in dentistry is very much along the same growth pattern. While there are huge growth in groups, that doesn’t necessarily mean growth in giant groups, it can mean growth in small groups, in five or ten or twelve dental practice.

But at the end of the day what’s happening is the business of that profession is starting to override the clinical part of it. I personally don’t believe that’s compromising clinical principles, I think it just means giving the resources to the right people at the right place at the right time to do better dentistry.

So my background has been in a lot of industries that grew and aggregated and matured over time and I believe, interestingly enough, I’m living that again in dentistry. I see the same pattern than I saw over the past 30 years in other industries.

Kevin: I think what you’re referring to is the explosion of Dental Service Organizations or Dental Support Organizations, commonly referred to as DSOs and MSOs, Managed Service Organizations or Managed Support Organizations.

I’ve heard you talk and make presentations in the past. Perhaps you can explain to the listeners what your prediction is. What you think is occurring and how you think it’s going to evolve over the next 10 or 15 years.

Steve: Again, great question. I do a lot of interviews, I’m asked this question repeatedly, in fact, I would say it’s 80 plus percent of the time. At some point in the interview somebody says, “You’re a business guy, so are you pro or con, are you for or against DSOs?”

And my answer is always the same; I don’t know why you have to choose. A market allows for all kinds of different businesses and sizes of a business in a particular industry.

As long as you have a business that provides value to a customer and you can demand the price that you need to be profitable and stay around and give you a comfortable living, I think the sole practitioner, I don’t think they’re a dying breed, I think they have to evolve in a general sense.

I don’t think as a solo practitioner it’s a challenge to manage insurance filing and it’s a challenge to find employees that can do a lot of different things when the competition is maybe a group down the street that says, “Wow, this person is really good as an insurance manager, we’ll hire him or her away and we can pay a little more wage.”

What you’ve really done is trained your competition. I think you just have to be smarter in the way that you approach it as a sole practitioner. I think the same thing applies to somebody who gets together with a group and I’ve consulted and coached groups that are four, five or six docs who all struggled on their own but have done terrific as a small group.

They’ll be an ownership group of five or six and now they’re 25 or 30 practicing dentists, the rest of them are employees. I think that is a model that really didn’t exist 20 years ago, really didn’t exist 10 years ago, but it makes sense today. So they all can come out ahead.

But at the end of the day, the dentist working in a DSO or an MSO or a group are still dentists. They still have to meet certain standards. They still have standards of care. They still have to make their customers happy and want to come back as a business owner or you’re going to go out of business quickly. So the same fundamentals apply.

I think there’s room for sole practitioners, I think there’s room for large groups, I think they offer unique and different thing. And I think as we’ve talked in the past, the ones who are more entrepreneurial understand that.

I actually think that the sole practitioner as a future will be a lot more financially stable because they understand the nature of their business, therefore, they have to compete in a unique way that works for them, versus trying to copy a large DSO.

Kevin: I was going to say Steve, your presentation and program Excellence in Dentistry and The Profitable Dentist, you have a phenomenal seminar generally in April in Destin, Florida.

What I noticed is the attraction of younger dentists, more entrepreneurial dentists, dentists that know that they need to keep their clinical acumen up, but they’re smart enough and astute enough to realize that you have to have this marriage between excellent clinical care, excellent customer service, but you have to understand basic business. And each time I’ve had the opportunity to speak with you, I’ve learned something that’s valuable for business.

Is there a way or knowledge about upcoming seminars that you’re having or planning where the dental community can reach out and hopefully participate and listen to what your organization has to share and educate us in?

Steve: Sure. In fact, the 2017 Destin Seminar, which is in its 26th year, Dr. Oakes kind of pioneered the private dental seminar field, if you will, the theme for that is where are you taking your practice.

What we hope that communicates is, back to the earlier part of the discussion, is that you are the CEO of your practice. I’ve always said dental school taught you how to be a clinician and you can hone those skills for the rest of your life and you should, as anybody in any business should. You should always strive to get better in what you do in that vocation.

But they don’t teach you very much about how to run a business. And that’s the interesting thing about dentistry is, the vast majority for generations that will graduate are going to be business people, but you get very little business training. You come out with a lot of clinical skills but not many business skills.

So what I try to do and what we try to do with The Profitable Dentist and with, again, Five Star Coaching is to get you to understand the elements of a strong business and focus on that. With where are you taking your practice in Destin, the idea is to bring people in who can help you with clinical.

We always include — the ration has changed a little bit over the years, we’re probably at about 40 percent clinical because that’s what our attendees and readers and listeners ask for, but about 60 percent is your practice. The mechanics of running a dental business are becoming more in demand.

You hit the nail on the head about younger dentists or newer dentist. My experience is that newer dentists understand they’re in a business, they’re running a business and they want to get those kind of skills. So that’s really what we’re trying to provide more of.

There’s a lot of clinical content out there, we will continue to provide it, but what I’m getting asked for more and more everyday is how do I build over time a plan for my employees? I’m going to hire my second or third or fourth dentist and I want to quit kind of bungling through it, is there a form or a platform or a system or something that we can use?

There are, but again, this is an evolving piece of dentistry, the idea of small groups. So what we try to do is focus on that and provide the tools and resources that anybody who wants to — again, if they want to be a sole practitioner, we’re going to give them to you. If they want to be a small group, we’re going to help you. If they want to be an emerging larger group, we’ll give you those tools and resources too.

Kevin: Steve, at the beginning of this podcast we talked briefly about the Five Star Dental Practice Coaching program and you elicited five salient points. One of them was leadership, another was metrics, another was system.

In this podcast, if you were to stimulate our listeners, is there one particular point in each of those five categories that you would put the highest emphasis on? So if you were to say in leadership, is there a particular one quality that sort of trumps all the other qualities? The same with metrics, if you had to look at one metric, is there a way that you can summarize and stimulate our listeners to want to reach out, sign up for the program and learn more about it?

Steve: Sure, in fact, great question. Let me kind of go down the list real quick. I would say with leadership, I always try to leave each client with the understanding that you are the boss. That doesn’t mean that you’re bossy, that means that you are in charge, you make the decisions, be prepared to do that.

Too many times when I get into consulting or coaching, the dentist just wants to come in and be the dentist and leave the difficult business decisions up to an office manager or surprisingly, even front desk people, a lot of people who don’t have a vested interest in the profitability of the business.

So if you’re the boss, it doesn’t mean be bossy, it just means that everybody there needs to know that you’re the person in charge.

Team building; I would say to understand that your team is your most valuable resource. They will make you or break you. They can build you up or they can come in and go through the motions every day.

So the more your team is engaged and involved and in it with you that everybody is pulling in the same direction and that they see you investing in them as a team and treat them like a valuable asset, you’re going to get a lot more out of your team.

Money; the time value of money and cash flow are probably the two things that I coach most about or try to get through. Understand the nature of cash flow. That’s the lifeblood of a business. You need a good balance of cash coming in predictably and cash going out.

And when that becomes imbalanced and upside down, you again back to leadership, need to be the person in charge, address it immediately, and take actions to get that part of your business right.

I know it sounds easy and there are a lot of complications and nuances to it, but fundamentally, your eye needs to be on the flow of money coming in and going out.

Metrics: I always coach people to determine the important metric for their practice. So if your growth has been flat for three years and the most important thing for you is new patients, then that’s going to become the metric that you care about therefore, your team cares about.

If it’s patient retention, whatever you need to focus on. I typically say pick three. There are 103 but pick the three that are unique to your practice that you’ve decided you’re going to work on over the next year and those are the things that — I’ll put a little marker board back in the lab or the break area for the team and I’ll have the office manager write up every day whatever metric we’re working on.

So if we’re trying to grow new patients, I want everybody to see every day how many new patients we have for the month. If our goal is 20, I want somebody to walk in everyday and see a bunch of zeros and either they feel bad and do something about it or they don’t. Both of those are valuable things to know.

Systems: again, the same thing as metrics. You decide what’s important to you in terms of systems. Whether it’s clinical systems, marketing systems, finance systems, but everything in your practice the more systematic it is, the less you have to address it every day, the fewer surprises.

You decide what you’re going to do, put the system in place and then let it run. Visit it weekly or monthly, make corrections as necessary. But without a system, you’re going to have your staff coming to you for 100 little decisions every day and looking for approvals every day that a system would take care of for you.

Kevin: Those are great highlight points. Steve, if the listeners wanted to reach out, they wanted to sign up for your coaching program, they wanted to sign up for Excellence in Dentistry, the seminars, if they wanted to either publish in your magazine or read your magazine, The Profitable Dentist, what’s the best way for our listeners to reach out and get in touch with you and your organization?

Steve: There are several ways and one of the things that we do is The Profitable Dentist Magazine is free to any practicing dentist or licensed dentist in the country. You can subscribe to that online free at www.theprofitabledentist.com. Fill out a quick little form and you’ll start receiving it.

The next issue we just wrapped it up this morning so it’s on its way out and if you would like that, just give us your name, address and you’ll get the very next one. I can be reached at steve@theprofitabledentist.com. That’s probably the best way to reach me. Or you can call in and one of the young ladies that take care of our reception can help you. That number is 812-949-9043. Any one of those ways.

I get a lot of calls every day. I always feel it’s sort of a responsibility to talk to anybody who calls in with a quick question. I probably take two or three calls a day from young dentists who want to start a practice or again, a lot of the calls right now are about groups that want to start groups.

I’m more than willing to spend a few minutes on a phone call, even in an evening, and just give a little direction and some ideas, and a lot of times just put two people together.

Kevin: What I want to do is I want to give a sincere plug to you. I’ve been a practicing dentist and still a practicing dentist for over 33 years. I have over 150 employees, 14 locations. I have dealt with the business of dentistry, the strengths, the weaknesses, opportunities and threats that have been affecting our profession and I would consider you truly one of the best thought leaders I’ve had the opportunity to come across. And I want to personally take this time to thank you, your company and your organization.

A couple of years ago Dr. Woody Oakes called me after receiving my book and he really sat down and talked to me, he gave me a chance to go on your radio show, Driving Dentist or Dentist Behind the Wheel and it was an opportunity for me to share my own personal thoughts and my own personal experiences. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank Dr. Woody Oakes for not only helping me, but the thousands of other dentists.

And now that I see you in this position, I see you doing the exact same thing and I hope our listeners take the opportunity for this fantastic resource to just reach out, learn more, get involved with The Profitable Dentist and allow them to bring your practice and your personal life to a higher level of success and balance.

Steve, in our closing few minutes, is there anything you’d like to add?

Steve: First of all, thank you for that. It’s very surprising and appreciated. I would like to add again, dentistry is in a very high state of flux right now, I think. It’s a very evolving business and I think there are a lot of people out there who feel like it’s the end of a thing or end of something. And it very possibly is.

There’s an evolution that always takes place in business. I am extremely optimistic about the entire industry of dentistry. I’m extremely optimistic about anybody who is in dental school right now, graduating, looking forward, looking at their future, the opportunities that will present themselves and are now.

I can’t say enough how optimistic I am about being a dentist or about anybody being a dentist or being in this business in the next 20 years.

Kevin: Mr. Parker, from The Profitable Dentist, Excellence in Dentistry, you’ve been listening to Ascent Radio. I can’t thank you enough for using your valuable time to share your knowledge and expertise with our listeners. A personal thanks to you and your organization and to Dr. Oakes.

Thank you so much, Steve, for your time and expertise and I look forward to talking to you in the future.

Steve: Thank you, Dr. Coughlin. Likewise.

E13: Podcast: Jennifer Brown on diversity and inclusion

June 8, 2017/in Podcast /by Kevin Coughlin

Hello and welcome to Ascent Dental Radio. A program dedicated to the balance between the clinical aspect of health care and the business of health care. And now here is your host, Dr. Kevin Coughlin.

Kevin: Jennifer, welcome to Ascent Dental Solutions. My name is Dr. Kevin Coughlin and I’ve been providing podcast information for our audience now for some time with the help of Doug Foresta. I understand you’re an expert in inclusion. Can you give me a little bit of background about yourself, please?

Jennifer: Surely. Yes, I am Jennifer Brown and I‘ve run a firm for about a decade in the inclusion and diversity space. Meaning that we do consulting and training for mostly large institutions around developing their workforce and managing their workplace towards being more inclusive and also educating themselves about how to reach diversifying world from a marketplace perspective.

So looking at clients and customers, however those businesses define their external marketplace.

Kevin: Jennifer, what motivated you to go down this pathway? Was there something that happened in your career or something in your background that triggered this area of expertise

Jennifer: Yes, actually. I had a background in leadership development and I found that that topic really resonated with me exploring what leads to human potential being realized in our workplace. This is where we spend so much of our lives.

I have a degree in that, but I was also an opera singer and I have a master’s in voice. So I spent a lot of time on the stage, as you can imagine, and I really loved speaking to people and interacting with audiences about leadership.

But the missing piece, I think, occurred to me — I’m a member of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community. I have a partner of 19 years. I always thought that that kind of had nothing to do with my work as a leadership development expert and trainer.

And as I matured and learned more about how many people that identify as LGBT, and then how many women and others who are historically less represented in some of the companies that I consult to really feel on a day-to-day basis, I really found my voice as an advocate who’d felt marginalized and really troubled by certain things that had happened to me in my professional journey, as I retooled myself and became more of a leadership development professional. And just being aware of that experience that I had had of kind of minimizing my identity and parts of who I am and how many others really experience that on a day-to-day basis.

I just felt very called to focus my work in that space and be both a role model as a woman business owner, as an out LGBT business owner, but also somebody that could shine a light into organizations of all sizes on behalf of talent that really traditionally may feel they don’t have a voice in the equation.

Kevin: If you were to say over the ten years of your experience a common theme that you see in large and medium size and even small companies when they sort of miss the boat on inclusion, is it because of ignorance, is it because of lack of understanding, is it just they don’t even know they’re doing it? Is there something particular that you could tell the audience that you’re seeing with your decade of experience?

Jennifer: Absolutely. I like to say the proactive appreciation of diversity and the building of inclusive workplace cultures, it doesn’t just happen. It’s a very, very rare organization that can take its eye off that ball or be kind of not working on it and then have a workforce that, for example, if you ask them, felt very included on all levels and really that they could bring their full self to work. It’s just one of those things I think that we hunker down and focus on business as usual, we get very, very busy, we think all of this takes time.

We also assume I give everybody opportunity. I’m very equally minded or equality minded or I’m progressive politically. So of course I believe in these things and I think if there’s an assumption there, that good intent is actually going to create workplace environment outcomes. And that is not true, at all.

There have to be certain things said and done and they need to be consistent and they need to be somewhat overt to make sure that you’re communicating a message that states in a positive way what you stand for and what your workplace and your company stands for, for diversity and inclusion and what that really means to you. So I think those are some of the things.

The other thing that is pernicious is the role of unconscious bias. And that shows up — again, it’s unconscious, which is the problem. We raise it to consciousness and we talk about in our trainings everyone has it and we all see the world through our lenses and we filter things, not because we’re bad people, but because we need to make sense out of things and make decisions based on very little information.

That’s the world we live in. Unfortunately, some of those decisions are not always the right ones. And so unconscious bias is especially difficult with diversity, of course, because we don’t see ourselves, for example, hiring in our own image or promoting in our own image or seeking people that are similar to us and having community with them.

Therefore, we’re not being challenged to grow through how we manage difference between ourselves and others and that’s really where the richness lives. And that richness is really so good for companies too.

It creates more innovation, it creates more input, which actually can solve business problems in different ways. But we tend to be creatures of habit and the status quo and change is hard and sometimes threatening for some people.

I think there’s also a little bit of a misassumption that if I extend more opportunity proactively to others that somehow some of my opportunity is going to be lessened, but really DNI, as we call it, is a one plus one equals three scenario so it’s good for your people, it’s good for your business.

And if you are a leader that feels that way, you have to kind of think about it differently and think about what will be unleashed in your company if you were to prioritize it. And I don’t think we can really know that until you try.

Kevin: I’ll share with you a personal story. I’ve been practicing dentistry in western Massachusetts, a very small isolated area of the state and I’ve been doing that for about 35 years.

In the early 80s, I did a quality assessment, quality assessed form to see if patients were getting a positive feedback. And an African American young man named Jeff wrote down his comments, “I love your office but it’s a lollipop white land.” And I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. So I called him up and he goes, “Doc, I just want you to know that everything around here is lollipop white.”

And I said, “I don’t get it.” I went to a high school where there were no African Americans. I went to a college with not a lot of diversity in my opinion so I didn’t even realize what was going on.

The sum and substance of it is I actively sought out in the community African American and Hispanic employees because quite honestly, one of the practices that I had was in the inner city. Now I’m happy to say I have 150 plus employees, I have employees from 20 different countries, I have six different languages in my personal practice.

Although you shouldn’t do it for the monetary value, but quite honestly, there was a whole vast array of individuals that I wasn’t aware of, didn’t associate, didn’t even know they existed in the community because I was living in my own little box. That one gentleman who I consider a personal friend really opened the doors back in the early 80s.

And for some of our listeners, sometimes I think just as you said, you forget your surroundings and those surroundings I think can pay off in numerous ways, not just monetarily, but I feel pretty good. I always say to myself my office is like the United Nations. We have everything that you can imagine and we get along very well. We have our problems like any business, but not because of race or nationality, I’m happy to say.

Jennifer: Congratulations! That’s incredible. We often say in the corporate world, which is where I specialize, you’ve got to see it to be it. And that translates I think to customers in terms of who do they see when they enter your business, however you define that.

Do they feel they see someone that looks like them, that speaks their language either literally or figuratively, maybe it’s their cultural language? People really do make decisions based on that.

In my world, I’m always asking my clients who did you bring to that sales meeting? Who did you put in front of that prospect? And when they get the feedback, they’re shocked, “Oh, we didn’t get that piece of work and one of the reasons was that we sent five white guys from our sales team.”

They didn’t even think about it. Meanwhile, they’re selling to someone who represents a really diverse audience base or a diverse customer base. So more and more when business deals are made, the buyer I’d say, side is actually evaluating the seller in this scenario for even things as simple as who are you putting in front of me to speak to me. Do our values match? Do I want to do business with you? And it’s becoming increasingly important to have that reflection and that mirroring happen.

And you can’t just have one person in the corporate world that’s like there’s one person of color or there’s one LGBT person that’s sort of invited to every single meeting. And that scenario repeats itself and it’s very exhausting for the person who’s being tokenized, if you will.

So I often say too the whole game, like your practice, you’ve grown a critical mass to the point where you have lots of different people, of different communities and you’re not overly relying on one to be a spokesperson for an entire community, which is never accurate, but you’re also no unduly burdening somebody with that.

It’s really exciting to feel that there’s pressure being applied in the business world in that way, other than it is the right thing to do, of course. Diversity, inclusion is, but there is such a tangible market scenario going on that really impacts the bottom line and that tends to really convince people that need convicting on this topic.

Kevin: Let me ask you this, in your business, how do you use measurements or metrics to find out the success or failure of your business? I know you’ve gone into very large Fortune 500 companies. Is this something that you do month to month, every other month, week to week? What would be a typical program that you would suggest?

Jennifer: For sure, metrics are really important. The hard thing with diversity and inclusion, especially inclusion, is that it is a world of soft metrics. It’s a world that can kind of be measured best with qualitative feedback and information. My favorite saying is “culture eats strategy for breakfast” — it’s a Peter Drucker quote — and culture in that case means workplace culture. It’s this lightning in a bottle, it’s an intangible, it’s difficult to pin down, everyone has a different definition of it and so the way we capture the diversity side and the inclusion side is kind of different.

Diversity side is your metrics around representation in your workforce. It is literally looking by ethnicity, race, gender and sexual orientation, although that’s very difficult to measure as is disabilities, very difficult because those are often invisible aspects of diversity and yet they’re very important to be able to capture. Corporate America specifically has a really hard time getting people to disclose and self-identify in their HR systems, especially for sexual orientation and disabilities.

Anyway, so measuring diversity tends to be around workforce demographics mainly and historically. And that’s still important, but I think that demographics are a lagging indicator of what does the culture feel like for people who have been hired into this company and who are endeavoring to stay and build their careers and are deciding do I feel comfortable here. And that’s really on inclusion side and that can be measured through employee engagement surveys that ask very pointed questions about do you feel welcomed and heard in this environment, do you feel your input is considered and honored, do you feel you have access to decision makers, do you feel you have a voice.

You can ask all those questions and if you also ask demographic questions, you can actually cut the data and look at who is answering the same question very differently by diversity dimensions. And to me that’s where it gets really interesting. If you ask women if they feel they have equal opportunity for promotion and career opportunities and you ask men the same question, you are almost always going to see a difference in their answers. But you have leaders meantime who say, “Oh, everybody has equal opportunity here.” So you’ve got this understanding gap.

And it’s interesting, if you ask the men if the women have equal opportunity, the men will say in higher numbers, yes they do have equal opportunity. The women will answer that question differently. So there’s even a perception gap between the genders and there’s an assumption I think that I find mostly among men and also among white people, frankly, that we work in meritocracies and that hard work is rewarded. And that if we just operate under that principle that everything is going to just work out fine. That’s unfortunately not true.

Kevin: Typically, Jennifer, when you go into a company large or small, do you start with the leaders, the CEOs, do you start with the employees or do you start with the HR department? How is that strategy in your company spelled out?

Jennifer: If it’s a larger company, there often is an office of diversity or maybe there’s one brave soul who has that newly added to their title, bless them. They got the blessing to go forward and kind of lead the effort but they need to corral various senior level leaders and also sort of bottoms-up employee voices and they also typically will found a diversity council of some kind. Which means a diversity council is best with more senior people on it who are passionate about driving the process for an organization.

Sometimes in a smaller company that diversity council may be the CEO and the executive team. Sometimes CEOs and executive teams are better kept in kind of an advisory role but not necessarily rolling up their sleeves and doing the work like a diversity council really should be.

In smaller companies or even companies of all size, actually, you have to think about the bottoms-up and the tops-down imperative of the conversation. The bottoms-up is really the voice of the employee and the mobilization and engagement of the bottom half of the organization say in the conversation.

So how we achieve that dialogue is we do focus groups, we might do interviews, we might do a survey and we’ll ask them those questions that we talked about earlier. And at the top of the house, simultaneously, you’re trying to figure out is the CEO onboard, are the executives onboard or not. Is there a lot of resistance to this idea? How might we educate about why this is good for business?

And that’s where your business case is really helpful because you have to speak that language sometimes with executives who just aren’t very familiar with this topic or assume, again, like I said earlier, they’re going to, I don’t know, resist because they have a bad associate with it or stereotypes about the topic. They might think it’s affirmative action, they might think they’re going to be forced to abide by quarters.

There’s a lot of assumptions about this conversation out there when really the bottom line about it is actually that we need diversity in our workforces and we need to lead that diversity in an inclusive manner in order to get the best contribution from people and I don’t know a leader alive that doesn’t want that.

Kevin: Jennifer, if our listeners wanted to get in touch with you, what would be the best way for them to reach out to you and your company?

Jennifer: Yes, I would love to hear from everyone. We’re Twitter, really active on Twitter @jenniferbrown. I’m also on LinkedIn, Jennifer Brown Consulting, which is the name of my company. And we have a new book that you mentioned I think earlier it’s called Inclusion: Diversity, the New Workplace & the Will to Change. If you want to pick up a copy, we’re requesting that people go and buy it on November 22nd, which is the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, because we’d like to get a diversity and inclusion book into the bestseller category. So we’re really pushing everyone towards purchasing on November 22nd.

And then if you have some consulting needs and you need some guidance for your organization, send us an email at info@jenniferbrownconsulting.com and we’d love to hear from you. If you’re interested in me as a keynoter, we actually have set up a personal brand page for me with some videos on it and a speaker kit and that site is www.jenniferbrownspeaks.com. Sorry that was a lot of places to go.

Kevin: I can’t tell you how insightful the interview was. I found it engaging and as always, I always learn much more each time I do one of these interviews. I wish you the very best with your book, Inclusion. And for our listeners, November 22nd is the date to get that book in as a bestseller. Jennifer, thank you so much for taking the time today and congratulations on your outstanding career and keep up the good work.

Jennifer: Wow, thank you so much. Thanks for this opportunity.

Kevin: You’re quite welcome. You’ve been listening to Ascent Dental Solutions where its focus is on knowledge, information, education and training. I want to thank our guest today, Jennifer Brown, and her outstanding information and let’s all try to do a little better. Thank you again for listening and I look forward to talking to you very soon. Thank you.

Marketing an essential part of running a dental practice

June 6, 2017/in Corporate Dentistry, Leadership, Profitability /by Kevin Coughlin

E11: Podcast: Jerry Jones talks marketing and profitability

June 1, 2017/in Podcast /by Kevin Coughlin

Hello and welcome to Ascent Dental Radio. A program dedicated to the balance between the clinical aspect of health care and the business of health care. And now here is your host, Dr. Kevin Coughlin.

Kevin: My name is Dr. Coughlin, owner and developer of Ascent Dental Solutions with a focus on knowledge, consultation, training and development. In today’s podcast, we’re honored to have Mr. Jerry Jones.

He is from the Oregon region and has been in the dental business for over 20 years and has a fantastic practice out on the west coast and he has some novel ideas in how to improve our practices and help develop an outstanding dental mission statement along with dental organization.

Jerry, it’s a pleasure to have you here today. Can you give us a little bit of information and background about yourself?

Jerry: Sure, you bet. It’s my pleasure and I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to be on your podcast.

The thumbnail sketch is I’ve been in dentistry for a little over 20 years. I’ve owned a dental office for 14, started it from scratch. No patients, no doctor, no staff, just a sweet pool of dental equipment. I’ve built a few dental offices over the years and sold a couple.

I’ve built and sold a number of other companies as well, but predominantly my businesses today revolve around the dental industry. I have a company that works with dental practices to increase patient retention and patient attraction, so putting new patients in the ops, so to speak. I also have a company that is a dental office franchise business called Wellness Springs Dental and we’re now franchising dental offices in 26 states.

I love dentistry, it’s pretty clear. I spent my life in it. I was at my office today for the usual time I’m in my dental office between 30 and 45 minutes a week. I run the majority of the business from home. I’ve got a great team and I just stay out of their way and I let them reach their potential. So that’s a quick thumbnail sketch.

Kevin: Let me ask you some questions about the franchisee and franchise in general. Is there a general plan that differentiates health care franchises from other types of franchises

Jerry: That’s a great question. I’ve never had that one before, but that’s a good question. Yes. Here we are in health care and the delivery of service in health care is such an intimate relationship-based business, if you want to call it that, versus say franchising a restaurant.

I just heard today, for example, that I believe it was former Cleveland Browns or Shaquille O’Neil, I can’t remember who it was, one of the big basketball players and I believe it was the gentleman — his name escapes me, but one of the top players in NBA right now for Cleveland.

Kevin: You’re not talking about Michael Jordan, are you?

Jerry: No, not Michael Jordan, although I think he’s in the restaurant business as well, but another well-known NBA player just purchased a franchise that sells donuts. That’s not really a high touch high experience business you’re going in to get fat. Let’s just be honest: they test good and people like to eat them. It’s not delivery of a health care service.

So the difference between the two is that franchise in health care has to maintain that relationship aspect, that relationship component that in a service business it’s nowhere near that deep of a relationship, if you will.

So I think there’s a big difference between the two and I don’t think because one is successful in franchising a restaurant they would automatically be successful in franchising in the healthcare industry. I think it’s a totally different ballgame, but that’s my opinion.

Kevin: Typically, my experience with franchise is roughly the owner of the franchise is taking between 11 and 14 percent of profit or gross revenues. Is there a formula that your particular system advocates?

Jerry: Yeah. We have a formula and that’s based on a percentage of income, gross receipts, if you will. In this case, it’s collection in a dental practice. So the franchise in exchange for a percentage of the gross receipts or collections, if you will, deposits, the franchise provides a huge number of services.

It’s not just coaching, it’s not just consulting, it’s not just here is what you need to do to be successful to attract new patients or here’s what you need to do to retain existing patients. It’s an incredibly vast offering for franchisees.

So the percentages, when you begin to compare when a dentist purchases is ala carte in a solo practice, you’re probably looking at about a 16 to 20 percent value versus the eight percent that a franchise requires for royalty. So there’s a big spread between — which there should be — a big spread between value received and actual costs to the franchisee.

So it’s a typical formula when it comes to compensation to the franchisor. The franchisee benefits are vast and we would probably need a full day to go through them all and that’s absolutely no joke.

Kevin: In your experience, Jerry, about what percentage of the gross revenues or net revenues do you apply towards marketing?

Jerry: That’s going to really be dependent a lot upon where that particular practice is in its development, its growth curve, if it’s a start-up practice versus a mature practice versus one that is in a serious growth mode. And I’ll cover all three.

A start-up practice, depending upon the area, you’re looking at a minimum of $6,000 to $10,000 a month. The reason why there’s no percentages, there’s no percentage of collections you had established. So you’re looking at 6 to 10 grand a month and up, depending on how stiff the competition is, cost of media because that varies from market to market and dental demand.

Obviously, the higher the dental demand, the easier it is to get your ads to work and fill your appointment book.

If you’re looking at a practice that’s in hyper growth mode, like mine is right now, we have four doctors and we just added two, I’m spending between 15 and 20 grand a month. I can’t tell you what that relates to as a percentage simply because I’m hamstrung by FDC constraints due to the franchise so I can’t share revenue numbers with folks any longer at my practice.

But we’re spending a good amount of money each month to drive patients in. For us, we’re looking at spending anywhere between $50 and $100 to acquire a new patient. That’s really what our formula is and that’s dependent upon the media as well. So hyper growth mode, a person could be spending anywhere from 5 to 15 percent of collections just depending upon how quickly they want to grow and what their budget is.

Mature practice, you really should be able to get by with five percent. I can’t imagine dedicating a whole lot more to that, especially if you’re focused on internal marketing and referrals which most dentists claim they are.

Most in fact, have no system in place for it and they’re miserable at creating systems and keeping them intact to general referrals and even holding them accountable. So every dentist in America that has a staff of one, two, three, four or five should be getting one, two, three, four or five referrals a month from each person.

If you have a staff of ten, you should have ten referrals a month just from your team alone. That’s not asking a whole lot. And if you’re a great dentist, your team loves your work and they trust you, why wouldn’t they be referring one person a month to you? It’s very little to ask considering the cost of business cards.

Kevin: In your expertise, Jerry, with the $6,000 to $10,000 earmarked for marketing, and I know that’s an average depending on the market and the development of the particular practice, what do you find is the most effective means of marketing?

Jerry: Let’s talk retention, so in other words, keeping patients in the practice. That’s going to be the least expensive of all, which is just providing a great experience and communicating with them on a regular monthly basis through a printed newsletter. That’s number one in my book for retention.

Number two, for patient attraction, right now Kevin I got to tell you that the number one thing that we do in offices all over the United States from Long Island, New York to San Diego, California, from Bellingham, Washington which is all the way near the Canadian border all the way down to Sandestin, Florida, we’re seeing newspapers and the use of free standing inserts to be our number one media.

I can cite two cases just from the last week. Dr. Harold in Long Island, New York generated 15 new patient phone calls the first day his newspaper ad (free standing insert) hit. Another doctor in Toledo, Ohio, Dr. Amber Leer, we’ve generated over 100 phone calls on two different drops of free standing inserts. And you’re looking anywhere between $1,200 per drop to maybe $1,500 or $2,000 per drop.

Drops are relative. I’ll explain what I mean by that. A typical newspaper will do a minimum free standing insertion of about 10,000 pieces. The national average is 10 cents a piece for printing and distribution.

So you’re looking at the cost of $1,000 for 10,000 free standing inserts distributed and printed. So it’s dirt cheap and they’re extremely effective and the best part is nobody wants to use them because everybody thinks all patients live online, which is a bunch of BS and we prove it every day. So we’re killing it with newspapers and we have been for years. So that’s probably one of the best kept secrets for new patient attraction in the United States.

Kevin: Jerry, that’s a good segue for me. As you know, I have about 150 employees, 14 offices here in western Massachusetts and constantly are struggling with the trials and tribulations of owning and running and growing a business successfully.

Whether any type of marketing you choose, and right now we’re talking about these inserts or drops, obviously no matter how many calls you get, you have to have an excellently trained and motivated staff.

Could you explain in your model how much time is devoted to training, modeling, role playing, et cetera, to convert those phone calls to actual scheduled appointments that keep the appointment and turn into revenue and successful care and treatment?

Jerry: Ideally, there is initial training for each and every individual that’s answering the phone and that goes for a DA who is cross training and fills in on occasion or that goes for a full time front office person or an office manager who on occasionally answers the phone.

All of our employees go through a ten point phone training system. It’s ten CDs in length, it’s part of my ClearPath Society membership for members here at Jerry Jones Direct. They go through that training, they have a workbook to complete, they have a test to take.

And then by each phone in my office is a flipchart that instructs them exactly how to answer the phone and how to build rapport as fast as possible, which means trust with the caller, with our guest. And then from there each individual is responsible for about an hour of continuing education on phone training every month. That does not include, by the way, reviewing the phone calls that come into our office and coaching on an as-needed basis.

So during that month there may very well be an opportunity of four, five, six calls where we’re going to sit down with our front office folks and go, “Okay, let’s listen to this call together. How do you think it went? Where were the challenges? Where did you have a problem?” And we take them through and we coach them on those.

And I’ve got to tell you, if any dentist out there is spending any more than $1 a month on advertising their practice and trying to attract new patients or just trying to retain the existing patients they have, if they are not training their team on the phones, they might as well just had given me the check and we’ll split the difference.

It’s really a waste of money to spend money on marketing and then having people that are not trained answering your phones. Not only that, it’s answering your phones before 8:00 in the morning, in other words, it’s 7:00 somebody should be ready to answer that phone all the way up until 7:00 or 8:00 at night.

Because right now with the active marketing that we’re doing, we have people calling on Saturday, on Sunday, it’s 7:00 at night, it’s 6:30 in the morning. I want that damn phone answered. I’m not spending money for fun.

Every dentist in America should be as insistent as I am about that process because look, money doesn’t grow on trees. It’s hard to make money in a dental business and we shouldn’t be pissing our money away through advertising and these driving calls and never going to answer.

Because I can show studies, I can show just data on my own interface here that I’m staring at on my computer screen right now, I can show you calls that are not answered that those people do not and they will not call back.

You get one shot and if you’re not answering the phone live as often as you possibly can and expecting your employees to answer the phone on the weekends, just send me your money. I’ll take better care of it than the media will. I’ll take better care of it than your team will because they’re not answering the phones. That’s my soapbox moment on phones which ring.

Kevin: Jerry, I had the pleasure to read an excellent article about you in the Profitable Dentist fall issue. A beautiful article. If the listeners out there haven’t received the Profitable Dentist, it’s an excellent magazine started by Dr. Woody Oakes and Mr. Steve Parker, two extremely intelligent gentlemen who’ve worked very hard to improve care and service in the field of dentistry. Can you expound, as we get close to ending here, on the acronym ACE and what it means to you and how it’s helped your business?

Jerry: We’re not talking about card games, are we?

Kevin: No.

Jerry: This is a take home for everybody that’s listening to the podcast. We are in a sea of sameness right now. Every dental office in the United States looks the same, smells the same, acts the same and unless you’re willing and able and interested in being different, unique and standing out, you’re not going to be attracting the patients that you should be.

So there’s a reason why corporate dentistry, chained dentistry, whatever label you’d like to put on it and I think it serves the purpose and serves the place, but if you’re worried about competing against them, you need to use this idea of ACE.

It was developed by a friend of mine Matt Zagula, a client actually of mine. A phenomenal marketer and great salesman, but Matt developed this to differentiate himself in the sea of sameness that he was in. He was in a very competitive industry and Matt realized that there’s three things that set people apart and what it does is it takes you from being a what to a who.

There’s a lot of dentists out there, that’s the what, but if you want to stand out and be different, you want to be a who. You want to be somebody. So ACE gets you there.

ACE stands for Authority Celebrity and Exclusivity. Using the ACE principle you can differentiate you and your practice from these massive numbers of other dentists and dental practices out there that are competing for your patients or competing for patients. Example, and this is probably the most visible example that everybody on this podcast will understand, and that simply is look at Dr. Oz. Dr. Oz may have incredible clinical skills, but then again he may be just average as far as physicians go. You and I don’t know. But what we do know is that he is somebody that is important and he has developed a phenomenal practice where there is a waiting list to get in and he’s done it through media and through differentiation.

He’s used and capitalized on the principles of authority, celebrity and exclusivity. Authority; he’s written how many books at this point? I don’t even know. Two or three or four major books. He’s on TV constantly. Everybody knows his name. I mean, Oprah essentially made the guy a star.

So he really has relied on authority, he’s now probably America’s top doctor as far as recognition goes. Celebrity; when you hang out with Oprah and any of the other stars that are on TV that you have as guests, that builds your celebrity.

Exclusivity; you’re not getting into his office unless you got a big fat checkbook or you know somebody. So that is a way to build a practice that is in high demand, can charge whatever it wants and is never concerned about attracting patients because you’re relying on that principle of ACE.

And I would let every one of your listeners know if you want to differentiate, the first thing you can do is write a book. And books are easy. They are a lot easier than you think. I’ve written, I don’t know, seven or eight of them at this point. I don’t even know. I’ve lost track because I don’t really care, but I’ve written a lot of books.

They’re not hard to write and as long as you write them for the sixth grade level and you have a way to distribute them to get the books into the hands of potential patients, that’s the name of the game. So that’s ACE. A phenomenal principle if folks are willing to tap into it.

Kevin: Jerry, I can’t tell you, I know how busy you are and I appreciate so much you taking the time for tonight’s podcast. Can you allow the listeners how and what is the best way for them to reach you if they have questions or they’re interested in your franchise?

Jerry: Sure, you bet. I’m going to give two websites and my email address. I’ll give my email address first, it’s jerry@jerryjonesdirect.com. By the way, I answer every single email. I get hundreds of emails a day, but I answer every single email. It might take me a few days, but I will always answer.

Two websites to go check out; if you’re interested in patient attraction or retention, go to www.jerryjonesdirect.com. In other words, if you want to attract more new patients and keep more in your practice, go to www.jerryjonesdirect.com. Get on our email list and you’re going to get a bunch of great information from us on a regular basis.

If you’re interested in taking your practice to the next level and interested in having someone help you build a series of practices, whether it’s one or whether it’s 350. My partner actually has 350 health care practices around the United States and I’ve got another partner who has a 26 operatory practice up in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. He’s absolutely crushing it, doing multiple six figures a month on his own, in addition to the three or four dentists he has working in his 26 ops.

So we’ve got some phenomenal systems and a phenomenal leadership team at Wellness Springs Dental Franchise and you can go to www.wellnessspringsdental.com to learn more about the franchise.

Kevin: As always the case, I usually always learn a lot when I do these podcasts and today is no exception. Terrific speaking with you and thank you so much for volunteering your time and promoting health care and dentistry in particular. I wish you the very best and thank you so much for providing your knowledge and expertise.

Jerry: My pleasure.

Kevin: My name is Dr. Kevin Coughlin, owner and developer of Ascent Dental Solutions, where the focus is on knowledge, consultation, development and training. I would like to send out a personal thank to Doug who is promoting and continues to promote the advantageous use of podcast in health care. Thank you Doug for your outstanding commitment to education and promoting the betterment of health care and in particular, dental care.

Thanks again for listening. My name is Dr. Kevin Coughlin.

Profitability rises when focus is on patient

May 18, 2017/in Customer Service, Leadership, New Dentist, Profitability /by Kevin Coughlin

Early decisions in a dental career are the most crucial

May 17, 2017/in Customer Service, Leadership, New Dentist, Profitability, Values Over Profits /by Kevin Coughlin

New dentists don’t often think of themselves as business people. But that’s exactly what they are. Whether you are starting your own practice, buying into a practice or joining an established team as an employee, your decisions are all primarily business decisions.

And the choices you make at the beginning of your career are some of the most important you’ll ever have to make.

When you leave dental school you are ready for patient care. But what about career care? What business prep have you received? I can tell you that when I left school it was very little and that hasn’t changed much.

I was out on the street with a DDS and not much else.

Thirty-four years later, I have 14 dental offices, 23 dental associates and over 150 employees.

I learned a few things over those years. Today I coach young dentists, so they don’t have to figure out the toughest part of the job – the business part.

I still practice dentistry day after day. Oral surgery, implant surgery, TMJ, orthodontics, endodontics, periodontics, fixed and removable prosthesis: I do it all. I can do this because I learned how to implement processes and procedures that make the business part work efficiently.

I talk to new dentists all the time and I get the same questions over and over again.

“Do I open my own practice?”

“Should I take over a practice from another dentist or join a corporate practice?”
“What should I consider before signing a contract?”

“How can I research a practice and learn more about it’s potential for growth?”

These are all great questions and I wish a simple FAQ would do the trick. But every dentist’s situation is different. While some are more entrepreneurial, others might prefer to clock in and clock out in time to hit the golf course a couple of times a week.

Defining your goals and then mapping out a career plan to reach them is something I enjoy doing.

If you’re interested in this specialized career guidance, take a look at my dental coaching program and I will help you match your plan to your goals.

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