“Beyond The Chair” (Part 3 of 3): “The ‘Tidal Wave’ That All Dentists Are Facing and Why You Can NOT Afford To Ignore It!”

Welcome to Week 3 of our new series, “Beyond The Chair”. We discuss issues facing the dental practice owner, and how to stay competitive in your market.

This week, here’s what you’ll learn:

• Why thinking like a patient (not a doctor) will give you the insight you need to appeal to more patients and get more case acceptance
• The “Pointed, Apex Tidal Wave” that all dentists are facing in 2017-18, and why you absolutely can NOT afford to ignore it
• The power of Severability, and why it can give you more leverage over your time and money
• The real secret behind working less, getting more free time, and selling your practice in years…not decades (hint: NO ONE is talking about this)
• And lots more…

Click “PLAY BUTTON” Below To Watch The Video OR Read The Transcription Below (if you prefer to read): If you’re having trouble viewing this video Click Here

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Transcription of Part 3:

Benjamin: I think that something important for you to do as you’re watching this is to step out of being a dentist for now and be a consumer. Think about it from the perspective of not if you need a dentist, but if you need a service provider. Let’s say you need a plumber or a pool guy…what is it that you do as a consumer to vet that person.

That’s what your potential customers and clients are doing. They’re doing it [to] you. That’s why you could be the best[-qualified] dentist in town, and nobody knows it because of everything you just said.

Graig: Absolutely. Yeah, I think right now, you’re at a very, very, very pointed apex right now in dentistry.

I think you know the numbers are apparent. I mean, incomes are going down, private practices are getting either bought out or broken and there’s a lot of large corporate and private entities coming into marketplaces because they understand there’s a lot of money in dentistry.

The sole practitioner – I don’t mean to sound you know offensive here because it’s not meant to be that way, but you’re not much of a threat. I mean, a word-of-mouth practice against someone who has a marketing budget knows how to spend that money, like a corporate or a large private practice. You’re showing up to a fight that you don’t have the weapons to win. And I think now we’re at Apex we’re sitting on the side-lines is really not an option anymore.

I’ve been saying that for a while, but it’s sort of really coming to that climax now where I’ve been really warning our subscribers and our list of folks to follow us and our customers as well, like “Hey, this tidal wave is really building right now!”

I think it’s important for everyone to have a wakeup call and understand that you have to put some money into marketing and selling your practice, because it’s sort of like that thing where one day you wake up and you look and you’re like, “Where did all my money go? Where did all my patients go?”

And we all have bad months and there are ebbs and flows to every business and every practice and every market is slightly different.

But you can’t ignore the fact that you need to really make yourself the best that you can be right now. Invest some money in the marketing and selling of your practice because the competition is doing it. They’re doing a really good job of it because, [in] dentistry, let’s face it – they hire firms like ours to know exactly what they’re doing. They’re not giving it to a staff member to try to mess around for two hours a week. They’re really investing in it properly.

Benjamin: To that point and stepping aside a little bit. One of my favorite blog posts we’ve put out, that you’ve written, and it [actually] had very little to do with specifically dentistry, was about how to run your business.

Graig: Right.

Benjamin: And I think one of the biggest mistakes that dental practice owners and doctors make is that they think they need to do everything in order for it to work. And there are reasons behind that obviously, but a big part of this is (and it’s trite) but worry about running your business not doing every little thing to make the business run because [that’s] not scalable.

This is a big part of the blog post: how do you think the little guys become big players? They learn how to outsource, they learn how to offload writing to other people so that they can focus on the business, not [be] in the business.

Graig: Right, and I think that’s important.

Quite frankly, even if you don’t want to grow your practice, and say you’re happy with how it is, you can retire in fifteen years and you’re on track or whatever that is. I think when you do those things and you work in a way that’s efficient, you don’t try to be the jack of all trades.

I think part of that is you become more profitable by default because you make better decisions based upon the fact that you hire experts to do so. Because, let’s face it…if you’re a dentist, you went to dental school and that’s your specialty. You didn’t go get an M.B.A, right. And so really, you have to lean on others to help you. It’s sort of like having a really good board of directors, right? You have a really good company that does your internet, your dental software…you have different folks that do different things that you outsource too that makes you more efficient and more profitable.

And the reason I say that is because you know everyone has a dollar per hour figure that’s associated to especially a dentist should know their dollars per hour and we really don’t want to be spending 10-15 hours a week messing around on Google either. That’s not really a good use of your time. That should be time spent either working on a business in a private setting, taking a vacation, spending time with friends and family – whatever that looks like.

But the flip side to that is the reason it becomes more profitable is because when you outsource something that is a cost, that is essentially severable. You can get rid of that as opposed to hiring an employer or doing it yourself.

[Let’s say] you bring someone in who is going to be your Marketing Director in a practice. Well, now we have payroll and insurance and “I’ve got to manage this person” Then there’s the culture of what that is.

Well, if you outsource it to company like ours, essentially the cost is less, the management is easy because they’re the experts and you’re more profitable because you don’t have another large overhead employee sitting in your business trying to do those things.

Benjamin: And it’s really a peace of mind thing if you hand that [over to an expert].

Graig: Which we hear that all the time.

Benjamin: Yeah. If you [do this yourself], you’re spending ten to fifteen hours a week trying to figure out the algorithm and stay on top of it.

Graig: Or a staff member trying to figure all that stuff out too.

Benjamin: And once you hand that off to somebody else and you’re confident in their expertise because you’re seeing the results, what can you do with those ten to fifteen hours a week? Can you bill more hours? Take on more patients? Does that grow the ability to bring more into your practice, or does it give you the chance to go play golf?

Graig: You have to relax a little bit and then you get that stress off your body.

Benjamin: [You could even] spend more time with your kids or even go on a vacation a day or two early as a result.

Graig: Some of our clients — we talk to them quite a bit. It’s almost like clockwork; we hear you guys tend to sleep better at night because it’s sort of that insurance policy that you have that is there that just takes care of you. If something changes or something happens, we know it way before you know it and you don’t have to worry about [it]. You can focus on the business, doing good Dentistry, and really making yourself more profit in your business because without that, you really don’t have a business and you can’t retire on time. [With] all those things going on, you can’t invest in growing your business if you’d like to.

Benjamin: Yeah; absolutely.