What's up guys? I hope that all is well. I actually wanted to jump on today and talk to you a little bit about what happens with teams when you start to scale and grow. I actually just received a message from ... and they were saying that as their practice is growing, now that they're implementing all of these great strategies, the practice is growing, there more patients. And they're needing to actually hire more team members. And so the question is, how do we prevent people who have been there for a while, getting a little bit concerned. Maybe worrying about their job security. And so I wanted to talk to you guys a little bit about that.
Actually, what I'm going to do is talk to you about what happened inside of my practice, because the same thing actually happened inside of my practice. So as we've been implementing all of our strategies to better serve our patients, giving them more great experiences. Such as the warm peppermint scented towels, and the complimentary hand and arm massage, giving them headphones and iPads to tinkle with the sound. And generally just taking care of them, as well of the things that we've been doing to showcase our practice on social media and Facebook.
We've been growing extremely fast. I actually have two other doctors in my practice. We're going to be adding on a third, and so what's happened is that as we have started to scale, and we have started to get busier, we've had to add on additional team members, and so we had, as all practices have, had to have a talk with our team and for me, having that talk with my team, was letting them know that I am so excited about where we're going to and where we're growing to, and the fact is that if it were me alone, working and we had a certain number of patients, I probably would only need one assistant, and I'd probably only need one person up front and maybe a hygienist. But as I start to grow, there starts to be more patients, then what we have to do is continue to expand to be able to serve patients at the highest level, which means that we need to make sure that we're getting enough team members so that our current team members are not being overwhelmed and stretched.
Now one thing that's super important when you start having this conversation is to really find out what your team members' greatest contribution is, and what we have discovered throughout the years is that there are certain people who are really good at being leaders and managers. There are certain people who really don't want that responsibility, but they have other things that they can actually contribute with. So we have one person who is actually an assistant, and she loves doing outreach, she's super involved in her church, and so we gave her a leadership role, not to train necessarily the other assistant, but her role was to be the Community Outreach Manager and to actually find different schools that we could go to and in doing so that actually empowered her. And so one of the things that I encourage you to do is really look at your team members and see what their strengths are.
One of my other team members who's at the front desk, she's really, super outgoing, and she's not afraid to ask people for video testimonials and so we had her to own that, and we actually had her to own reaching out to strategic partners to be able to create some really cool social media campaigns where we would give away prizes that they donated. Right? So now she's like a pseudo, you know we haven't given her the title or maybe we have, she's the Director of Marketing, but she's really somebody at the front desk who takes phone calls and checks patients in and out. But she's been able to be given a different role. So as you're looking at growing and scaling, if you've got great team members, it's always great to say like, what would you like to do more of or what is your special gift or talent? And then from there you can shift them into that position.
Now as you're growing and scaling, what you may realize is that you have to hire people who are below the skill set of your existing team members, and you actually very likely are going to hire people that are at a higher skill set than your current team members, and for certain team members that might make them a little bit nervous. But one conversation that's super important for you to have with your team is that inside of a business, no one is more important than anyone else.
And I often tell the story that for me, I feel and I truly believe that as a doctor, I am not more important than anyone else because if Mr. David was not there. Mr. David is the person who actually cleans the windows in our office. He sweeps the floor. He sterilizes the instruments and so if Mr. David was not there and the office was really dirty or the windows were very dirty, it would really affect my day. If the instruments were not clean, I would not be able to see patients. If my assistant was not there, it would be really hard to get through my day, for example, if I've got a bunch of crown and bridge patients because she's the one that does the temporaries. So what we realize is that in order for us all to achieve the same objective of the practice, we all have to have a different role, and in doing so we will be able to make our contribution which is biggest, and the company will ultimately grow. And when the business grows, everybody wins because there's more profits and now the practice owner can afford to look at raises, can afford to look at taking the team on continuing education, but if there is no growth then obviously there's no way that that can happen, right?
And so as you're looking at growing and scaling your practice, and having to have conversations like this with your team member, it's really important for you also to recognize that there's going to have to be a change in your leadership as you grow and scale your practice. Your leadership levels that you might have had when you had one employee is going to be quite different when you have four and quite different if you decide to expand to have ten or even 12 or even more. In my practice, I think we have 16 team members now, and we're going to continue to expand that as we have another doctor that's going to be joining us this year. But again, get okay with having these conversations with your team members because ultimately when you do, you can inspire them to greatness and take on higher level roles and let them know that it's okay that other people joined so that the practice can make it's greatest contribution.
Alright guys, we'll chat later. Take care.
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