What's up guys? I hope that all is well. I wanted to come on and tell you guys a quick story that happened actually last week with my kids. Many of you guys know I have two teenagers, a 13 and a 14 year old and quite frankly, we've been having some challenges with getting them to get up on time, to get their breakfast on time and to leave the house on time and it's caused a a lot of frustration on my part as well as my husband and caused them to leave the house, I'll say this, in not a great mood. I'm not sure how many of you guys have teenagers but it's not always easy.

But an interesting thing happened a few weeks ago where Sarah on my team, she actually does coaching with office managers of our inner circle. Anytime they are having any challenges or any time they need help with anything, they just box her and she jumps on calls and she works directly with them. There was actually a doctor that tends to want to stay really late in the practice and her office manager was actually struggling with it. He said, "We're staying really, really late and I want to make sure that number one, I'm getting home on time with my family but that the doctor is as well." Sarah gave them a suggestion to actually set an alarm clock where five minutes before ending time, the alarm clock would go off and the office manager would just pack up and say, "Okay, I will see you tomorrow. Have a great night."

It's really interesting because after about two to three days, the doctor caught on and said, "Is that alarm clock for me?" The office manager said, "Yes, we discussed that we would both leave at a certain time to get home to our families and Sarah said that this is a great tool to hold us both accountable." And the doctor smiled and they went home and I thought, this is really, really interesting because I'm looking at my kids and every day they're struggling to get downstairs on time to get their breakfast which means that ultimately that they're rushing and they're frazzled to get out of the door. Sometimes getting to school a few minutes late.

What we decided to do was to basically implement the same system and we set, having to set an alarm for the time they had to wake up, the time they had to get downstairs and the time that they needed to leave the house. Now, one thing that I can tell you, I've not been good with, nor my husband is having written down rules. I think most parents you don't actually have checklists for your kids but we actually decided to that. We've made very clear times of the time that they need to again, wake up, get downstairs and leave the house. And we said, "If you are not leaving the house on time, that means that you will have no electronics for the night. No TV, no phone, no computer, nothing. And if happens twice, the same thing will happen, plus there will be no activities on the weekends. Meaning, no get togethers with friends, no parties."

Everything was written down, it was very clear. We also wrote down that some additional guidelines would be that their clothes would need to be laid out the night before, their schoolbags would need to be packed. Everything would be done and we put the specific time of when that would have to be done. We also wrote down their bedtime, the time that electronics had to be downstairs. Very, very clear. Nothing on the paper was able to be in a form of an emotion. It was just something that was written down, written guidelines.

The interesting thing that happened is that after a few days we actually printed it out, we realized my daughter actually taped it into her bathroom so that she could see what the new guidelines were for getting up and the interesting thing is that this has been going on now for six days and they have gone downstairs, had breakfast, versus trying to scramble to eat breakfast quickly. They've gotten to school on time, they've been a lot happier and it's just been really, really good.

It really goes to show the power of having tools for accountability. Again, just setting clear little timers and having a written down process as well as very clear consequences if the guidelines were not followed. Going back to our practices, it's so important when we are wanting to have specific guidelines for our practice and a lot of times I hear from doctors, "Well our team is getting to work late." Or, "Our team is not getting to the morning huddle." Or, I hear all of these different things and it's so interesting because again, you have to start looking back at yourself just like I did with my husband, and I said, "The reason why all of this frazzleness is happening is because we haven't created processes. We haven't given the kids tools to be successful."

And once we took time to create again, something that was written down, something that had very clear, specific times, once we had again, consequences, there was not room for discussion. There was no room for disagreement. There was no room for argument. It was just a rule or a guideline. Again, I just really wanted to just tell you guys the story. Hopefully, it inspires you to think about things are happening in your practice that are not going exactly how you want and start to think to yourself, is there a document that could be written down that makes things clear? If there's something that you keep repeating over and over again or something that's frustrating you in your business, is there something that can be written down? Are there tools that you can use for accountability?

Again, timers, clocks, using Asana, using some sort of systems that's going to, Asana's one of those task management softwares. I talk about that a lot. If a task is not done by the date that it's set, it turns red. Do you have these processes in place again, with clear guidelines? I hope that again, this inspires youto think about creating some processes in your business and perhaps in your family as well because it's not a great situation when you go through the day and you started off frazzled. It's really super important.

All right guys, that is my tip for today. I hope you guys took some value out of that and we'll chat again really, really soon.

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I’m delighted to introduce Dr. Anne O’Donnell to the podcast and talk all about how dental practices can use aftercare chatbots to connect with patients and offer ‘Care beyond the Chair.’

Anne is a dentist based in Ireland and has been in practice for ‘more years than she cares to remember.’ She has had her own dental practices and sold a small corporate in 2018. She then became the groups Clinical Director. In 2013, she bought a failing practice and completely turned it around. It is now a multi-disciplinary general and specialist practice with a tenfold increase by 2018.

Anne is passionate about dentistry, her team, and her patients. She and her team have even developed a patient aftercare messaging service using Facebook Chatbots called "Care beyond the Chair.”

On the podcast we discussed…

• How ‘Care beyond the Chair’ works and how it helps make patients feel appreciated
• Why chatbots have a higher open rate than email
• Recommending dental hygiene products using chatbots
• Tips for scheduling automated chatbot messages
• How personalized messaging can help dental practices connect with their patients
• How to get patients to opt-in to receive chatbot aftercare messages
• The process of setting up ‘Care beyond the Chair’ in your practice

If you’d like to get in touch with Anne and find out more about how you can introduce her aftercare chatbot service in your practice, you can email her at dranneodonnell@gmail.com or reach out to conor@socialmediaelite.ie for more information.

For more information and to explore other episodes go to: deliveringwow.com/135 

What's up guys? It is Anissa, super excited to be here talking to you today about, are you leveling up your team leaders? So, I actually just looked at my What's Up messages and I received a message from Tammy, who is my Office Manager, and the message actually says ... Now granted it is 2:00 in the afternoon on a Friday as I'm recording this. The message says, "Hey Doc, just letting you know we had no water today. The Water Commission was working in the area and so, all of the water was turned off. Our backup tanks did not kick in, they were not working. And so, I contacted the plumber, he came in, he fixed our tanks. Everything is working, we're all good to go. We rescheduled the patients, everything is fine. Again, just letting you know. Let me know if you need anything, have a great weekend."

Now, I am so excited because number one, there are processes in place for what happens if there is no water, right? So, she knew to contact the plumber. She knew where to get his number. She knew if there was an issue, who to call. What was also interesting is that, she just took control, right? They took control over letting the patients know, rescheduling the patients. And it all ended well, despite perhaps, having to inconvenience a few patients with rescheduling them. But, I think the biggest lesson of what happened today is number one, it's a Friday. This morning, I actually was on a few Zoom video calls with our team getting ready for Summit. I ran a few errands. Again, typically on Friday's I'm not in the practice, and there was what could have been a big issue. Or maybe it was. And it was solved. It was solved by my team. It was solved by my Office Manager.

And so, my question to you is number one, do you have a strong team leader? Do you have someone who can run the business for you, whether you're there or not? Somebody that has the tools and processes and knows what to do. A lot of times we have Office Managers, but we do not actually, take time to build out processes in case things happen, right? And then the other thing too, is that a lot of times I can tell you the leader I would have been in the past, my Office Manager might not have had the ... Might not have had the ability to say, "You know what? I'm going to take this on." They might have felt like they would have had to have called me from the very beginning of the day, tell me their problem and ask me what I want them to do. Ask me what I want them to do about patients, right? And I would have been perhaps that leader that would have said ... Or that Doctor that would have said, "Okay, let me come in and try and tell you what to do" or "Let me come in and see what I can do to find a plumber", right?

But again, the team took control. And so, as you're building out your practice. As you look at becoming that true leader and scaling for growth, it's not possible for you to try to micromanage your team. And certainly, as you look at growing your business, it's going to be increasingly hard for you to be the Office Manager, right? And I say that and you may be like, "What?" But ... Well, let's just be real. So may of us who are dentists, if it's a small practice, we don't have Office Managers. I hear that from our members of our programs they're like, "Well I don't really have an Office Manager. I'm the one that actually oversees the team. And I'm the one that actually oversees making sure the payroll is getting done. And I'm the one that oversees ..." And I think that's really, really great when you're small and you're just getting started so that you can learn exactly what needs to happen, right? But as you are looking at leveling up your leadership. As you're looking at growing your business, what you realize is that you cannot do everything.

And, I also hear a lot of Doctors who typically ... I mean dentists, we tend to be those type As, and we feel like no one can do things better than us. But what we discover is that if you have other people doing things, even if they're doing it at 65, 70, 80% and you have multiple people that are doing other things for you. What happens is that, more tasks are able to get done. More marketing is able to get done, more processes are able to be built. More team training is able to be done if for example, you're not having to do all the trainings now for your teams, you know? So as you start looking at leveling up, I want you to start looking at changing your mindset and shifting to think a little bit bigger. I mean, if you look at any company, any major company you're not going to have the owner ... For example, let's just say Target. The owner of Target is not going to be the one doing the ordering, and doing the marketing and doing everything, right?

And they're not going to be the one micromanaging every department and micromanaging what the COO or the Operations person is doing, right? And so, that's essentially what your Office Manager is. For me I say, "Tammy runs my business", right? I own it and she runs it. That's her job, right? Her job to make sure that the marketing's in place. Her job to make sure that our team members are onboarded when we have new team members. Making sure that all of our systems are in place. Making sure that whoever is supposed to be scheduling a certain number of appointments every week, making sure that they're being held accountable for that. That's Tammy's role, right? And my role is again, to go in and to be able to form connections with patients and to be able to form those connections and continue to be the creative thinker of how we're going to continue to impact our patient's lives. And give them great, amazing experiences, right?

So again, this is a quick one today. But I just wanted to pop on because I thought it was really, really neat that Tammy sent me that message. And that she had actually taken care of everything. And I'm confident that she did the right job. And again, just encouraging you to keep moving forward in your practices. We're all getting there and we're all again, continuing to look at how can we make ourselves better to be able to impact our teams and our practices.

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What's up guys, it's Anissa. I am super pumped to be on today. I am actually heading out to Funnel Hacker Live, which is in Nashville, is a coming together of 3,500 and more marketers from all over the world. What's really interesting is that I used to feel a little bit embarrassed or a little bit ashamed to let people know how passionate I was about Funnels and about helping dentist or by using Funnels to be able to grow businesses and it's really interesting. This summer I was traveling to Kenya, many of you guys know that when we launched our first online coaching program, which was Delivering Wow U, all of the money that we actually made for the startup of that product actually was donated to village impact, which is a community organization that builds schools in Africa. So I actually built a classroom along with a few other members of the ClickFunnels community and we went to Kenya this summer to open up our classrooms.

But anyway, I was in the van with Russell Brunson, who was the founder of ClickFunnels and he told me something that was so impactful for me and not just for me, but for all of you and for the entire industry of dental. I was telling him about what I've been doing in my practice and what's been happening with those doctors that have been through our marketing programs and he was blown away. What's really interesting is that typically with Digital Funnels, you're looking at sending people to a page where they can get some useful information and give you their email address and phone number in exchange for something. So it could be for a [inaudible 00:02:08], could be for a checklist, it could be for example, the weekly printables that you guys are getting. But in the dental world we are offering, for example, seven consultations this week for Invisalign and click here to see if you apply, right.

Based on the response, they just might qualify and by doing this process, we're able to not only get people that are interested in coming in, but it gives us an opportunity to capture information so that we can contact them and see if they really truly are ready to get started and if the procedures are in their budget and if not, offer an alternate procedure for example, maybe a denture instead of an implant or maybe a cleaning to at least get them in and get started. The other cool thing about Funnels is that once people are giving you their information, they are now able to start receiving immediate emails from your business, which means that you're going to continue that nurture process and continue to stay in front of them.

But I was talking to Russell and I was like, what's really neat is that a lot of marketers think that the Funnel is the Funnel, but the Funnel is actually what happens before people ever go to your landing page. What has worked extremely well for me as well as my students is by doing engagement campaigns. So that's going to be the Project Smile or collecting clothes for charity that goes to get a local charity in your community or doing a 12 day prize giveaway with prizes donated from strategic partner businesses or getting out and treating a hundred kids for free. Those are the things that people will want to share, things that people will want to connect with and ultimately what sets the story of what makes your practice different and unique and if you use social media as a tool, then what happens is that now you're able to re-target anyone who has commented on any of these campaigns, if it's been shared to their newsfeed or anyone who has shared the campaigns or liked the campaigns and these are sort of campaigns that absolutely truly work.

I actually received a message last night from Dr. Ann when she's in California and she is one that really wanted social media to work for her and she had tried everything and then she joined our program. Just by doing Project Smile, which is the smile makeover competition, it transformed her practice and it was probably about five months ago that she had it. I think she had 40,000 people to actually view her video, but it's been transformation of what's happened after. So what I spoke to Russell about was that, this is the key in healthcare. It's not giving people at $39 coupon, it's not buy one, get one free. I mean, this is about people's health, right? If you can educate them and get inside of their mind, how this treatment that you're offering can help them, can make them feel better, can make them look better, can make them healthier, then you're able to get someone in who otherwise would have never had treatment and you can change your life.

So I said, for me, Funnels are a tool. But really it's about how do we build trust with people who have no idea who we are so that when they come in, we don't have to take so long to get through that trust cycle. How do we have it where they've seen our testimonials of our patients? We just posted yesterday a patient on our Facebook page who came in and he said that he had been seeing our ads on Facebook and he was a little bit skeptical, like how could this really be true? But he just kept seeing so many posts of people that were happy and he started to continue to see what we were doing in the community. He decided to just go ahead and make the phone call and he's like, "Everything that they say here is real and it's true and they care about you". He talked about the service that he had, that he had perio and he's been other places and his gums weeks later would still bleed and he came to our practice and after his first visit, he was surprised at how gentle the procedure was because he had never experienced that in the past. Now he was coming back in for a follow up visit and his gums had significantly stopped bleeding and he was just going on and on and on about his treatment.

Now, imagine which we did, we boost this post out to people who are living on specific streets in our neighborhood that we want to have more patients come in from or we have this shown to people who have seen our post about our community impact events. So they have seen information about us giving back to the community, now they're seeing testimonials of patient. Well, if they're not ready to come in right now as a patient, maybe they just had a cleaning somewhere else. I can assure you that that seed has been planted in their mind that the next time they have a dental visit, they're going to consider if they're in the right place or if they are talking to a friend who is saying that they have a dental issue, your practice is going to be top of mine. So to me that is what a Funnel is about. It's getting people from not knowing who you are, to getting them to follow you and become a raving fan even before they're a patient.

It's really interesting because I am really big about ROI. Like if you're going to spend marketing dollars, you want to see that immediate return. But the interesting thing is that with Facebook, the immediate return is not just from that patient, but all of the people that they talk about your practice to like their friends and their family and their coworkers. That's the huge benefit because you're creating this viral effect of word of mouth. So traditionally, it would take a really long time to build up that rapport in your community on what happens with social media is that you have a shortcut. I was telling all of this to Russell in the van, we were in Kenya and I was like, "This is how Healthcare Funnels work" and after they have gone through the process of getting to know the business and seeing the testimonials, then when you put a Funnel in front of them that says, "Who's at risk for cavities? Take this quick quiz to find out" or "Who is a candidate for dental implants? Take this quick quiz to find out".

These are the things that once they know who you are, they're going to be like, "Oh, I knew that, that business" and then next thing you know, they are on your email list and they're receiving information about that service and your practice is calling them and saying, "Thanks so much for your interest in our practice. We wanted to offer you are an opportunity to come in. We have a few spots this week where we're giving away a consultation for you to come in and get to know us and I have a few questions for you, right? It's based on that service, you know, I see that you've been missing teeth for a certain number time" or "I know that one of the areas that you wanted to focus on was this or that". When you do, again, when patients come in, they're ready and I've seen over the last nine years that we've used social media in my practice that when these patients come in and we ask them like, how did you get to know our practice? How did you hear about us? And they say Facebook, I internally smile because I know that I am not going to have to take a few visits to be able to nurture them, to trust us.

I know that they've seen us already, they're ready to get started and our case acceptance rate significantly increases. A lot of times people talk about different forms of marketing and why I'm so passionate about Facebook marketing or Funnel marketing is that we literally can get in the ears and the eyes of people who otherwise would have been afraid to go to the dentist and because they see what we're doing, they start to trust us and the fear starts to break down over time and we can help them. Many of us have unique skills, right? We go to extra training and we learn how to do additional services, whether it's help patients who have sleep apnea or we are skilled at placing dental implants or we've invested in the time to learn how to do Ortho in our practice.

But we keep that knowledge inside and no one knows that we are a doctor that loves to do that or they're not even thinking about us because we're not putting ourselves in front of them and it's like out of sight, out of mind, which is why I am such a huge fan of marketing. Even if you're in a position where you're busy and you actually don't have the capacity to see more patients at this time, it's really important to still continue with marketing perhaps who are different purpose, perhaps not giving call to actions for people to schedule. But your putting yourself in front of them so that you stay relevant because as you know, businesses that come out of mind, what happens is that ultimately they lose that ability to be top of mind on people's tongues and you definitely want to make sure that, that doesn't happen to your practice.

I definitely recommend that you look at and take a really close look at what you're doing for your marketing and your business. Social media is the easiest and fastest way to be able to tell your practice a story, take people behind the scenes, show them all of your patients who are extremely happy with the work that you're doing, with the way that they're treated and it's a message that needs to be heard. If you've gone to dental school for years, it's really your obligation to let people know how you can help them. Because if you don't, you are not in my opinion, impacting as many people as you truly can. So I hope this word of inspiration inspires you to look at your marketing, to look at what you're doing and to perhaps make some shifts. Again, this isn't going to be, it's already started off, but it's going to be a really, really good year for all of you. You are in the right place and you're in the right tribe and we are certainly here to help you along your journey.

All right guys, so I am almost at the airport. Again, I'm heading out to Funnel Hacker Live. I will be doing some podcasts from there so you guys will be able to hear some recaps and take you behind the scenes of this incredible event. But again, enjoy the rest of your day and we'll chat soon.

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What's up everyone? It is Anissa Holmes and today I want to take you behind the scenes of my Facebook ad that did not work. Now, many times when I am inside of Facebook groups or perhaps sometimes when I'm out at conferences, people come up to me and they're like, "I know that you work with dentists to be able to help them understand social media and the strategy behind it and how they can get a lot of patients using social media without spending a lot of money. However, the issue that I've had is that I've tried Facebook, it didn't work. I ran some ads. I posted. Nothing happened." So, people say, "What can you recommend for me to get better results?" Right? Which is normal. Which is typical. Which is a great question.

I actually wanted to talk to you about what we do inside of my practice when we run Facebook ads as well as what we teach inside of our Facebook boot camp. I think this will help you a lot and shed some light into the real truth behind running Facebook ads and creating campaigns. Again, we have just started to test, I think it's been four or five days now, a campaign for dental implants. What we did was we actually chose three different images and the three different images that we chose, I think maybe one was a man, one was a lady, one was a couple. We also had different versions of the copy. The copy are the words that go with the ad. We had a short copy version and we had a long copy version. Copy is again the words. The short copy means like one or two sentences and then a call to action to apply for a cosmetic consultation versus one that's more of a story form that's longer.

Again, just the short copy, kind of what it looks like is here's how our patient's are getting rid of their dentures forever. This week we're offering seven free consultations to those who qualify. Click here to see if you qualify. Or click here to apply. That's a short copy. What happened is again, we ran three different images, three different versions and after we did that we used a quick button inside of Facebook, it literally takes less than a minute and we created what we call a duplicate. We just made a copy of those and then we just went in and edited the text. We put the long copy. Now, what happened in terms of the results is that we had one ad that received a ton, ton, ton of clicks.

I think we had a total of maybe 64 people or so to opt in, meaning they give us their email address. They requested that we contact them for an appointment. Of those 64, there was one ad that had probably about 38 people to click through and complete again giving us their email address, going through the funnel on that one. There was another one that might have had maybe 16. Another one might have had eight. Another one might have had two. And two of them might have had like one or zero.

You can see here, and the numbers might not be exact there but you kind of get the point. Right? There was one or two ads that had a lot more people clicking on it. What was interesting is that the highest was one image, which was in a short copy. The second highest was a different image that was in a long copy. That was really interesting because it meant that there were two images that people liked and that the copy really didn't matter. There was not a clear winner. Our audience and our community, for some reason, these particular versions were resonating with them.

Now, if I had only run the ads that had zero clicks. I think it was one that had zero and then one that had like one or two. If I had only run one version of the ad then I would have looked at it and said, "Oh, this is not working." This is not a good ad. I need to go back and I need to change the images. Or I need to change the words. If I really was not experienced in understanding how funnels would work, I might say, "Well, my funnels not working and I need to change my funnel." I shared this example with you to let you know we really don't know what people in our communities are going to resonate with.

The best way to understand what people are interested in or what's going to move them to take action is actually to test. Then from there you know your clear winner. What we typically do is the ones that are getting one click or getting zero clicks, we just turn them off. That means that we're no longer spending any money to promote those ads. We're only keeping on the ones that people are clicking on. The other thing that you can do is you can say, okay, well, this particular one that's working, if you want to take it to the next level, we were running this ad with this particular audience.

For example, the two winning ads. You can say, well these are ones that people are clicking on, what if we were to duplicate that ad now and instead of sharing it or instead of only sharing it to this particular audience, people who might live on specific streets. You can say what if we were to also show this ad as a different ad, again clicking that button to just make a copy of the two that are winning. What if we were to show those ads to people who have previously been to our website. What if we were to show those ads who people who have previously watched our videos, if you're doing Facebook Live videos or have previously commented on posts or shared your posts or liked your posts. Or messaged your practice's Facebook page in the past. Those are the warm audiences.

What if we were to show the same winning ads that were seen by what we called a cold audience, people that have not interacted with your Facebook page or your business in the past, and again take those two winning ads and now you are creating copies to run to people that have interacted before? Then you say well I'm curious like what would be the results? Most time, many times, those warmer audiences are going to convert a lot better. You're going to have even better results.

The ultimate goal is once you figure out again, which one is working then you can just continue to run those ads until you see a drop in the number of clicks. Typically what we'll do is we'll run the version for at least a month and then once a month we check in. Literally, again just a few minutes to just log in to the back of Facebook and see what's happening. See what people are clicking on. See how much it cost per click. If it's working and continuing to work then you continue to let it run. However, many times what happens is that people in your community, once they start seeing, especially the images, the same images show up in their news feeds they are going to overlook it. Like they're not going to click on it. They're not going to stop. It's not going to catch their attention.

What I recommend you do ideally is every month go in and change out the images. Put new images in, even if you're using the same copy going ahead and changing out the images or perhaps continue to let those same ones run and go ahead and create a new version, changing out the copy and seeing how people respond to that new copy again. Otherwise, things can get a little bit stale and things that might work at the beginning can lose it's effect.

Again, I just wanted to take you guys behind the scenes because I do hear that question of, "Well, Facebook doesn't work." Part of the problem sometimes is people are just not posting the right thing or they are not boosting or they're not running to a specific audience, they're just putting up something on their page. The facts that Facebook is really a marketing company so if you don't pay for Facebook ads to be seen in specific news feeds or to be seen, you're just not going to have the same level of result.

All right guys, so I hope that that helps. Again, I am super pumped about sharing all of my knowledge with all of you so if you have any questions at all, just post them inside of our Delivering Well hang out Facebook group. Says Deliveringwellhangout.com. Again, we are here to help and support you.

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What's up everyone? It is Anissa, wanted to jump on and talk to you guys about bonuses. When should you bonus? Should you bonus? How should you bonus? And there's lots of different thoughts and ideas about how to reward your employees or your team members for a job well done. Now, before we do that, I actually want to tell you a quick story. So back when I was nine years old, I wanted to get this Rainbow Brite Doll. I don't know if you guys had that Rainbow Brite Doll. If you remember it, if you're old enough to remember it, but it was a really, really colorful doll. She had like blue hair and yellow hair and I just wanted this to doll. But the problem is that I knew that my mom would probably not get it for me. So I came up with this grand idea that I would actually create a lemonade stand to be able to get the money to be able to buy this doll.

And so I came home from school and I said, "Mom, I want to do lemonade stand on Saturday, and so can you please take me to the supermarket." And so she actually said, yeah, she took me to Winn Dixie. And we went in, we were walking the aisles, pushing the shopping basket and I put in my lemons and my cups and we bought some ice and we got sugar and we had a container that we could use to store the lemonade. Now, what I did was on that Saturday morning, I actually woke up and I went around in the neighborhood and I said, "Hi, my name is Anissa. I am trying to raise money to buy a rainbow Brite Doll and I would really appreciate if you could help me. So today at 12:00", and I gave them my address, "We're actually gonna be doing a lemonade stand and that will help me to raise money to buy my doll.

Well, everybody in the community that I knocked on their doors thought, "Wow, what a nice little girl and what a great idea." And so we actually had a lot of people come and to be honest with you, we actually ran out of lemonade. We sold so much lemonade, cup after cup after cup. And at the end of it, I was so excited because we had made $15.48. Now, I can tell you I was ecstatic because the doll was like $13 and I was like, "You know what? I've got enough money to buy my dog." But what was really interesting is that I went and told my mom was like, "Mom, we did it. I got enough money." And you know what my mom said? She said, "Anissa, I'm so proud of you. You worked so hard. And everybody that came, they were really, really happy and like, I'm so proud of you. But what I want you to really understand is that you didn't actually make the $15.38. What you actually made was $2.38.

See, the rest of that money that you made, it actually went to pay for the supplies, the cups and the ice and the lemons. And so what you actually made was what was leftover and that was the profit." Inside of a dental practice, many times we work really hard or our team works really hard and we have the false belief that we have actually made more money than what we have, and we are not taking into consideration the overhead, the team salaries, the benefits that we're giving to our team members, the rent, the water, the utilities, the lab bill, all of our different costs. And a lot of times what happens is that we are not sharing with our team what those expenses are. And so what they see is like what I saw. They saw the revenue, they saw the income coming in to the business, but they never saw the expenses.

And so as you're looking at how can I incentivize my team or better yet, how can I reward my team for a job well done, which I'm a huge fan of? One thing that you want to make sure that you're always doing is you're looking at profit. Now, unfortunately, what happens is far too many practices have no idea what their profit is. They're waiting for their accountant to give them a report and many times their accountant is just really there to do their taxes. And so many doctors assume that, "Well, what we have coming in our production is profit", but the fact is that those are completely two different things. And so what I would encourage you to start looking at is as you're considering rewarding your team, the first thing that you need to do is actually take a step back and look at what is the revenue, what are the expenses, and it's actually quite simple to be able to calculate your profit.

And so what you do is you look at what is the actual revenue coming in, and I don't mean the production which many times is actually inflated because of PPO write-offs. But what is the actual collections? What is the cash coming in? And from there, I say, okay, let's go ahead and remove all of the expenses that we have. So that's going to be all of your fixed expenses, meaning that you have to pay them whether you see a patient or not. So that's going to be your team salaries and your rent and your power bill and your water bill and your utilities, your cell phone bill if you have a cell phone bill, those things will be constant. And then you start looking at your variable expenses. What are your supply costs? What is the cost for you to even buy printer paper and ink for your printer?

A lot of times people really don't think about that, but the fact is that the business doesn't make anything until those things are taken care of. And so the profit is what's left after you look at your income misusing out all of your expenses. And so if you're not tracking that, you can certainly use different systems. Your accountant can help you with that. Internally, we love to do it within our scorecard. We actually have our team member anytime or I'll say this, every week, they put in the revenue that comes in per provider. We actually have hygienists, we have our doctors and so we can see breaking it down, where is our revenue coming from. And then what we do as well is, as a bill comes in, even before it's paid, it is actually the amount is filled in.

So we have a ... if you think about an Excel sheet or if you think about a diagram, on the left, you have a list of all of your different expenses. So at the top are all of your fixed expenses, like I said, all of your employee wages, etc, and below that is all of your things that are variable. So you have all of those different fixed and variable expenses and then at the top, you have like January and February, March, April, May, all the way through. So that way at the bottom, again, month by month, you can see what is your revenue. So that's your top item, what are your expenses, and then you see your profit. And if you break it down this way, it also allows you to see month to month to month, what are your expenses for each particular item. So you can look at, well, what are my expenses or how much am I paying for my power bill? So if you see that it goes up one month, you're like, "What happened?" Or if you look at your lab bill and it goes up, you can say, "Wow, well we had a good month", or you can look at your marketing and ensure that your marketing has given you an ROI. You can make better decisions.

And so I definitely encourage you to start looking at your expenses, looking at your overhead as well as obviously looking at how you can increase your cash that's coming in. So those are all of the business strategies that you have that you're working on with the other metrics on the scorecard, tracking your production per visit, hygienist production per visit, your reappointment rate, all of those different things. But again, just to keep it really simple, if we're looking at giving bonuses, guys, please do not make bonus one of your fixed expenses or one of those expenses that are at the top. You always want to make sure ... because guess what guys, what a business makes is at the bottom and a lot of times we think, Oh my gosh, we've made...", and you and I see practices that are making $3 million or they're bringing in $3 million worth of revenue, but then their expenses are like 280,000. And so everybody thinks the doctor is like a multimillionaire and the business is only making $200,000 a year which may seem like a lot, but to be honest with you, by the time the doctors paid and you're wanting to have money to reinvest in equipment and reinvest in growing the business, if you want to look at a new location, it's gonna come up short.

So again, I just wanted to come on and talk to you guys now about the truth, about numbers, the truth about bonus systems, and I want you to consider getting vulnerable and telling your team. I can tell you, when I told my team and opened up about the truth, about all of our expenses, their mouth dropped, they couldn't believe it. They Just saw the income and they thought obviously, just like I did when I was a little girl and I saw the money come in from the lemonade stand. They thought that that's what the business made. And so I had to educate them and teach them about what a business actually makes. And then I said, "Now I want you guys to actually ... because you're working so hard, I want to be able to create an opportunity for you to make more money. And so anytime we are getting profit, then we will share that profit with you. So you can make a decision whether you want to share 3% of the profit 4% of the profit, 5% of the profit, whatever that's going to be with your team.

But now it makes sense because you are actually sharing something after all of your bills are paid and it puts you in a much better piece of mind state. Again, I see doctors all the time that are giving bonuses to their teams and they're not even getting paid, which is crazy. So that's one of you that are listening right now. You just need to stop it. Alright? It means that team members are gonna be a little bit upset perhaps because things are changing. But how do you get over that is by having a real conversation and being open and honest about where things are and if you got the right people, they might be disappointed, but they'll understand. And you want to have people that are motivated.

Again, when I told my team, all of a sudden, they started working harder. They were like, "Doc, we thought we were making a lot more money than what we were." Again, they were looking at the top number and I was like, "Yeah, guys, that's why we got to work so hard." It made sense and they Started to work harder and all of a sudden, the numbers just started to get higher and higher and higher with our profitability. So I hope that helps. If you guys have any questions, just drop them on the inside of our Facebook group and that's the best place to be able to connect with me and the Delivering WOW hang out.

And again, I hope that this helps to make you think a little bit about what you're doing in your business. Are you looking at your numbers? And really, how are you rewarding your team? And I love to reward my team. So I encourage you, if you have a great month, if there's a lot of extra profits, share it with them. It will get them knowing that you really appreciate all of their hard work. Again, if you're gonna do a bonus, it's completely fine, but just do it the right way. All right guys, that's it. Take care until the next episode.

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I’m thrilled to welcome Steve O’Leary, the Project Consultant at APEX Design Build, onto the show to talk about the best processes for designing and building your ideal dental practice.

Steve is a natural born leader and dedicated to delivering high levels of customer satisfaction with help from his positive outlook on life and great listening skills. He has worked at APEX Design Build for almost three years and is super passionate about the company and what they stand for.

Apex Design Build is a fully integrated design, architecture, and construction firm that specializes in creating state-of-the-art healthcare facilities. Their motto is as enduring as it is simple: Your practice made perfect.

On the podcast we discussed…

• Everything you need to know about APEX Design Build Vs. Design Bid Build and what each involves
• The importance of having a high level of communication during the new buildout process
• Questions you should ask before hiring a team to help you build a new practice
• The impact that a well-designed dental practice can have on your patients
• What to expect when you hire a firm like APEX Design Build
• How long a typical build project tastes at each phase
• An estimated ballpark figure of building a typical dental practice
• Taking the first steps towards designing and building your own practice

If you’d like to learn more about APEX Design Build and how they can help design the dental space of your dreams, go to: apexdesignbuild.net/the-apex-continuum/

To listen to more episodes of the Delivering Wow Podcast, click here.

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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Hi, guys. I hope that all is well. I actually wanted to jump on. Something really interesting happened to me when I was looking at the podcast stats, and it was quite interesting. It really related me to what happens inside of our practice where we really drop the ball in terms of looking at what is happening in our business, looking at what drives our performance and our success. So, I wanted to tell you a quick story.

So, I actually, as many of you guys know, we're starting this new podcast format, right? Where I am giving you quick tips, telling you what's going on behind the scenes in Delivering WOW. So, I actually went into our podcast audio player.

What's up, guys? It is Anissa Holmes. Wanted to jump on really quick. Hey, guys. What's up? Wanted to come on and tell you a quick story about the power of tracking, looking at numbers, and how it affects your performance as well as your behaviors. So, I actually want to start off with a quick story. So as many of you guys know, I decided to take you behind the scenes of Delivering WOW, let you know what we're working on, why we're doing certain things. What's interesting is that when we decided to shift over to doing more podcasts and using this format, I actually went into Libsyn, which is the place where we store, upload all of our podcast files.

Interestingly, I actually ... I no longer upload my podcast. I have someone that does that for me on my team, and so I haven't actually looked in there in a really, really long time. Now, I looked in there actually today, and it was really astounding. So number one, it was really, really cool to see that we typically have about 9,000 downloads per episode of our Delivering WOW podcast. But what's really interesting is I looked at our stats for December. Now, in December, we actually had half of the number that we typically had. We had almost 4,000 downloads of our podcast in December.

So, you might be asking, "Okay, well, what happened in December?" Well, what happened in December is December happened. I was on vacation with my family. A lot of things were happening with Delivering WOW wrapping up the end of the year. Quite frankly, I probably was just tired and needed a little break after traveling so much in the months of October and November. So, we actually only released maybe one or two podcasts in December. And when you look at the metrics, it really tells a lot. It shows us that, number one, if you're not being consistent, you're not going to get the same results.

But what was really interesting as well is it really showed me the power of looking at numbers and metrics really in any area that you want your business to grow. So with Delivering WOW, we're tracking all sorts of things. We're looking at how many email subscribers do we have, how many people are joining our Facebook group, right? Because if we can get in front of more people, we can help them. The same thing in our dental practice. We're tracking how many new patients are we're getting. We're looking at the reappointment rate, how many people are getting a next appointment. It happened for me with the podcast, and I was like, "What if we were looking at this number more often, right? Would we have decided to be more consistent in terms of not only doing our normal four podcasts, but even starting this program a little bit earlier where I'm podcasting a lot more often and taking you behind the scenes?" And you know, what's interesting is that now that we are adding on this new section of podcasts, these short little bites where I'm coaching and giving you strategy to grow your business, it'll be interesting to look at the data and see based on data what happens if you guys like it, if you don't like it.

And the numbers actually tell the truth, you know? So, looking inside of our practice, the same thing is so important, and not just in a dental business, but any business. Again, with Delivering WOW, we're tracking lots of little things and it's not necessarily money that we're tracking, but it all ties into the profitability of the company because many times it's those specific things that you focus on that really make the biggest difference. One thing that I've learned from my mentor, Russell Brunson, is, what is the one domino that if you just tip over that one domino, it makes them all fall down? That's the power of metrics. That's the power of using scorecards.

So what we decided to do about, well, maybe it was the middle of last year, was to start using a weekly scorecard inside of my practice. Not only did we start using it, but we started using it within our inner circle coaching program. We also, toward the end of the year, released it for Dental Profit Academy so that they could also get access to the template.

But what was really neat is we started tracking specific numbers, and those numbers were things like, again, new patient numbers, the dentist production per visit, the hygienist production per visit. We were looking at, again, the reappointment rate, how many patients who have not been seen within the last 18 months are now being scheduled, right? Are now being rescheduled. We started looking at the number of visits. How many visits were we actually getting done per week? We were looking at our accounts receivable over 30 days.

What's really interesting is that we decided to, again, use that scorecard. We had a team member and their job, not only in my practice but in all of the practices that we work with, was to go in. We actually use Dental Intel for just about all of our inner circle practices. The office manager or the scheduling coordinator, someone on the team goes in and pulls that number or those numbers. And then what they do is they quickly, from a weekly report, just enter them on the scorecard.

Now, a lot of times people will say like, "Why are you having your team do that? Can't that be automated?" And interestingly, I spoke to Weston, who's the founder of Dental Intel, and he was like, "You know, if you want, I can actually get this custom created for you and all of the people that are in your program so that it's automated." I was like, "No, Weston. I really want to have a team member to go in and look at the numbers. That's going to drive them back to Dental Intel every single week to really dig in and see what's happening, make sure that they're using the software to be able to dive deep, get the numbers, and names of the people that need to be called, and just take action, you know?" And it's also, again, a form of accountability versus just having a number that they are actually physically having to move. It means that you're going to look at it, you know what I mean?

But anyway, sometimes I go down a rabbit hole. So anyway, the purpose of the scorecard really is to look at the numbers. What was really interesting is that many times goals were set. So, say for example, a production per visit goal. I know I said it in my practice that we would double it, and I mean maybe I was a little bit aggressive, but I just wanted to see if we were tracking it, if we could actually do it. The interesting thing is that we actually met that goal, which is crazy, before the end of the quarter.

But, I started looking at, again, not just my scorecard, but the scorecards of all of our inner circle members, and the same exact thing was happening. The hygienist production per visit was increasing. The new patient numbers were increasing. And the reason why is that instead of focusing on lag measures or looking at things that happen after, you actually were using data and real information, real, real, real useful information to make decisions. So again, if the hygiene production per visit was consistently low and in the past nothing was done, now they were able to go in and say, "Okay, the production per visit is not where we want it to be or it's not as much as it was last week. What's gotten us off track?"

And then you can say, "Okay, let's make sure that we're talking to all of our patients about why scaling and root planing is absolutely necessary if they want to make sure that there's further destruction of bone. Or, let's really try to make it convenient for our patients and instead of scheduling one quadrant at a time or even two, we just block time out and we get the patient in and we get the treatment completed in one day. Or you know, let's go ahead and run a report to see all of our patients who have unscheduled scaling and root planing and let's get those people as a priority, even over perhaps people who have unscheduled hygiene, right?" Because again, the production per visit would be more by actually scheduling those patients versus, say, for example, a prophy patient, right? So, it's really interesting what happens when you start to look at numbers and you allow it to influence your decisions or really hold you accountable to things that you need to be held accountable for.

And again, going back to the podcast, if I had been looking at the number of the drop of podcast downloads, I probably would have not let a week slip, you know? But, we all learn. It's a lesson here. Hopefully this will encourage you and inspire you to start looking at your numbers again week by week. It's something that can be done very, very quickly. And if something is off inside of your weekly team meeting or in your morning huddle, a quick mention can be made of what one thing or one or two things that need to be focused on for that week and it will significantly improve the profitability of your practice as well as patient care because things will not be dropped. The ball will not be dropped.

And again, looking at the numbers, which is all that to me is the truth, right? It reveals the truth. When I looked at the performance of the practices that we're working with that are using scorecards, it was like a massive, drastic jump in performance in the quarter once they started implementing scorecards. If you haven't started tracking your numbers, you definitely want to go ahead and do that. We're here to help you if you need us. But again, I just wanted to make light of this because it's super important, super critical, and it can really change everything for you inside of your practice.

All right, guys. So, that is it. I will talk to you guys really soon. And again, I look forward to chatting with you inside of our Facebook group, so make sure you head on over to http://www.deliveringwowhangout.com.

What's up everyone? It is Anissa Holmes. I am actually driving in my car. I wanted to come on and just give you guys a quick shout out. It's actually Saturday. I had breakfast this morning with my husband. I'm actually driving to pick up my daughter. She went to watch a school soccer match. But I wanted to come on really quickly and just let you guys know what is happening with our podcast and how it's going to allow us to serve you even more.

Many of you guys know that Delivering WOW was recently voted one of the top dental podcasts. We actually came in number three behind Nifty Thrifty and A Tale of Two Hygienists. We've been doing the podcast now for about three years and I really want to start actually taking you guys behind the scenes of what's happening with Delivering WOW, what's happening in my day, the ups, the downs, how we're helping our coaching clients, and how we're serving.

I hope that you like this format. We're going to be doing a lot more podcasts, and many of them will be me driving in my car. So you just might hear a little bit of noise in the background, but I think that's completely okay because it's important for you to see what's happening behind the scenes and to hear my thoughts and to be able to get further coaching from me through this medium. If that's okay with you guys, I'm actually going to share one thing that we have been able to do which is really, really cool.

I actually had this idea to be able to give more to the practices that we are serving through this podcast and our Delivering WOW community. Many of you guys know that we have a coaching program. We have Dental Profit Academy, and of course we have our Facebook programs as well. But one thing that we have focused a lot on is really providing a lot of content inside of the dental industry. So every Monday many of you guys may not know, but we actually have an article that we release and it's going to help you to grow your business.

Now one thing that we wanted to do was take it a little bit further, take it one step further, and actually allow you to have a printable resource that you could use for your team meetings. One of the things that we talk about in our coaching program is the importance of having weekly team meetings where you could actually focus on creating new processes or focus on improving systems or if there's an issue with communication between team members or between what the practices see as important, and individual team leaders, letting them know what you want to focus on, how you're going to get it done, special projects, et cetera.

What we decided to do was to create these weekly printables. What it is is every single week allowing you to be able to get a free resource. This is going to be how to run effective meetings, what numbers are most important for you to focus on, how do you conduct a morning huddle. I just wanted to make sure that you guys are getting access to this resource because we have spent a ton of time and money and budget to have our team to be able to support this one with coming up with the content which is the strategies that we teach with myself and our leadership team, but also looking at creating the graphics, getting it uploaded into our email service provider, and making sure that it gets delivered to you every single week.

If you've not signed up for the weekly printables, you definitely want to do that. It's completely free, go to http://www.deliveringwow.com/printables. But again, I wanted to just make sure that all of you guys get access to that really, really great resource. While we're speaking about resources, just sharing with you, as many of you guys know, we have this podcast which is a great resource for you. We also again have articles that we're releasing every single week on our website which is Delivering WOW. So you want to make sure that you check that out.

If you've not joined our free Facebook group, you can go to deliveringwowhangout.com. We've almost past the 15,000 mark and what's really interesting is we've got the top industry leaders, past podcast guests, they're all inside of that group, and so it's a great place to mastermind, as well as to get support, get questions answered by not just by me and our coaching team, but also other coaches and leaders and other rockstar dentists who are really just crushing it. So again, I want to make sure that you have access to that. http://www.deliveringwowhangout.com is the quick URL to get in there.

Again, I really hope that you guys are going to like this new podcast format. I love if you are listening to this podcast. If you could just take a minute to go inside our free Facebook group and let us know what you think about this new format for the podcast. I'm curious to hear your thoughts. All right, guys. I will chat later. I'm actually just arriving at the school, and again, I will look forward to chatting with you soon.

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