Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Delivering WOW Dental Podcast. So excited to be here with you today. Today, we're going to be talking about effective team meetings, why you should have them, how you should have them, and the components of an effective team meeting. Now, the first question that I want to ask you before we even get started is, are you having consistent team meetings? The majority of people that I talk to, they are actually not having team meetings. They are saying, "Well, we meet once a month, and at the end of the month, we'll review everything," or, "We meet quarterly," or even some practices say that they're meeting annually. And the reason why you definitely want to implement an effective weekly meeting for your team in addition to your team huddles is that now you can actually have a time for your team, if you're the doctor, to come and have your devoted attention, where they can ask you questions.

And that way, you're not getting bombarded with questions throughout the week, you're able to look at your metrics in the middle of the month as it's actually happening, and you can actually make changes based on what is happening, what's not happening. You can also look at actually having a new team initiatives that are getting started, whether it's a marketing campaign, maybe you decide that you want to implement a new service, and so now it's a time to come together collectively as a team to be able to decide what is it that you're going to be working on? Who's going to own the task by which date? And what's also really effective and powerful inside of a team meeting is that it does allow you and your team to be able to connect, not only professionally, but also personally. Inside of our Platinum Mastermind, one of our foundational tools that we look at when you're joining for the first four months is to help you to make sure that you are effectively having a team meeting.

And not just following an outline, but you're actually having accountability. It's actually a tool that will allow you and your team to be able to come together and change "I can't" statements. "I can't have multiple $10,000 days." "We can't have effective team meetings." Whatever the issues, it's a way for you to be able to come together, have that accountability, and again come together collectively so that you change those "I can't do it" statements to "how can I" and you are looking at, how can you do it together? So as you are looking at implementing a weekly meeting, the one thing that you want to look at before you even get started, if you've listened to my last episode on the podcast I talked about, before you start looking at putting in systems, before you start working on the business, you really do need to be able to connect with your team. You need to be able to have that way to be able to open up and be able to communicate, to understand outside of what's happening in the practice what's going on personally.

Because, ultimately, if you have a team member that may be having a family issue, maybe they have a parent who is aging and is not doing very well. Perhaps you're having stress at home with a child or within your marriage. These things actually do affect our practice. And even though we say, leave that stuff at home, it's really important to really understand that we are connecting with people in our practice and that life is actually happening. And so a lot of times when we actually know what's happening, we understand why our team may be showing up in a way that's not ideal, or why even the doctor as well? I mean, we're all people, and so when you're able to connect in your meeting, the very thing that you do at the very beginning is say, "What went well this week? What went well this week at home? What are you proud of?" And you may find somebody who says, "I'm really excited I got to spend time with my husband. We had a great weekend together. It was amazing."

Or they may say, "You know what? I had an opportunity this week to be able to help a patient. Who's been thinking about treatment for a few years and we had a conversation and they decided to move forward." Now what happens is that the doctor can celebrate and acknowledge the team. Lots of times our team members are doing great things, we don't even know it. And so it allows us to be able to really show that appreciation and to let them know that we really do

care about them, and we see and we notice and we recognize their efforts. From there, inside of our team meetings, what we want to look at is we want to be able to look at our numbers for the last week. So what is our doctor production per visit? Our hygiene production per visit? What is our case acceptance percentage? Are we hitting our goals or not? And, again, if we are, celebrating our team.

If we're not hitting our goals, we want to be able to, again, within that meeting, have a conversation about, how we can make sure that we're actually coming together collectively to be able to hit the goal. And there's typically about 10 different metrics that we recommend that you're looking at weekly. And once you do, you're going to start to see some pretty significant changes happen inside of your practice. The other thing that we want to look at within our meeting is we want to look at, what are the things that we're working on, not just this week or not just this month, but what are we doing quarterly? A lot of times you may hear people talk about creating a 90 day plan or creating a quarterly plan, and that's all really good and fine, but what accountability is there to make sure that you're actually hitting it? And so, as you're having your meetings every single week, it's a great opportunity to check in and say, "How are we progressing to actually hitting our quarterly goals?"

And if you are progressing, and it's not just the doctor goals, by the way, the doctor may have their personal goal, maybe they want to be able to increase their personal case acceptance, or maybe they want to be able to start doing more high level services, maybe they want to be able to grow and have a new associate, that's one thing that's really important to them by the end of the quarter, but the team members also, we want to make sure that they have their quarterly goals as well. So that could be, again, how many $10,000 cases are we going to close? And maybe the practice right now is not doing any, and so that allows you to understand where you need to focus, and that would be case acceptance training or focusing on making sure that you're actually doing procedures that will allow you to be able to generate those higher revenues, whether it's going to be sleep apnea, placing and restoring implants, et cetera.

As we start looking at what else we're doing inside of the meeting, we have an opportunity to actually go in and anything that we said that we were going to do in the last week, maybe you have decided that you want to have your team do KPI calendars, which is one of the things that we help practices implement, well, now you can say, "Who's going to own downloading the template? Who's going to go ahead and collect the daily, weekly tasks that everybody is writing down and place it in the template? And who's going to make sure that it's printed out so that now we see that in the break room and now the office manager and the doctor has a copy?" Well, what we want to make sure is that these tasks are not actually being done by the doctor. Again, as I spoke about in the last podcast, the best use of the doctor's time is actually doing the dentistry. And so we really want to make sure that pretty much every other tasks that can be delegated out to another team member is actually being done.

And so now that we are delegating it, we have this opportunity to be able to check in with our meetings that we're having every single week and say, "Did it actually get done?" If not, the team can say, "Well, it didn't get done and this was my challenge. I had a challenge with this." And so now you can discuss it as a team and you can get back on track and you can now actually get that task actually completed. Really, really powerful. As we start getting further down into the meeting, we also want to make sure that we have time to discuss any issues that we have that are happening in the practice. Maybe we have a new service that we're implementing, but patients are actually not scheduling. We need to discuss, what's the issue? Is it verbal skills? Is it mindset? How can we correct this? Maybe it's clinical competency of the team or the doctor.

Now we're able to look at, "Hey, guys, let's go ahead and plan a CE trip. Let's go ahead and talk about that trip. Where are we going to stay? How many days are we going to close the office? Who's going to go ahead and book the flights?" Right now, you have that opportunity to be able to discuss that within the actual meeting. At the end of the meeting, we also love to be able to

say, "How was the meeting?" And the team can actually check in and say, "We had a great meeting," or, "You know what, it was a good meeting, but we didn't start on time. And so if we had started on time, we would have rated it to be a 10 or 100. But because people showed up late, we're going to go ahead and give it an eight out of 10, or an 80%."

So as you start looking at building out your meetings and effective meetings, and these are some tips that you can use to be able to implement your weekly meeting. But I 100% recommend that you go ahead and put in a weekly meeting inside of your practice, and that way you can now have a way to be able to connect as a team, to be able to check in on your quarterly goals, to make sure that you are discussing any issues, and to really look at your practice week by week so that you can change the dynamic of the month. So hopefully that helps you. I absolutely love sharing these tips and tools with you inside of our podcasts. And if you know that you're looking to be able to get help with growing your practice, I invite you to reach out for a free practice strategy call by going to our websitedeliveringwow.com. All right, guys. That's it for today. Take care. We'll chat soon, and keep delivering WOW.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Delivering WOW Podcast with Dr. Anissa Holmes. We'll catch you next time.

Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of the Delivering WOW Dental Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Anissa Holmes. And today we're talking about how to build your dental practice from the ground up. So recently I've had quite a few people reaching out to me for practice growth strategy calls who are telling me that they are overwhelmed, they are exhausted. Some people have just been in practice for a few years. Others have been practicing for quite some time and still feel like they don't have a grip feeling like they're doing all of the things, feeling like their team is not yet the right team to be able to grow and scale with them.

And so I wanted to spend a little time today talking about how is it that we are able to build an engaged team, a team of leaders who get us, who want to be able to grow the business with us? How do we get people who are becoming leaders? How is it that we have a roadmap to be able to follow, to be able to grow our businesses? Whether it is to implement new services, to be able to increase our revenue, to be able to save for a rainy day, how is it that we're able to also look at making sure that things are not slipping through the cracks and we have accountability?

And so I wanted to spend a little time talking about these different areas today to give you some insight of what you want to start thinking about as you are wanting to remove the overwhelm inside of your practice. And so the first thing that we look at before we even put in any systems into play with any of the doctors and teams that we work with is I want to be able to really empower the team. I want the teams to understand that the practice is how they can not only be able to grow professionally, but how they're able to also achieve their personal goals.

And so one of the things that I will commonly ask doctors and team members collectively is how many of you want to be able to not only impact your patients' lives, but to be able to do more for your families? And I will say, "Let's be honest here. It's okay, doctors, it's okay to share in front of your team. Doctors, it's okay to be vulnerable. Team members, it's okay to let your doctors say, 'How many of you guys want more for your family's growing than you had growing up?'" And I will typically put up my hand really high and I say, "I know that I am."

And so what that means is that we have to serve our patients hard. We have to be able to work in a healthy business so that we can be able to achieve that impact and change lives, but ultimately so that we will have a business that will allow us to be able to all earn more. And what I will often say is that there are many pieces that make up having a successful case accepted. So it's not just the doctor doing the treatment. It is the scheduling coordinator scheduling the treatment. It is the financial coordinator making payment arrangements and getting that payment and getting that patient scheduled once that's done.

It's also the assistant making sure that everything is set up and also following up with patients in the lab. It's collective effort. But my question that I always ask is who is there to be able to cut the teeth that no one else can? Who can actually do the procedure and that is the doctor. We have the skillset to be able to do that. And so with that being said, I will always ask is it the best use of the doctor's time to be able to do all of the things? Should the doctor be, for example, answering the phones or should the doctor be ordering supplies? And the answer is no.

There are a lot of mouths that have to be fed inside of a dental practice. For me in my practice, we have about 18 team members. If you multiply that times their spouse and their kids and perhaps they have a parent living in the home, that's perhaps 80 or 100 mouths that are being fed. And so what we look at as far as setting our practice up for success is really making sure

hat our team members that are doctors as well understand that the best use of the doctor's time is actually doing the dentistry.

And so when we look at that, then now we can look at the roles of the team. We can make sure that they understand what is it that they should be doing daily, what is it that they should be doing weekly that's really going to allow for the businesses scale? And from there, we actually look at executing and helping them to be able to implement systems so that now there is accountability.

So the first thing that we always want to look at is do we have the right people? And all our people or all our team members understanding that our practice is how they can achieve and grow personally. Because as a business owner, ultimately, our number one responsibility is to empower our team is to get our team coaching, is to get our team training. Because once our team has training and they understand how to be able to grow and to become a better leader, then now we can take things off of our plate and we can focus on those things that we really love to do and we're really good at.

So as we start looking at building our practice from the ground up, we want to start thinking about how can we empower our team? How can we get the right training for our teams so that now they can grow into that leadership and we'll honestly will feel very comfortable and confident that they can actually get the job done? I find so many times what happens is that doctors are doing things like ordering supplies. Why? Because they had a team member that maybe made a mistake and now we don't trust them. And so instead of taking on doing tasks ourselves, we need to focus on creating systems and training processes with accountability.

We need to focus on creating ways that our team can communicate with us so that we are not getting text messages and getting interrupted multiple times during the day as we're seeing patients. And so there's definitely these sort of systems that you're going to want to put into your practice so that now you can have that communication thread. Now your team knows exactly what day of the week that you're going to be there fully committed with them to be able to answer their questions. And again, making sure that you have people that are there to help you to take that training off your plate. Okay?

The other thing that we want to look at as we are building our dental practice from the ground up is making sure that we actually have a roadmap to be able to follow so that we now have direction. Now it's really, really clear. One of the things that we look at in terms of what holds people back is looking at our internal fears saying, "Can I do this myself? Am I going to be overwhelmed? Am I going to be exhausted?"

And because of internal fears, a lot of times we just simply don't do the things that we know that we actually need to do. A lot of times we also just don't understand what exactly is happening. We don't have a plan. And so we have these external fears as well. And so once we focus on having help with creating that roadmap or we focus on creating that roadmap, then now we can grow. And so you might be asking, "Well, what does that roadmap look like?" Well, what I absolutely love seeing practices do is to take some time, to be able to create a strategy where now you can look at the last 12 months, you're able to look at what went well, what didn't go well in terms of revenue per service.

You're able to look at your production and not only production and collection, but your collection percentage. What are those things that prevented you from actually producing? Also looking at all of your expenses. And from there, you're able to understand what your profitability is, you're able to put in cashflow projections and you're able to really understand what a healthy business

looks like. Okay? So as we start looking at growing your practice, you want to be able to create that circle of focus. You want to be able to say, "Okay, what happens if we increase our case acceptance percentage without doing anything else?"

What if we now fully commit to that service that we said that we were going to start last year that we actually did not start or we did not actually execute the way that we intend it? What if we were to start looking at and increasing the number of high value services that we're doing so we're focusing on clinical skillsets? And how would that allow us to be able to serve more people as well as to be able to become known in our community for that service, as well as to be able to increase our overall revenue.

Okay? So that's one thing that we want to look at. The other thing that we want to look at as we are building our practice from the ground up. Not only do we need the right people and processes, but we definitely need to have the right tools. And these tools will allow you to be able to have accountability. And so looking at having, for example, a weekly scorecard where you're able to put in your metrics, where you're able to look weekly and say, "Have we actually hit our goal? If not, let's talk about it in a weekly meeting and say, 'How can we achieve that goal?'"

And as we start looking at assigning tasks, new things that we want to implement in our business if we want to be able to take a training, if we want to be able to implement new marketing, who's going to actually own setting these things up, who's going to help them and by when will it be done? Okay? So putting in accountability, putting in processes so that you can discuss what's happening in your practice from week to week is extremely powerful. And it's going to help you to be able to scale your practice extremely fast as well as to be able to reach your goals. Okay?

So hopefully this was super helpful for you. And you've got some pearls that will allow you to be able to grow your practice. I love being able, as you guys know, to be able to have this podcast to be able to share lots of valuable insight with you as we have worked with hundreds of practices and have been able to see what actually works to be able to allow practices to be able to grow from the ground up. We do invite you if you've not yet done so to be able to schedule a free practice strategy call with us. Go into our website at deliveringwow.com. We'd love to be able to help you to be able to grow your practice.