Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of The Delivering WOW Dental Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Anissa Holmes and today I actually want to talk to you about something that is pretty dear to my heart, and it really is all about building leverage in your business through associates. Now, I know some of you who are listening to me right now, you perhaps have associates in your practice. Some people who are listening, you might be thinking, "Well, is now a good time to bring in an associate or what's the benefit of having an associate?"

And so I actually wanted to talk to you to address this because what's been really valuable, instrumental and transformational and allowing me to grow my business, my dental practice allowing me to be able to earn a significant amount of income, grow my wealth, and honestly be able to serve our patients at a much higher level has been by bringing in associates.

Now, some people bring in associates and their thought process is, "Well, I can now bring in associates and I can do more high-value procedures," which is really, really great. But I actually want to challenge you to actually think a lot bigger than that. And I remember when I hired my first business coach, one of the things that I really ask myself is, "What do I want in terms of my business? What is my business going to look like a year from now, three years from now? How am I going to be able to build the ability to have time to spend with my family If I wanted to work three days a week, how could I do that without apologies? How could it take a month off in the summer? How can I build a business that actually serves to me versus me slaving and doing all of the things in my business?"

And what's really interesting is a lot of times because we especially as women have never had an opportunity to learn how to run a business effectively. We are doing our best. We are running our business, we are at the same time managing a household, looking after our partners, taking care of our kids all of their schedules. And we actually have a very unique situation where we are really trying to manage doing all of the things. And unfortunately, what happens is oftentimes time for us comes up short. And we don't have the ability to go to that yoga class or sit down by ourself and read that book.

And so for me talking about this topic for all of you, especially for all of you who are women is really to understand that it is not only important and valuable, but it is almost like oxygen. Something that we need to really start understanding leverage, what leverage is, how we can build leverage in our businesses so that we can have the ability to collapse timeframes in terms of growing our wealth, growing our plans for our retirement. How can we have the ability to duplicate ourselves so that we can have more procedures being done and offered in our businesses so that we can serve way more people at a higher level?

How can we have the ability to have other people doing things so that we as a business owner have the benefits, the true benefits of being a business owner, which is being able to choose how we're spending our days, what services we're providing? What are we doing with our free time? Are we able to make a decision to go into work at 10 o'clock because we want to be able to have some personal time every morning for meditating or going to the gym or going to yoga, being able to and work at a certain time. And again, while we're there be able to do the things that we want to do.

And again, just going back to me, my mindset when I hired my first coach because I didn't know how to do it. I said, "My goal is I want to be able to take a month off every summer with my kids." And in order to do that, I have to be able to build leverage. I have to be able to have somebody who is making sure that things are not slipping through the cracks who's not me. I have to make sure that systems are in place and I need other people that are producing in my business so that if I'm not there, it's not a big deal.

I often time hear inside of the Facebook groups I'd love to be able to take a week off and be able to go on vacation or, "Man, I haven't taken a vacation in multiple years or I'd like to be able to go and take this CE course. But if I do that or if I take my team to this training, we're not going to be able to see patients during that time. And all of a sudden we're going to lose income, and we're not going to be able to pay our bills." And guys, I'm here today to be able to tell you that it doesn't have to be that way. There is another way, there is another solution. And it really does come by adding in leverage.

So what does leverage mean? For me, I am a big proponent that you can have every single thing that you want in your business and your life. You just need to set the goal, you reverse engineer it and then now you just start following out the steps of your action plan. And so for me, I said, "Well, if I want to take a month off, what does that mean? If I want to be able to take time whenever I want, what does that mean?" That means that I need to have other people producing.

Now, what's really interesting in terms of associateships, and again, you might be in that position where you already have associates. And oftentimes I hear people saying, "Well, I want to be able to do all of the things and the high-value procedures, and I want to be able to give them just the fillings and all of those things so I can focus on doing all of the big cases." And I'm not saying that that's wrong, but I'm actually challenging you to think a little bit differently.

I can tell you inside of my practice, I remember thinking, "Well, what are the things ..." And I'm going to challenge you to build this list. What are the things that you're not doing in your practice yet that you'd like to be able to offer your patients, but you have no desire to do? And as you start thinking through that list, I know for me when I started to build that list and that list has changed and evolved throughout the years is I remember saying, "I love to be able to offer clear aligners in my practice. I want to be able to offer sleep and be able to create sleep appliances." Why? Because there are patients who have crooked teeth. There are patients who are snoring in my business.

And so not having the ability to help them is not what I want. I want to be able to help all of my patients. And I ask myself, "Honestly, are these things that you want to do?" And I'm going to tell you inside of my practice we do clear aligners. We're in the process of having training right now for sleep. We do laser treatment in our office. And I can tell you I never learned. I went to the course, but I've never done a clear aligner case. I will never do a sleep apnea appliance in my practice. In fact, in my practice, I don't even know how to use the TRIOS and iTero scanner.

And the fact is that I don't have to. I have team members who have been trained by the best. I have when we brought in laser, I had someone who came in and trained my team for clear aligners. I had my team go through, my associates go through training. I had coaches that held their hands through ClinChecks until they were confident. And so as we start thinking about leverage and bringing in more and offering more, I want you to start thinking differently and start thinking, "What are the procedures that you can bring an associate in for and you can actually have them to be able to be trained?"

The last associate that we hired, she actually was a past nurse before she went to dental school. And she was an older student because she had already had her first career. And so coming into my practice, I actually was looking for somebody that we could invest in and be able to get the training for sleep. And because I knew that was the purpose, I was able to be very specific in my recruiting process. And we went through many people until we found this amazing doctor who has compassion and who had a desire to be able to create in our practice this Blue Ocean Strategy.

And so what it looks like in our practice is that one of our doctors has a tremendous skillset in doing cosmetic dentistry, All-on-4 complex restorative cases. And so what happens is we've actually created within our practice a little situation where she does those procedures. Another doctor is really good at doing clear aligners so she's doing clear aligners. So you have one doctor who may be really good at doing extractions or doing endo. And so what I want you to think about is how can you not create a situation where you're feeling like you have to do all the things, but actually start reversing the process to say, "How can I interestingly do less, but bring in other people to do those high value?"

I often hear sometimes too, "Well, how much of a budget do you have for your associates? Like what if you pay for things and they leave?" So again, we're talking all about leverage. So even if you were to spend $10,000 having a team member to go to an institute, maybe a Spear or a Pankey to be able to go to clinical mastery and you spent even 10 grand, the question is, "Would you get a return on that investment of that 10 grand?" I find would a too many times the mindset is really so closed in terms of, "What if I make that investment?" And I'm like, "My mindset is completely different. It's like let me get you in. Let me find somebody who wants to grow with a company and I invest in you. "And at the end of the day, again, I invest in you. You are happy, you are growing."

And now what happens is that you're able to do, again, a one $10,000 case that will now pay for that. And the practice will continue to benefit month after month after month. So again, I really want you to start thinking about leverage. And for me, the question is how can I be able to get to the point where I can have associates actually producing to the point where I could choose to work if I wanted to or not? And so that's actually my challenge for all of you to be able to think about that. How can I bring in one associate, two associates? And for me, it was like if I bring in two associates, then I would be able to earn the current income that I'm currently earning and even more if they're doing high-value procedures.

So I really wanted to share this message with you to have you to start thinking a little bit differently. And as you start bringing in associates, now you can look at being able to have more time to do those things that you love. And that could be, "You know what? I no longer have to do root canals. I no longer have to do dentures." As I started bringing in associates in my own practice, I really, really enjoy doing complex restorative cases, restoring implant procedures.

And so I essentially stopped doing all of those other things. And I said, "You know what? You do those extractions. You do the clear aligners. You do the endo." You do all of those things. And now what happens is you're able to create a situation where you're doing the dentistry that you love without apologies.

So what I would say your action item for today's episode is to really think about if you have an associate, what are the things that can be handed over to your associates so that you can do more dentistry that you love? Making a list of services that you would like to perform in your practice that you're not currently performing and really look at can you bring in an associate to be able to do those procedures for you. Or if you have a current associate having a conversation to say, "You know what? Let's create some Blue Ocean opportunities in our practice for you to be able to thrive."

And in essence, become a mini specialist to be able to do that inside of our practice and invest in them, invest in their training so that they can be successful so that they can get up and running as fast as possible. And then you want to make sure that you're using the frameworks that we're teaching you inside of our programs to be able to create goals, to be able to use the whiteboards and the scorecards to be able to track performance. And ensure that your team members are actually hitting the goals so that now you have the ability, again, to be able to earn more, to be able to accomplish more, to be able to grow your business without apologies. All right?

So hopefully that served you. If you've not yet done so, guys, I would encourage you highly, highly, highly to join us inside of our Dental Boss Entrepreneurs Facebook group. We're going to be having a lot of really cool things happening in there coming up within the next few weeks. We will be having a get more testimonials challenge, helping you to understand how to be able to build more trust and loyalty with your existing patients, so much so that they're actually creating video testimonials that you can use for your social media, for your marketing.

We're also going to be having an upcoming wealth workshop so that you can understand what's your number, how much money do you want to start putting in now so that you have a set amount ready and available for you five years from now, 10 years from now. And understanding how to build in passive income that can grow tax-free. So really, really excited about that workshop that's going to be coming up and having you to be able to create your game plan of knowing what you want to set aside and how specifically do we budget for that within our practice so that we can ensure that we're hitting our wealth goals.

Definitely want to make sure that you're inside of our Facebook groups, so that you can get access to all of the amazing things that we're helping you with to be able to grow your practice. And if you've not yet joined us, you definitely want to make sure that you're joining us dentalbossentrepreneurs.com. All right, guys. So that's pretty much it. Thank you so much for listening and we will see you next time.

Thanks for listening to another episode of the Delivering WOW Dental Podcast. Now your next step is to join us inside of our free Facebook group Dental Boss Entrepreneurs where you'll be able to connect and collaborate with like-minded dentists. And if you're looking for help to be able to grow and scale your practice faster, we invite you to join us inside of our Dental Boss Academy where your first month is free. To join us, go to dentalbossacademy.com. Take care, guys, and we will see you in the next episode.

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 actually going to talk about how to have a team that does their job without being told. So this was actually a question that came into our Dental Boss Entrepreneur Facebook group. If you're not yet a member, we'd love to have you in our community. We have lots of amazing doctors that are getting together that are connecting, collaborating, and communicating. But again, we had a question that came in, and it said like, "How do I get my team to do those things? I'm feeling a little bit overwhelmed. I'm feeling like I am not having accountability. I'm to telling people what they need to do and they're not doing it." And so I actually wanted to address this because it's something that is extremely common as we all probably can imagine.

And it's something that I can tell you, I'm extremely proud of that we have inside of my practice and that we've been able to actually create frameworks for practices, to be able to implement certain tools, certain systems, to be able to have that accountability, which is really great because a few things happen. The team members actually become happier in their positions. They see that they're being able to give their feedback and come up with ideas that are actually being listened to and supported. And what happens is, as a result of it, we have more things happening because we have more people working together for a common goal and for their personal goals within their role in the practice. But as a result of it, the doctor can now focus more on what they really love to do. And what they're really, really good at, which is the dentistry or saying, you know what? I really want to take this course and learn a new skillset, or I want to invest in upping my knowledge of how to run my business.

And now that I have my team, that's taking care of these other things, I can feel focused on my learning, my personal development, my professional development. Again, really looking at doing what you really love to do the business and being able to have more time as an owner of a business, to be able to reap the benefits of that, which is being able to not have to work extremely long hours after work doing things, because now you have leverage built-in.

And so one of the first things that I always say when I work with colleagues is we definitely want to look at having three separate steps. So there are three things that we always want to be able to look at in terms of being able to get this accountability. Number one is we want to have the right people in our business. So we have to have people in order to have leverage. If we're trying to do everything ourselves, or we say, you know what? I asked my team to do this. They didn't do it. I got frustrated. I just did it myself. You're never going to have freedom that way. You're never going to be able to take a vacation. You're never going to be able to take time away because everything's dependent on you. So you definitely want to make sure that we look at the people component.

And the first step really is people because without having a team that you can empower to the next level and I get it right now, a lot of people are saying, well, we can't get team members. I'm not talking about necessarily having to hire people to do this. I'm talking about the people that are currently within your organization. How can we elevate them to actually become leaders within the organization, to have specific things that they are accountable for and they're actually doing it? Okay. So we're going to talk about how that process works, but we first need to again, have the right people.

The next thing is we want to have the right processes. So this is something that is done consistently every single day, every single week. A process is something that is not something that we choose to do one day. And then we kind of do it next week. And it's kind of random. It's something that we do every day or every week or every month or every quarter. And we do it consistently at the same exact time, or the exact same day, or the exact same day on the exact same time. And that way becomes a pattern and it is not something that's going to slip through the cracks. Okay.

So the third thing that we want to look at is making sure that we have tools because what happens is that if we have tools to be able to hold us accountable to the goals, and to the processes that we're setting, then now the tool is going to prevent us from having behavioral changes come in. Oh my gosh, we started this new process and we completely forgot. Or we set this goal, but we really didn't have something to be able to track it. And so how do we get that accountability? I can tell you one of the tools that I actually put into my practice that we've helped hundreds of practices, probably thousands now actually, to be able to implement is this process of number one, inside of our morning huddle, having a daily whiteboard, where we can put our goals, where we can look at historical numbers, where if we're starting a new procedure, we can actually look at that and we can see, have we hit our goal? Have we not hit our goal?

It's really interesting about a week or so ago, I was talking to a doctor, interestingly, that's been following me for a while. And she's implemented a lot of systems that we have put into place with frameworks within the coaching program, the Platinum Coaching Program. So she joined the coaching program, she's getting some progress, but honestly, she's not getting the ultimate process or the ultimate result. And so I started reviewing some things with her and I said, "Okay, let's start back to business foundation. Like, where are you with your scorecards? Do you understand why you're using them? Or is this just an exercise?" Because she said, "I'm feeling like I'm having to do all the things." And she said, "Honestly, I kind of feel like it's an exercise." And I said, "Okay, well that means that clearly I've not communicated or you've not been clear, your team has not been clear in terms of why we're actually doing this."

Nothing in your practice should ever be something that you do without understanding why you're doing it. If it's not giving you an outcome that you desire, you have to figure out, am I doing it correctly or does it even make sense? And I can tell you, like at a morning huddle for me, at one point we were reading out charts. We were saying, "Oh, this patient has mitral valve prolapse. So we need to pre-medicate them" which really wasn't really getting us anywhere. It was just something that we were doing just for the motion. But what I told her is that whiteboards are not that. Whiteboards are when you go in and you say that you want to start doing a new procedure and you're not, then now it actually opens up a conversation for you to be able to have within your weekly meeting an opportunity to say, you know what? We are consistently not being able to get patients started with clear aligners. What's the real issue?

And so the team members can say, well, we're talking about it, but we're just not yet being able to have the patient convert. And so now you're able to have a conversation and you're able to realize that your team and you really do need to invest more in verbal skills training. Or you may discover through this process that, you know what? You said you were going to do a marketing campaign and you didn't. So the first piece is being able to have this tool or being able to use a tool such as a weekly scorecard, where you can track your doctor production per visit, hygiene production per visit, accounts receivable. And you're able to look at all of these different metrics. How many are being rescheduled? What's the hygiene reappointment percentage?

And what happens is that when you have goals, the scorecard is something that we teach our doctors within our academy, as well as in our Platinum Coaching Program, we actually have performance scorecard dashboards built into our e-learning platform. And we create a process where every week a team member goes in. So that's the people part. The process is that they are going in and updating the scorecard. Again, production collection, doctor production per visit, case acceptance percentage, hygiene reappointment percentage, hygiene production per visit, AR over 30. And so now what happens is that the team members doing that, not the doctor. Okay. So that's the process every Monday.

And then the tool is actually the scorecard itself. The scorecard is where you're able to go in and you set your goals. If you hit the goals, great. If you hit them three weeks in a row, how I train within our academy and within our Platinum Coaching Program is once you hit the goal three times, then now you give yourself permission to increase the goal. And it actually shows you when you look historically at the scorecard, it actually turns blue in all areas where you actually changed your goal.

And if you don't, are not hitting a specific KPI, it actually points you to training within our platform that your team can watch. And you can watch to be able to get that number up. So if your case acceptance percentage is flat, we're going to point you to the training to be able to increase that number. So now that you have the person, you have the process and you have the tool then what happens, is that the tool is actually holding us accountable. So if your accounts receivable goes up from one week to the other, you know about it, it's not slipping through the cracks. And you have a specific team member who does your collections in your practice, the treatment coordinator. If you don't have that, the person who is taking care of the payments up front, perhaps this is your front desk team member, your office manager. Now they have a tool that if the number goes up, it can alert them. And now they can go and research that insurance claim, or they can say, well, what happened? And they realize, oh my gosh, the statement was not sent out.

And because of this tool, now they never want to see that happen, so they're going to make sure that statements are sent out and insurance claims are not having those errors. And as a result of it, you'll never get yourself in a situation where your accounts receivable accumulates because you're looking at it. But then are you looking at it?

And so the next tool that we really love to teach and help you to implement in your business is actually having a weekly leadership meeting where you can do some connection within your team where you're getting together, sharing what went really well for you in the last week. What are you proud of? Personally, what are you proud of? What's going on with you? Really giving a core value, highlight who's that team member that really over-delivered to a patient or helped you calling them out and giving them those kudos and that appreciation. But really within that actually weekly leadership meeting, that typically I will say should happen every ... Ours are actually on Tuesdays, right before our first patient, right after morning huddle, again, a consistent day, a consistent time where everybody shows up. And now what happens is that you're able to have that time that's dedicated for the first five minutes or so even, five to seven minutes reviewing that scorecard and saying, okay, well, what really took off? What goal that we have that we really hit?

And then you can now celebrate your team for coming together and hitting that goal or say, you know what? It's time to increase it. Or you say, oh my gosh, we've not hit this goal consistently for the last three weeks, but now not only have we not hit it, but it's dipping, it's dipping. Or the AR just keeps rising and rising. Or our doctor production per visit. Maybe it's not dipping and dipping and dipping, maybe it is. And then now you can, later on in that meeting structure, you can actually have a discussion to brainstorm and strategize about how you're going to improve it. And maybe it's improving your verbal skills. Maybe it is actually doing some role play. Maybe it is doing that marketing campaign that you know that you want to do. And now it's like, okay, well, I really have to just go ahead and do that now. Or maybe it's really tracking now back on your whiteboard, the number of same-day add-ons that you're going to do.

Again, being able to use tools that are first fueled by processes, meaning this is what we're going to do to be able to get that information. And then again, having that once a week time where you can get together and you can ensure that you're going to review so that you can again, see what's flat. And if something's flat, you can improve it. For example, in my practice, we saw that hygiene production per visit was flat about two or three years ago. And so we made a decision just based on that data to look at how can we increase it? We put in lasers, we put in [inaudible 00:13:52] protect. And all of a sudden we were able to increase that number, but if we weren't looking at it, we would not have known that was a sore thumb in our business.

So again, a lot of times people ask me like, what's the key to people, processes and tools? Or what's the key to getting my team to do things and I don't have to do them? And I will typically ask, are you using these tools? Are you using a process that it's done consistently? Nothing in your business should ever be done as an exercise. And I'll tell you, like I'm really very, very proud of where my business is, but here's the thing.

Like I had to make a decision to really focus on implementing these people, processes and tools in my practice. I had to go to my team and say, I give you ownership of this particular number. And so it's for you to come up with brainstorming ideas of how can you get those unscheduled patients rescheduled. This is your role in the business. I'm hiring you because I think you're awesome. Give me your ideas, give me your strategies. Let's talk about it as a team, within our weekly meeting and maybe focusing on each person's individual high goal that they have for the quarter, their rocks, things that are what's most important for them to contribute. And we all support each other through that process.

But again, if you're not having this weekly meeting or if you're not having the tools to hold you accountable, then now you're just taking things day by day by day. So hopefully that serves you. And again, people ask me like, what's the key? How do you have your team doing all of these things? How do you have your office manager running your business for you? And you don't have to really have micromanaging going on? I can ensure you that although I may not be looking at my profit and expenses sheet every single day or my scorecard every single day in my practice. If I log in, my scorecard's being done, my expenses and profit sheet's being done, my team understands how to run ... Any one of my team can run one of these meetings to identify cracks. They didn't know this at first. How would they know?

It's because I took the time, first, to learn it. Secondly, to develop processes and systems. And thirdly, to teach my team. And now they're able to follow the flow, follow the process and we don't miss. We don't miss a morning huddle with the whiteboard. And we've been doing this for probably about 15 years, some of these processes, and we don't miss having that scorecard updated weekly. We don't miss that weekly leadership meeting so that we can review and see what the real issues are. If there are real issues going on and you identify that even in your huddle, that you're not hitting a particular goal, then now you can go back and say, well, let's talk about that in our weekly meeting and strategize on how we can get those patients coming in or how we can figure out what the real issue is about a new service.

Maybe the real issue is just that the team doesn't feel clinically competent. And so we can talk about that. We can leave, and the whole purpose of those weekly meetings is not to go and sit down and just have a discussion. For me, it's all about leaving with a list of items, a list of to-dos and who's going to get those to-dos done. Each individual person, what are they going to work on that week? And that will be done by the end of the next week. What's going to be solved? And it's not just, let's just get together and talk. Otherwise, it doesn't make sense. And so hopefully this is serving you, this is helping you. I'd love to be able to continue to help you guys, if you fear or feeling like, oh my gosh, I need this inside of my practice and I know I'm not where I'm going to be, I'd love to be able to help you.

Our Platinum Coaching Program allows us to be able to work one on one with training your office managers to take this off of your plate so that now they can lead your team, working with you to really have those one on one strategy calls, to be able to grow your practice, looking at helping you and your team with training, on scheduling, on hygiene production and productivity, the marketing, the insurance. So we are able to help you and support you one on one and with a one on one coach within our platinum coaching programs.

But within our Dental Boss Academy, we have created the number one online training platform to help you and your teams with the business side of dentistry. And so we'd love to give you an opportunity to first get started with us, perhaps, even in the Dental Boss Academy, where we do have 24/7 online training to help you and your team to put in these systems, giving you again, the online training, giving you access to a group coaching call every month to be able to get support, teaching a new system to you and your team, helping you with those verbal skills, through the training, marketing, marketing calls. We'd love to be able to support you.

If you're ready to get started, we'd love to see you inside of the academy. If you go to dentalbossacademy.com, your first four weeks are actually completely free. So we'd love to be able to help you get started right away. After the four months, if you decide that you are wanting to stay in the programs, continue with the program, which we'd love to be able to help you do, then the monthly investment is only $297, which you can cancel at any time. So again, I'd love to be able to help you in your teams to be able to add in that accountability, getting these things off your plate. And what I often tell doctors when I speak to them is how much would it be worth it to be able to not have to do all of the things in your business, to be able to have that leverage, to be able to know that your case acceptance is high, your marketing is working, that you have team members that are being empowered to get to the next level. Well, that's actually what we help doctors and colleagues do every single day.

So again, feel free to check out Dental Boss Academy. We have lots of fun things that we're doing. Currently, we are starting an out of network challenge. So we're actually going to be a helping practices who want to come out of network, come out of network. We're going to be teaching and empowering the teams to understand the real cost of running a business. What does it really cost to do a filling, or to do a crown so that they can understand the cost of materials and that we're not necessarily making what they think that we're making on the procedures.

In fact, we may or may not know. And so excited to be able to teach that, to be able to teach the case acceptance frameworks around coming out of network. To be able to do something different, we have to have new skill sets. And so developing that through our verbal skills within our academy and Platinum Coaching Program, again, in our out of network challenge. We're actually going to be doing some role-playing with case acceptance with teams also helping you to develop the out of network marketing plan, as well as giving you the templates and tools to help you to be able to better communicate with your patients and what out of network means to them. All right. So hopefully this was a good episode for you. You got lots of value out of it, and I look forward to chatting with you again, really, really soon.