by [email protected] | Jun 9, 2021 | Prescriptions for your Practice
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Mild to moderate obstructive sleep apnea (OSD) can lead to a wide variety of health risks. Yet, more than 80% of people with OSD are utterly unaware that they are suffering from this condition.
In today’s episode, I am very excited to have Kirk Huntsman, the CEO and Co-Founder of Vivos Therapeutics, Inc.; a medical technology company that focuses on developing a non-surgical, non-invasive, non-pharmaceutical, and low-cost solution for patients with sleep-disordered breathing, including mild to moderate sleep apnea.
Kirk is a well-known figure in the dental profession. In 1995 he founded Dental One Partners (formerly Dental One) and grew it to over 165 locations in 15 states. In 2010 he was appointed as CEO of ReachOut Healthcare America, and in 2012, Kirk founded Xenith Practices, LLC. He founded and served as the Chief Executive Officer of Ortho Ventures, LLC in 2014, and in November of 2015, he joined First Vivos, Inc. as its CEO.
Recently, Vivos launched VivoScore Diagnostic Technology. It is a comprehensive home sleep apnea test for children and adults. It includes a proprietary ring-like device that you can slide into your finger overnight while you’re sleeping in the comfort of your home.
If you want to take better care of your patients, you would be interested to listen to this episode.
Tune in and find solutions to common practice issues at Prescriptions for Your Practice
Key Quotes:
- “As I built a successful dental practice brokerage business, I quickly understood that dentists struggle with some of the clinical and managerial aspects.”
- “You want to differentiate your services offering from every other Yahoo in the marketplace. And so we were trying to figure out what we could do that was different.”
- “I decided I would take the orthodontic courses. I said, look, guys, you guys follow me, and I’ll do this with you. If I can do it, you can do it. “
- “I was probably the only business guy on the planet that had the clinical perspective, as well as the business background.”
- “The doctors have got to feel confident enough in the technology and competent enough with it that they can go into the operatory, sit down with the patient, close the case and never look back. The patient will have a great experience, and they’re [doctors] going to have a great experience.”
- “You don’t need to be in intervention for a lifetime. Would you rather have a mandibular advancement case that you’re married to for life, or would you rather have the opportunity to celebrate victory in 12 to 18 months and be done with that case?”
- “I appreciate how this all comes together and adding quality and quantity of life for patients and family members.”
- “ADA has recommended that all dentists screen all their patients for sleep apnea. That’s now becoming the standard of care.”
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by [email protected] | Jun 2, 2021 | Prescriptions for your Practice
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“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.” — Epictetus
Listening is the single most essential skill in business, particularly in dental practice. Poor listening skills may lead to assumptions and misunderstanding that will eventually result in ineffective decisions and costly mistakes. It further deteriorates team cohesion and causes a lot of tension and stress.
Effective listening should be attentive, responsive, and active. Pay close attention to non-verbal expressions to understand and decode the messages correctly. Functional listening promotes healthy organizational relationships, encourages creativity and innovation, and fosters a positive culture among employees and the organization.
In this episode, I will talk about dental business owners retain great employees, nurture their growth, and provide them with tools for success to keep them dedicated to their practice, your leadership, and your customers — all because of active listening.
Tune in and find solutions to common dental practice issues at Prescriptions for Your Practice
Key Quotes:
- “When somebody leaves the nest and they graduate, these parents extend the trust that they will find good workplaces that take care of them.”
- “Good employees leave and you think that they leave for more money, but that’s not the case.”
- “The first key to active listening is giving someone all of your attention.”
- “The second step is to step into the conversations with genuine curiosity.”
- “Active listening means digging deeper because they don’t know how to articulate themselves and you need to ask exploratory questions.”
- “If you’re able to listen and they’re able to be heard, sometimes that’s enough for their needs to be met immediately.”
- “If you give your team, your patients, an undivided attention and you dive deeper to fully understand them, they will be committed and loyal to you and you can continue this reciprocal exchange because the offspring of active listening is trust.”
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by [email protected] | May 26, 2021 | Prescriptions for your Practice
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Where in your relationships, your health, your financial situation, your clinical dentistry, can the realism of progress take precedence over the fantasy of perfection?
At one point in our life, we have been in a situation wherein we strive to be perfect, only to realize that it is only an illusion that we put upon ourselves out of fear of criticism and rejection.
The key to perfection is acknowledging that it doesn’t exist.
Perfection is fiction, and it can be destructive. I’m not saying that you should lower your standards. Set high standards and strive for excellence, not perfection. You can only achieve success through progressive action.
Listen in as I discuss pointers on how you can identify areas of your life or business where the standard of “perfection” should be replaced with progress.
Tune in and find solutions to common practice issues at Prescriptions for Your Practice
Key Quotes:
- “When it came time for me to cross the finish line, I looked up at my time and the critic turned on, and I was starting to think of ways that should have improved my time and why the time wasn’t good enough. The standard of finishing immediately changed, and I was looking for opportunities where I could have perfected that run.”
- “That is a metaphor for a lot of or our lives. Where is that perfectionism that we’re trained to notice these meticulous details in the mouth, the dentistry that we’re doing, the margins, the bone levels? We’re down to millimeters and microns and that works really well in dentistry, but it can create all sorts of problems with their teams, with their families, in our life.”
- “We create these environments where there’s learned helplessness because our team thinks ‘Well, I can never live up to the doctor’s standards so why even try? I’m not even gonna put up the effort because I’m getting criticized.’ So, it starts to hamper our relationships.”
- “What is perfect? The reality is it doesn’t exist.”
- “The solution isn’t to really lower your standards. But we have to appreciate that the path to mastery is messy. Whenever you start on anything, you suck at it. So you have to give yourself permission to suck and get better, and better, and better.”
- “The solution is making peace with imperfection and falling in love with process and progress.”
- “Human desire isn’t perfection, it is connection.”
- “Understand that we have to change habits to change identity. Once we start to build that confidence, then the success and the progress are inevitable.”
- “Perfection leads to procrastination.”
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by [email protected] | May 19, 2021 | Prescriptions for your Practice
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Have you been scouring the internet trying to look for the best reward system for your employees? Let me tell you a secret; there’s none! I’ve tried different approaches, many times myself, and they didn’t work.
The bonus system aims to give out incentives (monetary or otherwise) to motivate employees to bring out their best and be productive. However, this kind of approach is counterproductive and not to mention expensive.
If you’re looking for a perfect incentive system for your employees, you should not miss out on these three elements: alignment, belonging, and healthy conflict. A reward system should not curb creativity and risk-taking. Once it’s manipulative and punitive, it will predictively fail 100%.
Tune in and find solutions to common practice issues at Prescriptions for Your Practice
Key Quotes:
- “What’s the best bonus system out there? And the short answer, the bottom line up front, is that there is no such thing.”
- “If you work from that mental frame, work for wages, then you immediately assume that if I give more wages, if I give an incentive or bonus program, then I have a better team and I’ll get more and better work… it just doesn’t work.”
- “Modern research says that bonus systems suck, and it can actually demotivate employees, or worse, motivate them to be egocentric, to work on their own self-interests.”
- “Most people are looking for alignment, belonging, and healthy conflict.”
- “You, as the practice owner, are completely limiting the effectiveness of your team if it’s a top-down approach.”
- “If we don’t first fulfill those common human needs, a bonus system will likely be expensive at best, counterproductive at worst.”
- “I really didn’t have the practice or team that I dreamed of until I really dug into the science of human potential, the science of organizational behavior.”
- “No bonus system can match the internal motivations of your team.”
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by [email protected] | May 12, 2021 | Prescriptions for your Practice
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Stephen Covey was spot on when he said, “The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule but to schedule your priorities.”
If you want to make more with less work, you need to leverage the principles of ruthless prioritization, that is, eliminating anything that does not add value toward achieving your goal.
Sometimes, you need to get rid of the good to focus on the great.
In this episode, I talk about the aggressive and scary move I made in 2016 to carve back some personal time from my workdays and still able to grow my practice. I’ll also discuss how to find the hidden potential in life’s harsh realities of unfairness. And as a bonus, I’ll share with you 5 highly recommended books to guide you on how you can make more by working less.
Tune in and find solutions to common practice issues at Prescriptions for Your Practice
Key Quotes:
- “You can make more and work less each and every year by leveraging the principles of ruthless prioritization.”
- “The reality is that the world is incredibly imbalanced and you have to embrace the harsh realities of ‘unfairness’.”
- “Sometimes you need to get rid of the good so you can focus on the great.”
- “Document and focus on the things that really create a lot of focus and power and the things that are disempowering.”
- “If you are going to chisel your big patients based down to one person who would you start with?”
- “If you give all your time and attention trying to fix your bottom performers, you’ll ultimately end up losing some of your best talents.”
- “How can you eliminate, delegate, automate the bottom few [assignments]? How can you find more time and focus in the top few [assignments]?”
- “Who are your multipliers? The ones who naturally align with your core values and mission and get you consistent results.”
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by [email protected] | May 5, 2021 | Prescriptions for your Practice
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How do we secure a productive environment in our practices? One that doesn’t get disrupted by the increasing tension in society and result in a toxic culture that could compromise your livelihood?
Let’s engineer a work environment that brings out the best in you and your team!
In this episode, I talk about the imminent changes in the dental profession that are big long-term wins if we start enhancing our company cultures. I’ll also discuss how to keep your team innovating and encourage your employees to grow their confidence, improve engagement, and experience joy at work.
Tune in and find solutions to common practice issues at Prescriptions for Your Practice
Key Quotes:
- “Our dental practices are a microcosm for society. Unless we create systems for safety and alignment for our teams, that polarization will create a very toxic culture and undermine your livelihood.”
- “In all (economic) climates, it’s important that you, as a practice owner, are building your confidence and that of your team.”
- “Personal issues manifest as work issues all of the time.”
- “If there aren’t systems for frequent and open dialogue, there’s a very good chance there’s some toxic behaviors hidden from you, the doctor. Those are the ones that explode and hurt you, patient care, and others on the team.”
- “Make sure you have some sort of no gossip policy.”
- “Make sure that you have systems for recognition.”
- “If you, the doctor, don’t engineer an environment that brings out the best in you, patient care and your pay will eventually take a hit.”
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by [email protected] | Apr 28, 2021 | Magnificent Marketing
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This week’s guest, Stuart Faught of Praze, is a well-known figure in the dental sphere as his expertise in reputation management has assisted thousands of dental practices to grow exponentially by helping them develop and enhance long-term trust.
Listen in as Stuart offers some tips on leveraging excellent patient treatment and excellent patient experience into quantifiable online reviews to establish yourself as the most trusted dentist in your community. We also talked about how you can lower your marketing costs by building your practice while boosting your reputation.
Tune in and learn more about Magnificent Marketing
Key Quotes:
- “Leveraging these different platforms to establish yourself as the most trusted dentist in your community is key now more than ever.”
- “I think dentists really need to understand that they have an amazing opportunity to literally be perceived and literally be the most trusted dentists in their town.”
- “Know where you’re at and then focus where it matters.”
- “It’s interesting to know that the most profitable practices, they all had one thing in common according to our studies. What is that one thing? They all had 300 or more testimonials.”
- “It’s always been my goal and mission to every practice we work with to help them become the most trusted dentist in their town. And we feel like the realistic path to achieving that is that one simple thing, let us help you get 300 positive reviews on Google.”
- “I quickly learned that really what was getting the patient from an internet search into the actual chair was those doctors who had the most and best reviews.”
- “There’s still a lot of the doctors who don’t realize that as a rule of thumb, the more positive reviews you have on Google, the more likely you are to be rewarded by Google and popping up in a search.”
- “I know that practices really value growing by word of mouth and it’s something that any business owner can take pride in. But I think that a lot of dentists still don’t realize that online reviews are modern-day word of mouth, right? And they’re these digital testimonials that live forever.”
- “They call that review marketing and it’s basically taking your positive reviews and marketing them over and over and over again. So the best way to do it is to leverage them on your website.”
- “I think that definitely, everyone should be on the same page as far as the doctor’s vision for the practice.”
- “If and when you get that negative review, it’s almost a great thing. As long as you’ve got a system in place, that’s gathering a bunch of positive reviews because you know, it makes those positive reviews look even more authentic.”
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by [email protected] | Apr 21, 2021 | Legendary Leadership
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I am re-releasing one of the more popular and the No. 1 most downloaded episode of all my podcasts. It features the incredibly insightful Dr. Thomas Grass as he recounts the story of how he found dentistry and the path that led him to this career. This is one of the most powerful conversations I have ever had on the show, as Tom delves deep into the importance of being present and how to avoid always looking to the future or your next achievement.
We discuss what Tom calls the UFO method and how to use this when approaching unpleasant discussions or delivering difficult news. You’ll learn how to create satisfaction out of inherently unsatisfying experiences. Listen in as we share personal stories about making connections with the people in our lives and touch on the responsibility you have to yourself to do the same.
Tune in and meet more Legendary Leaders
Key Quotes:
- “The minute you turn your patients into problems, tasks, or room numbers, you’ve failed.”
- “Dentistry checks all my boxes; you get to take care of people for a long time, you get to know people, and you get to be hands-on.”
- “Hospice is really good at showing you all the pieces and parts that surround someone’s life.”
- “You don’t know what people are living with, what people regret.”
- “Tell people what you need from them and give people what they want from you.”
- “When you are caring for people, you are giving away your emotional energy to them.”
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by [email protected] | Apr 14, 2021 | Legendary Leadership
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Two of my favorite people in this profession, Dr. Molly Karmazin and Dr. Corey Karmazin, join me on this week’s podcast to unpack their secrets to success. Drs. Corey and Molly are among those featured in my “Dentist On A Mission” book. They practice in a gorgeous, state-of-the-art facility in Sioux Falls, SD alongside a very enthusiastic high-performance team.
Listen in as Drs. Molly and Corey talk about how they made their scratch-start dream a reality, how they continue to reinvest in their practice and refine their leadership style to make the best better. They will also share their insights on culture, systems, and lifelong learning.
Tune in and find more Legendary Leadership
Key Quotes:
- “They said in school, one of the hardest things you can do is probably start your own from scratch. And we were like, let’s do it.”
- “I think with the information overload that we get now, I think it would feel daunting. I’d probably still do it [a startup practice].”
- “We’re always big in putting time and effort back into the team because I think it always pays off in spades.”
- “Sometimes you take it personally when people make a decision to make a change. And I feel like there’s no real substitute for just experiencing that. And I won’t say that it makes you kind of cold, but it makes you realize to really appreciate what you have at any given time and just know like there’s going to be things that are switched out.”
- “Anytime someone leaves, this is always for the better. And then it makes our expectations and levels even higher for the next one and we’re quicker to make decisions whether things are working or not.”
- “The thing that I’ve learned, probably the most in the last couple of years, is we’ve found our voice and it doesn’t have to come off as bossy. And being a leader is telling people what you want and giving them the tools to be able to do that.”
- “We had to invest in technology. We had to computerize the office because I wanted to have a seamless flow from our Sioux Falls office to this office. So it was kind of fun.”
- “I still can’t believe we still have patients that we saw like day one. I felt like I knew nothing. I felt like my skills were there, but they weren’t there where they are now. And you’re just like, Oh, these people saw it in you. And they were like, you can do it.”
- “I think doing it on your own, from the get go, you invest so much more in yourself and the business. Whether it’s with technology or remodel, whether it’s just trying to be on top and up, we just constantly re-investing.”
- Every single patient through the door has either come because they’ve picked up the phone and took a chance on us or they have now told other people. And so, we really do very little advertising. A lot of our patients come from, Hey, so-and-so told me to come see you.”
- “Our confidence in ourselves that we can deliver has made a huge difference.”
- “You don’t know what you don’t know and you think you’re doing a good job and you can do great dentistry forever in that little bubble. It’s just been such a pleasure to burst outside of it and to be able to start different things.”
- “Make connections with dentists all across the country and even the world.”
- “You can’t complain and get angry and bitter when you come from a place of gratitude.”
- “Starting each day with a thing of gratitude, I think, has changed everybody.”
Corey and Molly Karmazin started their dental practice 18 years ago in Sioux Falls, SD. They have embraced continuing education and technology and A-Team atmosphere at their office. Grace, Gratitude and Attitude help make each day at Karmazin Dental a GREAT DAY!
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by [email protected] | Apr 7, 2021 | Bold Biographies
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It feels great to reconnect with a good friend, Dr. Peter Bowman, whom I guested in my podcast 5 years back talking about The Art of Believing and Achieving. Fast forward to the present, Peter now owns a world-ranked 9-hole golf course and his dental practice is currently focused on implant cases in varying degrees of complexity, sedation dentistry, and Invisalign.
Listen in as Peter gives us a glimpse of what his work week looks like, his undertaking outside the practice, how he adapted his practice model to his other ventures, biohacking, and a trip down memory lane on how luck played a role in why he got into dentistry.
Tune in and find more Bold Biographies
Key Quotes:
- “Doing more efficient scheduling and delegating to the assistant, scheduling docker time and assistant time, we still have to kind of stay on top of that sometimes. But you know, just like anything else, nothing goes perfectly. All we can do is to make it better with each day.”
- “You’re putting out fires the whole time. You don’t have enough time to figure out where you want to grow and do new things, and doing that buffer time is really hard to even get scheduled. But you know, once you’ve got it and formed that habit, it’s been the best thing I made in the long time.“
- “A lot of my time is spent marketing and finding opportunities for growth, figuring out what service we don’t offer, the other offices in the area don’t offer, and finding a way to introduce that into the practice, picking a little niche to take care of.”
- “I think you can do a fee-for-service model pretty much anywhere, but you really have to make yourself stand out and differentiate yourself.”
- “We still do most of our approach based on finding out what the issues are, finding out what the patient wants, telling them how we can give them what they want, here’s what more we can do. And it just seemed to work for us. We built up a lot of trust and people keep coming back. So that’s how we do it.”
- “You become what you think about.”
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