by Karah Karah | Feb 9, 2015 | Prescriptions for your Practice
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Quotes & Notes:
- She is the director of consulting at Classic Practice Resources and is really an authority on creating systems for practices that really help them develop efficiencies and all and all become more productive.
- We are sharing a lot of tools to help them be more productive and have more fun.
- They [cancellations and no shows] are causing a lot of stress, and they are having practices that have a lot of missed opportunities.
- They are just not good for the practice. And many times they can be prevented.
- The biggest reasons for broken appointments are, no real concrete financial arrangements, the patient just doesn’t value the service, and the appointment wasn’t really confirmed properly.
- When the patient starts asking questions, and if those questions don’t get answered, then guess what, they are a no show.
- First of all, a lot of patients are asking for automated confirmation calls, and some of them know how to utilize it.
- We have to keep a hold of the fact that people do not really love to go to the dentist.
- We recommend sending a physical card three weeks in advance, send an email/ text three days in advance when they can confirm, and if they don’t they get a phone call the day before.
- If they confirm and no show, from now on they get the call.
“The more control you have over your schedule the higher your production will be.”
- Determine how much every unit of time is worth in your practice for each provider.
- The worst thing you can do is when you have an opening, call others to try to fit them within that time, for you are teaching your patients that it is ok to cancel.
- “We have worked on this schedule, we know you need this root canal and we have worked it out for you to come in tomorrow at two.”
- For the appointment wrap up, the dental assistant or the hygienist needs to sit the chair in an upright position, and keep the patient seated, and you must leave the patients bib on. Once you take the bib off they think the appointment is over.
- Give them a summery of the procedure that happened today. Its an opportunity to reinforce the future treatment needs and benefits of returning to complete what was started.
- Always, always ask the patient if they have any questions.
- Never send that patient wandering down the hall. There is a hand-off.
- If you want people to keep their appointments, then they have to realize that it is going to get worse.
- They [receptionists] need to be able to control and minimize broken appointments, and this is done through their actions and words, and avoid using the word cancellation.
- The first thing I am not going to do is say “Oh that’s ok.” No.
- Show them compassion.
You can learn more at classicpractice.com, and you can reach Sandy Pardue with her number (800) 928-9289, and email her at [email protected].
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by Karah Karah | Feb 9, 2015 | Magnificent Marketing
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Quotes & Notes:
- You have to get in front of them. The old school advertising term is impressions. You have to get them to your website. You have to convert them, move them to the next step.
- Your four pillars are Visibility, Conversion, Followup, and Tracking.
- There is still a ton of dentists that don’t have enough web presence.
- Not only is google not telling us what people are searching for, what it is, it is a push towards their pay for click advertising.
- Google is moving towards this omnipotent google that predicts and just knows what people are searching for, where they don’t want people optimizing their websites.
- My father was a dentist. That is how I got into it myself.
- It’s unfortunate that you just can’t hang out your shingle and people will come to you, but its a factor of competition, and economics. Why would they want to choose you?
- You need to start advertising and go start advertising where people are looking.
People are looking overwhelmingly online. Do you follow consumer trends?
- What makes a patient want to go to you rather than the one down the road? What makes you different?
- When a consumer makes a decision, in the health care industry specifically, they’re looking at trust and perceived expertise.
- Talk to people in the language they are speaking.
- Do the same thing in your marketing. Speak, as if you are speaking to a person.
- Joe Polish: “Enter the conversation that is already happening. Step into the conversation that the patient is already having in their head.”
- Every dentist wants more time. Every dentist wants to communicate better with their patients.
- There are two big benefits to video, one technical and one not. The technical benefit to video is search engine ranking, its visibility. The other thing that video does is it humanizes dentists.
- If you want Medicare and Medicaid patients, put on your websites that you offer that, because you are going to attract those and repel others.
If you want to reach Colin Receveur is on the website, www.moreandbetterpatients.com and the number is on the website as well.
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by Karah Karah | Feb 9, 2015 | Bold Biographies
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Quotes & Notes:
- One of the things about being in the business is that there is a certain consistency with being a dentist.
- In my work, you need to be flexible.
- Bring whatever you might need instead of preplanning.
- “Be the change you want to see in the world,” Gandhi.
- Distinction, which is how you see the world, determines how you act in the world. No distinction no power.
- Working on the inside to produce outside results.
The better I know myself the better choices that I can make.
Therefore produce better outcomes I can achieve.
- Today it [dentistry] is about we.
- Most dentist are unprepared to maximize their assets in this new ecology.
- When you have external money flowing into an industry it is a game-changer.
- You can’t win the war by yourself, so collaborate.
- Failure for me is a constant. It’s my relationship to failure that’s changed. Everyone fails.
- Breakdowns are the access to the future. You can’t change something unless it fails.
- Last week I tried to produce a new kind of course, and I said I would fill it with people. I failed. It was a failure to keep a promise.
- There are five hats you have to wear. Ownership, Leadership, Management, Marketing, and Clinician.
- Yes, [I have barriers] myself being the toughest one.
- Trust yourself to express yourself and see what that gives you.
- Dr. Copper would suggest every dentist read Courage by Gus Lee.
To learn more visit Masterycompany.com and the best page to go to would be the multimedia page.
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by Karah Karah | Sep 27, 2014 | Prescriptions for your Practice, Wealth Wisdom
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First, check out this outstanding financial resource that Jonathan has provided for the RD audience: http://dentistmetrics.com/relentless
Quotes & Notes:
- The biggest struggle I see a dentist has is knowing where to start.
- A business has people, products, and processes. And a lot of dentists have a lot of problems with those processes. It really comes down to managing people.
- They [dentists] have the innate ability to be able to manage the clinical side plus the business side.
- Nothing is going to run without your staff.
- Whenever you really start niching down, in the dental industry . . . you can actually see where people are doing things wrong by just looking at the numbers.
The goal is to have 55-60% overhead [for a solo practice]. And that is an average. I am a believer in the saying averages apply to everyone and no one at the same time.
- This issue doesn’t work for you because of why? And they will say, well it is because of the contract of the person in this role. You can say, has any dentist ever bought a practice, had a contract in place, and changed that contract? It’s really hard for them to say no.
- Staffing is the biggest thing to get in check if you want to get to that 55-60%.
- Lab fees and dental supplies both go hand in hand. That is really the #2 thing we tell people to look at after their staffing.
- Part of being a business owner is trying to find the best deals.
- Really make sure that that process [the process of purchasing lab equipment and so] is for convenience but rather for profit.
- Ask other people in your area what they are paying.
- Because I am a CPA I should probably say [the next big-ticket item is] taxes, but I’m actually not on that board.
- If you keep 15% for lab and equipment, and 20% for staffing then really you only have 20% left for everything else, be it rent or anything else.
- Any practice that is from the start-up level or is just in the running level, anywhere from zero 800,000 dollars in revenue. Their sole responsibility should be in marketing.
- If you have a great service or a great product, then you are actually doing disservice to the public if you don’t offer it.
- The problem with that is if you are doing what everyone else is doing then you are just going to get caught in the crowd.
- If you have a light to shine, shine it for the world to see. Don’t hide it.
- If you have a sneaking suspicion of something, don’t let it just go by the wayside and just accept it as fact.
- I would definitely go to check out dentalcardservices.com.
- Take control of supplies.
“What’s measured is improved,” Peter Drucker. But also “What’s not measured is not improved.”
- I feel like driving revenue is so much more important in the early stages of running a practice.
- I use Xero.com for accounting.
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by Karah Karah | Aug 15, 2014 | Bold Biographies
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Quotes & Notes:
- There really isn’t any kind of success without genuine happiness, and I believe no one is happy unless you don’t live your life on your own terms.
- If you can’t take a vacation and you really want to, if you can’t take a week off or two weeks or anything like that, if you can’t take an unexpected day off to visit a friend in need or to pay final respects to a funeral, then you are not successful yet.
Even when I am teaching, I make it a point to inject somewhere in a conversation to the younger dentists to not live beyond your means.
- Honestly what drove me more than anything else, and still drives me, was the fear of failure.
- I probably peaked when I got into the University of Pennsylvania Dental School, and that was the end of it, for when I got to Penn, I got my butt kicked.
- I remember, maybe five to ten years into practicing there (the new practice), I made an absolute sacrilegious move in that I put up an electric sign. It wasn’t brash, it was just a nice little sign.
- The center of your success in your dental practice is getting people to say yes.
- Struggles can be self-induced or you can be dealt a bad hand of cards and I have had both.
- The year that I moved in to my new building, I had started to reach what I believed to be a high level of success, but there was one problem. When I was at the end of my dental training career I got involved using cocaine . . . I got in trouble and they all got busted. And the worst part for me was that it was a really big story. I lost my license.
- You know, I sold vacuum cleaners to pay the rent.
- My father died about a year and a half after I lost my license, and I had a hearing to see whether I could get it back. Imagine the practice is closed, the practice that he had worked for 30 years and that I had taken over was closed. I went to the board of dentistry and I actually pleaded with them and said, “If you are going to help me, I need you to help me today.”
- And that would not be the end of my obstacles for in 2007 I lost my son to drugs. This was the worst thing that had ever happened to me.
- 2009 I had was diagnosed with stage three and two lung cancer and had an 86 percent chance of dying in twenty-four months.
- If you ever overcome the loss of a child, there is nothing else to be scared of.
- The only barrier to success is myself. If I give up. If I allow myself to say this is too much.
- If I sit here and morn for the next ten years, I will just be ten years older and realize that I am still alive. Do your best from the very beginning.
“Never, never quit,” Winston Churchill.
- If you live everyday like it is your last, then one day in fact you are going to be correct. If you knew that now, would you live it as you have now planned it?
- You have nothing to lose tomorrow. It’s going to happen because you earned it.
- Dr. Steve would recommend every dentist read The Psychology of Winning by Denis Waitley.
- You can reach Dr. Steven Rasner with his email [email protected] and at realizingthedream.com.
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by Karah Karah | Jun 28, 2014 | Bold Biographies
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Quotes & Notes:
- I have been coaching dentists for over twenty years. And when I coach them I try and find out what it is they’re trying to accomplish. And then we sit down and really take a look at their practice.
- You get the players you get and then you have to figure out where to put those players and make it a well-honed team.
“Be more concerned with you character than your reputation, because your character is who you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are.” – John Wooden
- If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?
- If you went and kissed each person’s bottom in the middle of the square, in front of a million people, that wouldn’t be enough either. So just remember that there are some people you are not going to be able to please.
- Basically, I grew up in the country. It was a good place to grow up.
- Both of my parents were educated. My mother had her master’s in education. My dad had his DVM. I think it made me think about doing something on a professional level.
- The mistake I made was that he had a small practice and I thought I would build it up. I worked four times as hard to build that up as I would have if I bought a practice five times that size and gone to work immediately.
- If you are going to buy a practice, if it’s your startup practice, buy the one that got the most patients and the biggest patient flow that you can afford. Now you can sit down and start doing dentistry.
- I was really good at making mistakes fast and then recovering from them.
- Sometimes we would have to go to talk to banks and say, “Either you can run the practice or you can work with us.”
- When the torch is on your butt, I can tell you, there is a different mindset that goes on.
- The guys that are battle-tested, that are used to dealing with some of these things, have a lot better chance at surviving and thriving.
- I am scared of the lack of leaders in this country, and the number of people with poor or no work ethic, and that we are rewarding these people.
- Dentist should understand that there is a significant change that is occurring in dentistry, whereas the mainstream practice we’ve known in the past is being cut into four quadrants.
- The marketplace is changing but most dentists are not adapting to the changes.
- If you are going to experience success you are going to have barriers.
- I am what I call an expert problem solver, and the reason I call myself this is because I have had to solve a lot of problems.
“Nothing can stop the person with the right mental attitude from achieving their goal. And nothing in earth can help people with the wrong mental attitude.”
- Dr. Bob Willis would recommend every dentist read Integrity selling for the Twenty-first Century by Ron Willingham.
- You can reach Dr. Bob Willis at his email [email protected], call 1-800-866-0655, or at his website which is dentalcoach.com.
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by Karah Karah | Jun 15, 2014 | Bold Biographies
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Quotes & Notes:
- “You can get all you want in life when you can give others what they want or when you can show others how they can get what they want.” – Zig Ziglar.
- What are all the other dentist doing? Therefore I should be doing something different.
- Give everyone the opportunity to say yes or no to your best care.
- Patients aren’t going to just know what we can do for them. Who else is going to tell them?
- As far as my most influential person, I would have to lean on my father.
- Being interested in how things tick led me into a background into psychology.
- Being able to experience different parts of the world and different parts of the country probably gave me a bit of perspective that things aren’t just the way they are where I am.
- From the process of getting my tooth restored and root-canal treated and crowned and post and core and all that stuff, I said “You know what? This dentistry thing looks pretty cool.”
- I was really lucky to fall into a job that was really entrepreneurial based, and I didn’t know at the time that I was really entrepreneurial minded.
- Most people leave dental school with the belief that if you are a good clinical dentist, you will be a successful dentist.
- You never know how a patient is going to be. Just because they are wealthy doesn’t mean they care about their smile. Just because they are a single mom doesn’t mean they aren’t willing to afford it.
- I had to work really hard at developing the general dentistry part of my practice after I had already started marketing the cosmetic side of my practice.
- Whatever niches attract you as a dentist, those are the things that you should layer in overtime to build some breadth and some diversity while still being unique.
- Nobody is going to do anything about anything unless they are uncomfortable with the way it is.
- I want to make sure I don’t waste my potential.
- My biggest fear is looking back and saying, you know what, I wasn’t able to make a difference where I wanted to make a difference.
- Don’t be afraid to fail. If you are not failing then you are not trying.
- Go nationally. The only way you can rub elbows with other peers that are doing the opposite is to find them, and they are not going to be all in your area.
- Go to other non-dental events.
- The enemy of great is good.
- You are not going to be able to get it perfect.
- Breaking through barriers means breaking through barriers.
- Dr. Chris Bowman suggests all dentist read Good To Great by Jim Collins, and Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Dr. Robert Cialdini.
- You can reach Dr. Chris Bowman at [email protected].
- His re-engineered website will be going up in a few months: dentalinsiders.com.
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by Karah Karah | May 26, 2014 | Bold Biographies, Magnificent Marketing
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Quotes & Notes:
- When I say I’m practicing full time, it means I’m producing full time in part time hours. If I can produce full time and still have free time at the same time, then that is the best of both worlds.
- “You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read” – Charlie Tremendous Jones.
- First you have to find a mentor when you are green, when you are a rookie… and then you have to be a mentor for others as you season, when you learn the lay of the land.
- Keep a balanced life. Every part of your life has to be supported by someone who has been there before you.
- I was born in Atlanta, Georgia, but lived around the whole south. I lived in 30 houses by the time I was 18.
- I was working since I was 14 years old.
- In my childhood it [the most influential person] was my scout-leader. I had an eagle scout as my scoutmaster who was a medical student.
- I went from zero to about a million and a half in the first 23 years of practice back in the 70s and 80s.
- Don’t ever finance a sale yourself, because you will never be free.
- The first thing you really want to focus on is becoming an expert in every area of dentistry that you can. At some point in time you will have to learn business and marketing.
- Hang around people that know how to do it [marketers and entrepreneurs]. Choosing mentors that aren’t dentists.
- One way we like to give back is by doing the Deserving Divas where we do multiple full mouth makeovers for free. It transforms their lives and makes us feel good.
- I felt like I got more out of the mission trip, then doing the makeovers. They don’t have access to simple things such as pulling a tooth.
- I often say to my associates that I don’t sweat. I don’t fear doing anything in dentistry.
- If you have it made, why risk it.
- I thought I knew more, and went ahead and blew it all. Over the next decade, I probably went and lost everything I had.
- Dr. Bill Williams would recommend his book Marketing the Million Dollar Practice; 27 steps to grow your practice half a million dollars a year”
- Get outside of that box, whatever box you are in. Take a class from a person who is more successful than you. If you want to be a millionaire you need to learn from a billionaire. You have to go beyond, don’t just do the same things you have always done.
- Set big goals each year and work on your 90-day plans.
- Be found everywhere and be found often.
- You can reach Dr. Bill Williams in a Multitude of places:
by Karah Karah | May 16, 2014 | Bold Biographies
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Quotes & Notes:
- Especially in orthodontics . . . whenever you finish a case, you are pretty much out of business again.
- “Tell me and I will listen. Teach me and I will learn. Involve me and I will become accomplished.” -Ben Franklin
- Just go do it!
- You can take seminars, you can read books, you can do everything possible but until you take that step where you actually are involved in the doing of it, you will never know the success that you could have.
- Just keep your sights on whatever it is you want to achieve.
- Halfway through my school I decided that I wanted to become a dentist [instead of medical] for at the time I felt it was a much better lifestyle, especially as female who wants to raise a family and work normal work hours.
- When I started off down this path of orthodontics and practice ownership I absolutely had no clue about anything.
- Back when I started, we had no computers in our office, and now we are paperless.
- I think I became the person that I am because I was almost kinda forced into it.
- Authors to read are Jay Abraham, J. Conrad Levinson, and Dan Kennedy.
- I love what I do so much that I am scared of not being able to do it for some reason
- Dr. Donna Galante would recommend Dan Kennedy’s The No B.S. Series for all dentists to read. Most important of the bunch would be The NO B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs.
- When go to realizing that there are many things in your practice that is going well, that is when you can start feeling like “Yeah, wow. I am doing a good job.”
- You can reach Dr. Donna Galante at www.drdonnagalante.com as well as emailing her at [email protected].
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by Karah Karah | May 10, 2014 | Bold Biographies
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Quotes & Notes:
- “CANI: Constant and Never-ending Improvement” -Tony Robbins.
- Every day I am trying to be a better dentist, better parent, better person, and better in my business than the year before.
- Someone who is not in very good shape, when they become fit, they become confident, more attractive, and this relates to the practice. While we don’t want to focus too much on the financial side of it, but you have to admit, when you are doing well then that makes you feel better about yourself as well.
- Like many dentists you talk to, it took me a while to get into dental school, but I was relentless.
- My hero is my grandfather, Dr. William Woodstock, who was a professional baseball player, but when his wife died, he decided to go back to dental school. My parents used to drop me off at his office, and I would watch him.
- Sometimes on Wednesday and Sunday, I would start calling successful dentists and would say, “Hey I’m not doing so well. Mind if I come in and watch you work.”
- After compiling all of the notes [from visiting dentist] I one day woke up at four in the morning, and I said that I really need to put this into a book, for I know a lot of dentists would really benefit from this information.
- The Winning Combination was the book that Woody Oakes wrote off of these notes.
- I’ve personally been in 2500 offices in the last 37 years.
- You know you are successful when you get a lot of arrows in your back.
- The idea for starting the Profitable Dentist [the dental magazine Dr. Oakes started] came from helping out a dentist had requested help from him, after reading his book.
- Right after I got the practice fixed, I had a botched heart surgery, but during the open heart surgery, I had a stroke. Two little kids, a wife, and I was paralyzed on my left side of my body, and almost no eyesight.
- Tony Robinns actually wrote me a letter encouraging me [to get better] during that time.
- I decided that I was going to conquer this.
- You just got to keep focus and believe in yourself.
- “If you want to have a special result, you find someone who is already getting the results you want,” Tony Robbinss.
- Dr. Woody Oaks suggests each dentist read Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.
- Just go for it. And get a Coach.
- You can reach Dr. Woody Oaks with 1-800-337-8467, on theprofitabledentist.com, or with [email protected]
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