201. How to Build Your Dental Practice From the Ground Up

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.

And if you haven't done so already, we love for you to join us inside of our free Facebook Group, dental bossmovement.com. We look forward to seeing you there. And guys, we look forward to hearing from you if you have any questions or any thoughts that you have in terms of our podcasts, anything that we can do to be able to help you, please make sure that you reach out to us at [email protected]. All right, guys, take care, enjoy the rest of your day and we'll chat soon.

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