208 How to Build Leverage Through Associates

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.