Break Through the $1 Million Bottleneck!

Kiera gives advice to those practices stuck in the $1 to $2 million range (because the same problems tend to apply). These hurdles can often be addressed in the leadership, systems, and mindset arenas, and Kiera spells out specific steps your practice can implement today to burst through the barriers.

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Transcript:

Kiera Dent (00:01)

Hello, Dental A team listeners. This is Kiera and I am so happy to be podcasting with you today. I hope that you are just loving your life. I hope you remember that we are so blessed and so lucky to be able to do dentistry. I mean, talk about it. So many people dream of this world. So many people want this world and yet you get to live the dream. You get to live the freaking dream. This is your life. And so today I thought it would just be fun to tackle into this of, you know what? Why are you still stuck at 1 million?

 

and how to break through, or maybe while you're still stuck at 2 million and how to break through. I feel like there's very similar problems from zero to 2 million. So I thought, hey, let's talk about it. Yes, it might seem like, okay, no, they're not quite the same. Actually, they're pretty darn the same. And I thought, hey, why not tell you why you're still stuck here and how to break through that ceiling? I remember once I was told about like the wifi symbol, and I feel like every one of those layers is just your next layer. And it's like, how can I burst through that next layer and actually make my life easier?

 

I remember I also had a friend and I was working towards my first million. I remember when I hit our first million in the company and my friend texted me and he said, Kara, now that you've hit your first million, the rest are easy from here. And I will say getting to that first million mark is tricky, but then getting beyond it. So from really, it's like zero to 2 million. Honestly, a lot of these things are going to apply. So you're still stuck at 1 million. Let's break through that plateau. You guys, this is the Dental A Team and we freaking love helping practices break through limiting beliefs.

 

Create the impossible into the possible. Make your life easy. Make your practice experience amazing and truly give you the life and practice that you deserve. I'm obsessed with having your life and business on purpose. Truly, why not? Like why? Why be a business owner? Why do all these hard things if we don't get to do the life that we wanted to have all the things that we wished for and to give our teams the same type of life and experience as well? So the reality is when we look at this, it's not clinical skills typically. Sometimes it is.

 

Sometimes you do need to take some courses. If it's clinical and you're struggling clinically, think Coice and Spear and a lot of those will be really great for you clinically. So typically though, it's not clinical. It's systems, leadership and mindset. Like literally that's what it is. It's the systems, it's the leadership, it's the mindset. Systems do tie into our numbers and knowing that. And so I just want to break through like these three little hidden barriers that oftentimes keep practices stuck and some ways to get around that. So you can plateau through that one million, that two million mark.

 

and really be on your way to great success, but doing it not harder. How about that? Like, I don't want to work harder here. I don't want to have to do more. Don't worry. When you actually put these things into place, you get more time back. You get more happiness back. It's not like, let's do this and have less happiness, less time, but you can if you do it your hard way. But we're going to teach you, today I want to teach you how to do this easy. Are you on board for that?

 

If so, welcome. I'm super happy. I'm Kiera. This is the Dental A Team. We created it to help hundreds and thousands of offices scale beyond that 1 million mark to get to the 2 million, the 3 million, the 5 million. We have offices doing 500,000. We have offices doing 1.5. We have offices doing 3 million, 5 million, 10 million, 20 million. The reality is these things apply across the board. There's different layers and different ways to fine tune and refine based on the size of practice you are. But at the end of the day, these are really easy areas to help you see where your gap is and to break through.

 

This truly is an episode that's for practice owners who know that they're capable of more, but honestly don't know where to go. I hear all the time when people talk to us about joining dental hygiene, they're like, Kiera, I don't know what I don't know. I'm like, you're right. So let's help you. Let's like peel off the mask, give you the resources and make it to where life is so much easier for you. So number one, the first block that I want to break down for you is you are wearing too many hats.

 

This happens all the time. It's called the bottleneck. Like think about it. We're like squeezing it because we're wearing too many hats as business owners. And oftentimes what happens is as the founder, you are so used to coming in, being the person who does all the pieces because that's what you had to do when you started it. But that's also a falsehood. And also what it does is it creates chokeholds because what we're doing is we're micromanaging lack of delegation, lack of trust. This is where it gets like really stuck. And the offices were able to break through and evolve.

 

put systems into place, they realize that they need to have a delegation ladder at our summit, if you were able to attend, awesome. If you weren't, you missed out on our amazing delegation ladder where we literally show you how to go in order of the tasks to be delegating and in what order based on the size and the growth of your practice. So when we get overwhelmed owner or stagnant teams or reactive decision-making, what we need to do is we need to build a leadership depth. So we're training our office manager, we're empowering our leads and we're letting go of low ROI tasks.

 

Like literally Dan Martell has a book called Buy Back Your Time and it was shocking to look at that. And that's where we came up with our delegation ladder of, wow, like if we could honestly help you all see that we could shift it and these are the tasks to go in order of, and we're delegating out. If you're producing 200, 300, 400, $500 an hour, get rid of those low tasks that truly are not serving you. So on our delegation ladder, the way we started it is we have at the bottom layer, your number one thing to delegate out first is going to be administrative tasks.

 

After that, it's going to be patient experience and case acceptance. After that, it's treatment coordinator. And that's going to be our case acceptance heavily. So we've got patient experience, making sure you're not the star of the show. Then we move into treatment coordinating and case acceptance. Then we move into marketing and branding. And then we move into leadership. And then beyond that, we move into overseeing. So if you're stuck in the administrative tasks, well, awesome. Let's wait till we need to delegate that and empower that out. If you're stuck in being the patient experience,

 

The practice runs because Dr. Smith is in the practice and everybody loves Dr. Smith and Dr. Smith, if they're not there, no one wants to come. No, it should be the whole team experience. This isn't Kiera Dent. This isn't the Kiera Dent show. This is the Dental A Team show. There are so many great consultants. They're such a great team experience, but I don't run it. Yes, I have an influence and I started at the beginning and the core values as to why I started the company, that exists as our culture, but I'm not the one responsible for our client experience. Literally, I am here to podcast.

 

I'm here to do our doctor think tank and I'm here to go speak at events. That's literally what I do now. And I get to see all of you, but I get to influence and train our consultants. I get to help and train in different areas. I get to influence the company because I'm clear at the top in the leadership spot because we have great consultants that take care of our client experience. You should have great team members that take care of your patient experience. Then you need treatment coordinators. You should not be the one doing all the cases and closing all the cases. And if you're not there, we can't close. It should be that your team can close cases without you.

 

Then we move into marketing and branding and then it's into leadership. So when you're looking at this, what hats are you wearing and how can you shift this and which level of the tier are you on to be able to buy back your time to make it to where you're super focused on those own that you're really great at in your zone of genius. Now I still enjoy some administrative tasks. There's still some things that I'm like, gosh, I really enjoy this. I feel really good checking off a checklist. When you move from administrative into leadership, it's actually awesome and un-awesome.

 

because you feel like, well, gosh, like I'm just doing all these things, but there's no progress. Like leadership tasks take way longer. There's not as fast of progress, unlike administrative tasks have to do. This is where you grow and you expand. So when a practice, like we have a doctor and they let go of the administrative tasks, so you hired out a virtual assistant or their office manager or team members. And I will say,

 

Office managers should not be personal assistants. So let's make sure like office managers, you should also be going through this delegation to your levels. Like look at yourself too. So you're able to scale leads in practices need to look at this as well. What are we doing in these tasks? And could we delegate to our other incredible team members and empower them to be great? answer is yes. So when doctors let go of this, usually like when I've seen offices empower their team, stop doing it all. They grow by 10, 20, 30%, a hundred grand, 400 grand, 500 grand.

 

to their practice because the breadth and depth of their expansion, now they're able to focus on high level dentistry. If you're not sitting there busying your time with answering emails and signing off on payroll and all these other things, you then have time to focus in on your dentistry to give better treatment plans, to give better case acceptance, to refine that skill set for yourself to where you're pushing that out there and that's what you're focused on. You're taking CE on that. Think of the ROI of that time spent.

 

versus sending emails out that really are not moving the needle forward. So I want you to look at everything on your plate today and I want you to see what things are in administrative, what things are in patient experience, what things are in treatment plans and case acceptance, what things are in marketing and what things are in leadership. And of that, figure out who could I delegate to? How could I get less hats? Who do I maybe need to hire? It's who, not how? There's a book about this, it's really great. And I want you to see, because when you are, everyone's working at the top of their,

 

a license, that's how I like to put it. So doctors, would mean you're only doing dentistry stuff and CEO stuff. That's it. Everything else is delegated out. You will be amazed at the growth that it adds. So that's number one. Are you wearing too many hats and where can you delegate? Number two, your systems don't scale. So a $1 million systems break down at higher value. Like they truly do. So it's like scheduling strategy and poor case presentation and inconsistent team accountability and not tracking our numbers, not having a great

 

treatment plan ⁓ presentation, not having great hygiene processes in place, these little things break down and it's like, gosh, like we don't know how to handle this. We don't know how to schedule. don't know how to take these phone calls. So on this, we want to implement scalable systems. like block scheduling. So it's not just dependent upon who's up there scheduling. We know if it's Kiera, if it's Tiffany, if it's Brittany, our schedule will be consistent every single time. That's a true system. I get the exact same result no matter who's sitting in that chair. Our treatment, like,

 

⁓ Case acceptance using the NDTR handoff. That's literally a system that allows your case acceptance to scale We have a billing protocol where we literally like pull it all down We have a system of how we follow up with all of our claims We have a system of when we look at our money instead of like, shoot. We don't have money. Let's go look at AR We have a set system of we send claims out on these days. We send out our insurance We follow up on insurance. We follow up on patient balances on set cadences and dates doctors You have a set system of when you look at your bank account when you reconcile your

 

pieces with your office manager. This is where it is our AR follow-up. Like all of those are scalable systems rather than reactive systems. And the $1 million practices are often like playing whack-a-mole. It's like, here's a hot fire here, fix that. here's a hot fire here, let's fix that. Rather than like, okay, what needs to happen so we can consistently get the results. I'm obsessed with Disney. I love their model. I think they're an incredible company. And I love something that they said is that we're able to create predictable magic with the systems behind the scenes.

 

So for you, we're able to create predictable million dollars with the systems behind the scenes. Also, sometimes when you're in startup mode, you actually have this identity, which is going to move into our next block. You have an identity of I'm a startup practice. So you actually act as a startup practice rather than thinking like, what does a $5 million practice do? Well, you better believe they're not like just willy-nillying their schedule. They're not willy-nillying their case acceptance. They're not willy-nillying their billing. They don't willy-nilly that stuff. And it's not that they have more time than you.

 

It's just that they have more scalable systems and they actually have systems in place that work. So when we've implemented block scheduling, you've heard me say it so many times, literally in small practices, we've been able to add 500,000, 1 million. Like it is not something that's hard. These are not fluffy numbers. They're not like, my gosh, I'm exaggerating. They're literally like, I can show you what they were producing, what the block schedule created and how they're able to have consistent days like that. When we implement treatment trackers, we're able to boost case acceptance exponentially because we're tracking and we're looking at patterns.

 

When we're able to fix AR, we're able to reduce your billing and we're able to increase your collections, reducing your overhead. When we teach you how to look at your numbers, we're able to decrease your overhead, increase your profit, and you're able to like literally sleep at night because you're not stressed out about it. These are the simple scalable systems that we put into place for these million, $2 million practices. It's wild. You can have like some skyrocket success, but if you don't have these systems for sustainability, you'll never be able to break through. This is where you start to plateau. So.

 

Pick a system. don't care what it is, but commit that you're going to make it scalable and upgrade it this month. All right. Block number three. This is the third one that I see a lot of times of why practices are plateauing and it's because they don't have a vision of where they're going. So like I said, it's that identity. It's like, what is the $2 million vision? What is the $3 million vision? And when mindset is in the right place, clarity can drive these results. So again, thinking I'm not a startup practice, I'm a $5 million practice. What would I do today? What would that CEO be doing? What would that dentist be doing?

 

They're not much different than you are today, but they are doing things differently. They budget their time differently. They're working out in the mornings. They have an AR system, these things. So what it is is like million dollar and $2 million practices are oftentimes in survival mode. it's like, like I said, whack a mole versus strategic planning. You have leadership teams in place. And when I first started, I was not at a million. was like, all right, if the $5 million practices are doing this and they have leadership team meetings, Kaylee, she was my personal assistant at the time. was just me and her. was like,

 

We're having this meeting and I don't even know what this meeting is supposed to be, but we're having it. We were broke, we had no money, so we went to her apartment clubhouse. That's where we had it. We had all these papers. I knew nothing of what I was doing, but I started acting in the habits of what these people did. What's crazy is when you start to act like these higher level practices do, you start to become and evolve. So this is where it's going to be. We want a clear 12 month plan of what would the KPIs be tracking? What are the team members?

 

What are the pieces I need to do to have a $2 million practice or a $3 million practice compared to where I am today? Let's break it down. What does that look like monthly? What's that block schedule look like? What's the type of dentistry I need to do? Do I need to add another provider? But we're making sure overheads in a line with the growth as well. So when I have teams do this and we literally like, build a one, three, 10 year vision for practices, the doctors often come in a lot more.

 

I would say conservative and their teams grow. But when we get the alignment of the doctor and the team together, it is crazy. The growth we have, I have a practice. he texted me, he said, here, I know when you came in and you set this audacious goal with me and my team, I thought there's absolutely no way that we'll be able to hit that. Like no way that's out of the, out of the control. ⁓ and so they were originally producing about 200,000 months. So they're about a $2.4 million practice. And we set this goal to get them to 3 million. So we said, what, what did a $3 million practice look like?

 

What do we need to do? And the software was like, are you kidding me? Like we're maxed out, we're tapped out. So many people think this and it's like, that's where we take the impossible and make it possible. We find the solution, we find the ways and we get the whole team aligned. So the whole team's rowing together. So we broke it down. What does that extra 600,000 look like? What does that break down monthly? What does that break down daily? They then hit. So they were at 200, next month 220, next month 250, next month 275. They just broke 300. That's even higher. 300 is 3.6 and remember they were just going for three.

 

This is how they grow. This is how they get their whole team aligned. This is how we start to look at what systems do we need to put in place? What training do we need to put in place? What team members do we need on the bus? What right people, right seat do we need to have? And it's wild because when the whole team aligns, everybody's there. And sometimes you need an outside perspective to coach you. Sometimes doctors, you don't know how to build that vision. You've never done it, right? It's like, hey, you're telling me to like draw you a map to the moon and I've never been to the moon. So how am even supposed to envision this? That's oftentimes where a coach.

 

or a consultant like ourselves can paint the roadmap for you. We've been there, we've done that, we've done it many times successfully. We have practices that are 10 million. I have offices, I've got five practices. We add one to two million to their offices every single year, every year consistently. And people are like, how do you do that? I'm like, well, hey, we got the foundations in place. They have scalable systems. We've got leadership teams in the right place. And then we're looking for the refinement pieces that we can do. We focus on case exceptions consistently.

 

But if I only focus on that with the $1 million practices, well, great, we're getting great cases, but guess what? It's all gonna fall apart because we don't have the systems to create the predictable magic and patient experience to continually retain and keep these patients. So this is where it is. No matter where you are, even if you're not at the 2 million and you're at the 5 million, this still works because guess what? The 5 million CEOs, you are stuck in what you've been doing and you need to expand into the higher level. You're still stuck at not having scalable systems and you need to scale those as well.

 

You don't have the vision for what does a 7 million or the $10 million of practice have. You are still sitting in your 5 million. So all of these actually, like I just said, 1 million and $2 million practices, this is actually for the higher level ones too. It's the exact same thing. It's just different cards, but the same game that we're playing. And it doesn't mean that you have to grow to this level. It doesn't mean that we're here to push you. It's here to say, this is what's possible if you want it. But the ultimate goal is that your life aligns with the practice that you're doing. That's our goal.

 

and to make sure that you're insanely profitable and insanely happy. Because I don't want you working harder. The blocks that we have lead to overworked owners, broken systems, and unclear vision, which causes chaos, confusion, stress, all the pieces. So right now, to break through your barriers, it's not about grinding harder, it's not about doing this harder, it's about leading better and building smarter. There's two ways to go about it. We can like slap it all together and help and pray our house of cards doesn't fall down, or we can build foundations, we can build vision, we can build clarity.

 

We can build focus and we can get traction. Move your practices exponentially. So move forward. Don't do this the hard way. Do it the easy way. And this is something where like we help this all day long. This is what fires me up. If you can't tell from today's podcast, I get lit up over this type of stuff because I love helping offices. See the vision, see the potential, figure out where we need to go. And it actually becomes so much easier when we have a roadmap. We create a map of clarity. So let's do that with you and your practice. Reach out, [email protected]

 

DM us growth or visit our website. This is where we literally do a complimentary practice assessment and it is crazy. Even just that practice assessment when you come on a call with us will give you so much clarity whether you work with us or don't work with us to see, my gosh, here are my gaps of what's holding me back from moving forward. We created it recently and I'm obsessing over it because offices who come through are like, wow, this call was so valuable because I see where my gaps are. I see where I need to go and hey,

 

Great, if you're a good fit for us and we're a good fit for you, awesome, let's work together. We fly to your practice, we work virtually with your team, we have in-person masterminds where doctors and leadership teams get together. We truly have built this to be something where you no longer have to question if success is real for you. It's a way for you to have proven, sustainable, successful success indefinitely. So reach out [email protected] And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.