Episode 681: A Dentist-Recommended Book You Need to Read

It’s time for another DAT Book Club episode! This was a surprise addition, recommended by dentists: Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect by Will Guidara.

Kiera talks about how this book inspires readers to make their patient experiences special while also being profitable as a business.

Check out the full list of DAT’s 2023 book club here.

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Transcript:

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0:00:05.9 Kiera Dent: Hey everyone. Welcome to the Dental A Team Podcast. I'm your host, Kiera Dent, and I have this crazy idea that maybe I could combine a doctor and a team member's perspective because let's face it, dentistry can be a challenging profession with those two perspectives. I've been a dental assistant, treatment coordinator, scheduler, filler, office manager, regional manager, practice owner, and I have a team of traveling consultants where we have traveled to over 165 different offices coaching teams. Yep. We don't just understand you, we are you. Our mission is to positively impact the world of dental. And I believe that this podcast is the greatest way I can help elevate teams, grow VIP experiences, reduce stress, and create A teams. Welcome to the Dental A Team podcast.

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0:00:50.9 KD: Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and you guys, I hope today's a great day. I'm actually really excited for today's podcast. This is the book club series. I hope you guys are enjoying it. If nothing else, I hope I'm bringing to light awesome resources out there for you and giving you and your team a really cool podcast that you guys can listen to together, that you can share together, giving you books that you guys can read together. This is where I feel I'm expanding your minds. And so this was... This one was an interjected book. It was not part of our original book club series. But our team internally decided to switch from Psychology of Money to Unreasonable Hospitality. Now, I read both and I just did... We have the Book Club podcast on the Psychology of Money. And so this is just a bonus one for any of you. And the reason we decided to do Unreasonable Hospitality is because we had two doctors, shout out to both of them, send our consultants this book, two doctors, unassociated with each other and I was gifted one of them. Tiffany was gifted one, Brit was gifted one. And we realized if we're having this many doctors and then it came in as a podcast book recommendation as well, which I love. When you guys email me your best books, books that have changed your life, books you're reading currently that you really love, please email me [email protected].

0:02:08.2 KD: I'm an Audible junkie over here. I listen to it like crazy. Anytime I travel, I love to just keep expanding my mind because I believe that when we stop growing and evolving, that's when we're gonna die off and I'm not willing to do that. And so I love learning from brilliant people in this world and I try to source a bunch of books for you, things that I feel really are beneficial for your mind. So any book that I recommend, just know I have usually read them. There's maybe one or two that I haven't fully read, but I've read enough to feel confident recommending it. And this is another great one. So we figured internally we needed an opportunity to read a book that was given by our doctors to us. So this is just a quick off bonus book club for you. But I hope you take it because Unreasonable Hospitality I actually feel is a really, really awesome topic just as a overall podcast topic. So yes, I will be doing some book club in here, but the cool thing about it was I thought, why did so many doctors send this to me? Oh, because if we could make our practices unreasonable hospitality, we would be game changing. To me, this is the secret ace of the future of dentistry.

0:03:16.5 KD: This is where I think practices are going to radically skyrocket to success. I really do. I think it's gonna be something that will be the future of business. We are in such a changing world. We've got AI coming in, we've got different pieces, but human beings are still humans and interaction and feeling taken care of is going to be, in my opinion, the secret sauce to win. The secret sauce to retain team members. The secret sauce to... And it's interesting I'm saying sauce 'cause this was all about restaurants and food and so many fun things. But I really do think that this is the ace in the hand that can make you the cutting edge practice if you're willing to implement it. So I think that that's why both offices sent it to us. I am super giddy to share with you guys about this book. So Unreasonable Hospitality is just an amazing book. It's all about these beautiful restaurants in New York, and the author, he is just an incredible person. He's got a cooking show now, so if you wanna go watch it, awesome. But it's by Will, and I don't know, Guidara? I think is how we say his last name. But it was just interesting because he really talked about making your business something where you can create magic for people. And goodness, it was so amazing. So I'll just do a couple of my quick highlights and then we talked about how to kind of bring this into the dental office.

0:04:39.7 KD: And so he said cult is for culture. And I love this because so many people feel like they're in a cult or they're doing this and there can be some bad things for cult. However, cult is for culture. You think about the first four letters of culture and it is cult. So yes, in our offices there is a part of a cult based on the culture we're building. And he said, make it cool to care. I really love that. Make it cool to care. And so with that, there were just so many little pieces where he talked a lot about his leadership and how he was able to grow these amazing restaurants that just made people feel special. And he said like they just practice, practice, practice. They practice every piece of it. So he really went through his whole restaurant experience and his whole journey. And the biggest piece I took away from it was his passion and love for making things special for people while knowing the other side of the business of being profitable as well.

0:05:36.3 KD: So he said really like invest in your A players, hire slow and that helps your A players even be better. And so hire a group of people and tell them to lean on each other. So that was one of his tips to make it easier to build this type of a culture. I really feel it's important when you're looking at unreasonable hospitality to create a culture where this is who people are. People always say they love Chick-fil-A. And I actually did some digging on Chick-fil-A. This is not your top five star restaurant, this is Chick-fil-A, a fast food restaurant that I feel has revolutionized fast food. You go anywhere and people are Chick-fil-A fanatics. So I did some digging and I was wondering what makes Chick-fil-A special? Chick-fil-A lives by certain standards. Chick-fil-A is not open on Sunday, whether you like that or don't like it, that is Chick-fil-A.

0:06:23.1 KD: So I read up on it and Chick-fil-A actually vets people, you have to be a certain type of person to own a Chick-fil-A franchise, period. It's run... There is a religious theme that runs through it and they require you to act on those certain principles if you're going to own a Chick-fil-A franchise and they do not deviate from it. And I thought about that, I'm like, that's interesting. No wonder you get the exact same experience at every single Chick-fil-A that you go to. They have the same motto, they're so kind to you, you get the same experience and their food is great. But I thought about that. They've literally created a culture and they've been able to franchise and stamp that out and they've been able to do that. And I've thought about our practices and I thought, what have we done in our practices to create that experience? Do we know the culture and the type of people we want to have in our practices to make it this amazing experience? Or do we just hire whomever 'cause we're so desperate?

0:07:20.8 KD: I think when people get really intentional, when I was a rookie business owner and I had to learn this the hard way too, I was just hiring whomever and then I got real serious about my core values and what are the core values? And now, you better believe I do not deviate from that. People always said, "Kiera, hire for culture. You can train skills." And I'm like, "Yeah, right. Hire for skills. Are you kidding me? I don't wanna have to train that." No. [chuckle] You can have people with great skills that do not fit your culture and destroy your culture and that ruins your A players. So who are the A players? What is that culture? And make that really cool, make that culture where people are obsessed with it. I do think that that truly is one of the secrets of the top elite practices. Their culture is solid and they do not deviate, period. So it was really awesome in this book where they had it, and then he talked about how they really practice all their systems.

0:08:14.5 KD: So in the book he talked about how they would practice serving the plates, practice welcoming people and they practiced over and over and over again and they would work on making it better and better and better and better and better and look for little ways to make it better and making sure the extra pieces actually meant something to their guests at the restaurant. And I thought about how can you apply that to dentistry? And I thought, do you practice the new patient experience? Do we practice that and refine it and refine it and refine it and refine that phone call and make sure that the results we're getting are awesome. Do we practice the patient experience? Do we practice our handoffs? It sounds so silly, but hearing that at the restaurant, they practice it every single day. Like they would have their "morning huddle" and they would review who was coming in, how they're going to, and they would literally practice serving the plates and how could they do it better. And how could they bring the check to make people not feel like they were being rushed and have it at the right time.

0:09:06.3 KD: So I loved that they just did like these little surprise and delights. So they figured out with the check, bringing the check is always awkward. People want it so they don't have to like wait for the waiter to bring it, but they also don't want it too soon 'cause they don't wanna feel rushed. So they figured out bringing the check with a bottle of wine on the restaurant that said, here's the check and a bottle of wine. Enjoy, take your time. We're so thrilled you're with us. So then people got a free bottle of wine, they got the check, now it was on their terms, they didn't feel rushed, they figured out how to do it, but that came from the practice, that came from them working together and figuring it out. And so I just thought about do dental practices actually practice the experience of their patients? I don't think most dental offices do. I don't see it that often. And that's like silly. It feels silly, but they practiced it, they refined it, they figured out the pain points and they fixed it.

0:09:58.2 KD: In the book they talked about doing sign language so they could make sure like the coats were delivered right when the person was getting up to leave the restaurant, they found that another pain point was that the patients or the guests had to park on the street and they would just go feed the meter. And so that way they didn't have to worry about feeding the meter. Think of how little of a cost it is to go put money in a meter. Meters are not that expensive. And so that was a cost that they built into their restaurant and they were able to do it and make the experience for their guests amazing. It was so... I thought about that of dental offices, like what are the little pain points in your practice and how much would that cost? Build it obviously into your P&L, 'cause he did talk about being profitable and you have to make sure that you have a cash flow and that you have a profitable business. But then you look for how to add the magic and the simple pieces in there that are really gonna make a difference for your patients. And I thought, oh my gosh, think about those offices that are in busy cities.

0:10:51.1 KD: Could you do like Ubers or, I mean, can you do where you pay the meter for them or something where it just sets your practice apart that's really going to make an impact. Like don't do it if it's not gonna make an impact. Do it for something that's going to really mean something to your patients. He also, one of my favorite lines from the book was success comes in cans. Failures come in cans. And he said refusing to delegate is a terrible excuse. Take more time. Short-term investment with a long-term game, perfect moment is to give them more work before they're ready. So the perfect moment to delegate is to give them more work before they're ready so they can learn. And he said, make collaboration mandatory. Must find a way to make us better within the first 30 days of new hires. And I really loved a lot of these thoughts. He also said, don't destroy ideas. Often brilliant ideas come right behind a bad idea. So maybe that's not a great idea, but there's another one and it's in that idea please. So allowing your team to really, really work harder and giving them a space to be creative. And I loved another line that just stood out to me so much in this book is, he said. People can feel perfection.

0:11:54.9 KD: He said, why do you think Disneyland spend so much time fixing all their plants and making sure everything is truly like absolutely perfect? I don't know if you knew this, but Disneyland, they trim the yarn of the dolls in... It's a small world because there's humidity in there and the doll hair grows and so they literally go in and give the dolls a haircut. And I thought about that, like, that seems so silly. It's yarn, why would we even do that? But when he said, people can feel perfection, I thought about dental practices, people can feel well-oiled systems, they can feel if the practice is in disarray, you can feel the energy, people can feel perfection. And so how are we in our dental's practices helping them feel perfection? Because honestly the place I really do want perfection is in my mouth. I wanna make sure those fillings and those crowns are perfect, but that comes from all the other pieces. Where are we maybe sloppy, from our billing to our answering the phones, to our scheduling, to not having it perfectly scheduled for perfect in and out times to having perfect setups?

0:12:53.6 KD: People can feel perfection. They can also feel when it's rushed. Are you creating systems and routines and practicing to help your patients feel perfection? So I just think it's interesting. And then another cool thing he said was when they have new teams onboarded that they have the leaders write the things that have been said in the company that have impacted them the most over the years and they create a booklet and give that to new hires. And I just thought, how cool would that be coming into a team and an organization where they just already feel like they're on the winning team? So just a lot of ideas in there. I think it was also a matter of do you love hospitality? Do you love having these magic moments? Another cool thing in the book that I really loved that I wanna highlight was, they talked about just doing things that were special and making magic moments for their guests. And they got the whole team excited about doing this. So people, and they had the liberty and they found ways to make magic easier. So like when they'd hear it was someone's anniversary and they knew they were staying at a hotel close by, they would call the hotel and they'd have a bottle of champagne delivered to that hotel, that guest room. That's not an expensive gesture.

0:14:01.4 KD: They had a relationship with the hotel and they would do it and people were just awestruck by the simple things that they were doing. He hired somebody to like do watercolors of people, of magic moments that they were having and they would send it home with them. I think my favorite one was there was a group of people that came and they overheard at the table that the last thing that they didn't do on their list was getting a hotdog. And so this is a really bougie restaurant, it's very high end, but they heard that that was the last thing that they weren't able to get done before they flew out and they were flying out and there was no way for them to be able to do it. So they went and got the hotdogs and of course the chef was like appalled that they were putting hot dogs in this high-end restaurant and they said, trust us on this, we're serving it up. And they said the shock that these people had of getting to have their New York hotdog before they flew out is something that those people will go talk about forever.

0:14:57.6 KD: And there was another one where they talked about how they weren't able to get to the beach and they literally brought in like pounds of sand and made a beach experience for these people. And what was so cool is it was just the intentionality behind it and the team got so excited and so jazzed to constantly be looking for little ways to make magic for these people. And I thought about dental practices and I think we've become so systematized sometimes, which is what I preach, which is what I teach, that we forget that there's this human element of magic. And so I even think as a team, and I tried this so I can speak authentically on this, I put on a busy day, like I know you guys all have those schedules where you look at your day and you're like, ooh, it's gonna be one of those kind of days, versus saying, we're gonna just create magic. That is something where you can be so incredible and look for ways to create magic consistently in small little ways. So as we wrap this up, I just, I loved the book, I loved the things, but I love taking it to you guys of how can you create unreasonable hospitality within your dental practice? How can you create magic moments in your dental office?

0:16:07.5 KD: That's something I would challenge all of you to look at, to think about, to explore because this is where I think you can become a practice that changes lives, not just in dentistry but in their personal life, not being so systematized that we don't create it. Find ways to get your team so excited about doing this in a way that's still profitable but truly changes lives for the better. And guys, if we can help you with this, I know that's what we're about. My whole team knows we add the sprinkles wherever we can. We're looking for ways, little things that just make a huge impact because we know that person, we thought about them and we created a magic moment for them. So I'd encourage you guys look for that. Be unreasonable. Create a culture where it's cool to care. Create a way where your team is excited about looking for ways to help each other and help the patients and to get excited because that makes your days when you look at them and they're long, instead of looking at it as long, today is the day where I get to help create magic for someone.

0:17:04.5 KD: And then go do that. If we can help you in any way, please reach out, [email protected]. I'm always here for you, always ready to serve you. And as always, thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.

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0:17:18.2 KD: And that wraps it up for another episode of the Dental A Team Podcast. Thank you so much for listening and we'll talk to you next time.

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