Episode 755: Next Year's Strategy- Team Effort 

When it comes to setting annual goals, it’s critical to have the right people in the room. In this episode, Tiff and Britt talk about strategizing growth as a team. They give insight on who should be there, where it should happen, and how to keep the goals manageable.

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Transcript: 

Tiffanie (00:01.484)

Back at it again with my favorite consultant to do podcasts with. Don't tell the other girls I said that, but I really do have so much fun.

 

Britt (00:11.584)

I mean, I think we've had, we've done them the longest. Other than you and Kira, we've done them the longest together. So we'll just say that. It does.

 

Tiffanie (00:18.696)

I agree. I think it makes a difference and it makes me like, oh my gosh, here's Britt again. We get to chat. So we get to have our friend time. Yeah. Yeah, there's not a lot of people in my life I get to talk nerdy dental stuff with. So yeah, yeah. But I've got all of you guys this week and I'm excited. Yeah. Oh my gosh, that's funny. That's funny, because your mom has been at, she's a...

 

Britt (00:26.538)

We get to catch up. We get to talk nerdy dental stuff, which we always love. So it's great.

 

Britt (00:35.217)

I mean, with my family, sometimes it happens at like the dinner table where those are people, but.

 

Tiffanie (00:44.916)

a long-term dental assistant, right? She's been a dental assistant forever, and then your sister is a hygienist? Yeah, yeah.

 

Britt (00:50.166)

Uh-huh. So like we take over, the three of us, and then my niece went and worked in the summer at my sister's office for a little bit as a sterilization tech. So that was fun to see.

 

Tiffanie (00:56.098)

Cute.

 

Tiffanie (01:00.82)

Oh, I love that. I love it. It is a family thing over there. And I feel like that happens a lot. Like I know my doctor, we always had school breaks and I'd be like, get Haley in here because I have so much of this pile of scanning that needs to be done or get Emma in here to file these charts. Cause you know, 10 year olds just love paper. So I was always like, yeah. And I know that, I know mom was always excited. Their mom was excited to give them something different to do than a...

 

Britt (01:20.59)

Why not give him a test to do, if perfect?

 

Tiffanie (01:30.648)

going back to the pool. So I love that.

 

Britt (01:32.586)

I support all teenagers having jobs, so I'm like, great. Get her in there, earn a little money, have a little something to do, be responsible, it's great.

 

Tiffanie (01:35.261)

Exactly.

 

Tiffanie (01:40.388)

Mm-hmm. That's how my sister started at my practice when she was, when she turned 16. She was a sterile tech and you know I called it a gopher. Like go for this, go for that. Go do all the things that I need done. Yeah, yeah, I love it. I love it. Well that kind of actually like goes a little bit talking about things that you need in a practice and

 

Britt (01:49.485)

Yeah.

 

Britt (01:52.714)

We love a gopher in a dental office.

 

Tiffanie (02:04.352)

maybe spaces of life that we don't think about, kind of goes with what I wanted to chat with you about today because I think you're really fantastic at this portion. You help our company do this a ton within the Dental A team. And I've watched you work with tons of practices, big and small. I know you've had practices that had like three team members and then you had practices that, gosh, what was the one, you had like 52 or 47 or some sort of astronomical, I feel like, huge number.

 

Britt (02:27.766)

Big.

 

Tiffanie (02:31.08)

And you've been able, I've watched you as a consultant be able to take those practices big or small and really integrate systems and these kinds of meetings that I wanna talk about into their practices so that they could see the growth potential and then not only that potential but see the action items that go behind it. Part of that I think too is projecting how many team members you need, what are the spaces that we forget need to be done that people don't have time to get to and really projecting for those things. So I wanted to.

 

chat with you about that because you have been really successful and your practices have seen wild success in creating this kind of a situation. When do you suggest having these meetings? What are the kind of goals? I'm thinking annual, right? Like what are the kind of goals that we're looking at per year? And then how do we go through and really create the processes for that? What are some of your methods and to your madness within that?

 

Britt (03:28.362)

Yeah, I know we all of us love I know Tiff I know Danae to like growing the leadership teams and I think that's taking practices from almost that kind of just survival or just like functioning like going day to day to really starting to make that massive movement, or just feel like they've got more of a plan behind them that there's more intention behind what they're doing and just instead of just kind of like trucking along and yearly meetings and planning is a big part of that.

 

will just go do it, sit down, hunker down, look at numbers, what kind of growth does the doctor want, right, and it'll be a doctor. The bigger your team gets, it can't just be doctor because more people are going to have to come into play to help execute on that. So doctors, I will put my little plug in, I'm all about growing leaders that can help you and understand that big vision. So even if you've got an idea of pulling your leaders into that yearly planning meeting, saying like, all right, what do we want to grow to? What's our minimum requirement? Where do we want to go this year?

 

does that look like, what do we think is possible? And then starting to kind of like map it out, like, all right, let's look at the hard numbers. What have we done? What kind of growth do we want to see? What big things do we want to accomplish this year? Are we looking to expand anything? Are we looking to add on any providers, that type of stuff? And start setting those goals on what we can do, what production, what collection can we hit this year. I think along with some of the organizational things that we want to put into place as well, like numbers most important.

 

Absolutely, that growth has to be there, those numbers have to be there, our goals have to be set. But then what kind of movement do we wanna make as an organization? Do we wanna get systems in place this year? Do we wanna get job descriptions in place this year? Do we wanna grow leaders within departments this year? What do you wanna accomplish and sit down at least every year and then every quarter to follow up on those yearly goals to make sure we're making progress?

 

Tiffanie (05:22.476)

I love that. I love that. So pieces I heard were really the who of it all, like who's going to be creating these goals, who's going to be working on it. I think something that's really important that you touched on is

 

One, doctors don't try to do it by yourselves. I think even if you have a small team, like you're all leaders then at that point, like you're all leaders. So do it together, you get better buy-in. And you're less stressed, so why not? So the who, like who's going to come together to create these goals? And then I loved the where.

 

where do we want to go? Like where are we at and where do we want to go? So then breaking that down and really thinking what did we accomplish this year and even maybe last year. Like what was our growth from 2021 to 2022 to 2023? Like what is our growth projection and our growth scale? So where were we? Where did we go? And then where do we want to go this year? So what did we accomplish in I mean now?

 

at this point, it's gonna be 2023 when you listen to this. So in like 2036, when we're still relevant and you're listening, you're welcome. But 2023, you're gonna say at the end of the year, what did we do this year? And then you're gonna say, what do we want to do in 2024? So really looking at mapping it out.

 

Britt (06:20.365)

Hahaha

 

Tiffanie (06:31.348)

and taking those growth projections, you can see what your scale is by looking at previous years, year over year. I think a rule of thumb that I typically hear and live by for dental practices or businesses in general is you really wanna see like a seven to 10% minimum increase for the following year. That kind of takes into account all of the different changes in the economy.

 

Typically, we're going to disregard the last couple of years with that statement. Typically, you can count on about a 7% increase at least. So I do see practices easily reach that 7% to 10% increase because the reality of everything is...

 

I think when we think of a goal and we're like, we want to reach one million, right? And we've only ever reached 800,000 or 600,000. We think it's astronomical. It's too big. That gap is too big. But when you really break it down and you look at what's that percentage increase, month over month, day over day, it's a smaller amount. So that's kind of what you're doing there is you're mapping it out. What did we do? And where do we want to go? And then I love what you said about like what kind of things to talk about.

 

in those annual meetings and when you're setting those goals or those we call them wigs, wildly important goals. So when you're setting those, looking obviously at your production and collections, you always want that seven to ten percent increase there, which sometimes you guys is like a hundred thousand dollars or sixty five thousand dollars. Like it's really not that much when you look at it broken down over the year, but then also you said organizational things. So an ops manual, like what is it going to take to get there? So if you're

 

I like to think of it...

 

Tiffanie (08:07.436)

I like to break things down into chewable amounts because I feel like you get this giant steak on your plate. You go to a restaurant, right, a steak house, and they give you this giant steak. And if you didn't have the fork and the knife on the side to break it down, you're just like gnawing on it. That's what I feel like sometimes we look at our goals. Like our goals are these giant steaks, and we're just trying to like gnaw at it until we can consume it. You're never gonna get there. You're never gonna eat that steak. But if you can cut it up with the fork and knife and make it bite-sized chewable pieces,

 

you can now eat the steak. So even when you're looking at the production and the collections, what that increases, well, what is it going to take to get us there? Yes, the production collections daily, monthly, weekly, all those pieces. But I think that leads into your organizational piece, Britt, where you said job descriptions and systems in place. So what are we lacking today?

 

that we need, like we got to where we're at, we're celebrating where we are today and what we did before got us to this point, but that means we have to do something different to get to the next point. So what do we need to put into place in between there to get us there is kind of how that makes me think, Britt, when you're saying like the ops manual, things like that. Is that what you're seeing and how do you see that work for practices?

 

Britt (09:26.602)

And that's some of the fun strategy behind it, right? So it's like, all right, with what we have right now, in order to get that increase, right? Is it, when's the last time we looked at our fees? Is it that we're not running as efficient as we could be, and we've got that growth sitting right within our office, and we just need to learn how to run a little bit more efficiently? Is it that, hey, we're like max on space running efficiently, and we're taking all these insurance plans, like, hey, do we wanna consider dropping some insurance plans to get some of that growth?

 

Tiffanie (09:55.725)

Yeah.

 

Britt (09:56.716)

to change up our pay or mix. So that's where the fun comes in and having more people than just one doctor, right? So more than just doctor can bring in some variety of ideas and get them on board for those ideas instead of doctor just coming and saying, hey, this is where we're going, this is what we're doing. That it's been a team effort to figure it out and strategize together and help them kind of process. I know Dene was talking about a client recently that's like, all right, here's where they are.

 

town, they're wanting to change some things up, but they don't really want to drop insurance, but they want XYZ. And it's like, all right, in order to get XYZ, we've got to be more profitable and we've got to bring in more income. So let's talk about ways that it can happen. PayorMix is one of them, but like, what other ideas do you have? And let's come together and strategize and figure out how we want to make it happen.

 

Tiffanie (10:40.224)

Yeah, for sure.

 

Tiffanie (10:48.148)

I love that. I love that. And I think you brought up another important piece there where Danae is the one like looking at that bird's eye view to say

 

doctor and team has come up with these steaks, they've got these wigs. And now she's got to help them to figure out how to cut those up into bite sized pieces. And I think that bird's eye view is something that we as consultants offer all of our practices. We kind of see through it. I was telling a client earlier this early, that was last week, last week, I was telling a client, um, it all blends together, you know, but I was telling him like, my job is to see past the barriers that are in front of you that are keeping you in that limited belief.

 

Britt (11:18.833)

It does.

 

Tiffanie (11:26.618)

My job is to see past those barriers, to see the angles in which we can manipulate and change a situation for a better result, utilizing where you're at today. So not just saying, yeah, if you had five more team members, you could do all of these things. Well, guess what's really hard to get right now? Team members. So if you're if you're limited by something like that bird's eye view is what helps us to get around it. So when you're building those goals, whether you have a consultant or not, it's neither here nor there.

 

I'm saying, I think bringing the team together and allowing one another to be bird's eye perspective for the others, for each other, each position, really brings a different point of view into the situation because your hygienist might be able to say, hey, I don't know if you do this already or not, but front office, what if you did it this way?

 

And they may see something that the front office doesn't see because we're in it day to day to day. Britt, you might come to me and be like, Tiff, if you just give yourself 10 minutes between your calls, maybe you'd be less stressed. And I'd be like, oh my gosh, that's the most brilliant thing anyone's ever brought to me. So I think consultants, we come in and we see that. But I think you can do it for yourselves to a certain extent as well, not diminishing what we do at all because I do think that it's very important. And if it's for you.

 

Britt (12:28.256)

Yeah.

 

Tiffanie (12:47.588)

we're there, we're here for you. But if it's not for you yet, you guys have each other too. So making sure that again, those annual meetings and those WIGS meetings are involving multiple people and multiple perspectives and points of view with a resolution in mind and growth in mind, making sure that everybody's on the same path and projection for the business. You don't just have somebody's in there, a sourpuss like no, we can't, we've done all we can, you know, you

 

But I thought that was really cool. What you're saying is make sure that that's there.

 

Britt (13:19.598)

And that's.

 

part of these meetings, right? These yearly meetings are a time that I don't want these to feel like commonplace or routine, right? Like these are our chances to think outside the box and to kind of push our limits a little bit and not to say you don't have to, you have to do anything extreme, but like we need to consider all ideas. So when we're in these meetings, let's consider all the ideas, let's look from different angles, let's see where we wanna go, see what different solutions are and help each other to see things in different ways,

 

Tiffanie (13:30.765)

Mm-hmm.

 

Tiffanie (13:51.487)

Yeah.

 

Britt (13:51.852)

Sometimes we've got to call it like it is and see things from a little bit different perspective to help determine where we want to go. And that's the difference in these meetings that I want to make sure we point out in the yearly and then at least quarterly evaluating how far we've got, what do we need to focus on this quarter, is to make sure we're really pushing ideas and we're not allowing them just to become routine.

 

Tiffanie (14:14.508)

Mm-hmm, for sure. I love that. I love that breaking it down, making them fun, making sure that we're looking at the growth projections. And I think too, to that point making them fun is making sure they're not depicted in a way that's like, we're just here to gain more production. I had a conversation with a hygienist today regarding that, which you know are my favorites, but it went really, really well.

 

Britt (14:37.038)

You know those hygienists.

 

Tiffanie (14:38.7)

I know it went really well because she really had that mindset of the change that the practice was trying to bring into her world, right? One they like stripped, we stripped her control, which is never a good idea, right? But it's just the way the cookie crumbled. But she really felt like it was only for production. And I had to explain to her like, well, the reality is

 

with all due respect, adding in these profis here, it's like $68. It's not a lot of production. So it's about the patients and what are we able to do for the patients? So with that kind of a mindset and really looking at, look at how many people we served this year, how many people, how many lives were changed and benefited because we're here.

 

Now, how can we benefit and change and serve even more people while still serving these other people? That's the growth. So like looking for who else's lives can we touch while still having a piece of the people who have been here with us, not losing sight of them, but kind of combining it. And that's how the growth is. And having people on board for that, I think helps to set those wigs and the intentions correct so that the production and the collections, the money just comes after that. If

 

the right reasons and you're pushing for the right goals and you're all pushing together in the same boat, you're rowing in the same direction, that's when things really fall into place and you see that success.

 

Britt (16:05.542)

And intentions truly do come across. So like in some of these meetings, like absolutely we're gonna talk numbers, but our patients and our team are always number one. And sometimes those are the ones that come up against each other as a business, right? That it's like, all right, we can make strategic decisions to help our patients and help us to provide a more fulfilling, more profitable life for our team members as well. And so sometimes those do kind of come up and they play against each other and we wanna make sure we're looking at

 

patients and our team at the same time. Because the better the business does the better we're going to be able to take care of our team members.

 

Tiffanie (16:37.911)

Yeah.

 

Tiffanie (16:41.94)

I love it. I love it. Awesome. Okay, is there anything else you feel like we need to add in there or hit on or hone in on more than we have?

 

Britt (16:51.758)

I think it's just making it simple for people. If you don't do yearly planning, right? Setting financial goals, setting organization goals of where you wanna go and really thinking through that strategy, like your call to action is, start doing it, we're in August right now. So set the date, spend the time for planning out 2024. And then don't just set those yearly goals and forget them. Monthly they should be checked in on, if not more frequently and every quarter broken down into more digestible pieces to make sure you're making progress.

 

Tiffanie (17:21.528)

For sure. I love that.

 

Okay, so our action items are schedule it, number one. So schedule it right away. If it's the first week of the year, if it's the last week of the year, whatever that looks like, schedule it so that you guys can make those projections. And really think about who's going to be there, who do you want to have there? And then where are you going? So have that information. Where have you been? Where are you going? So that you guys can break it down. So schedule it, who's gonna be there? And then where are you taking the practice? And really have a clear idea and those intentions.

 

what kind of things you're going to want to impact this coming year. Go do it guys. It's not that hard. Simple is always best. Don't overthink it. If you need help, if you need ideas, I have told you, I don't know, five times, at least just during this podcast, that these are things we do all of the time. We work with our practices side by side for these things. And we work with practices who are not signed up with Dental A Team and we help them by gifting them.

 

free information and free agendas, things like that. We have all of that, you guys, so stop trying to reinvent the wheel, stop driving yourself crazy. Just reach out to us because we are here for all of you. Britt, any other action items you can think of? Sweet.

 

Britt (18:35.082)

Nope, I don't think so. I think if you want to level up on it, just make sure your intention, your direction, your strategy, and you've got the people there to support you, you're not doing it alone.

 

Tiffanie (18:44.164)

I love it. I love it. Thank you, Britt. Thank you for being here. You guys, if you haven't done it yet, drop us a five star review. We want to hear from you, especially if these are things that you've done before and new ideas that you may have taken away or things that you know work really well for you. I always say it. Leave it in your review. People do read them and then they can take away ideas from you and now you're serving even a bigger community. So thank you so much for listening and we'll catch you next time.