Episode 808: Start-Up Tips

Transcript:

Kiera Dent (00:00.79)

Hello Dental A Team listeners, this is Kira. Welcome to another Dental A Team podcast. Guys, I just love hearing about you. I love knowing where you guys are at. I love seeing you guys post on your drives to work. I love hearing about your teams. I love hearing about your successes. I just love supporting and cheering you on. Whether I know you personally or whether it's far away, I love our consulting family, those who work with us virtually or in person. We have an incredible mastermind where we meet once a month.

We've got incredible virtual offices that are coming in. We've got people who are getting practice momentum and gaining the skills necessary, getting their foundations and being a part of our 12 months of business success cycle for teams and doctors. Being able to get those systems in your practice. I just love all of you and then all of those who are listening on the podcast. I hope one day I can welcome you into our dental team family and our consulting side and cheer you on and see your successes.

because ultimately I think that that's what I was made for. I was made to cheer you on. I was made to see your successes. I was made to give you the tools and the resources to help you get the success you are totally capable and definitely deserving of. So today guys, I wanted to dive into a request. Did you know that you can actually request podcasts from me? If you head on over to thedentallyteam.com, click on our podcast tab.

And right there you can submit ideas. So if you have a book you want me to talk about, if you have a issue in your practice you want me to talk about, if you're like, hey Kira, could you make a podcast about this? Guess what? I create this podcast not for me, but for you. So please go leave me some submissions today. Everybody, if honestly guys, if every single listener went and left me one idea, I would have podcasts for probably the next like 20 years.

We have so many listeners and I love all of you. So don't think someone else is gonna go do it. You go do it and I'm gonna create podcasts for you. So what I love to do is to answer listeners questions. So today the question was, Kira, what are some startup tips for implementation of systems? So this is a startup practice and I just wanna say kudos to you for having a practice. And I'm gonna give you a few implementation tips for how do you get those systems in place. So number one,

Kiera Dent (02:13.394)

I love to talk about like what systems should we have? What are those systems? And I think it's really important for you guys to realize that I have created with our team, we have what we like to call our 12 systems business success cycle. And so on there, I'm gonna pull up for you guys a graphic. So if you guys are watching online, fantastic. And if you're not totally fine, don't even stress about it. But I'm gonna share this with you. And for those of you not watching, don't you worry.

I will definitely, definitely tell you so that way you can see what it is. But on here, here we go. So what I'll do is right here is we have the business success cycle and I've got 12 of them there. And these flow, cause I also have the team side for the system success cycle. So I like to start out in January with leadership. So up here is the leadership. Then we go into accountability and then into our marketing plan, our patient journey.

our tracking results like KPIs and tracking, our production per hour, diagnosing and closing, reputation management, how are we doing across the nation, our quality control, so it's like OSHA and HIPAA, time management and delegation, productive meetings and fulfillment, okay? So those are what I put together for doctors. And then I have a secondary one for you where it's for the teams. And so with the team side of that, what I love to show

is we then need to make sure that our teams on the system success cycle, they go hand in hand. And on the systems for teams, I'll show you, it's not quite the same graphic. It's just a little bit different. So let me share that with you. Don't worry, all of you listening, I've got you. Don't you worry for one second. But on this one, you guys can see, we have the foundations, but then it comes right over here to the same thing. So for leadership with doctors, we go to ownership for teams.

culture for teams, raving fans, five-star patient experience, billing with ease, smooth scheduling, case acceptance, dynamite dental assistance, elevated hygiene, operations manual creation, productive meetings, hiring and onboarding. So I try really hard to have them go where they go hand in hand for systems because systemization can feel super hard if you're trying to do it all on your own.

Kiera Dent (04:37.246)

Then what I say is how do we figure out which one system we're going to implement and then how do we get that implementation in place? Well, first step is what are your goals for the year? Where are we even trying to go? So many people ask me, Kira, how do I prioritize? Like there's so many things I could do, but how do I actually prioritize? And my answer to you is we prioritize based on where we're headed and we figure out what one's going to give us the most bang for our buck. So which one's actually going to solve the bulk of our problems the most consistently and that's the one we're actually going to do.

So for you, if you were saying, okay, this year, I'm a startup practice and I wanna make sure that I produce 500,000, fantastic. I would say, well, let's look at those systems and which ones do we need to put into place first? Do we have good scheduling to where we can schedule really well? Do we have an awesome patient experience to where we're able to attract those patients in? Do we have really, really good management in our practice? When I have a new startup practice, the things that I go to first, I'll tell you, are number one,

I always recommend a startup practice has a really good office manager. Number two, we've got to get our billing dialed in because if we're not able to get paid for what we're doing, that becomes really, really stressful on cashflow. And then number three is we've got to have the system so that way in the back, we know how to diagnose our treatment plans. We know how to set up for procedures and do really, really awesome same day treatment. So now we can build systems for everything else. I have an operations manual that I love that has so many systems in it from our company.

where in there it goes through all the clinical systems that you should have. So how do we set up for a root canal? How do we set up for a Chrome prep? How do we set up for a filling? How do we set up for all these different things? And let's make sure our rooms and our operatories are all good so every team member, no matter who they are, they can set up for it exactly like the rest of us. That's gonna help you guys just move quicker. And then I say get really, really good at your hygiene exams. Hygiene exams are paramount. Like get double with your hygienist and if you don't have a hygienist,

when those patients come in for a hygiene cleaning, if they have treatment, do the treatment first, because then what you can do as a startup is you can actually bring them back in on say a Friday and you can hire a hygienist to do that hygiene on Fridays. So do the treatment, because you as a doctor can do the treatment, bring them back on a Friday, you can hire a hygienist for just Fridays and start to build that hygiene schedule. So those are really my biggest things. And then what I'd say is you've gotta know your numbers too. So knowing those numbers.

Kiera Dent (06:58.322)

Make sure that you know that P&L, make sure that you know where your money is going, how you can pay for things, because when we don't know the numbers, it becomes really stressful as a business owner. So how do we actually implement these things? Number one, you gotta have a clear system. So what is the purpose? What are the required tools? And then what are the steps to make sure we're all doing it the same way? And this can get daunting, it can get overwhelming, we can put so many systems into place.

but I really do love an operations manual because implementation is easy when it's written down, it's a protocol, it's reviewed with the whole team, and then we practice it. And as a startup practice, I really recommend you role play a lot. Let's role play a new patient phone call, like every single day. Let's do different scenarios. Let's role play how we do a treatment plan. Let's role play how we take a patient back. Let's role play how we do a hygiene exam. Let's role play every single one of these because we don't get great by hoping and wishing, we get great by practice.

and practice and practice and practice and practice. Even as an experienced office, this isn't just for a startup, practice those specific systems, like the five-star patient experience. Let's go through every single part of it every single week and make sure that we are all rock solid perfect on every piece of it. Let's practice our handoffs. Let's do a relay race on our handoffs. Let's make sure all those different pieces are in place perfectly, so that way we know what we need to do. Implementation of systems.

feels daunting because we're like, wow, there's so much. But if my goal is to do 500,000, I'm gonna break that down and then I'm going to look to say, all right, if I could only do one thing, just one, what's gonna help me get to that 500,000 the easiest? Honestly, I would do morning huddles. Morning huddles let me look for opportunities. Then I'd make sure my case acceptance is rock solid and I'd probably do block scheduling as well. And the way you implement it is you figure out what's gonna move you forward the most.

and then we make sure it becomes perfect. That's it. And what I found is we try to implement too many things to where our team feels like they can't do it. As a starter practice, you're going to be implementing a lot of things, but you've got to make sure that it's done at a sustainable level to where what we implemented four weeks ago doesn't go out the wayside and we're able to still hold onto it four weeks later. So systems I don't believe should be memory-based as much as possible. So how can we get that system to be more automatic?

Kiera Dent (09:17.538)

Can we put it in our note templates so we don't have to remember? Can we put it on a route slip so people don't have to remember that? Can we put the blocks in the schedule so people don't need to remember that? Can we have it just automatically default to how long each procedure should be? Can we have it be something where things just take off for us in a way that we don't have to remember it? As much as can be automated is going to be easier implementation. Because when people have to try and remember everything, like, can you imagine if we had to remember the entire dictionary? Like, forget that.

Who would actually be able to do that? Probably no one. So if you can find a way to implement just a small little piece that's not, like the less amount that we have to memorize and know on our own, the better off we're all going to be. So how can you make this into a system that it doesn't require memory, that doesn't require people to be perfect? That's going to help with your implementation exponentially.

Because now you don't have to stress about it. Now we don't have to hope and pray that Mary remembers that every time someone calls in for a new patient, these are the questions to ask. We have a new patient form. We ask these questions every single time. We fill it in every single time. Every time we do an insurance verification breakdown, we have a form, we fill it in, we scan it into their file. Every single time we do a crown prep, we do it this way. And we get those things automated to where it's the exact same way every single time people stop missing. It's just like every single time I get in a car, I put a seatbelt on.

And guess what? There's a annoying beeping sound that reminds me in case I forget to get my darn seatbelt on. They're not hoping and praying people remember to put their seatbelt on. They've created a system that basically forces us to do it that way. So with startup practices, you've got to find a way to make those systems as automated as possible. When I go in and consult an office, I don't hope and pray that team's gonna remember what I taught them. Because guess what? We don't retain what people are saying. We retain by doing, we retain by the facial expressions, like that's what we remember.

So people are gonna get like 10% of what I said in that meeting. But if I leave them a route slip with all the pieces they need to fill in and just tell them, I need you to fill this in every time and I remind them for the next like three, four hours before I leave, well, guess what? Now they don't forget that. If I have a treatment tracker of the things I want them to look for, they don't forget that. If I have a new patient tracker of like the steps of a new patient, they fill that in, they don't have to remember that. It's literally just step by step by step. They don't have to remember. They have to remember to use it, but after that, everything else is done.

Kiera Dent (11:35.594)

So in a practice, when you're trying to systematize, those are the system categories that I love. Those are the areas that I would start on. But the biggest thing for implementation is simplicity. Simplicity, how can I make this so simple and automated that no one will ever forget? How can I make this so simple that people can do this without needing to remember? That's the key. And if we can't, then like stack it, habit stacking, right? So if we do a crown, probably have this, this. I had some offices and what they did is they literally had a like.

sheet for every procedure and a hat where everything needed to go. So that way assistants didn't have to remember it. Had other people take a picture, laminate it on a little ring, leave those pictures up in the operatories so we can just pull it out and use it. Anything that can be a quick form or can be automated and it's a form we quickly fill in, those things will make implementation so much easier, but make sure what you're implementing is actually getting you towards your goal. It's not just busy work. And this is what I do for a living. This is what our team is so good at doing is helping you guys.

Get the systems implemented, figuring out which systems to implement and when, and making sure that you hit your goals with ease. You don't have to do every single system. That's not what a systematized practice is. It's making sure that the patients get the best experience consistently every single time. That's systems. It doesn't have to be a set amount of systems. You don't have to have everything done to be systematized. You just need to make sure that the systems that will create the best patient experience and team experience that you're getting paid on and acceptance of cases, we repeat that.

over and over and over and over and over and over again. And that's what you need to systematize. So if I can help you reach out, hello at thedentallateam.com. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental Late Team podcast.