Episode 466: The Possibilities Are Endless in 2022

Happy New Year, fam! In this episode Kiera is kicking off your new year in a magical way. She guides listeners through an activity that’ll set each department in your practice up for success in 2022 while including a reflection of 2021. Lists, schedules, patterns, and a ton of possibilities. By the end of this episode you’ll have up to three goals that’ll propel you into your best year yet — professionally and personally.

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0:00:05.6 Speaker 1: 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, we have traveled 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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0:00:52.2 S1: Hello Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera. Oh, guys! Happy, happy, happy new year! Oh my gosh. This is the time that I love. I get so excited for December and January. I get so jazzed thinking about all the possibilities that are ahead of me. When I was... Oh gosh, this was in college, I came up with a phrase where I said, "I love new days 'cause it's a brand new day with no mistakes." And then I was like, wow, it's a brand new year full of opportunities. It's a brand new month full of opportunities and I hope you guys are looking at your life that way. So I'm gonna give you guys some tangibles. It's a new year. I love to kick off the new year in a really, really, really magical way. These are things I personally do. So I'm gonna give you things that I actually try, I do every single year and hopefully, it's gonna help you guys kick it off.

0:01:42.0 S1: So what I want you guys to do is I want you actually to grab a piece of paper, we can walk through this together, whatever you wanna do, but I want you to walk through it and we're going to actually go through every single department of your practice. Okay? So we can have office manager, scheduling, billing, treatment coordinating, associate doctors, hygienist, dental assistants, our doctors, our owner, marketing, those areas. If you have more than that... Some have regional managers, some have a call center, some have a billing center, whatever it is for your practice, but I want you to list all of those departments. For me, I do marketing, I do sales, I do consulting, I do operations. [chuckle] And so we all have our different business make-up, but at the end of the day, departments are departments.

0:02:26.0 S1: So I want you, then, to write all the positives in those departments. Really get to the nitty gritty of it. So that will be the first step. So go through what was really, really great about your dental assistants? What do they just flourish on? What about your hygiene team? What about your office manager, scheduler, biller? Go down the whole list. Then I want you to write, what are the blind spots? What were the areas that we maybe didn't do so well in 2021 that we need to improve on? And guys, I'm releasing this to you, hopefully before you go back to the practice. So you should have no excuse, it's a holiday, of when you can do this. So hopefully, you guys are able to do it with me. If not, that's okay. Do it on the weekend or sometime when you can do this because the sooner you do this, the sooner you can make changes that will definitely kick off your year on a stronger note.

0:03:14.7 S1: So then write the areas that they weren't as strong. Like for me, marketing. We have doubled down on marketing and I've got some areas that we're weak on. We have not done a good job of working with sponsors and affiliates, that's a zone that we are really, really weak on right now and you can almost do it as like a SWOT analysis, if you want. So strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. But I really look at, what are my blind spots? If you guys want, our consulting clients actually get a checklist for their whole practice of area. So if you guys are interested, that's something I really love, we're kicking it off this year even better. But really, I want you to assess every single one of these departments. Where are we weak? You don't need to be a coach, you don't need a check list to know where you're weak, you already know a lot of those areas.

0:04:00.3 S1: It's not too hard, is it doing well or is it not doing well and where are we not doing as well? And be honest, get deep on this part. Next up, I want you to do all the aspects of a business. So we're talking about the profitability of our business. We're talking about our tax strategy. We're talking about our legal aspect. We're talking about our CPA. We're talking about CEO time, making sure that we have that. We're looking at our marketing of the practice. We're looking at our EBITDA, those fun business aspects of our practice. I want you to list all those areas and I want you to write what you did really, really, really well this year. And then again, on the other side of that, I want you to write the areas that you were weak. Guys, I recognize this year I am weak on taxes, tax strategy. I have it on my goal board to become a tax expert.

0:04:48.1 S1: Yes. I bought two stupid books on taxes that I'm going to read. I bought the hard copy, I always do Audible so I can read it as like three, four, five times the speed and maybe I'll buy an Audible book so I can get through it faster. But I did that because that's an area I'm really weak and I'm sick of not knowing, of not understanding. That's a zone I'm super weak on. I'm also weak on setting up my wealth strategy. What is it? How much do I need to have? What am I looking at? What is my investment strategy? I'm weak in that area, you guys. So that is a zone that I'm going after. Where am I great? I'm really good at profitability. I'm really good at Profit First by Mike Michalowicz. Like, insanely good at it. I get better and better and better every year and I teach clients is because I freaking love it. I love helping people become profitable.

0:05:33.9 S1: I love reading a PNL and seeing where we... I literally, guys, every quarter, go through my PNL every single quarter. I set it into a cadence this year to go through my PNL and check off all the areas where I'm not as strong and where we could cut and where we could get rid of and we started thinking about different opportunities. I go through it every quarter. It's annoying. I go through every transaction. [chuckle] Because it's something that I wasn't doing. That's a zone that I'm weak, that I can grow on. My legal team. I look to see, are my employee handbooks updated? Do I have a strong process on that? Do I have a good HR policy? Have I checked the new laws and regulations that have come up to ensure that we're compliant? What about OSHA and HIPAA? Are we compliant in those areas? And if not, that's a zone we're weak and we might wanna work on. Okay. So the reason I go through this is because I want you to have a full map. So stop the podcast, write it out, get it done. Go.

0:06:28.7 S1: Yes. I said go. Pause. Pause right now and then come back, because I want you to really dive into this because if you can have a full map of how your year was in 2021, it will give you the guidance that you need. Also other things on business are CE and growth. Did you have CE? Did you have coaching? Did you invest in yourself? And some people do a little too much CE. Some people don't do enough CE. So look to see, what's your cadence? I say too much CE is if you haven't executed and that hasn't become a full process for you, it's too much CE. So for example, if I'm gonna go take an implant course, I need to be able to place X number of implants before I'm going to go take more CE. Otherwise, we become CE junkies and we do implants, Invisalign, 3D printing and nothing actually executes.

0:07:14.5 S1: And so, yes, it feels good that we did all the CE, but what's the outcome? What were we striving for? We didn't actually achieve that. So I want you really, really to look at that. Some of you are saying like, "Yeah. It wasn't my best year." Some of you are like, "Wow, I've got a lot of negatives and not a lot of positives." Others are like, "I had quite a few positives." But what I want you to do is be able to see everything, 'cause I'm a big believer that when we can see it, we can find patterns. I want you to look to see, is there a pattern in there? For me, when I did this I realized I wasn't having enough CEO time. I didn't have enough white space in my schedule to be able to fix a lot of these problems. I also didn't have the right people in the right seat. When I did this last year, I realized my culture sucked. It was bad. It was not good. We were not retaining team members. I had a massive problem on my hands. So that was my number one thing. My two focuses in 2021 were culture and marketing.

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0:08:11.8 S1: As you guys look back on 2021, how was it? Was it your best year? Was it a year you could have done a little better? And as you're looking forward to 2022, what type of a practice and a person do you wanna be? Well, guys, now is the time to take massive action and to have the life and the practice you've always wanted. Dental A Team Platinum is where it's at, guys. We focus on system development. That's right. Top to bottom. Team development, growing leaders, growing you as a person, making sure you're balanced, that we have happier teams and we also ensure that your practice is profitable, teaching you how to be business-savvy. So if you're looking to enhance your practice, take it to the next level, you yourself wanna grow? Now is the time. Dental A Team Platinum, we fly to your practice. Most of our offices see a 10%-30% increase in revenue, reduction of stress, happier teams, better patient experiences. So if you know you wanna rocket launch yourself into 2022, don't wait, guys. We are only taking on so many Platinum practices, because we physically fly to you. So email us today, [email protected] and you better believe we have something special for you end of year offices. So be sure to reach out, [email protected]. Remember you're only one decision away from a completely different life.

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0:09:21.4 S1: And I would say we got way better. I hired coaches for marketing. I hired new team members. I switched it. I had Liz, who's my business coach, start hiring for us because I wasn't doing a good job hiring. She's not desperate. She ran a consulting company prior to working with us. She knew what to look for and she's been incredible. I changed up my core values. I had a business coach go through core values with me. I paid $9,000, yes, you guys heard that, $9,000 for somebody to help me re-work my core values. I was definitely committed and I was not willing to settle. This year, I've got other areas to work on and I'm definitely going to find coaches and specialists and experts in those zones, because when I set a goal of this is the area I'm going to work on, I'm committed to it.

0:10:04.5 S1: So I want you to look at it where... And now look for any pattern. What is the pattern? And I want you to just brainstorm dump right now, if you could change... List off all the ideas of things that you could do. Okay. So maybe an idea is you could hire the Dental A Team. Yep. That was a shameless plug, guys. Hire us. We make massive results. We change your team, your systems, your profitability. So if any of those three areas are struggling, guess what? We do a three-for-one deal over here [chuckle] and it's amazing. So maybe it's that you... So that's an idea that you could do. Maybe it's that you're gonna read Profit First, 'cause you need to get more profitable. Maybe you're gonna hire Dentist Advisors to help you with your wealth management. Guess what? I am the newest Dentist Advisor client.

0:10:49.2 S1: Ryan Isaac has given me free advice for years, I endorse them fully and I realize I need somebody to guide me, to help me. I can do investments on my own, it's not hard to do but it's the accountability that I needed. It's the planning, the tax. I bought two books on taxes, guys, you know clearly my two words this year are health and wealth. [chuckle] And so that's what I'm working on, but as a business, that's something I could do. Other things I could do, I could plan two CE events this year that I'm going to attend. I could look at it that my dental assistants are not great because they haven't been trained. We don't have high enough Perio so I'm going to create a Perio protocol and I'm gonna have hygiene calibration this year. My office manager needs leadership training, so I'm going to hire a coach for them to train them.

0:11:34.0 S1: We do that, guys. We train a lot of office managers. You could also do your personal life. Put that on there as well. How's your personal life? Are you taking vacations? Are you going on date nights with your spouse? Are you spending time with your kids? That's a zone. What about your health? How is your personal health? I want you to write those down as well. Sorry, I didn't add that to your original diagram, but add that in. How's your health? How's your relationships with your family? With your spouse? With your kids? With yourself? Those could be areas. I'm gonna meditate. I'm gonna read Miracle Morning and implement a Miracle Morning. Dump it guys. Dump all the things. I'm gonna have a rebrand 'cause we're not getting as many new patients and I wanna have a rebrand. I'm going to expand the practice this year 'cause we're at max capacity.

0:12:16.8 S1: I need to hire an associate because I don't have enough CEO time. We need to increase our billing 'cause our AR is out of control. We are going to implement softwares. So Modento, Swell, CallForce. All those different ones. EAssist. You could have any of those come in if you're weak in those areas, but really look and list off all the possibilities that you could do. Then I want you to look at that list and I want you to circle one, two or three things that are going to give you the biggest impact this year that you're actually going to do. So for me, last year, I hired two people. I hired somebody for marketing, I hired somebody for core values and culture and then I paid a shiz, that's with a Z as in zebra, I did not swear, a lot of money on paying my business coach, who is wildly expensive and worth every penny, to hire for me this year.

0:13:13.2 S1: It did not come at a low price point for me. I also bought a $24 book on Amazon about taxes. That's pretty cheap. But it's gonna require my time. So all these different things, circle it. Give me three things that are going to give you the biggest impact for good and they're gonna change the bulk of these issues and concerns that you have this year. Okay. So what are you going to do? And guys, I'm doing this exact same thing with you, so don't feel I'm letting... I'm just teaching you. No, I do this exact same thing every single year. So now, what are you gonna do? What are you gonna do for a massive action? What things are you gonna do? I sometimes let you guys have four quadrants. Okay. So we've got our business quadrant, our profitability quadrant, our you quadrant, our systems quadrant and our team quadrant.

0:14:01.8 S1: So you're welcome to choose anything in all four of those quadrants or however you wanna do it, but pick something that's going to drastically drive those areas forward. Next, you have to calendar it. So schedule it, 'cause right now it's just a pipe dream. Like, yeah I really, really, really wanna do that. Now, it's scheduling it. What do we need to do? What's step one, step two, step three? And I want you to do it. If it's going to be hiring a coach, I want you to send the email right now to get that coach hired. If it's I'm going to attend CE, I want you to put it... I either want you to research it today of what CE events you're going to go to, pay for them, get them scheduled or I want you to have a set appointment that you will not break with yourself of when you're going to research CE events that will be for the biggest bang for the buck.

0:14:45.9 S1: Every single year I plan my CE the year before, and yes there are some times that it comes up a little extra throughout the year, but I try to really think about throughout the year, what is the CE that I want to have that's gonna have the greatest impact for me? If it's team meetings, I want you to get those meetings scheduled right now and have a theme. Guys, we have the 12 systems of Dental A Team. We literally have 12 themes for you. So one every single month. We try to put it on auto pilot for you, so you don't even have to think about what meeting to have each month, it's already put in there for you. So you've got to go through everything, identify where we're positive, where we're negative. We don't wanna get rid of those positives. Then we're gonna brain dump all of the ideas that we could possibly do to make these things get better.

0:15:28.9 S1: Then we're gonna circle three, I told you you could go up to four if you do the four quadrants, of the areas that are going to be the biggest bang for your buck this year or the biggest bang for your time this year, that's really going to make a massive difference. Then you're going to schedule it and then you're going to actually do it. So I helped you guys just build out a plan. A plan for your new year. A plan to kick it off personally, professionally. With your team, with your systems. Identifying all these gaps. For our Platinum team, I'm gonna do a kick-off this year where I go way more in-depth on this this year, because it's something that I love to do. They're gonna get one-on-one... Well, it's one-on-group, but I will be there, they can ask questions, it will be live kick off this year, 'cause I wanna help them go through this and actually do this with us.

0:16:11.2 S1: So if you guys wanna join us, I'd love to have you. Other people... Tony Robbins guys, I attend Tony Robbins. Brandon Burchard, Ego is the Enemy. There's Ryan Holiday. There's the traction series, Gino Wickman, read Traction if you're not good with meetings or you don't know how to run a business. Have that Profit First with Mike Michalowicz, amazing. There are so many good coaches and resources and if you don't know, reach out. I had a client ask me, "Kiera, who is your like... I guess fulfillment Coach?" Kareena with Tony Robbins. She's freaking amazing. I will happily recommend you to her, get you connected. I've got another one. Her name is Dr. Kaylin O'Hara. She is amazing. She's had breakthroughs with me emotionally. She's like a therapist, but for business owners and entrepreneurs and cuts through all the white noise... Cuts through all the noise and helps you find your space and your clarity. She grew me so much.

0:17:01.6 S1: So guys, if Dental A Team's gonna be a great fit for you, awesome, I'd love to have you guys. 2021 wasn't your year? Kill it in 2022. But take massive action. You can listen to this podcast, you can decide you can do all that work, but if you don't take action, you're gonna get very minimal results. Yeah. They might happen, but commit. I remember the day that I bought tickets to Antarctica, my dream of seeing all seven continents was no longer a dream, it was a reality. When I actually signed up for the courses... You guys, I paid $10,000 to go to Tony Robbins Business Mastery course. I was like, what the heck? I can't afford that. I'm barely making that myself. It was terrifying for me. That was one of the most impactful, I call lightning strike moments, of my life. That struck. That changed me.

0:17:49.5 S1: I quadrupled, quadrupled my business in one year because of the things that I learned. It was one of the biggest things that ever changed me. So moments of impact, what are you gonna do this year? So now I'm not afraid. I'm like... I am afraid a little bit. Tony Robins Platinum group, it's really, really, really, really, really terrifying to me. But I do it because guess what? It's being around people that are gonna change me. It's me mastering areas of my life. It's me constantly growing and evolving and it's the way I grow my business, 'cause it starts with me. I've gotta identify all the areas, I've gotta create a game plan and then I've got to stick with it. And then we do check-ins. So once you have this all mapped out, what I do is I write down what I need to accomplish every single quarter to hit my goals.

0:18:34.6 S1: So you've got all these things, what are we gonna... To accomplish. I want you to have tangible measurables. How are we going to know... I'm helping you build your WIGs, your wildly important goals for the year, how are you gonna know you actually achieved this? So for us for marketing, our goal is we want a 19 SQL/MQL, marketing qualified and sales qualified leads, every single month. 19 was our number this year and you better believe we dominated it, we worked our buns off 'cause we were averaging six. So we went from six to 19. That didn't just happen miraculously. That was me like working super, super, super hard on it. If I wanna improve my hygiene, I want my hygienist producing three times their pay. That's industry standard. At least 80% of the months that are out there. We can have a profitability piece up there.

0:19:16.1 S1: For me it was, I wanted to have one personal vacation every quarter for a week, that's how I know I'm going to achieve it. So what are those areas? Make it into a tangible goal, then you should do the tangible goal and then you should schedule research. The CE, we're gonna do implants and Ortho. That means we wanna place 20 implants and we wanna have 20 starts on Ortho this year. Those become our goals. Then we identify, okay great, now I've got it, I've got it scheduled, now I need to figure out what I need to do each quarter. Break it down. So for me, I say, okay I was at six and I needed to get to 19. I'm not gonna go, in Q1 I need 19 leads. Q1, I'm going to research marketing companies. I'm going to take a marketing course myself. I'm going to reach out to a marketing mentor. I'm going to track our leads and I'm going to have a marketing meeting every single month.

0:20:03.5 S1: Those are the steps. I started Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4. Mine are usually like five to 10 things per quarter. So it's a quick snapshot of my entire year and then I look at it every day or every week. [chuckle] I do it part of my Miracle Morning that way I can see, am I on track or am I off-track? And I assess it at the end of the quarter. So guys, there's your January kickoff. Please text me. Text me, 801-885-5351. That's literally my cell phone. Text me that, "I'm all in. 2022 is my year." If you do this exercise and you're kicked off and it's gonna be the best 2022 of your life, please text me. Email me [email protected]. I wanna know that you're all in 'cause when you actually text me and commit to me, I know you're gonna be committed because you actually went and you did the commitment piece. So guys, try it out, I can't wait to hear from you.

0:20:52.9 S1: I can't wait to help you guys. If we're a good fit for you, awesome, I'd love to help you make 2022 the best year. If there are other people I can connect you with, please reach out, I'm happy to do so. I want you guys to have the most magical 2022 of your life. This could be the best year of your life. It can be the year that you become the version you've always wanted to be, but it starts with having a plan, it starts with assessing and it starts with executing. Execution trumps knowledge every day. So go execute. Alright guys, as always, thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team podcast.

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0:21:26.7 S1: 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.