From Case Acceptance to Case Agreement with Susan Leckowicz of Dental Coaches

What I've developed over the years is what I like to call a case agreement system. How do we get patients to agree to treatment rather than just accept it?

This is Growth in Dentistry, a dental intelligence podcast where we ask the question, what does growth in dentistry mean to you? I'm Steve Jensen, a data dental nerd and your host. Welcome back everyone to another episode of the Growth in Dentistry podcast. Super excited about the conversation today. A good long-term friend of mine, one of the earliest users of Dental Intelligence. I'll share more about that in a minute, but before I jump in, huge shout out to Dental Intelligence for sponsoring this podcast week after week. The marketing team does a ton of work behind the scenes to produce these bad boys, and as always, they have a special offering for the listeners of the podcast. So if you haven't ever checked out DI, this is your first time listening to this podcast, Or if you haven't checked it out for a long time, they're offering a $50 gift card just for doing a demo. They've got some really cool new releases. So they've got scorecards, which means you can go take all of the data you could always find in DI and put it into one simple report that you can view that's customized just for you. They've got a little AI assistant in there. So like you can ask it questions about your scorecard. So if you're like getting ready for your interview with your boss and you're like, hey, what's gone well this quarter and what do I need to work on? It can help give you a few little tidbits there based on the scorecard you have pulled up. Anyway, lots of cool things. They're always releasing new features, so definitely go and check it out. Okay, with that being said, I wanna introduce my guest for today, Susan Leckowitz. Welcome, Susan, to the show. Say hello.

Hi, thank you. It's great to be here with you.

If you guys haven't met Susan, Susan has been coaching for the last 16 years, so she's been doing this a long time. And before that, you know, pretty traditional. She was doing the assistant role, got graduated as a hygienist, was a hygienist, and she was there clinically working for 20 years before she stepped into her coaching role. I'm a particular big fan of hygienists. My wife's a hygienist, so I'll always have a sweet spot for a hygiene turned coach. And here's what I'll share. I said this earlier in my introduction, but Susan was one of the very early, early adopters of Dental Intelligence. DI, like, we barely had dashboards in 2015, and that is when Susan started using it. Before that, I mean, Susan, you can speak to it. Before that, she was doing spreadsheets, she was pulling a lot of manual data out of the practice management software. And, uh, we are wildly grateful for Susan's support over the last 10 years. That's crazy, it's been 10 years, because we were just itty bitty when Susan started working with us, and now we've got over 10,000 practices, which is wild.

That's amazing.

So Susan, welcome to the show. Um, for the, for the listeners, um, I wanted to frame the episode this way. I brought Susan on for a, for a very specific reason. There's a, a trend I've been watching for years now where I've been seeing a decline in case acceptance, and there's a few things, some nuances to why that's happening, but it's definitely been happening. Um, but specifically the thing I want to talk about today is kind of some nuts and bolts on a very obvious problem to be solved. And here's how I'll share that. Doctors like to look at what they will call case acceptance. I'm gonna call patient case acceptance. And what I mean by that is, okay, I'm gonna present a case and it could be as simple as a, you know, a 2-service filling to like a full comprehensive treatment plan that's worth, you know, 20 grand or 30 grand. And what doctors like to look at is to say, hey, does the patient at least start something from that plan? So, and so folks can hear, we're tracking over 10,000 practices. The average practice right now is getting about 75% of the patients to start the treatment plan. Okay. Now here's the big discrepancy that Susan and I are going to talk about, because she's got a really incredible system for this. When I look at, of all the dollars that are getting presented, How much of those dollars after a full year are actually getting completed? 35%. Okay, so we're really good at getting patients to say yes to something in the beginning, but we aren't very good at following that treatment plan all the way through and seeing it to completion. So far, far fewer patients are actually getting work done, like completing the full case. So Susan, I'm gonna shut my mouth for a second and let you speak. Do you see that? You've worked with So many offices, hundreds of offices spoken all over the country. Is this a pretty common problem that you see in dental practices? Yes.

Yeah.

They get started with cases and then kind of lose track of what happens after that first kind of scheduling.

Yes, yes. And one of the reasons I got involved with dental coaching was because I was on the other side of the coaching whistle. So I worked in different practices that brought in different coaches from around the country and I just really loved having an outside observer tell me what other offices were doing and to kind of help me grow personally and professionally, inspire me to do, to do more. And I just ran into a gal that I used to coach at the ADOM meeting, and she became a coach, and she's like, well, I tell your story. And I'm like, well, what story is that? She goes, you inspired me to become a coach. So it's a really great place to be. But what I've developed over the years is what I like to call a case agreement system. How do we get patients to agree to treatment rather than just accept it? Accepting anything kind of yucky, right? Oh, I gotta accept this. How do we get them to agree to it? And then how do we create that process with every member on the team? Okay, it's just not that scheduling coordinator's job to get that patient to yes. Everyone on the team plays a role in becoming a patient advocate and helping that patient fit this treatment into their schedule and their budget and to understand the start to finish of it, right? And to be able to kind of shift out of that, well, I get $1,000 a year with my insurance. I'm just going to do what my insurance covers this year. I'm just going to do that. So how do we, how do we make those shifts? And how do we create a tool that makes it easy to get really clear with the patient on what it's going to cost, what are their options for paying for care, and committing to the visit, you know, signing what I like to call the financial agreement form. We create a customized financial agreement form between the practice and the patient. It's different than the treatment plan. You get the treatment plan from your practice management software, but how do we get clear with what their options are for paying for care? And how do we lower the barrier to care by providing outside financing options for them? So, and showing them what that actual payment would be. Per month to get them thinking, okay, I can afford this, I can spread out payments over time, I can get healthy and, you know, pay for it over time.

Yeah, I love, I love the focus on, on agreement instead of acceptance. I think that's a really good— I think words do matter and I think our team's words matter. You're totally right. It's so funny. I just am so used to saying acceptance that I forget that it is kind of like in just general life, it's kind of a, you know, it's like, oh yeah, I, I guess I can accept the fact that this is happening, you know, where agreement is like, oh no, cool, like we're both on the same page with this. So let's, let's maybe start like, I think most of the time with case acceptance, people will think, you know, hey, the beginning of case acceptance starts when people walk into the room to present treatment, you know. Uh, but I think it starts before that, you know, you and I had kind of talked a little bit beforehand, but can you tell me about like your thoughts on, you know, some of these key components of prepping for the day. Like where, where does case acceptance start as a team and how do you think about putting, you know, the right prep in place before the patients ever walk through the doors?

So if we're talking about our existing patients, you know, with the Dental Intelligence morning huddle report, we can clearly see, you know, who has outstanding treatment plans. So when I'm working with teams and we're setting daily goals, we wanna really kind of look at, okay, where are opportunities for same-day treatment, or where are opportunities for treatment where we may have openings the next day or the following day? And how can we look at particularly the hygiene visit? How can that hygienist look at the schedule? And what I like to see happen is if a patient's coming in with an outstanding treatment, that the doctor exam can happen sooner than the bitter end of that appointment. After the cleaning's been done.

So I want people— they don't miss what she just said. That's really clever, actually, where if they have unscheduled treatment— I'm hearing it right— if they have unscheduled treatment, then you try to get the doctor exam as early in that— I'm assuming it's a hygiene visit— hygiene visit as possible, the exam done. Where if there is an unscheduled treatment, then we can, we can get away with it being later because there's probably not going to be the same same-day opportunity that we can guarantee. That's really interesting. Okay, keep talking through that.

I like it. So So what happens at the end of the hygiene visit a lot of times is, you know, the hygienist will sort of preheat the oven in the beginning, right? Oh, Steve, last time you were in, doctor was concerned about the cracks in these molars, took some photographs, they're getting worse. You're gonna need crowns there. You know, I'm gonna have the doctor take a close look at that. I'm gonna update an intraoral photo. Then, you know, the scaling, the polishing, the buzz for the doctor, the wait for the doctor exam, the patient's like, I gotta get back to work. And then the doctor says, "Yeah, you're right. You know, we need to do this work." And then the admin team has to maybe put together a financial agreement form and the clock is ticking and the patient's like, "I'll call you. Here you go. I gotta go." They're checked out. So, what I like to say is at your morning huddle, if you're identifying somebody with outstanding treatment, you could say, "You know what, doctor? My 10 o'clock patient, you know, has these two crowns. You're gonna be finishing your, you know, 9 o'clock patient." And if you look at a traditional hygiene visit, after the first like 15 or 20 minutes, all the diagnostics should be done. So that's when I suggest the hygienist will call for the exam. So then during the scaling and polishing, which should be about 20 minutes, the doctor can figure out when to go in and interrupt the hygienist. So the assistant could even help get involved, like, hey, doctor, go do that exam now and I'll take this impression or whatever they're doing. So the doctor comes in, hygienist tees it up, doctor says, yes, you know, this needs to get done. You know, this doesn't always happen, Steve, but I have time in my schedule tomorrow, or we could see you at the end of your hygiene visit. You know, what's the soonest we can get the patient in? And then the clinical team member messages the admin team, okay, I have a treatment plan for 2 crowns. So they put together this financial agreement form. So we wanna have no waiting. We don't want the patient waiting. And while the hygienist is finishing the appointment, they could say, Steve, have you ever had a crown before? You had a crown done years ago on the other side. Yeah, the temporary kept falling off. It was terrible. Or whatever that experience was. Oh, that's not going to happen here. You know, we do same-day crowns, or you're, you know, our assistants are amazing, or whatever, whatever that patient's preconceived idea of what that treatment is can get addressed, right? And oh my God, you're going to love this beautiful new crown you're going to get. We have the best lab, or we design the crowns here. We're going to take great care of you. So then when the handoff goes to the admin team member, the— can it— can go very smoothly. Okay, Steve's ready to schedule those two crowns. Okay, here, here's our, um, here's what I can share with you, Steve. You're— you know, the cost is $5,000. We expect your dental benefit plan to pay $1,000. This is your out-of-pocket. This is how you can split up the treatment or the— split up the payment so that there's no waiting. There's no waiting. And it's not, go have a seat in the reception area, we'll call you up to schedule, or no calling back. Or, and if the patient isn't ready to move forward, they say, well, I don't know my schedule, or I need to think about it. We can ask them to sign our form. Okay, Steve, this just means I went over these options with you. What option are you leaning towards? Oh, okay. You want to spread out payments with an outside financing? Okay, great. You know, today is Tuesday. Can I call you on Thursday? Will that give you enough time to think about it? You know, or get— figure out some type of follow-up or get your Dentalintel follow-ups to auto-populate so that you can let the patient know, here, here's your copy. I'm going to scan a copy and keep it in your file and follow up, you know, with that patient.

But, and so people hear kind of how those, those follow-up tasks work in DI. Basically, you can say, hey, I just want a notification to an assigned team member or to a role. Maybe you've got like several treatment coordinators that follow up and you can kind of round robin assign them or to a specific individual. Like, hey, I just want to know like if a patient gets a week out or 3 days after I diagnose treatment above or within a certain dollar range, I just want a notification sent to me or specific team member alerting them, hey, like this person still hasn't scheduled. So that they don't slip through the cracks. That's what Susan's referencing, which can be really helpful, you know, just to at least like get this double check, like, okay, like we're not slipping through the cracks, we're making some attempts to get them scheduled. And then if you can't get it done that day, you can reschedule them. Or if you make the attempt and like you can't get in touch, then you kind of keep kicking that can down the aisle a little bit. But it just makes sure that no one No one slips through, which is like way helpful.

Right. And what, what really is powerful for the team members that are doing these follow-ups is to see their results.

Yes.

Because, you know, sometimes you feel like, oh, I'm making all these calls and I'm, you know, it's not, it just feels like a lot of cold calling, but you can really see, oh, this team member brought in $10,000 worth of restorative care, you know, in this month. So I love that. And it also, in our coaching programs, we talk about collaborative accountability. How do we collaborate with the doctor and the team leads on holding the team accountable? Because so many times we hear like, well, we're making the calls, we're printing the list, and you know, we really don't know, right? And it's a way to kind of to track success, celebrate success, and see what's actually happening, you know. In the practice.

In fact, I'll share. My wife, who's a hygienist, uh, when she was using DI, they, they found— my wife's one of these like odd individuals that she likes making phone calls to people. I, I know that's can, can be a rare breed, but if you get one in your office, definitely like hold on to them, especially if they're good. So my wife, as a hygienist, you guys can imagine how this goes. Like typically when this something falls through in the schedule, she'll kind of like help around, maybe help with some sterilization, maybe help clean or organize something like She doesn't like to sit on her hands. She likes to actually do some work. But, um, they found that if my wife would do unscheduled treatment follow-ups, on average, for every call she would make, she would get $162 scheduled. So they were like, dang, like, if she's making 30 calls in an hour, then we're going to get— we're going to pack the doctor's schedule, and we're happy to pay her hygiene salary for that, like, you know, 45 minutes, 50 minutes calls. When one of the hygiene patients fell through. Now in general, we don't want hygiene patients to fall through, but for them, like you said, like the ability to track and kind of see like, okay, what's actually happening from these, they realized, oh, this is, it's really helpful for the business and it's worth our kind of time and effort to point her that direction. So.

And some people are good at influencing others, right? And a team member could say, well, what do you say? Tell me what you say and I'll just say what you say. You know, because obviously What you're saying is working. And it also, I think, lets patients know like, this is important. You know, this is not just something we're going to watch or we're going to wait on or monitor. You know, we're going to— we're going to let you know we're still worried about this and it's important that you come in.

So, so talk to me through— I like the idea. One of the things I'm just going to say out loud so that, that I had an aha moment so that listeners hear it as well. I mentioned I really like how you're bringing the exam forward in the hygiene visit, junctional treatment. So that in my mind, it was like exclusively so that we could maybe get some same-day treatments.

Yeah.

For that reason it works. But I like how you highlighted there's also steps that happen after the patient said yes, we're trying to get to this agreement. Right. And I like how you said, you know, making sure that the patient's not like waiting for that financial arrangement to get prepared. Like, I like that, like, we can have that exam earlier so then the conversation, we get to like a, okay, we're gonna— we are gonna have this conversation, and then we can trigger that to the team member, you know, up front, whoever's having that, to start getting the work done for the convo. So then the patient comes, they're never sitting around. I thought that was a really thoughtful way to think about the experience, and for sure is going to impact conversion because it's like, oh cool, they're ready to rumble. I'm not sitting here wondering like, hey, like I think all the work is done. Like the hygienist cleaned my teeth and I'm ready to eat. So that's a very good part.

Yeah. And I think too, if you, if you want someone to consider staying, you know, same day service, coming back in an hour, it gives them time to think about, okay, let me send a text to my coworker and see what's going on at work. Or, you know, I, I can stay, or it just lets them process it a little bit more. Like, well, let me, let me think about this. Okay. I'm already here, you know, why not? You know, why not just get this done? I won't have to worry about it. You know, the hygienist can encourage the person, you know, you're here already, you know, it's just going to take another hour or whatever. It just, it just helps, like you said, like give them more time than it's at the end of the visit and I've already, you know, I want out of here kind of thing.

Okay, I think that gets us through like a pretty good idea of like that prep before the appointment. You kind of talk through the flow of the patient, through the way the hygienist is going to prep them for the conversation with the doc. Doc's gonna come and do exam. Doc's going to trigger an alert for the team to work on financial, that financial conversation to get to agreement. And then, you know, hopefully they're going to schedule and then, you know, come back. Will you talk me through maybe the next— I think question would be, how can I go and like analyze that process? What numbers do you like to go look at, Susan? Like when you go look at a practice, How do you understand, like, okay, where— are there any breakpoints in this process that you can, you know, help as a coach or, you know, as a practice owner or office manager? Like, where can I go look to start discovering, like, is, is my process good and where might I go, like, improve things? What, what numbers are you looking at?

So I like to look at, um, how much treatment's getting diagnosed, right? Because we can't produce it if we don't diagnose it. So You could have 80, 90% case acceptance, but you could be diagnosing in very low numbers.

I'm gonna say this, I want people to hear this. There's an inverse relationship between how much you diagnose and the dollars that are getting accepted. So a lot of times people look at the benchmarks and be like, okay, I'm like one of the top diagnosers. I think the top, the higher GP dentists are diagnosing like 20-something hundred, I think high 2000s. Per exam. And on the low end, they're diagnosing like $500 or $600 per exam. And a lot of times people will look at the case acceptance numbers and be like, oh man, like I'm diagnosing a lot, but my case acceptance is, you know, 40%. But the hot— it looks like the best performers, quote unquote, are like 67%. When in reality, the ones that have like the super, super high dollars in general— now there's some caveats here— in general are the people who are under or like very, like, like they're very, very, very conservative in their diagnosis. But the caveat there is, I just wanna point out, there are people like Susan who can come in and show you like, hey, here are the gaps in your process and we can have a good comprehensive diagnostic habit in the practice and get excellent case acceptance results. I wanna make sure I call that out as well. So, okay, so sorry. So you look at— How much you're—

we have to look at all 3 metrics, right? Diagnostics, how many patients are saying yes, so acceptance, and then how— what percentage of the dollars. So how do we— and then what's our goal? What's our goal for the month, you know? And do we— well, I like to see if, if we're starting the month and we're already pre-booked to 50% of the goal, it's going to make it easier to hit the goal that month. If you can— if you're following a template, if you're doing same-day service, if you're following up with patients, if if you're only scheduled to 10% of your goal in the beginning of the month, you gotta hustle, you know, you got to have a lot of new patients, you've got to be converting a lot of same-day treatment. So all 3 of these numbers can't be in a vacuum, you know, and if I have a client who has super high case acceptance, but maybe they're diagnosing only to 20% of the people they see, or they're diagnosing a crown a visit, you know, small amounts, I would be like, well, doctor, people are trusting you and they're saying yes. Do you want to do more quadrant dentistry? Do you want to do longer appointments? Do you want to, you know, get people healthier faster? And, you know, usually the mouth kind of mirrors itself. You've got a bunch of cavities on one side or fillings, you're going to probably have the same thing on the other side. So how do we do more, you know, that, that makes sense for them? I don't believe in diagnosing treatment that's not needed, but How can we be more proactive than reactive? And how can we just change the narrative a little bit and use visual aids to help patients understand? And I think you really need to future pace people. And people think, oh, well, people do a filling on a tooth and they think, oh, I did that, it's okay, it's all done. Yeah, you know, so what's the next step? Well, you know, oftentimes as you get older and you're chewing on this tooth, you're going to need a crown. That's going to be next. Or What are you going to do if, you know, you're in your 40s, 50s, 60s, and your teeth need to be resurfaced? Just like buying new tires for a car. Do you want to do 10 crowns in one year, or do you want to do 3 crowns, you know, a quarter? Like, how, how are we going to get you healthy so by the time you retire, you know, you're not in dire straits of, oh my goodness, you know, if I had done this treatment sooner, I wouldn't have lost all these teeth. So my, my dad was a dentist, and my dad loved food, loved to eat. And he didn't even like high-end food. Like, his hot dogs was like his favorite food. Yeah. And he would just talk to people as if they were losing teeth. Like, he'd be like, well, Steve, what do you do when you get older? You know, you want to go to a restaurant, right? You're going to want to eat. You want to eat a steak. How are you going to eat if you don't have teeth? You're not going to to, you know, have dentures and like, you're gonna have to eat soup at home. You know, what are you gonna do? Just scare them into the future. This is, this is what your future is going to look like if you don't start taking care of this now, or your bite's going to start collapsing and lose teeth. And what are you going to do, you know, when they start moving around, um, and you can't chew? So you have to, you have to get people thinking a little bit bigger and into the future with what's, what's, what's going to happen if they don't do something, what's going to happen if they do.

One of the things too, I think, just so that like all the clinicians, if you're listening here, this office managers as well, you know, any of the team members. One of my favorite quotes or ideas from a guy named Ben Horowitz started a massive, you know, investment firm, started some really cool companies. But one of the things he said is the role of a leader is to repeat the same things over and over and over and over again without any lack or like diminishing level of enthusiasm. Where in dentistry, I think sometimes you might be saying to a patient, you know, the same thing over and over again, like Susan just said, like explaining, yeah, like we want to preserve the natural tooth as long as possible, you know, and kind of this life cycle of decay and how a cavity without any change behaviors can very quickly lead into a crown and a root canal or an implant. And you know, you, you feel like you say that over and over and over again, but you have to remember people need to hear things multiple times before it sticks. So even if you've already told this one patient 2 appointments ago, like, odds are they probably don't even hardly remember at this point. So I think that's another good reminder. Just as you were talking, I thought, yeah, I think it's always good to remind doctors and hygienists and teams that you will find yourself repeating the same thing over and over again, but don't lose the enthusiasm in it. Like patients definitely deserve to get, like they deserve to be presented like the best possible options for their health. Like I want that. I wanna know from my doctor and dentist, like, hey, I want a smile I'm proud of that's healthy. What are my best options? And if they didn't have cavities, there are still things they can talk to you about. Like I know they're going to CE courses. Like tell me what you, Is there something you learned? Is there some cool new toothpaste I can use that might have regenerative something or other, you know, that I can try? Like, who knows? But like, I think those things, you know, if you're a clinician and you're excited about something, I think talking about that is also like critical. People sense energy in your role. And I think that's a big deal too. So keep that enthusiasm high despite the fact, like acknowledge, I'm gonna say the same thing, over and over and over again for, you know, 35 years of my career, however long you practice dentistry, but keep the enthusiasm high. Okay, Susan, let's see. We talked about numbers a little bit. Oh, let's talk like, sometimes when you're trying to change behaviors in the practice, maybe you've identified a gap in the numbers or, you know, a doctor's listening and it's like, okay, cool. I wanna like adjust some of the behaviors, scheduling behaviors. I wanna get my team on board. And that's not always super easy. People don't like love change. So how do you think about like getting the team members buy-in? Do you have any system for like celebrating successes along the way? Like how do you think about that? Cause that's such a critical, like we all have so many good ideas, but then like actually getting it implemented is a, is another, another beast.

Mm-hmm. Totally agree. You know, and when I think about. Driving change, changing behavior. And if you really want a different result, and many clients come to us because they feel they've plateaued or they haven't grown or they're stuck or they need something new to invigorate the team, right? And to really generate some type of change, I always will share with the doctor, well, if you hire a coaching team and you, you know, present, okay, we're going to get into coaching. What's in it for the team? Okay, what's in it for me to grow this practice? So what we are advocates for is creating incentive plans that make sense for the practice, for the owner doctor, and for the team. And we like to work with something called the grab bag daily production goal. And what we do is we analyze past data, we talk to the doctor about the profitability, profitability of the business, and we talk about the growth and having the growth in the collections support this bonus. And the bonus usually turns out to be about 1 to 1.5% of collections. Cool. And the doctor has to be able to celebrate with the team and be happy for them. So what we'll do is we will create a goal, we'll create a tracking sheet in a shared Google Drive that gets really clear on, you know, what's the number, what does the team get, and how do we build success if we have consecutive days on goal, when do we celebrate with this bonus, and what are the rules around it. So that the team understands that the goal should be a stretch and that if we're hitting this bonus 50% of the time in a month, the goal needs to go up. So we incrementally raise the goal according to what's been happening, you know, in the past. And what we can also do with this is create accountability and create team buy-in with it. So we create some simple rules around it. So let's just say some team members don't show up on time for morning huddle.

Happens.

It happens.

Happens.

Right. And doctors get tired of having those conversations, documenting, you're late again, Steve. We start huddle at 7:45. So we can say, well, if you're not here at 7:45 to start the huddle, you're not going to be able to participate in the grab bag bonus that day. And if you don't wear the right uniform, or if you're, you know, you call out sick half the day, you know, you have to be part of this team and these are the things that need to get done, or you have to make sure your chart notes are done, or whatever it is, whatever that change in behavior that you feel is something the team is capable of doing, the team member are willing to do, you can attach it. And I can remember once I was coaching this office in Texas, and man, they were tough. They were like looking at the clock, oh, 15 seconds went on, oh, you're late. You know, like they calling each other out. They were like loving the fact that we had some rules.

You know, we had some rules to play in.

Had some rules. And it's just a fun way of— this becomes a focusing tool for the team. So there's a way to do it that it doesn't get stale or get old or the team feels entitled to it or we're working so hard, you know, we should get, you know, and I had this one office, it was really kind of funny because I was talking to the scheduling coordinator and they were on goal for the day and a patient called and tried to cancel his appointment.

No way.

And, and she was like, she was like, well, you know, Steve, we had 3 hours reserved for you, doctor's schedule. You know, if we need to change this appointment today, it's gonna— I'm gonna have to charge you a rescheduling fee. It's gonna be $180. You know, is there anything I can help pers— help you personally do to, you know, avoid that? He goes, well, let me see if I can change my work meeting. Yeah. So he goes and changes his work meeting and says, I'm coming. And she was like, I was not letting the team not get grab bag that day. Like she was like determined that, you know, and it worked, right? It worked. They changed the narrative. They changed the expectation with the patients. It's not okay if you don't come in or you Cancel last minute. No, not okay, man.

That's so good. We, uh, time, time flies. This has been such a fun conversation. So many, so many good nuggets right here at the end. I'll say, you know, the thing that was going through my mind was where, where, um, focus goes, energy flows. So like, kind of, I like this idea of having very clear goals, very clear rules and guidelines, and your team will rally around that. I, I totally agree with that. Uh, the other thing you said was around like successes. So I think, uh, the phrase that comes to mind I think is, um, like yesterday's successes become today's standards. So like, that's pretty normal. Like, I do a lot of running. Susan was making fun of me before we started recording for it, but like, the, the— my goals from a year ago are totally different than my goals today because I keep making progress. And that's such a fulfilling experience in life. The same goes for work, uh, If we feel like we're making progress and we're achieving new heights, and that's a really rewarding work environment to be in. It's when we don't have clarity on goals and we don't have clarity on how to be successful, or when I do get, you know, a bonus, or like, what does going above and beyond look like and what does that mean for me? When we don't have clarity on those, that's not a very fun work experience.

But we're not measuring, right? We think, we think we're doing better. I think people are saying yes, you know.

So that's when you get a lot of, I think, you know, complaints from team members and like, because they just don't, they don't know. So then they're kind of left to their own wits to decide what excellence means or doesn't mean. And so I really like the system you talk through to help like bring a lot of clarity and focus to the team in a really like exciting, energetic, productive—

A fun way. Yeah. And you pull the scrap bag bonus in the morning, you know, of the day after you hit the goal. So it's a great way to start the day.

Yep. So Susan, we're gonna wrap things up. I always ask everyone the same question to end, which I will here in a second, but I want listeners to know like, Susan is amazing. We are throwing a few things in the show notes for people to be able to go grab. So number one, you can actually schedule a call with Susan. You still do snapshots, right? So you can like—

Yes.

Not using DI, you can go install it and she'll do a review call. I don't know if you wanna explain that more.

Yes. Yeah, be happy to, you know, review your dashboard if you currently have DI and create a growth report and go over that with you and share with you where I see opportunities. For growth. You know, if you don't have the dashboard yet, we can initiate a data sync and do the same thing, growth report and a review of growth opportunities. I also wanted to share a, um, complimentary coaching call with any of the listeners. We're offering you the ability to have us customize one of our financial agreement forms for you, and we'll do a training and record it with your team needs on how to, how to utilize this form. So it's, you know, the initial coaching call and then a follow-up call once Jennifer on my team creates the form, and we'll both help you walk through how to use it, create some videos, and give you this tool to help you get more patients to agree to treatment.

That's super kind of you, because in fact, when we were doing the episode and you were talking about the financial agreement, I wanted so badly to say like, hey, What exactly does that look like? So it sounds like you actually will like customize that to the practice, right? That's really, that's really cool.

And so, you know, with your logo, with your offerings, you know, whatever, whatever you're offering patients now. So yes, yeah. And we also do, we work really hard to put together a monthly newsletter with valuable coaching tips and information. So there'll be a link to sign up for our Dental Coaches newsletter. And, you know, if you want to reach out to me, I'm Susan@DentalCoaches.com. And I named my company Dental Coaches because I always believed that one person can't know everything in a dental practice. So that's why I go to ADOM and meetings like that to learn and see, you know, what's new and how I can bring better resources and better information.

Definitely check out, we'll throw that link to the newsletter in the show notes. So you guys can go click on that, subscribe to the newsletter. Definitely go do it. I'll do that myself. And Susan, to end, I ask everyone the same question, which is what does growth in dentistry mean to you? So I'd love to hear your answer to that and then we'll wrap it up.

Growth in dentistry means to me really enjoying what you're doing, enjoying what you're doing and really thinking about like the ripple effect of what you're accomplishing in improving patients' quality of life and improving— when I think about, you know, when I was a hygienist, I loved getting my patients healthy. But I think as a coach, working with practices who are getting more patients healthy, the impact is bigger. And it's, it's exciting to see, and it's exciting to really hear those stories. I kind of miss the patient stories not being clinically in an office, but it's exciting to hear stories from our team members about how happy people are and, you know, how they're impacting and changing lives on a daily basis.

Yeah, I love that. That's such a good reminder. I think oftentimes we struggle to like step back for a second and just like acknowledge, hey, the work I'm doing has real impact. And then what kind of let that settle on your, you know, your soul, your heart, whatever you want to call it. Like that's so good as just a practice for our lives. So thank you, Susan. Totally agree. And thank you to all the listeners for joining again. This has been another episode of the Growth in Dentistry Podcast. My name's Steve Jensen, your host. Keep growing, and we'll talk soon.