Hot Take on New Patients with Miranda Beeson of ACT Dental

It's a lot more inexpensive to recapture patients that already know you and have been in the practice than to go solicit new patients. And at that point, you're just spending your own time and manpower, not money on top of it. So if you have the ability to focus efforts and systems around recapturing your inactive patients or even catching them right before they go inactive and having a system for that, you're going to save a lot on, on having to bring brand new people in.

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 for today. I know I say that every time, but today I really am because we have a hot take about new patients that I am excited to talk about with Miranda. Now before I jump in, introduce Miranda. And jump into the topic. Huge shout out as always to Dental Intelligence for sponsoring this podcast. A lot of work goes on behind the scenes to edit these out, make sure they're ready to rock and roll, try to make us look good. And I'm super grateful for Dental Intelligence for doing that for us. As always, they have an offer for listeners. If you haven't checked out Dental Intelligence for a while, they've got some really cool new things that they've been releasing. In fact, just barely they released surcharging. So if that's something that that you've been interested in your state, that's an option. I know that's another polarizing topic, but just know that's a thing that you can do now with the payment solution. What else has been released that's super cool? They've got detailed patient statements coming up, so if you're using our payment solution, that's another payments update that's happening. And then we have a new release with the mobile app that is coming out tomorrow. Now, I'm saying this now, and this will be months after it actually released, So if you haven't checked out the mobile app, then that's maybe another cool thing. We've moved a lot of our functions into one unified app within the product. So there's some cool stuff that's coming out. And then of course the traditional stuff, all the patient comms, forms, analytics, the stuff that people know and love about DI is all still there. So if it's been a while since you've checked it out, definitely check it out. They'll give you a $50 gift card just for taking a demo. Okay, with that out of the way, I wanna introduce Miranda Beeson from AG Dental First, I have to give a shout out to ACT Dental. We've been partnered with them for years, probably almost since the very beginning of Dental Intelligence when it was founded and really launched in 2015. And Miranda is not a newcomer to ACT, but new-ish the last 3 years. Miranda is a pretty classic story when it comes to consultants. She was a hygienist for years, uh, dedicated to her craft. Uh, as you listen to her, you'll see that she knows exactly what she's talking about. Moved into the admin team and ran that for a while, and then has transitioned now into coaching and is one of my absolute favorite people to talk with, work with in the dental space. As you'll see, she thinks about the dental practice in the most, in the most thoughtful way. She thinks about people, she thinks about numbers, she thinks about the business, and she's going to help you craft your business in a way that's going to maximize the experience for the team, for the patient, as well as for the doctor and make sure that the revenues meet the lifestyle that you actually want to live. And I love her approach to practice management. So Miranda, welcome to the show. Say hi to everyone.

That was amazing introduction. Thanks so much. I just, I'm like so pumped. I'm more excited than I was when I first came on to be here now. So thank you. I couldn't agree more that I think that what we talk about with dental intelligence and metrics and systems in an office, I love that you just tied in the impact on the team and the patients. There's always a correlation between the two. And I think what's really nice for me is, like you mentioned, me moving into that administrative space is I also got to see the perspective from the dentist's point of view, which sometimes team members don't get to see. So I do believe that I have a very well-rounded approach to understanding the business of dentistry because I've been in most every seat. And now that I've been on this side coaching and the director of education with ACT, working with clients and practices all over the country, It's like an even broader scope. So I love being here. I've been here with you before and it was fun. So I'm really looking forward to doing this again today.

In fact, I'll share, as you were speaking, it just made me think, I listened to this podcast this last week, um, where the CRO, who's like chief revenue officer for a massive publicly traded company called ServiceTitan, and they're doing like almost $1 billion in annual revenue, $11 million market cap, like big company. And he said one of his first invitations to any of his leadership team and even new team members, like whatever level you're at, he says, you need to learn the company, like our product, you need to learn the customer and you need to learn the people, like the culture inside of our organization. And I think listening to you talk about like your life work experience, like it has lended to you knowing that so well for dentistry. Anyway, so fun to hear, like I think you really do have like a perfect path. Now, Miranda, let's jump in, let's jump into this. So one of the things that I'm noticing on the trends, and this is kind of like how it's gonna set the stage for the conversation today, is I look at patient-based growth across the industry, and that has slowed the last several years. So the average practice is really only growing by a few patients every year. The lower performing practices are actually bleeding patients, so they're losing more patients than they're gaining. And then even the top performing practices It was 19% this last year. So like, that's good, you know, but if you just for context, like if you have 1,000 patients, that's you grew by 200 and then you spread 200 across, you know, 6 months because they're coming every 6 months for hygiene worth of patients. And you probably don't feel that, you know, that's like 1, that's like 2 a day because we're like 200 working days. So it's not really, if you're growing by 20%, yeah, that's like exciting. You're on the top performers, but it's maybe slower than you would think. So average, average practice is really not growing, 1.8%. And so I think because of that, there's been a lot of doctors that are talking like, oh man, like, I just need more freaking new patients. I get asked all the time, like, what marketing agency can I work for? Like, Steve, what are you seeing? Like, who drives a crap ton of new patients to me? And Miranda has a hot take. Of course, new patients are important, but always take that maybe new patients isn't the answer that you're looking for. And so I'm just going to frame it up that way. I'm actually let you be the one that talks. So Miranda, why might new patients be a dead end for a practice owner? Like they think that's the solve. Hey, I want more new patients, but why might that not really be the fix they're looking for?

Oh, so I'm glad we have a whole podcast to talk about this because it's a long answer, but you're correct. Every practice needs new patients. We get a lot of dentistry from new patients and we are always going to have a level of attrition when it comes to our active patients leaving or passing away or moving or becoming inactive. So we need to be replenishing that over time. But we have to think a lot—

let me call this out so people hear it too. Why, why would I need them? It is true that new patients are less likely to say yes to treatment, but if you just think about it conceptually, especially the limited exams and the consults, like those two visits are like a 100% at-bat clinically. Like, you know you're going to present treatment. Now the, the hygiene new patients, you know, you might not have as high— it might be more normal to like your average hygiene at-bat rate. But those two new patient types, like, yes. So it does give you more clinical at-bats to like present treatment, which for sure we need. So I do want to—

Yeah. And if you're in a practice where you do a lot of comprehensive dentistry and most of your patients have had comprehensive dentistry, like you still need the new blood coming in in order to continue to have dentistry to do. So it is an important factor. And I think what's great for us to talk about today is Everybody focuses on that new patient count, like how many new patients, how many new patients a month do I need?

Yeah. And when we work, that's what they're asking, like, hey, do how many new patients you get in a month?

Oh, cool.

Oh, you're getting 60. Okay. Who's your marketing agency?

Yeah. But what's happening with those 60? Yeah. Right. And so I love, I love breaking that count down and getting more, a little more granular with like what is comprised within that. What about the patients we're losing? We call that the leaky bucket. Like, what's happening with the leaky bucket? And in the end, are we actually growing or shrinking? So like you said, you could be getting 60 new patients a month, but if you're losing 180 new patients a month, you're shrinking, you're not growing. So you can brag about that all you want, but in the end, is your practice really benefiting? So there's a couple of pieces I think we can talk about today, one being around that concept of like, how many do I need? And that's speaks to the part you mentioned earlier, which is, you know, it depends on your annual patient value. It depends on the practice model that you have, and we can certainly lean into that. And then I think we can also talk a little bit around the actual growth concept and, you know, recapturing patients, losing patients. What are we actually netting in terms of our active patient growth versus just focusing on the new patient count for this, you know, snapshot in time? The ultimate end game too is we want to keep them. And so how do we also know if we're being successful with that patient experience so that they stay and they continue to add value to our practice? So yeah, you want to start on the like practice model side?

Yeah, I wanted to hit that. And then maybe— and meaning like, can we talk annual patient value? Like, I think that one, because you kind of made the comment like, okay, so yeah, you're getting 60 new patients, but here's the reality, that means from a dollars perspective 2 very different things, or a whole spectrum of different things. So just so everyone hears this, bottom 10% of practices, their annual patient value, meaning how much, how many, how much collections do we do per patient? The bottom performers are at $370 per patient. And then on the high end of the spread, the top 10% of practices are doing like $1,100 per patient. So that means something totally— if the bottom performing practice is getting $60 a month that's only producing, you know, a third of the collections than the top performing practice. So I want everyone to hear that, like, you could be getting the same number of new patients, but one business is producing a third of the revenue, which is pretty wild. So talk me through, like, Miranda, how do you— like, if I'm a dentist, how do you think about understanding how many new patients then I actually need, thinking about annual patient value?

Yeah, so annual patient value is one of the most important metrics that I will look at when onboarding a new client. Like if I'm working with a client and I get a slew of data in front of me after their assessment, I'm gonna look at their APV first because it tells me so much about the practice. I know if somebody is in that, you know, $250,000 to $450,000 range, they probably are a really high-volume, low-profit practice. They probably participate in a lot of PPO insurance. They maybe even also have a membership plan, They're doing more than likely a lot of write-offs and therefore seeing a lot more patients to make up the difference, which again, there's no right or wrong about the type of practice you have. It's just knowing what type of practice you have. Um, because like you said, they're going to need a lot more patients to hit goals than a practice that maybe is, uh, I have a practice in Michigan, they're fee-for-service, their annual patient value is over $1,200 a patient. So they're not going to need as many new patients to continue to hit their collections goals. As that practice that's sitting around that $300 mark. So we like to look at practices, and the APV tells the story of, are you high volume, low profit, meaning we see a lot of patients and we're not getting a lot financially out of each visit or each patient, or are you a lower volume, high profit practice where I don't need as many and I don't see as many? I probably have a fraction of the number of visits as that other practice, but I'm making more profit or revenue off of each of those patients that walks through the door. If you're a $1,200 practice and you are in that low volume, high profit, you could probably have 15 new patients and be fine versus needing 45 or 60 or 75 in the other model. So that's why it's not easy to just say like, how many new patients should my practice have? Because you have to look at where you're starting. You have to look at how many providers are in your practice. And then what's that APV? Like, I just think that annual patient value is one of the most telling single metrics that doesn't require pieces from elsewhere to really get an idea of what's going on in that practice.

Yeah. And one of the thoughts you had, I had as you were, I don't know what the opposite of, because a virtuous cycle is like, hey, like these things all reinforce each other and it gets better. I don't know what the opposite of that is called, but one of the things that I've noticed is even with the low annual patient practices, so it's high volume, low profit margin. Those practices typically have the highest cancellation and no-show rates. They lose a lot more of their patients. Like they're just kind of, I don't wanna say flakier, but like they just struggle to, you know, keep them consistently coming back for hygiene recare and traditional visits. And so like there it's not only lower profit, but you also need more new patients because you're losing so many. And then once you get into like, there is kind of this virtuous cycle where at some point as I move up this kind of echelon of patient you know, style, so to speak. Yeah. All of a sudden cancellation and no-show rate can go down. But then maybe to be fair, like I, I did a podcast, uh, who was it, where we were talking about like, uh, marketing specifically and driving consult volume where sometimes there's a mismatch on like what people view their ideal patient profile is. Well, they'll think, oh yeah, like I want pe— you know, patients who make good money and are reliable and show up for their appointments. But oftentimes those aren't the ones that like need tons of actual dental work. You might get some cosmetic work there. So, you know, teeth whitening, you know, Invisalign, some of that you can definitely get. And they'll consistently come to hygiene, but they're not necessarily like full mouth reconstruction, All-on-4s, like those patients, you know, so you kind of have to play this like—

Well, and even practices that do a lot of comprehensive or full mouth, and I worked in a practice like that myself, hybrid dentistry, the All-on-X type stuff, like Those cases were awesome, but it's not like that was all that was in your schedule. Those are, you know, 1 or 2 a month maybe that you see of these bigger, more comprehensive cases. And it's still the bread and butter dentistry that's making, you know, keeping things rolling. And so I think the biggest difference that I notice with patients in these different models of practice is, and I've worked in both as a hygienist, like I've experienced them firsthand, is the value that the patient has. Like there's just something about the lower volume practice where I don't know if it's because they tend to be able to spend a bit more time with patients. There's this higher value of what we do and who we are. And so we tend to— that's how that APV raises, right? Because they're going to say yes to more because there's just more value intrinsically being able to be built into the experience. On the other side of things, a lot of times it is, it's faster appointment times. I remember working in a practice as a hygienist and there was 6 doctors and 11 hygienists. It was crazy. It was very, very busy. And in a practice like that, thinking as a coach, you have to be systemized. Like everything is built upon really consistent, documented, aligned systems because you're just, you're a lot busier. It's just going to feel a lot busier in a practice like that. It doesn't have to feel busy in a bad way. Um, but as long as you have those systems in place and everyone knows where they're supposed to be, it can, it can hum. Um, but I think it's just important to recognize what type of practice do I have, because that's where you can really start determining your new patient count. So if nothing else, uh, it's super simple. Well, if you have Dental Intelligence, it's right there on the collections board in the upper right-hand corner. Um, but otherwise you're just looking at your active patient count and then putting that in, like looking at your last 12 rolling months of collections and then doing the math and how much of that collections, you know, per patient, and get an idea of of where you sit. I think most practices, and you kind of explained it with your data, are somewhere in the middle, you know, somewhere probably between $450 and $800 or something, maybe.

Exactly, $640.

And then you have your extremes.

Yeah.

Yeah. So once you have that information, you at least know what you're building and where you're at. And then you can say like, I'm good with where I am, or I want to lean a little more this way, how can I make that happen? Or I want to lean a little more that way, how can I make that happen? But I think that's the first really most important piece in determining how many new patients do I need. And I think this is a great segue into this other side of the conversation, because when I say how many new patients do I need, there's a lot of other subtext that comes into determining that, because the new patient count doesn't necessarily mean I'm growing. So I think that's the next piece that we need to highlight for sure.

I could be getting more new patients. I could also actually be growing my total number of active patients. Revenue could be declining depending on decisions I'm making. So I think a lot of this, you pointed this out, but I'm gonna say it clearly just back to you. Like a lot of what doctors are saying when they're saying I would want more new patients is they're really saying I have production goals I want to hit and I think my path to get there is through new patients, right?

Yes.

I love, yeah, well you kind of transitioned us into Okay, so I think people get this concept that, okay, if my annual patient value is higher, then conceptually I need to add less new patients to hit a revenue goal than if I have a lower annual patient value. Does that make sense? And I can go, you know, do some discovery based off of the practice type I am. That might change the volume. So I think that's clear. So now talk us through, like, but then stuff breaks in between adding new patients and trying to get the production done and keeping them, and we lose some patients. So talk us through the systems or like how you think about maximizing— because we're gonna get new patients in— how do we think about like maximizing what we get out of all of these efforts?

Well, there's several numbers that really help us to know net growth, right? So another metric to know is net growth. So APV is great, new patient count fine, but what really matters is the net patient growth. And so when we look at that new patient count, right, that's how many patients are coming in for the first time to our practice within a given period of That's what most of us are tracking when we're looking at new patients, but then we have to build in recaptured patients because a lot of times we have patients that haven't been in, in 2 years, 3 years, 4 years, you know, 18 months or more. Technically they're inactive. And so we are either unintentionally or intentionally, and I'll speak to a system for that, getting patients back into the practice. It could just be that they remembered, you know, I need to go to the dentist. It's been a while. And then you get on the phone. This has happened so many times where you're like, it's actually been like 3 years. Like, it has not been 3 years. And then they start going, they're like, oh yeah, because it was before I had Joe and little Joey's 2 and a half now, you know? And so it just, time gets away and then something reminds them they need to come back in and they initiate that communication. But I actually really encourage teams to consider a like win-back or patients going inactive or inactive patients like reactivation system, something where on a consistent basis their running reports to look at those patients that we didn't manually change because they didn't call and say they were moving. We didn't hear that they passed away. They didn't say they were switching practices. They literally just don't show up on our active patient count anymore because it's been more than 18 months. So running reports from your practice management software or through Dental Intel platform to be able to look at those people that have gone inactive or are going inactive and have a campaign, an outreach campaign where we're offering and encouraging them to rejoin us in the practice. This because it's expensive and time-consuming to recruit new patients. Yeah, I, I think that there's amazing marketing agencies out there. Like, we work with a couple of them that are fantastic and well worth the investment, but it's a lot more inexpensive to recapture patients that already know you and have been in the practice than to go solicit new patients. And at that point, you're just spending your own time and manpower, not money on top of it. So if you have the ability to focus efforts and systems around recapturing your inactive patients, or even catching them right before they go inactive and having a system for that, you're gonna save a lot on, on having to bring brand new people in. Cumulatively, new patients coming in and your recaptured patients really are what's serving the kind of influx of patients coming into the practice that help feed the top line of that new patient growth number.

Yeah, I love, I love the way you're thinking about the, the lost patients. Is like one of those little sneaky cancers that people are just unaware of, you know? And, and sometimes it's like, man, that thing gets to stage 4 before we realize, like, hey, we're on a really bad path here. But, um, hopefully, uh, you know, if you haven't ever— that's another like DI thing, like we make it so easy where that—

so easy—

why it develops and people have a hard time paying attention to it. It's cause it's just so hard to go actually find that in your practice management software. So that's one of those things that's definitely worth like checking out. That's one thing I will just give a call out to ACT. One of the things that they do is called the snapshot. So if you've never checked out DI, you can actually, you know, reach out to Miranda and the ACT team and they will install DI. Is it at no cost? You guys do a free consult on that first one?

I don't know. I don't know.

They, they will do like a snapshot, but I know we do it. They'll go install DI. I just know you guys can go do this and then they can review, you know, without having become a client yet. They can go and look at numbers with you. So, or even pull a growth report that has like a bunch of— it's got 14 benchmarks on it that we can help you guys get, uh, that they can share with you as well. So that's like another—

yeah, we like to— and it's all customized because every practice is different. So that's one of the things we love about coaching is every practice is different. And so what you need help with and where the opportunities are in your practice, like you all have the same general issues and challenges and opportunities. It's just what's most important right now to focus on. Yeah, but I will say, um, I love using Dental Intel for this purpose because, um, on the dashboard right there is the little new patient wheel and it's like 0 to 6 months, you know, 0 to 3 months, 3 to 6, and then it's like 18 and over and you're like, click that little button and there's your whole list. It's just like right there. There's no having to generate queries or anything like that within your software. So yeah, if you have that option, that's the best way to go for sure.

I think, um, so the, the last thing I think I want to, to like ask and focus on is, is, okay, I think, I think we've gotten, gotten through a lot of these, like, okay, now we need to focus on net growth. Now that makes sense too, so I'm not losing more than I'm gaining. Um, will you talk me through maybe two breaking points or a few that you see? One of the places I think where people might miss is they focus on that new patient count number, but they don't have a whole lot of insight to what happens after that first visit. Like, what percentage of your patients ever even come back for a second visit?

Are your—

is your team rescheduling them? And some of those mechanics. And then maybe after we talk about that, maybe if you wouldn't mind, Rana, kind of speaking a little more broadly around kind of just some general best practices for patient retention, like what can we do to avoid letting patients ever get to that 18-month-plus bucket.

Yes, I love that because like I mentioned, we call that the leaky bucket and you have to plug that leaky bucket because it doesn't matter. Again, it doesn't matter if you have 60 new patients and you reactivated 60 more. If you're losing more than you're bringing in, like you're shrinking. So, and then like you said, there's, there's a lot that goes into managing all of that. And so we want to make sure that we're getting the most return out of all of that effort. And so the biggest thing is the patient experience. So a couple of factors, um, when we're looking at what happened, like, I think it's important to have a documented new patient process, like a process for all the way starting the phone call. Like, you know, what are we doing on the phone? What are, how are we making sure we're building relationship right off the jump? Moving outside of that transactional conversation, more into a relational, starting to build trust right away on the phone.

Yeah.

And then documenting what happens when they come in the front door. Like, what are we doing in the reception area? What are we doing? Is there a tour on the way back to their operatory? And then once we're in the operatory, do we ask some open-ended questions before we just jump in and start taking x-rays to get to know that person and what they're looking for, what they are expecting out of that first visit with us? Are we starting to get to know them and their goals so that we can customize the way that we work with them and the treatment that we present? And then moving through that process, same thing. If we are presenting treatment, um, how are we making sure we're tying back the outcome to what it is that they were expecting or wanting at the beginning of our conversation? And when the whole team can align around this, this documented process, our new patient process, and also I think it's really important for every team member to go through that process to actually be a new patient, you know, especially if it's a new process to your practice. Like everyone takes a turn being that new patient and being able to experience what do our new patients experience when they come in the front door? What does our comprehensive exam feel like? Does it feel like they're a part of the conversation or does it feel like we're talking over them or behind them with all of this jargon and they have no idea what's going on? Like, What's— whatever's happening within that patient experience is going to be what drives if they're staying with us. They're deciding in that one moment, right? It might be an hour, it might be 2 hours depending on your practice and what you do, but that's all the time you have to help this person decide if they're going to trust you and if they're going to stay. And it is much time as we put into thinking about bringing new patients in and how are we going to attract more patients. We have to think about at least that much time, if not more, into what are we doing once they're here to create an experience and to create value so they want to come back. And then we actually have to, like, call to action, schedule them for their next visit. So that's the piece that I think it surprises me how many times, again, we work with Dental Intel. So if I'm working with a client, I'll pop in and I'll just click on their new patients from last month and I'll look in the column that says next visit and how many of them have a next visit versus don't. But even bigger than that is how many of them have a next visit that's hygiene, because hygiene is what tethers patients to the practice long-term. That's what has them coming back every 3 months, 4 months, 6 months, whatever it might be. So to me, the most important metric on that end is that new patient hygiene reappointment percentage. What percentage of new patients that we saw in this given period of time reappointed for hygiene? Because now we know They've, they've bought in, they trust us, they're tethered to the practice. And so, um, when we're looking at that, like we, I want a significant, I mean, for me, I'm, I've got a high bar. I'm like 94% or more.

Yes.

Because I believe that even if someone's coming in for a comprehensive exam and they need something fairly urgently from a restorative standpoint, or they came in for an emergency and we're referring them to an oral surgeon, I still believe you can still make a hygiene appointment. You know, like you can make that next appointment and a hygiene appointment, or you can refer them out and 6 weeks from now schedule them for hygiene once they've had time to deal with that and recover. But get them scheduled for hygiene because that's what keeps them tethered to the practice.

Yeah, I, I love the way that you started this part of the conversation because I thought you were going to jump directly into numbers, but instead what you said was, hey, what matters here is really the patient experience. And then you ended with, okay, so as long as the patient— how are we going to know if the new patient experience is good? Well, we're going to start measuring our patients saying yes to that next appointment. Obviously, the restorative work and our case acceptance, we can look at some of those metrics, but specifically, are they willing to commit to consistently coming back for a hygiene visit? And that is going to be our indicator of, is this process or this, like, experience we put in place, is that going to be good? I love the way that you put the patient first, and then, okay, but how are we gonna, you know, kind of measure that to get an idea of, of are we improving the experience, or—

Well, and I love that you just said that because I work with teams, just as, you know, I coach dental practices. So most of my time is spent on calls with dentists and office managers, but I also work with the teams. Like, we go in and we plan out quarters, and we spend time in their office, we spend time sitting together in a room planning, and, you know, for 8 hours at a time. And a lot of times team members struggle with numbers, feeling like a lot— we'll hear the words like, oh, numbers are just too corporate. Like, you know, it feels kind of cold, it feels so business. And yes, but— or yes, and, I guess I should say— it, it's all tied together. And so I think what's really great is being able to help connect the dots for team members that yes, we're monitoring your perio visit percentage or we're monitoring your perio diagnostic percentage. But when those numbers improve, that just means that more and more of our patients are receiving like a quality high level of care. And we have an activity we do with our teams, this KPI analysis activity where we can take certain KPIs that are trending one way or another. And there's like questions that the team sits down and they break out and they talk about like, first of all, just like, what is this number even measuring?

Yeah. And then that's always like one of the things like we forget that people just don't know.

They don't even know they're reporting on it every week cuz they're supposed to, but they have no idea what it's actually even calculating. That happens a lot. And then it's like, okay, how does this number impact the practice? Great. How does this number impact our patients? And so I love for them to really sit in that question because ultimately, like, you know, we were just saying with this new patient, the hygiene reappointment percentage. If we see that go— that going up, that just tells me that we are doing a really great job of making someone feel safe and comfortable and cared for and understood and heard, because that's when people come back to your practice is when they feel psychological safety. They feel like they can trust you. They can feel the culture in your office feels good to be here. They listened to me. Like, that's when someone's gonna come back. Not because you have a shiny CBCT, which is awesome, or I do the, you know, best crowns in town, or I work with this lab or that lab. Like, they don't, they don't care about that stuff. What they care about is how you made them feel, and if they feel like they're going to be able to come back and be comfortable. Everybody's scared and vulnerable in the dentist, so if you create an experience where they, they feel like it was catered to them and they felt heard and understood, then that number is gonna correlate. And so I think every metric in our practice can be tied back to patient experience or some type of value to the patient. And I think that you and I have talked before about DISC styles and patient communi— I mean, people communication styles. And a lot of our team members are like S-style people who are very feelings-based and nurturing, and we're caregivers. That's why people go into dental hygiene to take care of people. So we have to find a way to make those numbers make sense to what they're motivated by, our team members who are like that, which is how does it impact a patient in a positive way? And if they can correlate that number to that positive impact with the patient, then your team's going to get a little more bought in to reporting on and understanding those numbers and not feeling quite so cold when it comes to talking about them.

Yeah, I, I 100% agree with that. Well, we have been absolutely just firehosing everyone with, with killer information. This has been so fun. This is one of those that like I'm going to go blast on LinkedIn and be like, hey guys, you got to go listen to this. You know, some of this stuff, if you're an old school DI person, you may have heard of years ago, great reminders. And for so much of the industry, like this is so relevant and so needed to start to wrap our minds around, especially some of the trends I'm seeing. Now, to wrap up, I always ask everyone the same question. Which is what does growth in dentistry mean to you? So I'd love to hear, Miranda, what's on your mind today? What does growth in dentistry mean to you this go round?

I feel like right now, because I'm in the middle of— I'm a project manager, for lack of a better word, for an online community that we're building, the Best Practices Association. And what we're trying to do with this association is create a community for dentists where they can be with like-minded dental practice owners, entrepreneurs, where they feel super supported to really be able to build a life that is supported by their practice. So I think that what we hear so often is that dentistry can be a little bit all-consuming, uh, if you are private practice dentist especially. You're an entrepreneur. You didn't realize what you were signing up for, and it can start to consume you. And there's pieces of that that are great because you should be all in on this business that you've created. But some people can get so locked into it or feel so lost within it that they start to sacrifice a little bit of their life. So to answer your question, what I think that when we think about growth in our industry, I would really like to see more growth in more private practice owners feeling really comfortable and really confident in being an entrepreneur. Like, you can do this and develop a practice that supports the life that you wanna live. It's not like your life has to exist around the elements of your practice, right? You can design whatever hours you want. You can do whatever type of dentistry that you wanna do on the type of people you wanna do it with, the people you wanna do it with. Like, You have all of the control around that. And if it starts with you really thinking about what you want out of your life, and then how can you work to build your practice to support that? And I see it happening more and more, and I see people like just blossom. Their personalities change and you can just feel the weight come off of their shoulders. And I would love to see our industry grow more and more in support of that. And I know we're— I like, I'm confident, like, we're doing our part over at ACT and the BPA. We just merged with SmileSource not too long ago, another great support of private practice dentistry. So we are really in this effort to create this protection of private practice and really help dentists feel like they can do this and, and do it in a way that really lets them live the life they wanna live. So that's what I'm excited about doing right now, and I hope it grows in our industry.

Yeah, I'm just trying not to do like a fist bump. Amen. Amen. If you're not on the best practices train, get on the train, people. Yeah, there's no reason why— we've got one life to live. There's no reason why we shouldn't be thinking about how can we architect the way that I work and live, family, community, friends, and make sure that I'm enjoying it. I love that perspective.

And I agree, Steve, my oldest child is going into his junior year of high school. I still feel like I'm, you know, 29, 30 years old. So I don't know how that's possible, but if nothing else, it's keeping front of mind for me that like it all does really go by fast. So curating a, curating a life in which those things that are most important to you stay at the forefront. And then again, just make your business work for you in that way. Hey, your team members will appreciate it too, because then they'll get Go and enjoy their life a little bit more.

So yeah, I love that. And then I'll just say too, I know the team at ACT, Miranda, Heather, and then of course Kirk is amazing founder. And, and this team really is good at doing what Miranda just said that they do. Like, that is their square focus and they deliver. So if that's something that's interesting to you, for definitely go hit them up. Yeah, I mean, you can go to actdental.com. I think it's actdental.com.

actdental.com.

Listen to their— I'll give like a cross-podcast promotion. Listen to their podcast, the Best Practices Podcast. Freaking good. Kirk's awesome. Are you on there too?

Oh, I'm on there a lot.

Okay.

I like to talk, Steve, in case you haven't noticed.

Join this community that Miranda's talking about. What else can they do? I'm sure there's probably like a newsletter. Like, they're good guys at getting you content that's helpful. And take advantage of all of it.

So I always— we always say we're, we're a content machine. There is no shortage of content. So yeah, like, come to the Best Practices Association, come join us. Just join.acdental.com and you can come check out our community and be a part of that. Team members are in there, dentists are in there, and we're really doing everything we can to provide as much content as possible to support, you know, that, that mo— motive of better practice, better life. And yeah, the more the merrier.

Agreed. And thanks, Miranda, again for joining us. This has been freaking awesome. Always, always a joy to chat. Always love your insights. And then thank you to listeners for joining us. Been another episode of the Growth in Dentistry podcast. My name is Steve Jensen, your host. Keep growing, and we will talk soon. See you guys.