140: Off-shoring vs In-sourcing

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When I was working as an associate

right out of school, I never imagined

I could own these many practices with this amount of support.

So thank you.

You have helped build my marketing mind

to a whole new level.

You have this natural talent, this unique ability. Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of DSO Secrets. I'm your fearless host, Emmett Scott and today I'm with Support DDS JW Oliver, managing director and Brenda McNulty, dental group director at Support DDS or Queen of the World. See, I got that in there.

Thank you.

Hey, great to be with. You know, when I think about like clear and present dangers, challenges that we're all trying to work through, obviously inflation is making the headline, but how that really rolls down to us is managing labor costs, managing team and managing labor costs. I guess definitions matter. It's about keeping your best people, that's really what it is. And being able to make sure that you're being able to pay them fairly, et cetera. And when I think about that, I think about my best people. I want to constantly be moving up into a higher and higher roi and anything that I can commoditize down, that I can have systemized down, then I want to move that down into lower cost structures. And so there's a couple ways that you can do that. I think a big one is figure out how to use technology wherever you can to leverage your team and workforce, et cetera. But another one that people look at is could I offshore this? Is labor cost somewhere else cheaper? Where a dollar over there is worth $10 here and so is there places globally and with today's technology, is that more possible? You all have kind of taken that to another level with this idea instead of offshoring, insourcing. So with that kind of intro. Jw, I don't know if you want to start off or Brenda, but you know, love to hear a little bit about, about Support DDS and specifically how you think about offshoring versus insourcing.

Yeah, I think I can take that. From the, from the beginning we saw this not as an offshoring or taking a contracted piece of the business that is in the dental business, maybe a insurance verification and Just performing a task. We saw it as an opportunity to leverage full time employees ftes to work for organizations, especially in the dental, whether it's a single dental office or in the DSO world where they could be used full time, you know, not working for multiple offices, but designated towards a certain area. So rather than offshoring and looking at this as something that happens separate and apart from your business, really it's as if somebody's working remotely even here in Texas. Right. Somebody's in Dallas and somebody's in Fort Worth. It's very similar.

Yeah. So Covid, like made this a lot more easy for all of us to consume because the idea of remote workforce was kind of like somewhat fringy. You know, it's like, yeah, I got a couple people. But now it's like, it's just standard. It's almost weird now, right? It's like, oh, we're going to go into the office. Okay, why is that? So I think the difference just to pull out what you said there with offshoring, mentally I'm thinking of that as a vendor who's got a set of systems and processes. They say we can complete this task, good or bad to be proven, but we can complete it. Give us access usually to your practice management software and that's about it. We'll send you a report and hopefully we do a good job and if we do a poor job, you know, we'll have that conversation, et cetera. But it's a little bit of like out of sight, out of mind. It's never truly that way. Like if you're doing a good job, you're managing them as closely as any department. But okay, that's offshore insourcing is, hey, I want someone to be part of, let's say billing team, because that one's easy, right? I want someone to be part of my billing team. I could hire them locally here, I could hire them out in this state or that state or whatever. And what you all have done is kind of streamlined. Where? Well, why don't you just think about another country too, that is Zimbabwe, and just say, hey, I'll just interview somebody there, labor costs are less, culture is awesome. And then I'll just include them as part of my team. Is that a good summary, Brenda? Anything you would add to that?

That's a really good summary. You have this down pat. I think what really makes the insourcing stand out is we're not giving you a service, we're giving you a person. And this person is going to be able to Be molded into your systems your way. They're not going to come with their own agendas or bad habits from other practices. They're going to say, I'm here to work and I'm going to work hard. Tell me what you want to work, you want me to work on and tell me how exactly you want things done. They want to be a member of your team as badly as they possibly can to be considered a vital part of your practice. You know, when somebody drops a vendor, people don't think twice. In fact, half the time, you could drop one of these major vendors and nobody would even blink an eye or reach out. But with us, if you had any issues with our team member, we're going to coach that team member, we're going to help that team member, and that team member really is working towards your success, that they're going to have a vested interest in your success.

Yeah. Because with offshoring, I think part in the back of our mind is, let's say again, I'm using billing because it's simple one and often use or insurance verification or something like that. You are kind of always wondering, like, am I getting the hours that I'm paying for? Am I getting like, they're working with a bunch of different customers. They are kind of providing you a black box solution and saying, don't worry, it'll work out. But you don't totally know how many people are fully dedicated to yours. If the reason it didn't get done is because insurance companies were crazy that week, or if they had a bigger client than you and they just went over and started working on them, you know, or they were trying to sell the next customer and they got distracted, whatever it might be. One benefit of insourcing would be, well, this person's only working for me.

They're only working for you. And they're coming to our secured facility where we're able to keep eyes on them to provide support, mentorship, leadership, even pastoral care for them. We have our eyes on them all the time. It doesn't happen that people say, I don't think they're working 40 hours a week because we track it. They even have security codes to get in and off of our floors. It is 100% your system's your way, 40 hours a week and we've got your back.

Not to mess up flow too much, but to kind of mess up flow. Just so everybody knows, DEO has a summer summit. June 9th, 10th and 11th. Support. DDS is very supportive of DEO. They are at the so as you're listening to this, if you have further questions, of course, just reach out to Brenda or jw, but they'll also be at the summer summit. So, yeah, just Brenda. Okay. Don't reach out to jw. He's managing partner for a reason. So, yeah, if you want something done, reach out to Brenda. Now, we have that same in our organization. But check your calendars. June 9th, 10th, 11th. Make sure it's marked off that you're going to be out there and it'll be awesome. So just wanted to put that in the back of people's minds as they start thinking about.

Yeah, let me comment on that too. I think that we've been involved with DEO for a couple of years, and whether it's the smaller events or the larger events, they're amazing. I've never, I've been in the dental 35 years and I've never seen a group or an area that just collaborates, shares best practices and really where. And that's, that's a tribute to what that your organization has done, because I've never seen that before in any area of the dental field.

Yeah, Jake's done such a good job of bringing entrepreneurs who aren't scarcity mindsetted. Right. They're abundance mindsetted. And so as soon as you think about dentistry from abundance, you're like, well, we're penetrating 40% of the marketplace. Let's get to 80. We double the whole thing. Okay, what are you doing? What do I. You know, the competition's external, not internal in the industry anymore.

Well, and Emmett, to say that, I mean, that's what we look at. Even when you talk about these other companies that perform task oriented, they're fine. You know, I don't see this as. They're not our competition. People who are doing automation and AI and things, we want to complement those. We just have a solution that's different than that for sure.

So I reached out to. Well, I didn't reach out. I'm on a little text group with a few of us during COVID that were riding the peloton and we call it the DEO Laton because we're all in deo. But they actually just asked me yesterday, hey, what do you guys know about support dds? And I said, well, funny you should say that. We're doing a podcast tomorrow. I said, send over some questions. So can I ask you guys a few questions that they had?

Absolutely.

One of them, Lori Noga, does a good job on asking questions. So she's got a Couple here. One is love to know their story and what impact they have in the country they operate in. So can you talk a little bit? You guys are specifically in Zimbabwe, right? So that's. So do you want to just talk through that kind of, why Zimbabwe and what's the impact?

I'll tell you what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna. I'm gonna answer the first 50%, and I'll let Brenda, because she's actually in Zimbabwe now, and I think she's got to see the impact differently than I saw it. So, real short story. I went to a Christian conference. Gosh, 2015. Met a guy there. We stayed in contact, and he's in the real estate and food business. And he was like, hey, we should start a business together. So we started this not specifically in the dental, but in various areas. And we are in other areas. We're in some real estate and some different channels. But what we did is. And this is the impactful side is. And I think it's important to realize or understand that businesses and people can use their businesses to make an impact. We call it a global impact. And what we did is we both committed that we were going to give 51% of our profits back to various ministries. And so, of course, you know, that's easy when you first start because you're not making money.

Nothing to give. Nothing to give, Right.

It's like, oh, yeah, well, let's give 100%. But in the last couple of years, that's really come to fruition. And so we call it a win, win, win. We believe it's a win for the client who gets an amazing team member, speaks just perfect English. And I should probably bring somebody on, let somebody hear one of them. We've got a win. That is for our team members. These jobs go to an area which the unofficial unemployment rate is somewhere between 70 and 80% that's unemployed, not employed. And then it's a win for the ministries that we donate to. So, yeah, that's the impact is we look at it, Emmett, is every time somebody brings on a new team member, there is a direct impact of a ministry somewhere in the world. And Brenda could probably. She's been involved in that at a different level as well.

Absolutely. So I've got to see the other side of that 51%. I've got to visit orphanages. And all of that is wonderful. But to me, when I start thinking about this is an incredible human being that has a university education that their family dumped every dollar they had into Letting them be their legacy.

Right?

And they're sitting there and they don't have a job and we're offering them this position where they're going to impact their life, their family's life and then in fact the community and their church community because they're able to tithe. They're able to give back in many, many different ways. And just being as a small little example here, Emmett, we have a driver here, his name is Simon. And Simon was hired by Zimworks and he takes me around and takes all of our guests around. And Simon says to me yesterday, I am here to make sure that you are happy. I am here to do anything that you want. I am so grateful for this job that you are going to see how wonderful I am. He showed up an hour early this morning to pick me up and took a rag out of the backseat of the car and washed it in the driveway so that I didn't have to get in a dirty car. And he said, this job means so much to me and every single person that works at ZimWorks. This job means so much.

And ZimWorks, just so you know, ZimWorks is our, is our overall company support. DDS is our channel, so.

Got it.

Our branding is ZimWorks.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, everybody loves it.

Yeah. So when you think about why should I choose to hire overseas versus the US that was next question. I mean, part of what you just said is I have a hard time getting people to show up to interviews. Right. So someone who's like, I am so thankful for this job. I mean, how many of us wouldn't be like, okay, fine, you're hired. You know, I mean, like just having gratitude. I've noticed that with our team, you know, so full disclosure, right. Community Dental Partners. I'm CEO of Works With Support dds. I think we have quite a few. Right.

Do you guys know about 28? Yeah, there's quite a few.

Yeah. And so what I've noticed is there's just this kind of culture of gratitude which really lines up with our nine pillars. So any other thoughts on that?

Yeah, yeah. We've actually seen people, a number of us have seen this, we've seen, we've seen people do interviews. So. So I kind of understand the process. Somebody will tell us what they're looking for. In the dental world, we do have pre trained candidates where we put them through a program to get them some basics and then they'll, when you're hiring, you'll actually do a zoom interview like we're doing here. And many times, Emmett, you might be interviewing somebody and the candidates and they said, you know what? I think I would just like to hire Susan. And so they bring Susan back on and say, hey, Emmett's decided to hire you. We've seen numerous people just literally break down and cry because they got a job. And I'm thinking, wow, you don't see that here. You know, that just doesn't happen. And I think I had a conversation with a gentleman today who's run some centers in the Philippines, and you know, those have escalated to quite an expensive proposition now just because of the levels of maturity that they've had. And so, you know, whether it's hiring somebody in the US at 18, 19, $20 an hour or trying to bring somebody on about the same cost, and it's difficult. It's been a scarce market, too.

And Emmett, how many times have you had. How many times have you had a team member that's tried to call in and say, you know, I'm just not feeling it today. I'm having a mental health day when that happens here, they say, I'm sorry to hear that. Come on in, because we're going to have our pastoral care team meet with you. Our team is going to surround you with love. That's our culture. We're going to pray over you. We're going to surround you with love. And so we don't issue people want to come into work. Somebody the other day, I was interviewing for a client and I said, why do you want to work here? And she goes, I've been walking by this building for four years thinking, one of these days when I get my degree, I'm going to go apply. And goes, and I finally did. And it's like, wow, we have that type of reputation in Zimworks, in Zimbabwe, in support dds, that people are thinking, if only I could work there instead of I don't want to show up to an interview.

One of the concerns in this next question here is it can feel like you're taking advantage of somebody. Based on what you guys just said, I think people could get there. But let's imagine someone sitting in America. They're thinking, from a business perspective, what's initiating some of this for them is a business decision. You just mentioned $18 an hour versus much less in another country. And some of that can be a little bit of shame and guilt, like, am I doing something wrong here? You know, am I taking advantage of someone? Are they getting a fair wage? Of course we hear about, you know, apple and sweatshot and Nike and Sweatshots in China and so forth and things like that. So these are the things in the back of our mind. I always like to just bring up like the reality of what's going on in people's heads. So can you guys kind of talk through that and how do you guys, you know.

Yeah, yeah, I actually can address this one in my last trip to Zimbabwe was last month and I, I've gotten to know the people at the embassy there in the US Embassy. So this last time I actually got to meet the charge day affairs, which is the person in who really runs the embassy. He's not the ambassador but he runs the embassy. And I had lunch with him and the economic advisor and he asked me, he says, I understand you, you start your employees off at X amount. I said, yeah, that's our entry level. He said, you do realize that's about double the rate of what a lot of people make here. And I said yeah, we know that. And he said, you know, you don't have to pay that much. I said no, but we want to pay that much because we really want to offer something that's a very fair wage. And we do. And we've got those starting wages and then all the way up we've got one of our DSOs that has a really their controller. The financial controller works in our office and delegates out. But I think it's important to realize that piece of it that we offer more than a fair wage. I mean we're a Christian based organization and we definitely want to invest in them not only in their monetary but in their spiritual and in their personal lives as well. So. Yeah, good question. And we have this often we have to address that.

Yeah, I would imagine. So can you give me some of the financial component like what do you usually share with a customer just here. So people have some perspective on I guess at the high level. You mentioned $18 an hour. What do I need to think about kind of a billing person or somebody else there is going to cost me?

Yeah, I would say that about 90, 85 to 90% of every. Everybody we have there. Not everyone, but 85% of all the dental for sure that that initial cost, that initial fee, It's a flat $1,980 per month and that's a fixed fee, comes out to be about 1150 an hour. No contracts monthly basis. And I just had Chingay joining us as well. I wanted to see if she could jump in. She is our business development. She works hand in hand with me as well. But she's Zimbabwe, and so I thought it was important to have her jump on and you might say, h, yeah,

that would be awesome. Hello, how are you?

Hi, Emmett. Great to meet you. How's everyone doing?

Doing great. How are you doing there in Zimbabwe? I heard there was a little bit of rain, but it's like awesome there.

Yes, it is. That's why Brenda came to visit us.

Yeah. Hey, since I have you on the podcast here, just so you know, you're live on Facebook and on the podcast, knowing JW probably didn't tell you any of that, but anyway, it's great to have you on. So tell me a little bit about your experience with support DDS and your team members. Experience? You know, we were just talking through. Sometimes in America, when we reach outside and start working with other countries, we feel excited. But then we also, like, is this a good experience for them? Are we doing the right thing? You know, we get American publicity around how Americans are taking advantage of other countries and that we need to be. So I'm curious your perspective since we have you here.

Sure. So I think that kind of the perspective I have around it is that it's a partnership. Right. So there is an incredible opportunity for me as someone who's got. One of the things that we really value here is education. Right. So everybody's kind of well studied and that kind of thing. And there's an opportunity to work and say, hey, I can get some international exposure. I can work in a space where people are willing to kind of partner with me and help me grow in my career and learn, and I can offer them kind of the skills that I have because of my educational background. So I think that's a lot of how I think of it, and I think a lot of the team members that we have process it that way.

Yeah, it's powerful to be able to say, I've worked for large DSOs. I've helped dentists in America do X, Y and Z. I know some team members that we've had have said, oh, yeah, my last job with was with JPMorgan Chase doing their support. And now, you know, so they're building this really amazing international resume. Right. So cool. What would you say would be. I didn't really have questions for you, so I'm going to come up with some now.

That's okay.

What do you think? Okay. No, this will be a good question for you. Where do most dentists and their. And their group, their team members, where do they usually mess up in the partnership?

Right.

Whereas just maybe their, their mindset they just didn't do. Or tactically they didn't do things right.

Or.

And what do you think is like the best? Who's doing it the best? You know, who, what, what activities do you need to do to like hit it out of the park and make the relationship so like those two extremes. Like, I've seen this fail very consistently when our partner in the US thinks this way. And I've seen it succeed very consistently when they think this way.

Okay, great. So I will start with kind of where we've seen it succeed. One of the really big things, and this is true whether you hire remotely or in person is integrating someone. Right. So having them come in and become part of your organization. So it's not just, hey, I have got someone who is doing these three, three things. Hey, Chenge is working for me. Chengay. These are the kind of nine things that we have as our core values. So this is the way that we outwork it in our process. This is how we integrate it and how we interact with our patients, all of that kind of stuff. And really committing yourself as an organization to say, hey, this is not just a remote team member, this is a team member. And I think that allows you then to get the best out of your team member. Right. Because they feel like, hey, this team is invested in who I am. Let me bring my 150% to this day. And they do that every day.

Yeah, that's awesome. So what I heard in that is an onboarding process that includes. And I like that you said nine values. It's like our nine pillars. Very good. So integrating them into the culture, having a true onboarding, I'll tell you tactically, one of the things I know our team members do is they'll open up a Zoom like this in the beginning of the day. They'll have the team members there on a big tv. So everyone local and on zoom just have this great interaction to create that. So anyway, I didn't come up with that. Our team started doing that and I think that's brilliant. So having those check ins, maybe you know if there's a morning huddle, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

I noticed our team is really good. If we're doing some kind of local celebration, then right through support dds, I think there's a way we can give dollars or. And you guys help coordinate that there. Chengay. Right. And say, okay, we'll buy pizza or cake or whatever it might be. You can send little gifts over those kind. So I guess I'M just emphasizing like this is your team member.

Yeah. I might add too. I mean, something that's worked really. And I know she was probably not wanting to say cdp. She didn't know if it was appropriate. But yeah, we brag that, you know, Community Dental Partners uses those nine pillars and really integrates them. But the swag is a big deal, Emmett. We've got a lot of our organizations who will send over T shirts and mugs and pencils and pens and we're happy to take those over. And you know, their eyes just brighten up because they feel like, wow, they thought enough to include me with their teams. We've got some companies that say, hey, we buy lunch on Fridays and they'll actually supplement and pay for the lunches and the team will go out together for lunch. So little things like that can, can really just do. And those are really easy things. Right. How much do T shirts cost and how much does a lunch cost? Once a month or once a week? Those are major things.

I think it comes back to where we originally started, which is you're insourcing.

Right.

So yes, Jingay, it's going to be easy. Then the extreme on the other side. Hey, Chingay, great to have you on the team. We're so thrilled. It's nice to, you know, you made it through the interview process all right. I think you got access to the software, maybe you don't, but anyway, good luck. Let me know if you need anything. Is that a good example of a poor implementation?

That is exactly right. And sometimes people do that. It's kind of throwing someone to the wolves. Right. Because if they don't know, they don't know. And then they fail. And you're kind of like, my remote team member isn't doing well. But it's because you haven't taken them in as a team member.

Right. Yeah. You're really again, falling into the outsourcing mindset. Right, Exactly. And okay, cool. Well, that's. Yeah.

And I, and I would add to it. I think that's a big piece of it. We try to tell people if you hire somebody in your office to work at your front desk doing scheduling and follow ups and RCM or billing or whatever, you've got to train them and you need to let them know exactly how you want it done. So when you can implement those processes and procedures, then you're going to have success. But you're right, they call back and say, well, they're not doing anything that I need them to do. And there's been no training or, you know, KPIs or anything. They're like, they don't even know what they're supposed to do, so.

Right. Yeah. Frankly, you'd be the same for anybody you brought into an office environment and then just hope, you know, good luck. I hope that works out. Maybe you could stay on for one more question. Let's see. Can you guys talk a little bit about security issues? Of course. We're in dental, very nervous about being hacked. One time Michael and team brought me in and showed me a monitor and it was just like running list and it would. And it had these countries on it. Saudi Arabia, Russia, not surprisingly. You know where I'm going. Anyway, it's going through this list and I go, what is this? And they said, well, that's our sonic wall and it's displaying all of the hackers that are trying to get in. And as we got bigger, we had to get bigger and bigger sonic walls because they'd actually, you know, the way they got into Target or Sony is they just. They all team up together, overload the system until they finally get in. So obviously, security issues. We've got patient information, we're transporting that between. How do you guys think about that security? You know, Social Security numbers we're scared about.

Yeah, I think that's obviously something we're hypersensitive with and we actually spent a lot of time and money on. Initially, all the team members do get HIPAA certified, so they do have an online course that everyone's required to go through. And then I think on an annual basis they have to recertify again. They're obviously trained on individual protocols, but we also have black talent security, which you may have heard of. They're big in the dental business and they do protection from a third party. So we wanted to have a US Company that was also giving us some security. So they actually have what's called Sentinel One loaded up on all of our workstations in our office, again, working remote. Everybody does come to one central location, so we're not scattered out at people's homes and you know, various areas. So we've got. Very good.

Well, that's part of the advantage of working with you all versus like jumping online and just hiring someone in Zimbabwe. Right. Is now they have to figure out their own Internet connection. Security is whatever it's going to be. You know, you don't have someone.

Power security data. Yeah, you're right. There's nobody to monitor that. You're exactly right. So they come into this facility, which as you can see, Chingay, she's. I'm sorry, Brenda, but she's dressed better than me and you both. They always outdress us and outperform us quite, quite heavily. I thought I was dressing up with a clean T shirt on, but yeah, we, we are definitely, you know, they're not allowed to have phones at their workstations. We, we keep them in either in their desk, in their drawer. So we do as much as we can, and obviously have had to invest in quite expensive fortigate equipment for our network so that we can protect our resources as well. But adding the layer of black talent, I think, has been a, a major investment for us to see that, not only protecting our servers and our systems, but our individual workstations.

Chingay, if there was anything else that you'd want to tell your friends and partners over in the U.S. you know, maybe somebody's on the line, they're like, should I do this? Should I not? What would you tell them?

That's a great question. I think in the future, in the current kind of climate that we live in, collaboration is what the future will look like. And choosing to collaborate, right, is how you will move your business forward. And this is how collaboration will happen. We are drawing from resources that are not just nearby, but in far off places, because there are things and experiences that we have here in our context that we can bring to your local kind of offices that your team might not have experienced and things that you have there that we can learn from. So collaboration is the future, and this is a step in that direction.

And they all sound like her. Emmett.

Well, could you kind of talk about that? I mean, you've mentioned that a few times. What's English? There is Queen's English, right? So is that something that you grow up with learning, or is that something at the university that's taught?

So schools generally buy. So I would say 90 to 95% teach in English. So you learn English from a very young age. Generally, people are multilingual here. So you don't just learn English at school. You also have the option to learn other languages, so French, German and stuff like that. So. And because we have this kind of legacy, we have a really good education system. And as I said earlier, education is really valuable. So you'll find that people go through multiple degrees, they really value education. And by and large, kind of the papers that you write, the means that you communicate with your professors or in the class is in English. So I, you know, I used to joke with some of my friends to Say, hey, you know, even when I dream, I don't necessarily dream in my mother tongue. I largely have my conversations in English.

Well, and what's great is again, you're insourcing so you're going to be able to interview multiple individuals, look at their different capabilities just like you would in the US and kind of make a decision around some of these things. Maybe to finish off here, let's talk about. Anybody can answer this or you guys can each. I'm a dentist. I've expanded out to a couple locations because I'm going to increase the complexity. It's not about number of locations, but I'm trying to do call center. I'm thinking about call center, I'm thinking about billing, team it, accounting. You know, just all these things are starting to pile up on me. Which one should I think about Support DDS first? You know, where it's kind of like bread and butter like all day long. Think about us. You know, number two, we should be definitely in the running. Three, four, five, you know, we can, we have, but you know, it wouldn't necessarily like. But first thing, what should people say? Yeah, you should be doing this through support dds.

Yeah, I might say the first thing is with a mature organization that has their systems and processes, they can definitely go and look at, okay, I'm going to do my billing or I'm going to do my insurance verification. But I would say maybe the number one thing is just leveraging the resources for more horsepower. We say leverage your current team and then grow your organization. So you know, as you know a lot of times and you may have hired somebody for a high level position, but they may be doing a lot of low level tasks. I don't say low level tasks, but very repetitive tasks that aren't a high return on the ROI for that person. So my feeling, and Brenda could, could elaborate further, but my feeling is you're adding just some horsepower at, at a very nominal rate compared to what you would be looking at.

I actually really like that jw because basically what you're saying is today what's the team member you love? They've been with you forever, they're doing a great job, but you want them to step up to the next level. And one of the ways you're going to get them to step up is you're going to have them write out all the things that are on their plate and you're going to go, okay, these are things like only you can do because you got legacy with me. You're a strategic Thinker these other things, like, we could get other people doing this, right? We can get them up to speed, they can take those tasks off of you, and I can get you to the next level. So everybody's got somebody that they're trying to continue to move up within their organization, and there's a long list of things that they're doing that somebody else really smart person with a degree can take care of. Right?

And we actually tell them to do that as an exercise. Make a list of everything that team member is doing and then look on there and say, well, why are they doing that? Why are they doing that? And why are they doing that? How can I offload that and increase that input as well?

The majority of team members there are doing what activities, though? Like, if you just kind of took

statistics, I would say that many of them are doing insurance verification. But where we're finding the most value is when we're looking at the office mission and vision statements and say, what can this office do to get closer to that mission and vision?

Right.

So a lot of people are doing this position called the director of first impressions, where the first time they call the office, they get somebody in Zimbabwe, they take down all of the insurance information, they verify it, they call the patient back, go over all them, and then they call the patient back two days after their appointment to see how their appointment went. It's concierge type dentistry. Customer service level is top notch, and it normally pushes them closer to their mission vision. Why aren't they doing it now? They don't have time to spend 15 minutes on the telephone with a new patient. So this is an opportunity for them to kick their level up a notch. And who wouldn't want to speak to somebody like chang A for 10 or 15 minutes on the telephone? She's just welcoming the tone of voice. They're eager. And I love to have our team members really represent the practice in that light because it's things that they've always wanted to do, but they've never had time.

You know, people ask me like, emmett, when did you do a call center? I'm weird in that we did it the day we opened the practice. Now, our call center at that point is I literally just stuck somebody in a different room. But for me, part of it was I hate it when I walk into any organization and I'm standing in front of the front desk and they're on the phone just because I'm like, should I call in to talk to you? Like, I'm the one standing here so we always kind of moved that activity to another spot rather than being out. So I think that's part of what you're hinting at there too, Brenda, is there's an opportunity to have that person spend more time with the individual and it not affect those who are in the lobby. I had a question actually come in and it said I'm thinking about doing 247 call center access. What is the time periods that you're working on there in Zimbabwe? And one is if I'm going to have them on my team, are they able to do us hours? Because what's the difference in time zones?

Seven hours right now, eight hours. Well, I guess we're getting out of daylight savings. I sure hope that passes. So confusing. But yeah, right now it's seven hours. But we actually have, we have a number of clients now who are on the 24 7. You know, they actually just gone to a five by five. They're doing Monday through Saturday I believe it is. But typically our team members like us here in Texas, they're working a 3 to 12, 3pm to 12pm time zone but, but they're adjustable. We've got some that'll say please come in. I'm going to have you work from 4am my time until noon or one and you can get some tasks done. And then when I get to work we can talk about the tasks you've completed then. Especially when we get into marketing areas, we do a lot of marketing support. People do it in social media or digital marketing or whatever that might be. We've got those types of team members or even IT support. That's where one of our big clients is coming in that does dental and medical IT support. They wanted to be 247 during the week so we had to. They wanted to expand on those times too.

Yeah. So the door is open to have that conversation. Definitely.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Guys, thank you. You have been wonderful. Chengay, I'm so glad JW pulled you on.

Great to meet you, Emmett.

Yeah. Anything else before we shut down here? This has been super helpful. I think one thing I love is I love the resources that are coming into dental. Like this is a capability that, that we need. It allows us to leverage so much of our own team members time to be able to scale, have bigger impact, get more patient access and then you know, the causes that you guys are doing there at zenworks and support dds like it makes you feel good too. It's awesome. Yeah.

Well. And if you want the most important thing out of the whole meeting here. Emmett, if you want to say the most important thing is don't miss the DEO Summit in Phoenix January 9th and 11th.

Thank you very much. That's right. That's right.

And buy Emmett's book.

All right, we'll throw that one in there, too. Well, there was a shout out to you guys from Santosh Patel. Just saying what great partnership it's been. Rachel Wall also just said, thank you so much for doing this. So anyway, appreciate you all. If they want to get ahold of you, let's give them contact info, make life easy for them.

Yep. Just go to support DDS.com they can schedule an appointment. They can go. They can email Brenda brenda@supportdds.com Pretty simple to get a hold of her as well.

Awesome. And you guys are active on DSO Secrets Facebook page. So come over there if you have more questions there. They'll be happy to answer them. Drop them into this. This podcast here. Anyway, great having you all. I appreciate it. Thank you so much Chengay for jumping on. And until next time, keep smiling.

Thank you for listening to DSO Secrets. Join our community on Facebook at DSO Secrets and get answers and resources to some of your most challenging questions. If you want to get a copy of the seven secrets of any DSO, go to our website at DSO secrets.com and we will get that emailed to you. Remember, don't go at this alone. Let us be your team while you build your team.