170: Increase Revenue, Profit & Have Healthier, Happier Teams with the Dental-Specific Operating System

The greatest opportunity that you have in your organization right now is your team is unlocking and unleashing this human energy and human potential.

Hi, I'm Emmett Scott, and just like you, I've had my ups and downs in the dental industry, but times are changing. The DEO has built a map of how to succeed in one of the most challenging industries to navigate. On this show, we talk to dental industry leaders, solve problems, and get you the answers you need to face these challenging times and Thrive. Welco to DEO's Growth Secrets podcast for dental organizations. Now let's get started. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of DEO Growth Secrets. I'm your fearless host, Emmett Scott, and today I'm so excited to have Josie Sewell, fellow partner and deo, here with us. You know, so many times I get questions that really boil down to two areas. It's either people or something around processes, and how do we solve those. And what Josie's built out with the team at DEO I thought would be a perfect conversation for all of us trying to figure out, especially with all this inflationary environment and everything else, how do we maximize our people and processes? And there's lots of great ideas out there, but for me, I almost need frameworks, I need buckets to put those ideas in. So if it's a technology idea, where do I put that? If it's, you know, a culture idea, where do I put that vision idea, where do I put that? And what Josie and team have built out with the DEO map is a way for us as leaders to have a framework. You know, I've always been jealous because the IT guys have like so much software and help desk solutions where they can put everything in and submit tickets. And of course, you know, Ken and others would argue CFOs have tons of tools. Of course, Excel being the biggest one where they can map everything out, QuickBooks or whatever other software. But us as leaders, like, where do we go when we're making a decision, what frameworks when we're trying to hold a meeting, those kind of things that we have to do, or even just getting our ideas down on paper, we don't have the same type of resources and tools. So that's. Whenever I see these frameworks that are built out, I'm like, yes, I finally have a tool as a leader. So, Josie, great to have you on here and I think it would be fun because it's been a while since you've been on DEO Grow Secrets, especially with our new launch here. But tell A little bit of your background. And then I want to jump right into DEO Map and what that framework is doing for the groups you're working with, because it's massive.

I would be happy to note, while you were talking about help desk or tickets, I was thinking, like, wouldn't it be nice to say my business is not profitable and just submit a help ticket? I think that that's a great visual or an analogy for us to think about. So we're going to figure out how to do that. Yeah. I am Josie Sewell and I'm a partner at the deo. I'm a dental hygienist by training. And so I spent the first part of my career chair side and I really loved kind of the art and science of periodontal disease and treating patients. And it was a lot of fun, but it was a little bit repetitious for my personality. And so I taught in a dental hygiene school for a little bit. Then I got into coaching and consulting and did some writing and a bunch of other stuff and. And eventually found myself in a dental group. And I sat in various different seats on the executive team. So I started as the director of Hygiene and then I moved to the Director of Culture and then the Director of Operations and then the integrator or coo, we sold it to a larger group. Then I worked at Dental intel for a little bit, which was fun. And then Covid hit and found out that, like, my passion is coaching and teaching and working with people. So I started my own coaching business in the middle of COVID Dr. Eric Roman and I partnered up and then almost two years ago, we partnered with the DEO and here we are building really cool stuff.

Well, and as we look, I mean, dentistry, the clinical side and all the CE associated with that, tons of resources out there, but the reality is like 95% of the activity you're trying to figure out is people and processes within those four walls. Or if you scale to multiple locations, you're trying to do multiple four walls plus all the stacks of humans and how they communicate. How do we get all of these to connect? Right. I look at when we have an associate come into a practice, they've been focused on all this clinical stuff and some of the first conversations they have to have is with an X ray tech and what their needs are. And they're like, oh, well, I've never really had to take this on, or the office manager and scheduling and so forth. So this is just that, an even bigger level if you're a practice Owner or a group owner, you know, what is the framework? And so talk to us a little bit about DEO MAP at a very basic level and maybe you can even kind of organize some of the structure for us.

Yeah, I would be happy to. So we call deomap an operating system. And it is the only dental specific operating system. Now you're familiar with that term as it relates to like your phone or your computer, like Mac OS, right. Or iOS. But this is not technology, at least not yet. Right. But this is actually a business operating system. And so dentists in particular have a very systematic, methodical way that they do the work that they do every day in the chair. Right. The way they take care of patients, they know how is my, you know, what do I need to diagnose. And then once I diagnose it, how do I go in about and I do this crown or this filling or these implants. But they've never been given a systematic or methodical way to take care of this building business, their business. And that's what DEO MAP is it. It is an operating system, this systematic, methodical way to build your business. And we talk about the transformation that you experience with this process as you go from being a practice where maybe it's one or a couple locations, but it's primarily dependent on that owner dentist and what they can do with a handpiece for revenue generation. Right.

And then their personality. Right. That just kind of fills the room naturally.

Absolutely. A lot weighs on their shoulders. When you go from being a practice to a business, maybe you start to add some leaders around you, maybe you start to build some systems, add some associates or even locations. But as a business, it's still really dependent on you for your leadership, your decision making. You're really continuing to drive it. And then from a business to an organization, that's when we become a self managing organization. You know who you are, you know where you're headed. You have really great systems and process to duplicate results. You have an executive team, they're experts in their given field and they're all working together. And then we have got this. You have to have a level of systemization, but also leadership development so that each location operates, you know, profitably and contributes to the larger organization. So the goal of deomap is to help become a thriving organization.

And, and, but it's applicable at every level, right? Because every level you've got some humans running around that you need to be able to communicate, set a vision for all of those things. So whether I'm One location, multiple locations or full blown DSO or group D. EOMAP can help simplify, right?

Yes, absolutely. Give you clear. And a lot of it is also like a consultant will come in and say, hey, this is what I know, this is my expertise. You need to do it this way. To your point earlier, when we started, you like to have a framework. We very much built this around framework or principles. So whether you're a practice or an organization, your general practice or your specialty, one location or 50, it still applies to you. And you can customize it to get the results that you need and built on your model.

You know what this reminds me of is I remember when I really got into like some of the Steve Jobs stuff and it was like, okay, should I only wear like black turtleneck and jeans every day? Because then my brain is free. I don't have to make that decision. And I didn't quite go to that extreme, but I did come up with like, I'm only going to wear, you know, this set of clothing. And it really does simplify things quite a bit. And as a leader, every time something new is coming at you, you know, when you were talking about those different stages, I always think of it as like, entrepreneurship is like a hub and spoke system, but. But it's like there's some energy and being the smartest one in the room and you know, you're using your intuition and then your intuition starts getting exhausted. You know, it's like, what are we going to do in this situation? What are we going to do in this? You know? And again, in the beginning, when you're like picking out the URL and you're doing some design, it's fun, but it's like, Susie didn't show up 10 times. Now what are we going to do? Type stuff and she's the highest producing hygienist or whatever, it's like, oh, I'd really like to just have a process for some of this stuff. Right. And so you almost come back to as a leader, to get to the next level, you got to get out of the intuition game and you got to get into systems and processes, even with your people in communication. Kind of get to the black turtleneck and blue jeans that you just do on a consistent basis.

Yeah, absolutely. Decision fatigue is a really big thing, right. That we all face. And we've heard a lot about overwhelm and burnout and all sorts of things that the team members are going through. So if you're going through that as an entrepreneur, chances are your team is Also really, really going through that. And a lot of entrepreneurs will say, I just want to give my team freedom. I want to give them autonomy. I trust them, they're amazing. However, when they don't know should I turn left or should I turn right, they're experiencing that too. And what they're doing is they're quitting their job thinking that, you know, it's you causing this. When in fact, if we had some really clear processes and really clear expectations, they actually have a lot of freedom within those processes because they have those clear guardrails. So for anybody who's out there, that's like, no, we're creative, we're innovative. Structure creates freedom and structure creates autonomy. And without it, you have overwhelmed, burned out people who are stepping on each other's toes.

Yeah, people love us to delegate. They hate for abdication. Right. And oftentimes the way abdication works is like, I don't know what to do. You do it. By the way, if you do it wrong, I'm going to call you out. Right. It's just, it's not super empowering. It's just overwhelming. Or it's what happens when the controller steals a hundred thousand or bookkeeper stills. That's abdication. Right. Where you've just have no system or process, no leadership on how you actually follow through or have controls around things. You've just abdicated. And you do that because of what you said, Josie. You get burned out. And so you start abdicating. And it sounds pretty like, I'm just not a micromanager. I'm just going to let everybody. And it just kind of turns into chaos or people stealing money or whatever else, and then you swing the other way. Right. And then you become this micromanager. I'll never let that. Oh, man, how many organizations have we seen, you know, do that? Right. So this, this is that straight, narrow path. It's not on one extreme or the other. It's here's the systems and principles where people have the autonomy within a framework that you're still in charge, but maybe not in control of, of all the pieces, but you have the systems, the processes, the reporting.

Absolutely. What most people are missing that I've worked with is they just lack some clear structure. And I think because dentistry is, you know, wherever you are, whatever kind of model you have, the. It's like dentistry is dentistry. It doesn't seem that different. And so maybe you have some hygienists and some assistants and you've got a few doctors. We don't believe that we need an organizational structure or that we need to dive into roles and responsibilities. And yet that's what people are craving. That's one of the most highest requested things that people want to work with us is I just need some structure in my organization. And so with DEO map, that's actually where we start, is let's figure out, like, what is the structure of your organization? What departments do you need? What are the roles and responsibilities, and then what are the key performance indicators. There are lots of other operating systems out there if you're familiar with, like EOS or you've read Traction or their system and Soul or Scalable or scaling up. There's all of these other ones, but this one is dental specific. And so it's easy for us to say, oh, your five locations, you might start to look like this. And then when you get to 10 or 15, these might be the type of positions that you need or the people that you need to bring in. And here's how we measure success. A lot of dentists and teams are not really looking to reinvent the wheel. They're looking for this proven model of what has worked. And I think I've heard you even say on a previous podcast or a webinar that in this environment, we actually don't have the luxury of trial and error. We really need something that we know works, and we need to learn it from experts who have been there.

Yeah. The cost of each person, the cost of their time. Right. Is not put us in. The squeeze on that margin that's created in dentistry generally has eaten up any of our R and D money. It's eaten up our ability to be like, oh, they were working on the wrong thing. No big deal. Right. Everything needs to be now organized and we need to get maximum amount and people. Also, their turnover is based on effort more than anything else. Like, what's the effort I'm having to put in versus the income I'm getting. And it's interesting how they're judging effort. And a lot of it's what you just talked about, Josie. It's like if I'm having to do all the thinking, if there's no real structure here, but if I can show up, even if I'm having to make some level of strategic decisions, if there's good frameworks that I can use, then you're getting retention out of it. Now, I. I did a presentation up in at Washington State for some dentists, and one of the things they asked about was this. So I'm just going to Share this real quick. It's actually now if you're listening to the podcast, you're not able to see it. Did I, did I share that or no?

You did share and then you unshared.

Okay, well, it was just a fast share. So that's all you got. All right, so here it is. So we've got the do map. Do you just want to talk to a couple key points and we'll do more podcasts on this because again, I think this is critical right now with what's happening with labor costs and other things is being able to maximize the value of the people and they want it to.

Yeah, I mean, when you look at this, I think that what you just said is the biggest takeaway is that the greatest opportunity that you have in your organization right now is your team is unlocking and unleashing this human energy and human potential. And that's not even from us. I mean, Gallup has said that the greatest economic disparity that we have right now is the inability to harness human energy. So when you look at this, everything that we teach comes down to how do we unlock and unleash this potential, like this human energy in your organization. And when we do that, you will find that revenue, profit, all of those things get better. And not only that, but your team is healthier and happier and you have better retention. So this, we say that These are the 10 elements to create a self managing company. So within vision, the way that we define that is one, who are you? Meaning what are your core values you should hire, fire, review, reward and recognize around them. It also means why does your organization exist? What is your like just cause or your big why? Where are we headed? We talk a lot about your long term destination. So what does that look like for you? Maybe with revenue or impact or something. But what's the long term destination and when do you want to get there? We do also bring in a little bit of the hedgehog concept and help teams identify what their where their authentic power lies. So that's within vision. Once we get clear on this, everything else we do is reverse engineering your vision and getting you one step closer to it every time we're together.

And Josie, I think what be cool is if we did a podcast on each one of these because I think each one of these have their own framework. And if you're like, man, this is, you know, 10 elements. It's a lot of things. Yeah, leadership's a lot of things, right? And there's this is why you're getting exhausted is because these are the things your team's looking for from you. And again, oftentimes what we're trying to do is use our gregarious good looks and personality to solve problems and all that intuition. And the reality is, is they're like, no, I just. I need decisiveness. I need a decision. I need a framework. We were talking earlier, it's interesting that word decide has some of the same root words as homicide, pesticide, suicide. Right. It means to kill. It means to kill the other options and to be decisive. And so I, I look at DEO map and I'm like, this is the framework to help me when so many new ideas are coming in. You know, if you've got good team members, they're giving a bunch of ideas, you're struggling financially to figure out what's the best solution. You need to be able to decide on all of these things.

Absolutely. And the program within, what we call implementation, which is more direct coaching. A coach like me works directly with your leadership team, is really, I think that one of the best things we do for people is getting them laser focused on just a few things right every single quarter. And we really, really focus and carry those things to completion. But it's also helping people understand, like, hey, my quarterly priorities, those are projects. What does it mean to build a project or scope a project? How do I do project management? And that's a lot of things. Where many leaders. In dentistry, we were clinicians first. And project management is not something that we were taught. We weren't taught the business of dentistry. And this becomes that development for you and your team to understand the business and know how to drive and to drive things forward. But what I was pointing out was like, we help you get clear on those decisions and then we give you permission to say no to everything else. And a lot of people find freedom in that.

It's huge. We should talk more about project management. Of course. That's a passion of mine. Abby and I are actually doing a webinar for DEO members this Wednesday, just around that. So these are kind of the resources. If you're out there on your own trying to figure this out, Google stuff, etc. Can I just tell you, it's all in one place and it's been designed for dental. So if you're feeling a little overwhelmed emotionally, like all of us have, and you're like, where's that one place everything could be? First of all, come to our free resource, which is over on our Facebook page at DEO Growth Secrets number two you need to be coming to our summit. So go to DEO Dental group, look up the events. Come to summit. Tons of presentations there, tons of people to network there. But then join deo. Start looking at this implementation. I will tell you, start simplifying your life. Right. So Josie is over on our Facebook page. Feel free to ask any questions. I'm curious, if you're not using DEO map, what are you using? Are you using your intuition? Do you have some other cool framework? Like, I'd be interested, you know, maybe it has some special tool and we'll integrate it into DO map. But I, I would love to know, you know, what, what you all are using. So anyway, Josie, any final thoughts? I. I think we're gonna have to have you back a few times. I'd love to just go through each one of these. You know, we like to provide as much value as possible and we'll just have 10 podcasts really breaking down each of these map items. But any other thoughts?

Yeah, no, I would absolutely love that. I think, you know, grateful for the opportunity to be here with you and to share this and, you know, again, it's going to simplify things. But what I love about seeing people integrate this operating system is one, it gives them clarity on their business. But people also start to apply these principles to their life and they have healthier relationships. Their marriages are improving, their relationships with their children are improving. And so when we get into the operating, you'll see that we built this post Covid and you'll see that we have an element of like personal health and wellness. And also just taking a look at, like, how is your life? What is the harmony in your life? And at the end of this, Emmett, I think, you know, down the road, like, if we look back on the legacy of D E O, if we can help people build healthier, sustainable businesses where they're teams, this is all about the team being healthy and happy. But also you're better people for it and your marriages are better and your families are better for it. I think that's a huge impact because too long we've kind of sacrificed our personal lives and relationships for the business. And there's a way to have balance. And I think that we're providing that roadmap for people. And that's what gets me really, really excited about waking up and bringing this to the world.

That is freaking awesome. Everybody should just re listen to that. Make it like your mission statement. Put it on your wall, get it vinyled in your bedroom. Your wife will think that's weird, but do it. And like, that should be our goal. So, Josie, thank you so much for being on. We'll have you on again. If you want to have more of these conversations, come over to our Facebook page at DEO Growth Secrets. And until next time, keep smiling. Thank you for listening to deo's Growth Secrets podcast for dental organizations. Continue the conversation on our Facebook page. Group and meet other dental leaders. Get questions answered and the strategies you need to succeed. Plus, we have some free resources for you right there on the Facebook page. Remember, you're not alone. Let's do this together. Join DEO's Growth Secrets Group on Facebook. And until next time, keep smiling.