179: 3 Things You Need to Scale Your Dental Organization

We have what's called the DEO Growth 30. These are the 30 things that you need in order to grow a dental practice and our dental group. And I'm going to give you the first three that I think are foundational. 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 challeng challenging times and thrive. Welcome to DEO's Growth Secrets podcast for dental organizations. Now let's get started. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of DEO Grow Secrets. I'm your fearless host, Emmett Scott, and today I want to talk through three things. Wait, how many fingers do I have? Okay, three things. See this sign language? Three that you need in order to scale your your dental group. And what I'm finding is I have my office hours every week with the DEO members. We have 250 organizations in there. And as we talk through different strategies, I'm finding that there's foundational pieces that those who are scaling have in place and those who don't. We're struggling because we don't have those things in place. So I'm going to give them to you right out of the gate here. By the way, we have what's called the DEO Growth 30. These are the 30 things that you need in order to grow a dental practice and or dental group. And I'm going to give you the first three that I think are foundational. Now, if you've ever seen the DEO growth model, we have three areas that have to scale in order for you to scale your business. Number one is you, you personally are always developing. Number two is your team and number three is the business components. I'm not going into those right now, but just so you know, those are the three areas and I'm going to go one level deeper and say on the you piece, what is that one thing that I need to start with? And it's prioritization. Most of us got where we're at because we're hardworking, we have great ideas, tons of them. By the way, we see opportunities. Every time we walk into a restaurant, you, a store, whatever it might be, we see these opportunities for improvement, but we're terrible at sitting down and actually prioritizing them. Now at D. E.O. we have what's called the I dope system. We take ideas. It's an acronym. We take ideas, we document them, we organize them, and then we prioritize them before we execute. And if you look at a lot of the lack of traction that you have within your organization, it's because you have so many ideas you're trying to get to. Executed ideas. I'm trying to get executed ideas, I'm trying to get executed. And pretty soon you train your team that none of your ideas are important enough to take the time to scope them out, to organize them, and to follow through. And in fact, most of the time in these meetings, you know, I'll hear people say things like, we've been talking about this for a long time. And talking about things is not the same as project planning, strategically planning, organizing resources around that, and executing well. So as you think about moving from entrepreneur to a better executive, number one, personal development, we have to have a prioritization system. That's number one. Number two, if you go down to team, what do you need most importantly for the team? Simple. Some visual org chart. Now, we can get into job descriptions and KPIs and all of that stuff, but just starting off sitting down and figuring out what the org chart actually looks like, and then having the integrity to actually follow that org chart. What do I mean by the integrity? Sometimes I'll see people doing activities that's not clearly represented on the org chart, which partly comes from people like, hey, I'm just here to help, whatever I can do, you know? No, defined like, not my job, you know, so they have like, this really good culture around everyone jumping in and helping. But it actually creates a level of chaos and a little bit of the old notion, if it's everyone's responsibility, it's no one's responsibility. If everyone's in charge, no one's in charge. The org chart starts to say things. We were on with a team the other day, smaller team, and you had an individual who kind of acted as bookkeeper over here, an ops person over there, and so forth. You had a fractional CFO person who was helping with this, but they were also helping with that. By clearly defining that visually, it allows that team to get into greater momentum, right? It allows them to know what when am I leading and I'm the final decision, and when am I following? Like, how many times have you had a meeting around something Again and again and again. If you really dug in, it's like no one knows who's actually supposed to make the decision. Sometimes you get CEOs who are trying to be very community oriented. I've done this. I want to be collaborative, but at the end of the day, it's like someone needs to make a decision and say, great, I've heard all of you. Now here's how we're moving forward and put that over on your I dope system and start project planning that out. All right, so some kind of work chart. Now some of you are like, yeah, yeah, we've done that. I'd love to see that. Right? I'd love for you to look at that and like, does everyone agree to it on. In my companies, one of the agenda items, first one, after we do a positive focus, good news type stuff, is we review the org chart, like, every week. It's on there. And we just say, is there anything on here that needs to change? It's so helpful to just, like, get oriented. It's helpful for me to remember, okay, that's my role. I'm also helping here. I'm supporting there. Right? All right, so that's number two is org chart, quick interruption to your podcast. Patient centricity, quality of treatment, and productivity are the key to growing any practice. But especially for DSOs, partnering with Avoclar not only ensures an outstanding patient experience with clinically proven products, but ongoing support, training, and education opportunities that center around your growth strategy. Now back to the episode. Now imagine someone right now. If you just had your projects and clearly prioritized and organized, and, hey, we're doing this first and we're doing this second. And if you came up with a new idea, it went on the list, but everyone knew, like, Emmett's new idea didn't have to be acted on until it moved up on the list. And if the team had an organizational chart that they all believed was true, like, hey, if I make a decision here, I actually make it. It's not going to be, you know, someone else isn't going to micromanage it or whatnot. And I know what I'm fully responsible for. If you just had those two things, how much momentum does that give a team? Right? Like, everyone knows where to row and everyone knows their responsibility on the boat. All right, Number three, profit loss statement. Most of us are not getting our financial statements timely or accurately. Accurately meaning things aren't in the right place. And in fact, most of us just aren't using it because it isn't timely. So why is that so challenging? I mean, if I got money in the bank account, everything's fine, etc. Because a lot of the questions I Get is, hey, Emmett, we want to know buy this practice. We want to add an executive, we want to buy equipment, whatever it might be. Those are all financial decisions. I think we've gotten a little bit too into this Instagram hustle grit culture where we think entrepreneurship is like, I don't know, it's like running a half marathon or something. It's just like push through it, you know, it's like a physical workout when the reality is behind all of that's calorie counting. Right behind every business is really the financial understanding. And so we might have willed ourselves to this current state, which is awesome. But to get to that next level, we actually have to understand our numbers and, and get them in a timely manner that we can make decisions. Now I want you to imagine, and that goes under our business area. So imagine you team business and you've got three tools here. I'm talking out of 30, we have 10 for every one of these. But if you just had a clean prioritization system within your company, if the org chart was clear and if your financials were timely and organized well, which we have a great training that you can take to your accounting, your bookkeeping team, and tell them, here's how you need to organize my financials. Here's how my chart of accounts need to look practice by practice. And if I have a corporate or DSO set up, what does that need to look like? Think of the like peace of mind you would have with just those three things in place. Think of your ability for advisors to give you advice and say, yep, you could scale here, you can't do it here. Be careful of this. Look at this number here. Hey, this team member, we need to add this here, et cetera, and think about the peace of mind it would be, you know, as you're taking your shower and that new idea comes up, or you lay your head down at night, you think, oh, where are we at on that? Just having things prioritized. So start thinking about what's the next step for you? Do you need to get the prioritization you need to I dope some stuff. Do you need to get that org chart a little more clear or is the profit loss statement need to be trued up? All right, so those are three things out of our growth model and out of our growth 30 that I think would take you to that next level. If you want to have more conversation around this, of course, join DEO. That's the easiest. We've got WhatsApp groups, we've got weekly trainings and open office hours where our coaches help you move through all of this or come over to our free Facebook group. Ask questions, get answers from the community, et cetera. 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 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.