222: The Associate Retention Playbook Every Owner Needs

You know, I often say to be an entrepreneur, you have to be willing to tolerate a lot of things. To be a successful entrepreneur, you have to know what to not tolerate anymore. 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. Welcome to DEO's Growth Safety 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 we have Dr. Samson Liu on our podcast. We're so excited to have him along with a lot of our live audience here with deo. For those who are DEO members, just so you know what's coming up tomorrow, we have as regular our open operations office hours for any COOs, VPs of Ops, Operations Managers, Office managers, they can jump on there, talk to our fractional coos. We've got our periodontist virtual meetup on Friday and then next month we will have our next training on this Wednesday evening. If you haven't registered yet as a member for our DEO Summit 2025, it is June 12th through the 14th, so make sure you've registered for that. It's going to be down in Phoenix, Arizona and it's going to be awesome. We're going to really break down a lot around the profitability with team. We've got what's called the staffing blueprint. We're going to be rolling out unlocking profit at every revenue tier, the labor code, cracking the org chart for profit and precision pay bands and pathways, how to scale dental positions with clarity and much more. We've got some free event workshops to the Dental Group exit strategy which is going to be awesome. It's a playbook to get really peak valuation and then we're going to have another one called the AI Edge and Dentistry. So how do you innovate, secure and succeed in that? So if you are not a member of deo, feel free to go to the Dental Organization or Dental Entrepreneur Organization website at DEO Dental Group and you can register for an accelerator growth call there. So with that, Dr. Samson Liu, great to be with you this evening. I appreciate you you being on. Let me give a little bit of your background. You're the founder of SOH Dental, a national dental support Organization that's purpose driven, people first, focused and legacy minded. His lifelong passion is to build long term collaboration, collaborative relationships with doctors and unlock practice potential. He's a frequent speaker with an excellent industry reputation and relationships with key opinion leaders. And just a good guy, I have to say, he's just a good guy.

Thank you.

And smart man. So that's why we had you on is mostly for the smart part. So it'd probably be helpful for those who haven't met you just to tell a little bit about your history because you have a really cool career that not a lot of us have experienced. I mean really from the ground floor of the DSO world now onto your own dso. So you want to talk just quickly about that?

Sure. I mean, I spent 18 years with Heartland Dental. When I left Heartland, I was the chief clinical officer or executive vice president and so I learned a lot on how to a DSO made mistakes early on and corrected them over time because back in the day there was no blueprint. Like there's no deo. I wish there was DEO when Heartland Dental was around. Right. So. But because of that they made almost every mistakes possible back in the day. And so I think that experience really enabled me when I left Heartland 2018 to start my company to avoid some major pitfalls. So, so I really appreciate my experience there and really helped pivot it, you know, when I'm actually running my own company, then all of a sudden like, oh my God, you know, we didn't do this, we did this. That didn't work. And so it was just a lot of, you know, just lucky experience that I didn't even know was applicable until I was going through it myself and going through the same growing pains like, oh, so that's why they did this, that's why they didn't do that. And now I understood. So I was learning as I was working there without knowing it was going to help me with my own company. So I'm so the fast forward now six years into it, almost seven years into it. So we're about 40 locations in about 11 states and we are pretty far coast to coast. And we're just talking to Emmett about Hawaii because we have a substantial presence in Hawaii. And so we are, when we say we're national, we're truly national. And some of the biggest questions always ask how you manage practices so far away. But that may be another podcast.

Yeah, no, I mean, I love how you started that with the Mindset piece because I think too many times as entrepreneurs we think it means we have all the answers. And in fact, before we started, you know, you even said, hey, just so you know, I don't have all the answers, but you know, I often say getting married teaches you how to be married, having kids teaches you how to be a parent, and owning a business teaches you how to run a business. Right. And so, so true. On the job training, it's a little bit like Groundhog Day. You get to wake up every day and try again to see if you can get just a little bit farther. And you know, it's true. So I think having that long term mindset's critical. You had a pretty specific role too at Heartland. I mean, you were not only the chief clinical officer, but you were doing quite a bit on the turnaround. I mean, if you're good, they tend to put you in the worst places, don't they? Isn't that kind of what we do too, with our best people?

Yeah, I was kind of the, you know, I hate to use the word doctor whisperer, but that's what they kind of call me. So, so then, you know, I get stuck with the worst practices possible. And most of the time is, is about, you know, being building trust with the doctors and how to help them, help them see what they don't see. And that's basically my role. And I do a lot of on site visits to my offices, especially the ones in Hawaii. I have to really go there quite often.

Right. How kind of you.

Yeah. And you know, and, and it's a lot of it. It's about the art of how to point out the things that doctors don't see in the practices. And to my surprise, most people are much smarter than you think. If you make, help them see what they're missing and guess what, they'll start working on it and improve it. And so I think that's, you know, I think that ties a little bit into, you know, hiring and retaining associate doctors. A lot of times it's not really about squeezing every last drop from your associates because that, that speaks to the culture of the company and speaks to how you treat people. And sometimes doctors, no matter how nuanced they feel that. And so I think one of the secret sauce, I don't have a secret is that you gotta really treat doctors with respect. And I mean really treat them with respect and not treat them like, you know, a factory line worker, which we don't, none of us do that. But what happens is our actions consistent with what we say. A lot of times a lot of people say, oh yeah, we we're doctor first. And then when you talk to the doctors, like they don't feel like they're really doctor first. And so then that's some. So that would be something that we have to bridge the gap into what you say and what you mean, is it really actually in action? And so those are some of the things that we make mistakes on early on, right. We, we really try to push doctors hard. As we're growing, we're very aggressive and I think that's. We learn from that. And over time we learn to a very, a very poor or guiding relationship with doctors and we don't push the doctors. And so we have very, very high associate retention even without equity. So I think our average industry average is probably 89% in doctor retention. And single digit doctors have actual equity in the company. So all these are purely based on relationship and not based on, oh, you have equity, so you're stuck here, you can't leave, or things like that. Or they're sticking around because they want to wait for the next payout. And so it's not like that. It's really about purpose in action. So a lot of people ask every other seminar that I went to, they always talk about, oh, you got to have a good culture. And good culture, it's great. And people are like, I'm sick of hearing good culture, good culture, culture, what does that mean? So for me, it's not about having good cultures, it's about really having actionable purpose. So what that means that you have a purpose or we have a purpose being people first. So being people first is not something you just say, it's something you have to do. If you say it all the time doesn't make it true. You have to actually do things to make it true. And so I think what we do spend a lot of time on is how do we really define what are the actionable things underneath your value or your purpose statement? And how do you make it happen consistently day to day? And it's kind of like what you said earlier, Groundhog Day, right? Is we're just repeating the same thing over and over and eventually that becomes the culture.

Yeah. Okay, I want to untangle a few things because you just dropped a bunch of. No, you just dropped amazing gold there. So let's start with taking care of doctors. I think that's a real interesting one because it sounds, sounds kind of easy or obvious on the surface. I've always liked the title DSO because if you break it down, it's Dental Support Organization. And I think an organization that's supporting the clinicians is what you're talking about here. What's always weird for us, I think, as you scale, is that the patient moves from being your primary customer to the doctor being your primary customer, and the patient kind of becomes the customer of your customer. Right?

Yep.

And I think where a lot of clinician owners get stuck and they're just uncertain on what to do is what does it mean to support a clinician? You know, And I think our human nature is to work at the extremes of things. So on one extreme is, well, it just means to give them full autonomy and you never talk to them again. You know, you just go out to dinner, but you never talk about clinical things with them. Of course, the other extreme is, you know, you're over their shoulder looking and go, no, do this, do this.

More, more, more. Right.

They kind of feel like it's at one of those. And I think when you're trying to get to the middle and say, well, what would it mean to mentor a clinician? What would it mean to develop them? Can you kind of break that down, operationalize that for us? Because, you know, I have all the time, like, I. I want to hire an associate or hire.

But I don't.

I don't know what it means to actually train them. And what data should I use? How should I use it so that it doesn't become something that I'm stepping on their ego.

Yeah, it's a. It's a. It's a very nuanced question because there's. Not all doctors are the same. Right. So therefore, we have to really treat each associate differently. So the biggest thing that we do really well is. Is retention is. You know, I know the title is oh, Hiring Associates, but I have never had any issues hiring associates because you put an ad out or you hire a hiring agency recruiting agent, you're going to find some doctors, interview for what you, you know, for the job. So the really, the key for me is that retention is really what it's all about.

That's almost your KPI as the chief dental officer and owner as. How good's my retention? Right.

Yes. Because if I now I don't mind having turnover. Like, if a doctor doesn't. Being a people first, we're very patient. So we give people probably a little longer than they should have to prove themselves to be, you know, to be worthy of the position. And so at some point, we're gonna. We're gonna have to cut the separate. Cut the cord and do a separation. But until then, we support them till the end. So when I do, I do a lot of on site visits like I was mentioning earlier, and I go mentor doctors always think that I'm there to mentor the doctors. So it's very typical. I go visit office. You know, they know I'm coming. The whole office is nervous, oh, you know, owner is coming, doctor is nervous, oh my God, what am I doing wrong? Why am, why is he coming? Right. It's always a very negative before they go to positive. And then I go there and I spend a lot of time. I used to spend about two days every time I go. And people always so surprised that I don't actually mentor as much the doctor and more about mentoring the people around the doctor and how to support that doctor. So when I'm mentoring a doctor, I'm actually mentoring the doctor to see what the practice is not doing. Right. And what I'm doing there is training the team and mentoring the team to show them what it's supposed to be doing and how they're supposed to support that doctor to the next level.

Can you give us an example? Because it would be really helpful. Like, can you talk about a practice you went into recently, during the last couple months here and kind of an opportunity you saw that really changed things.

Yeah. So for example, like I was in, I was just in an office last, well, week and a half ago. I'm on spring break right now and it was in Nashville. And the doctor, there's two doctors there and they both have been there for several years and they're. And they just don't produce what the office can offer. Right. It's. The office should be doing twice as much as they're producing. So that's why you go and visit and see what's wrong.

Right.

The doctors, good doctors and their clinician, they're very good clinicians. The team is average. So when I go in there and talk to these doctors, I'm actually making them hold the team accountable to what the things they're doing. There's only three things that every dental office do, schedule, produce and collect. So what I always do is I go in there and I focus on schedule. Now we do as a dso, we do have scheduling guidelines for each practice and all that stuff. But one of the reasons they don't do well is because they don't follow the scheduling guidelines. So. But that's not really a mentoring doctor issue now. That is a scheduling issue with the front desk that's, you know, walking out with no, no two appointments and Things like that. So when I'm going in there, the first thing I always need to make sure is, am I blaming the doctor? Always is. OCD is always at fault. And the answer is no, it's not. It's hardly ever the doctor's fault. It's probably only 30% of the time it's the doctor's fault. So then it is my job to make sure to give everybody a chance. I need to make sure that the team around them are solid. So if you ask me, 80% of my success on onsite visits is not mentoring the doctor, it's actually mentoring the front desk, mentoring the assistants, mentoring the hygienist on how they should treat the doctor. And when I'm training the doctors per se, it's not about training a doctor. I'm just helping the doctors see what they're not seeing. Are you seeing, are you not saying that this, this person is not doing what they're supposed to do? Are you not seeing that they're not doing a two on one transfer? Do you, do you say something in morning huddle when there's, there's some holes in the schedule? Do you know what to do when there's issues in the office? A lot of times it's about leadership for the doctor and that's what we're

focusing on, mentoring them. You're mentoring them on the support that they should deserve and correct. You know, I often say to be an entrepreneur you have to be willing to tolerate a lot of things. To be a successful entrepreneur, you have to know what to not tolerate any. Basically teaching them like, hey, you can't tolerate that these X rays are bad every time. You can't tolerate that your schedule is all wonky, you know, otherwise you won't be able to produce, you'll go home more exhausted, all of those things. Is that right? And what I'm.

So what happens is this is a spectrum of, you know, support. Right? So once we make sure the offices are doing well around these associates, then we then now there's no more places for the associates to hide. So then, so over time, when you build a relationship, trust with a doctor, not, oh, you know, they're here to help me become a leader, help me become a better doctor with a better team. Then everything else after that. Now we have a good bond. And so everything after that makes it easy. If you need to implement something, for example, you want to implement something new, a clinical initiative, then you're going to get the doctor's buy in because doctors know that now we're on the same side. So I'm inspiring alignment, I'm inspiring trust. And so a lot of times we don't push things out because that's what happens. We push things out before the doctors are ready. And that's why they quit. They feel like you're too much pressure on them to produce or too much focus on production and all these things. So a lot of times it's really about the nuance, the art of how do you build trust relationship? By first building a good team around them, then you build the trust with the doctor and then it becomes a partnership where there's a give and take. If they want something, we ask for something in return. So that's how we build a partnership going forward.

I love this because if they have all the support, you're killing two birds with one stone. One is you're getting the doctor the right support so you know that they are getting what they need. And number two, they're seeing that you care about them directly or indirectly. And so when you get to step two, having done all that, if there are clinical capabilities things, they know that your heart's in the right place and you're just trying to elevate them. It's almost an extension of support now, not a component of criticism. It's like, hey, I want your career to be better. I've done all this work with the team, now I need to get you the clinical capability to be able to excel as well.

Yeah, yeah. And I think that, I think that work upfront is what is the key to retention. A lot of people tend to skip all that and just go right to, hey, you gotta produce more, you gotta prep the crown two minutes faster. You gotta, you know, you gotta learn how to do surgical extractions. And it's okay if that's the company, the philosophy, you need that super GP model, whatever. But I think for us, we have a different philosophy. We don't have a super GP model. So we are not pushing for super clinical skills in the doctors, but what we are pushing for is good leadership skills in those doctors.

How do you think of your org chart? If I just zoom out for a second here, you know, you're going around doing some of this clinical leadership you've got. You said 40 plus locations all around the country. Can you just walk us through that? I think it'd be helpful for some people. You know, they might not be at that level yet, but just thinking through what scale looks like, what's your tier, kind of move down through the org chart. And how does leadership work? Because obviously you can't be in 40 locations, you know, every month.

Yeah, I mean. I mean, so you talk about generally how to build a support platform. Is that what you're thinking?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. And then kind of who drives leadership generally from the office level, you know, up and down.

So the. The. I mean, so I have a. So as a doctor, if I want to become a DSO and a leader, the first thing I did was to figure out what I'm not good at and finding people to support the weaknesses that I have. Right. That's part of the EOS book about visionary and being integrator. So for me, I really came down to four areas. I came down to I need somebody that knows numbers and metrics and data and all that. I need a genius in data. So it took me a few tries to find the right cfo, but I finally found the right CFO that could do the things that I expected him to do. And then I need somebody who's really good at building relationships. So that's why I brought my COO in, Kesha, and she's been with me for almost two decades. And so I trained her from the ground up. Back in the day, I took her over, took her with me, and so she can build relationship with everybody and anybody. And that's how we drive the relationship culture all the way down to office level. So she oversees several regional directors, and each regional directors oversee about eight or seven or nine offices, let's say. And so then the relationship goes from there. And then the regionals have relationships with the office managers. We don't always have an office manager in every office, but we have, you know, maybe one manager that will maybe oversee two or three offices. But then most of the time, we always have an office manager overseeing partially or wholly in, you know, in one area. And so that's kind of the operational structure there, which is not unique. It's pretty standard. And then on the. Yeah. And then on the support center side, then we have Amanda, who is my chief strategy officer. She's really the integrator for the company. So she's the one that drives initiatives of implementation and drives accountability. And that's where we do all the negotiation centralization and all the things that we need to make the support platform fully supportive of all the practices. And she's overseeing the entire support center. And then what I'm good at is I'm good at building relationships with doctors and growing the company. So then I'm in charge of business development and I'm in charge of clinical leadership in the company. And as we grow bigger, I would probably have positions in those, you know, you know, to replace myself in some of these positions over time as we get bigger. But I'm really good at it and I enjoy doing it. So, you know, so that would be something I figured out.

The Chief Demo Officer is way more important of a position than the CEO because the Chief Dental Officer in a DSO environment establishes what the clinical standard of care is going to be. And really the CEO, if you're, if we're being strict on positions here, is really supporting the dental support organization that's following through on the CEO's vision, you know, so it's really a support position. Can I ask a real tactical question? Just because I think this would be helpful. The scheduling piece is so critical and I think people don't realize how important that is because the one thing as an entrepreneur you can't create more is time. Right. So how you're using that time at the practice level. Of course, there's lots of. On how to use it personally, but how to use it at the practice level most effectively, I think. So as we coach members, we see, you know, them having way too many exams for the doctors or, you know, they have this treatment right after this treatment and I mean, it's just so difficult for the doctors to get in flow, you know.

So are you talking about schedule as in the office schedule or something?

Office schedule, yeah. So.

So office schedule. So we have an extensive. Okay, we went through an extensive analysis of schedule before we came out with a scheduling guideline. So first of all, you have to have somebody that can pull those data, right. And analyze the data. Number of days, number of patient availabilities per day based on number of providers in each practice. And then we come up with what is possible. Right. And then we come up with the scheduling guidelines for hygiene and with scheduling guidelines for doctors and by column. Right. We do the rock sand water or rock sand mud scheduling guideline. I don't know if you guys heard of that. It's pretty common. I wouldn't say. Like I said, we don't do anything unique. The biggest thing is not about knowing what the concepts are. It's knowing how to hold accountability. And so 90% on the concepts. Yeah, yeah. Everybody knows that we should do this and do this and do that. You know why nobody does this? Because nobody verify. So what we do is our unspoken, unspoken core value in the company is trust and verify. That's what we do. And so Everything we do we trust, but we always verify with metrics and that's how we track everything. And so we come up with report on scheduling and the scheduling guidelines. So basically, for example, you know, like hygiene exam for new patients should be 45 to 50 minutes, right? So some offices schedule an hour and 10, right? And so that's something that we need to work on over time with reporting and with, you know, conversation with hygienists and doctor and things like that. So sticking the schedule, I mean, this

would just be fun for our listeners and members here who are listening in. Can you give us, I don't know, five components of your scheduling guidelines that is helpful?

I mean, I think that the structure is that we. So everybody every. So we do the rock, sand and mud, right? So that's the first scheduling guideline and the structure. And then we have specific times line for each procedure. So rock would be, you know, wicked crown build up and crown will be like an hour and a half, I guess, something like that. Then sand would be everything that's less productive, right? So it'd be like five fillings or less. And then, you know, seats and denture and all everything else in the third. So what we do do is that we do an informal fourth column called teamwork column for conversions. So that's what we also do. And so we train on that because on average, our study shows that offices that convert, on average, they produce about 30% more than what's on the schedule. So while we have a scheduling guidelines, our goal for each office is to help them Convert same day 30% of what is scheduled so that. So then what happens, the morning huddle is that they need to look for opportunities on the schedule that you can convert 30%.

Now what are common things that they could convert that they come up with?

So there's, there's really two types, you know, hygiene patients converting to doctor side to do work that's pretty common. So the other thing for hygiene schedule is convert doctor patients to hygiene when there's openings. Because a lot of people don't actually go the other way. But a lot of times hygienists are sitting there getting paid and they're not doing anything for an hour. So a lot of times we always make the hygiene to go over there. And then the third one, the most common one, is just do more on the patient that's already scheduled. And that is what the chaos always set in. And that takes some time to train the officers to get used to a, you know, calling audible on the Schedule and try to make changes to the schedule, because everybody hates the schedule change during the day. And so we have to organize chaos in the office. And that's what we really focus on training on the scheduling guideline. The scheduling guideline is only phase one, because if everybody just do what they're scheduled, that's really easy. But what's hard is doing more than what's on the schedule. And so that's really the skill set that we focus on.

Who leads through that, who kind of owns that metric of, hey, we're going to try to hit 30% more than what's scheduled. Is that an office match or is that the doctors?

That is the regional office, the regionals and the office manager. And that's where we hold them accountable to really sticking to the scheduling guidelines. And then the morning huddle is where the conversion always. The opportunities always present themselves. And so the biggest problem with most offices is that it's not they don't have opportunities on the schedule. It's not that they're too busy. It's that they just don't look for those diamonds in your own backyard, and then you don't convert. So conversion is really key to. So to me, like, I look at an office, I would look in office as scheduled and look at an office as actual production. And I could tell how good the office is based on how much they convert every day and how open and flexible and positive the mindset is. If they always schedule to go and they always achieve exactly what schedule, to me, that's not a blessing, that's a curse. I say, oh, that office is stubborn. They're rigid, they're not open to change. That's an office I need to visit, you know, so that's really. That's exactly why I need to go in there and break all those rigidity and really make it all flexible and nimble and be open and flexible. And that's what I go in.

You think the reason they're hitting just a goal is because. Because they're inflexible on, like, it's not that the patient doesn't need more care. They're just like, well, this is why I scheduled today. And you're trying to pull that instead of having the patient come in three times, why wouldn't we just get as much done today as we could? Something like that.

Yeah, it's actually very easy. I usually make very little changes to show them what's possible. So, for example, in this office, Nashville, I just told them to do one thing, and the one Thing I said was, now I would say for the first day, observe everything. I see what the problems are, and there's a lot of issues, but you have to prioritize what you focus on. You don't go in there, oh, there's 15 things I saw wrong. Fix it, I'll come back next month. And you know, no, you just pick one or two things and you want to celebrate small wins and little successes. So I told them, okay, I want you just one thing. I want you to shrink every schedule by 10 minutes tomorrow. That's it. And I said, that's it. I just want you to shrink every doctor's appointment by 10 minutes. I'm not asking for anything. I said, all you do is shrink everything by 10 minutes. And then guess what happened? They probably didn't even notice every schedule was shrunk by 10 minutes because they were just so focused on giving every patient more than enough time. Right? So then you realize that really you don't the time expand to what? You know, you have an hour to prep a crown, you're going to use an hour. You have five minutes, you're going to use five minutes. So when you only shrink 10 minutes per appointment, they don't even feel the pain. But then you know what, that does it, that changes the mindset right away. Everybody's like, oh my God, we can do everything and on time and run on time and we're producing more because everything's shrunk by 10 minutes. And guess what? You're able to do more and shock more and convert more. So now I open the door to flexibility and possibility. So then it's easy now because I build trust, I build relationship without causing life changing things in the office, it's easy to ask for the next thing to change. And so that's how I do step by step, just these little tweaks. But those little tricks is what is you need to do it day in and day out. And that's what makes the biggest difference. Like you say Groundhog Day, right? Everything just got to be consistently doing over and over and over.

I'm going to call it the Samson Lou tweaks. All right, so one of them is shrink the schedule by 10 minutes. Every appointment by 10 minutes.

Yeah. Just to see if they can do it right. And they, and always, I always challenge them. They all say, oh my, you know, they just all surprised, but they're always excited about the challenge. And you know, once you shrink 10 minutes, you know what they can do, they'll find more places to shrink because now they feel like, oh, I can do anything. I can.

Yeah.

This is actually funny.

What's the second tweak?

What's the second second tweak? The second trick is morning huddle. Most. Most people learn morning huddle really well, but I have been to so many offices, including my own, and no matter how well we teach them, they never actually do it correctly.

They look like, yeah, I want to hear.

Well, it depends on. Now, there are different kinds of morning huddles, but what I've seen, and it could be different for all you guys, so I don't want to generalize, but most of the office I've seen, they just go through the motions in morning huddle. They don't actually find value in the morning huddle.

They just.

Oh, there's 15 things I need to do in morning huddle. So I. I get all these data, I do all these chart preps, and I just go through all the things. It's a very busy but ultimately not very productive Morning huddle is what most.

It's like an administrative coordination. It's like a bureaucracy. It's an administrative coordination meeting. You're adding in this element of like a. This is a game we're about to play, which is find 30% in this. Correct you when you came in this morning.

There's. There has to be a purpose to morning huddle.

Yeah.

What if I have asked everybody, what is the purpose of morning huddle? How would you answer that question? How would anybody ask. If I ask all of you right now, what do you think your purpose for morning huddle really is? You can put in the chat. I'm curious what you guys say, actually.

Yeah. I wonder how many it's number one. I don't know. We haven't been able to get people to do morning huddle number number two. My doctor's never showing up to morning huddle, so I don't know what to do about that. You know, Number three. Well, we just review the schedule and, you know, maybe share a little bit of good thoughts or. Yeah, so.

So this actually. So this. Okay. Justin did a good job. Align team, check in, identify bottlenecks, identify opportunities. Right. That's probably what everybody else does, Right? So now you're going through this. Okay, we have an opening, a nine. We're opening at three. We have. We have these opportunities to convert. We have these. You know, we have two patients back to back here that's kind of reading all this stuff. Right. I almost fell asleep every time I go to morning huddle when I Go through all this because there's only one overriding reason why you do morning huddle is to figure out how do you add more production to the day. But you have to identify what the barriers to identifying those opportunities. So, for example, I only care about how much time the doctor's time is for the day for each patient. The reason for that is if the goal for the purpose moneyhole is 30% conversion, right? So then if you tell me there's five openings here that doesn't actually do anything, what I need to hear is I have Mrs. Smith coming in here. She has two crowns on the schedule. That is not that needs to be done, that we can convert today. That is what that. But that's where the extent of the morning huddle usually stops. What I need to do is the next level. Beyond that is, is Mrs. Smith ready to do those two crowns today? And if not, why not? And what can we do today to convince her to get those two crowns also started today in addition to what she's had on the schedule? That's the only thing that matters in Mourning Huddle. I don't need to know that there's six openings. I do not need to know that bottlenecks. I just need to know is Mrs. Smith gonna do what is unscheduled today and if not, why not? And what can we do to help her to say yes to that?

What are common reasons? I mean, she's on the schedule. I would assume she's doing the work. What would be common reason she's not gonna do it?

It's either time money or it's mostly time money and insurance. Right? And fear. Sometimes it's fear, but most of the time I want to know like this. This is what I expect to hear from every business assistant about Mrs. Smith. Mrs. Smith is ready to do two crowns today. She can't afford them all today. So I offer to payment a payment plan over the next six months. So she's ready to get started today. That'll be ideal conversation. Then we know we're going to convert. We know we've got the 30% coming. But what I usually hear is Mrs. Min has two crowns that need to be done today. There's nothing beyond that. So I need more information. That means I need them to actually reach out to their patients and really get to the bottom of what's going on behind what's on the schedule. That's what I want to know. I can read the schedule. Everybody can read the schedule. Everybody can see the openings on the schedule. I Don't need to regurgitate all the things that we know. I need to. Need to. I only want to know the things that I can't see on the schedule. So I need to know that Mrs. Smith is really, you know, really can't afford the two crowns. Maybe when you talk to the patient today, you know, I think she's open to it, but she needs Dr. To talk to her one more time to really reassure they're needed and necessary and that we can get started today. So that's the information I want to hear. I don't want to hear anything before that because that's pointless. I can see that Mrs. Jones has five filings to be done.

Okay.

Is he going to do today? And if not, why not? Tell me why. That's what I wanted to do. So what happens is when you do a good morning huddle, that trains the team to be a better listener and communicator with their patients. So now when they're talking to patients, they are thinking that they're not going to say to Mrs. Smith, like, oh, you know, confirm your appointment for tomorrow. It's like, hey, you know, I saw you have two pounds. You know, is there any reason why you can't do it or not? And just get more. Now that's where the real training comes from.

So, okay, this is another Samson Liu tweet, which is the confirmation calls. Yes.

That's where the real thing is. It's training them how to talk to patients and get deeper understanding to get to the next level.

It has the treatment in the call. Right. And asking the question, is there anything. Is there any reason why you won't be getting those done? So then, because I was wondering how. Now you. You said you're business assistant. Is there a title actually in the practice called business assistant? Or how do you think about, like, who's prepping this for. Somebody's gotta be kind of the leader of the huddle.

It's. It's. The business assistants are the ones that prep for all the patients. And hygienists sometimes prep for their own hygiene patients to convert for hygiene purposes. Business assistant.

Is that a front desk?

Yeah, that's our front desk. That's. That's official title for fundamentally.

I love it. No, I love it. Yeah. Business assistant. Again, it's kind of focused on a result over just an activity.

You have to.

But what.

What I've noticed, like, it's really hard to train the team without showing them the morning huddle. So I can train all the team, like, oh, you need to prep the charging, the finals going on. But nobody does this because they don't connect the prepping the call with the morning huddle. And so I have to show them with the end in mind. So I always start the morning huddle and then work on that. And so then as they work backwards, then they will work towards that morning huddle the way that it needs to be.

Because it's this result you're driving towards this result. And the morning huddle is now a support system to the result. The confirmation call is a support system to that result, Correct?

Yes.

All of these things are feeding. So I think one thing you're laying out is the only way to be a leader is you have to have a clear metric that you're driving towards. It can't just be a foofy culture. We all want to get along. Good luck, hope you do well kind of thing.

Once you get a conversion culture, then the office is there, there's the user conversion used to pivot. They used to be flexible and think, and then all of a sudden the production jumps up. So, for example, that paid that office, that the next day they did $38,000. And because they were. They're looking for conversion, they were really serious about what to do. And they went from. They doubled two.

Two doctors.

Yeah, double. Double. 38,000.

Double is 38,000. So you were already doing.

They were doing about 15 to 19 on average. But then, you know. Yeah. Wow.

That. That was. That's like cash collectible or that's like UCR pretend money.

No, that's real money. That's. It's all cash. So it's all for your service.

It's all.

So the fees are much higher too. So it's not that hard to tweak those things.

Tell me how you think about conversion. And, you know, one of the things we were talking about in our, in our coach training meeting today here at DEO was this number of. You know, if you have a team that's converting 50% of what gets treatment planned, then you have to basically be treatment planning twice as much as what your goal is for the day. Right. So how do you back into that same concept? If, if you say, hey, my conversion rate is X, then that means I got a treatment plan Y in order to hit the daily goals.

I don't know if you actually do it that way because you. Well, no, we, we, we. We kind of meet the doctors where they're at, because. So, for example, like, every time doesn't matter, the same office. Right. If you change. The doctor is a different office. The doctors are very different one for the other. So you almost had to meet each doctor where they're at, build a trusting relationship and then work it back, work it up from there. But what happens is when doctors can. What I find is that most doctors, even the worst dentists that I met, can always do more than what they were doing. So the key right away is unlock that. And that's why we went over all the things that we did earlier. Because you got to make sure that that doctor is all already living up to his or her full potential, whoever, wherever they are at that point. And then after that, then over time we can introduce things to make them even more efficient. So to me, the biggest concept from a clinical perspective, if we're putting a business head down, put a clinical hat on, it was truly doctor mentoring. The next step is actually not clinical mentoring is managing multiple operatories. The number one struggle for most associates to do more is they don't know how to manage more than one patient at one time. So the worst associate, the one that worked well, one chair and they work one patient at a time. Right. And so even if they have two operatories, they very rarely use all two operatories. They might just work out a one and they overflow on the second one. So then because they don't know how to manage more than one patient at one time. So to me it's not about actually scared. Treatment planning is not the biggest issue. It's mostly case acceptance. That's the biggest issue with most doctors. If you look at most analysis of doctors scheduled treatment plan versus case acceptance. Most doctors case acceptance about 30 to 40% and that'll be pretty high. So then it's not. And that's the worst doctors. So a lot of times it's not about treatment planning. It's really focused on face acceptance. That's. So that's really about talking to the patients, getting to. Yes, right. So those are the things I actually work on first with the doctors actually working on doctor like verbiage. And the second thing work with a doctor is multi chair efficiency. And those are the two things that work. But you'll notice that all those things do not actually involve clinical procedural training or mentoring. It's all around communications and time management. And those are the next things that really raise the doctor to the next level. Not necessarily prepping a crown faster by two minutes. It doesn't matter if you prep the crown an hour or two minutes. If you only see one patient an hour, it really doesn't matter.

So I think we're getting to the same answer. I like your approach and how you articulate it much better. Yeah. So you're saying, hey, the way I like to approach this is just say they're going to treatment plan. What they're going to treatment plan. I'm going to focus on that. Whatever they are, treatment planning. I'm going to work on the case acceptance piece. And then from a modality perspective it's actually about the multi chair movement that concerned about is there, is there a give me one or two tricks on the case acceptance that you're like, this is what everyone's doing wrong. If they just do these one or two things, they're not even that good. They just need to just do those and it'll just move it up just a little bit. Just doing that on the case acceptance.

So. So I give you two. Yeah. Okay. So the one trick that I would recommend for communication with the patient is used the PCSB method. Problem, consequence of no treatment solution and benefits. I think some of you have heard that here and there and it's been around, you know, talked about and, but we really embrace that and we teach that. So most doctors just jump from problem to solutions. They never go to the consequences. Oh, you got a broken tooth, Mrs. Smith, you need a crown. Right. So that's 99% of most doctors. They will never admit to it, but every time I hear them talk, it's always the same. They go right to the solution without talking about the consequences. So the trick is we kind of

assume, I mean this is human nature. But when we're really smart at something, we actually assume people understand consequences when they don't. Right, they don't.

So it's actually. So actually what I DO is a 5 minute, 5 minute conversation. Like 30 seconds on a problem, 4 minutes on consequences and 30 seconds on solutions and benefits.

Okay, wait, I like this breakdown. Say that again.

5 minute PCSB. So problem is 30 seconds. 4 minute on consequences of no treatment and 30 seconds on solutions and benefits.

I love it. So like it's just heavily talking about the consequence. It's not just you need to include the consequence. The consequence needs to be whole part. 80% of the 5 minutes reality is

not actually 5 minutes. But I want people to understand that you need to just verbalize the problem and really talk about the consequences. So there's actually. So the consequences needs to be not just clinical, it needs to be life and social consequences. It like if it's hurting, you could miss work. That's a consequence. It's not. It's hurting. There's an infection spread. There's a root and the periapical. You're going to get a abscess. Those are great clinical consequences. But you have to talk about life consequences. Like you're gonna miss work or, you know, you, you know, you've been in pain. You know, on a Friday, there's no dental office open and you have, you know, like, you know, you have a wedding coming up. You really want to get this fixed, you know, don't give us enough time to, to take care of the treatment. You may not be able to get to the wedding with beautiful, nice teeth. You know, just. Those are consequences that are not related to clinical.

Yeah.

And, yeah. And so what happens is once you get through all that, guess what? The patience is the one that comes up. Oh my God. What do we do? What can we do? Oh, well, we can do a crown, you know, and fix it and we'll look and feel just like your actual, your natural teeth. I just finished My solution. Benefits. 30 seconds.

You.

I don't like to describe what they are. I don't describe what they are. The assistant can do that when I leave the room.

Got it. Do you, do you like to do the consequence? Kind of almost like a friend, like, here's why I'm concerned about this, because this is going to happen, this is going to happen, this is going to happen. But it's almost like you are just, you're just, you know, empathetic towards the realities of where their life is headed, you know?

Well, it is. If you talk all clinical, then you sound like you're talking down on them. But if you talk about life consequences now you're a friend, you're really looking at them holistically. Right. That's really what you need to bond with other people, is that you need to, need to make sure they understand here that, hey, you're not just here for your teeth. I'm here because I'm worried about your kids. I'm worried about your time off work, you know, and things like that. And you know, we open so you're

really facing them and just talking to them as a friend. Is that kind of how you like?

It's really informal, it's really casual and it's a lot less pressure because we have well meaning intentions and patients need to know the consequences before they can make a decision. And that's the, that's why, like, if you don't get the consequences, they always feel like something is Missing. So you have to really focus on what that is and then talk about the treatment. Now there are, I'm, I'm. Because of time. I'm oversimplifying this because there are some different options for treatment. And the next biggest mistake I see is presenting too many options instead of giving patients your recommendation of what the best treatment is. And that's really the next thing that we have to work with doctors on after the PCSB is the treatment prioritization and recommendation.

One of the most powerful stories I heard on this is a friend of mine, his mother in law had breast cancer and she went to a doctor and the doctor said, well, there's three things we could do. And she said, well, which one do you recommend? He said, you know, all three have their consequences that are done. And she said, let me go get a second opinion.

She went to too much doctor. Yeah.

The doctor said, I know exactly what's wrong. I've done thousands of these procedures. I can do it on Thursday. There's one solution I think is fabulous. When do you want, can you do it Thursday at 3? And she said, yes, that'd be great. You know, like, yeah, people, we think that they want options, they actually just want leadership.

Yeah, yeah.

The.

So the biggest thing to do is just present one treatment. When, when, when it's time to talk about actual treatment, you would talk about two things. Talk about the treatment and why, why you recommend it and you talk about the treatment that you don't recommend and why you don't recommend it. So most people only stop at the first half. They only present, oh, you need a crown, because the crown's the greatest and the best in things in sliced bread. And they stop there. And that's when patients feel like, well, what if there's another option? And I didn't hear anything. So they always ask, well, can you do a filling? Right? Because they always want to know what another treatment option. And then you go, well, you know, the filling doesn't work out, it's too big. You know all this stuff, right?

So you're doing it back on your heels, responding rather than leading.

You be reactive. And it's like they're calling you out. You're being proactive and you're an expert. You've been reactive, you're a shyster, you've been proactive, you're an expert. So you just, just say it now and just stop. I don't recommend a filling. I recommend a crown. And just say it. And then the patient will feel like I have all the Information I know what is good, what is not. I know the options. I know why I don't want to do it. I know why this good. They usually say yes because they feel like they have no need to call. So the number one failure, not failure but kind of like a mistake that I, I, I noticed is like whenever a patient says to the doctor, I need to talk to my wife, I need to go and think about. I tell them this is where you can work on your conversation with the patient. That's where like that's, that's basically saying that you are not able to explain clearly to me that I can make decision today. And so you have to really go back and think about your conversation like which part did I miss that? Do pcsv? Did I recommend the treatment that over recommended that gave too many options? And that's where you have to debrief. And that's what I do most time I just stand in the outside of room and I just listen and I give the doctor feedback and that's all I do, I do all day. And then after four or five times the p, the doctors gets it and then all of a sudden patients start

saying yes, well yes, you've operationalized so beautifully. You know, it's not like hey doctor, you have to be more dynamic and more extrovert, more friendly and you know it's, it's a very clear process that still fits within the clinical model that they understand. Okay, I know we're running up on time but this is just so much goal. Talk to me just quickly about the multi chair. Where are they? Where are we missing on that?

Where are we missing the multi chair? Every, most doctors don't know how to run multi chair efficiently because they don't know how to get in and out off the operatory efficiently. So the first thing I tell them is, is that depends on the skills level. I will give them either a 15 minute rule, 10 minute rule or 7 minute rule. That means that you know, if you're new and you're seven minutes the best. Huh? Seven is the best. So that means that you, no matter what, every seven minutes you need to get off your butt and leave the room and do something else and come back later. So you and that's the most efficient doctor. But most doctors do not get the right away. So I always start with a 15 minute rule. Most doctors say oh I can do that, I can do that. And then, then okay, well let's try 10 minutes. So that's when they have struggles with 10 minutes because when I say 10 minutes. I mean, that's a rule. That means you're prepping a crown, you better finish prepping that crown by 10 minutes and get up. You don't need to finish the whole procedure, but whatever you're doing, you got to finish that. So without training the doctor to be better clinically, I'm just giving them benchmarks that they can meet on their own.

Wow.

So they will prep a filling faster. Yeah, I don't care. I don't care if they prep 10 minutes for a filling. As long as they get up every 10 minutes, it's fine.

You know, so they're going to naturally drive themselves to be better because that's exactly it. Yeah. All you're doing is showing them the right behavior that needs to happen on the, on the operatory level and correct. Just like you did on the schedule where you just took 10 minutes off.

Yeah.

They're going to figure out, well, if I correct, how do I do it? Oh my.

You have to, you have to close. You have to have them self discover. You cannot push them. You can only guide them, remember? So that's what being people first is about. Everything I do is live up to the people first philosophy. You gotta treat people respect and let them figure things out for their own. I'm just giving them benchmarks they can meet on their own. Now if after all these things don't work, that's when you know that maybe this doctor is not a good fit. Right? Yeah.

How long can they be out of that operatory? I mean, how many other operatories are they doing? The 10 minute?

10 minute, 10 minute, it doesn't matter. I mean, three usually works up to three to four if you work that many operatories. But Most operators are two. So if you do that, if you're down to seven minutes, you can do three chairs easily. And not just three chairs, waiting for

15 minutes or so in between or something like that.

Well, but, and that's the key. So the key is the key. The next question I always ask, okay, I can do this in seven minutes now. So. But what, how do I get in out of the office? I say, well, it's really simple. I said, always do it in the name of the patient. Whatever you do is always in the name of the patient. So after seven minutes, you're halfway through one comp prep out of three, just say, hey, you know what, Mr. Smith, I butcher your teeth and now I'll give you a little break. Okay, Just relax, get you a little rinse, get a little break and Then I'll come right back. That's seven minutes right there. It's very simple. Oh, I just gave you an aesthetic. You're not numbing. I'm gonna give you a little bit more to make sure you're really numb. Okay? I'll come back in seven minutes. It's. There's so many little things you can say for the per. For the benefit of the patient, you know, oh, John must be tired. How about I give you a few minutes to, you know, rest? And that's how you gracefully exit yourself. And so as long as you give the doctors a few ideas of what to say, they'll. They'll run with it. They'll figure out all kinds of things. Oh, you know, like, oh, you know, it's bleeding, the gum's bleeding. I'm gonna put some gauze in there. How about let bite on it for a few minutes. There's so many little things they could say to gracefully exit yourself without seeming like you're abandoning the patient. Oh, my gosh, he's so nice to give me time to rest. You can, like all these things are going to add more value to customer service.

Oh, brilliant. Now you're not focused on. I know you're not focusing on production, which I think is also brilliant. But you have to know with having so much data, if a doctor's producing at X, Y and Z, so kind of like these 15, 10 and 7, you know, our kind of production bands where you kind of know, yeah, that doctor, I'm not going to go in there and be able to make him any more efficient. I mean, where are kind of the numbers or versus the opposite, where you're like, there's absolutely an opportunity to help them. So.

So that goes to the big picture of the office. If off. I mean, if the office is doing really well, then it doesn't really matter where the doctor's level is. Like, for example, our goal is office has to be minimally 17% profitable. Right. And, you know, so then if they consistently hit that, then it's not a bad to good situation. It's a good to great situation. And that's a much easier conversation with the team, with the office and all that. If they're below 17%, I've done everything I can. The regionals have done everything they can. So now you know that maybe that's not a doctor long term for us. So that's where we think looking at

the holistic picture, not even necessarily top line, but how's the practice getting managed? You know, staff costs all of those things associated with like office.

Like for example, the office of mentioned Nashville. Right. They're 22% profitable. So when I go in there, I'm not going there and guns blazing. Right? I'm going there. It's tweaking little things. And so, you know, it's not a lot, but it's the little things that they need to work.

Is there a dollar KPI though? I mean, like, I know that if rent $6,000 to make that 6%, I've got to be 100,000 in production to make some of the numbers where there's just some key KPIs are there. Is there a certain amount of production where you're like, hey, if we're producing below this or doc's got to be at least at this number for these things to play.

I mean, I think that, I think the industry standard is like, you know, a new grad, maybe 60,000amonth is the minimum. So 80,000 is, you know, above average. And then a hundred thousand is really what you're looking for in doctors. So anything more than that would be pretty much a keeper. Right. So that's the goal is to get all the doctors up to 80 to 100,000. That's the goal. But then they'll get better from there.

Except for your Nashville where you're doing 19,000 a day per doctor or something like that.

Yeah, well, that's office hit or miss too. Like, it's inconsistency that we focus on sometimes it's not really.

You have a big day and then you'll have a down day.

Most doctors are not consistent. That's really the issue.

Before I let you go and you've been just so kind and this has just been pure gold. I really appreciate it. We didn't really hit on the hygiene side. And I'd love to just give them a little bit on the hygiene side. Okay, can you. How do you think about that? Because that's probably, you know, at, at this stage of the industry, it feels like the hygiene's scarier to have conversations with than the doctors anymore, you know,

So I, I, you know, it's. We have very high hygiene retention as well. So it's not about hiring trouble, it's about retention. So we always focus on retention and hygienists too. So our change is really high. So I don't. The one of the early mistakes was actually, I think we keep underperforming hygienists too long and moving them out too slow. And that's actually One of the biggest mistakes we made, we actually focus on.

We're so scared. We don't. We can't hire anybody. We're scared. We can't hire anybody else.

I don't know if that is true because I've never have an issue of hiring an hygienist. Like I will always, folks, I'm like, that's like doctor, every time I put an ad off or hygiene, I always get hygienists respond to an ad, right. So to me, I think the number one thing we pay our doc, we pay our doctors and hygienists very fairly. Like we don't try to undercut them. We pay them really fair. Right. Number one. And number two, that we do have a really good hygiene bonus system that makes them excited about it. Right. And the hydrostatic is not, like I said, it's not earth shattering. It's just a sound. It's just what they get paid and then they get a bonus on top of that based on the percentage of collections they get above a certain amount, a certain threshold. So it's just a bonus.

A lot like Dr. Depeche Patel trained class is they're gonna. You're gonna treat them like a doctor. Are you using something similar to a doctor contract, like 35% collections or something?

Yeah, we use like 30 collections.

Yeah.

And then, you know, and then after a certain threshold, you know, you know, that's. They, they start getting that after certain threshold, you know, so it's not a

greater of their hourly rate or this 30% number.

So the. So we actually do it different. We do a, we do a guarantee base salary plus a percentage bonus. That's commission on collections on the. Okay, so we don't do either or we do plus. We do salary plus a bonus.

Right. But the bonus has to get to

a place where certain threshold. Yeah. So because of that and because of that, it's just like Dr. Depeche. Right. It's like I. Then it doesn't really matter how much they're paid because the threshold will be higher if they're being paid more.

So on my cost of goods section, I'm going to end up with the same percentage. And the closer I can bring that percentage, that's what matters more than.

Yeah, yeah. So. So. So to me like that we found that to be the best over the years of trial and error to be the best compensation model for all hygienists everywhere. So we're not changing that, we're sticking to that. And it has very high retention so we know it's working right?

Well, your best, your best hygienists are making more per hour than anywhere else in the marketplace. But under Canal, it works so well because the rest of the. This is better than it would be. Correct.

So. So to me, I think once you figure out a compensation formula for hygiene, I don't think you're gonna have any. I don't think you have too many issues with hygiene retention. I think that's really. Once you figure out that formula.

Do you ever get to a point I, I have seen where the hygienist is like, but I don't wanna work that hard. I get that I can make more money hourly and not have to work that well.

That's where. But that's where the. Well, that's where the mistakes we made because we had hygienists like that and we didn't let them go. And that's when, you know, it's time to let those hygienists go and interview new hygienists that would be open to this formula. And then once you keep them, they don't ever leave or they rarely leave because of that.

Okay, let's make sure I understand the math. So let's say hygienists, I mean, you're all over the place. So you probably see what everything from. Are you in Washington State where they're playing or on.

Oh, yeah, they're pretty high. Washington is by the highest in the country.

Yeah. I always say Washington State's like my canary in the coal mine of what's coming down the pipe. So what would you say? Is it 35 to 75? 45. I mean, where are you saying this

is about $55 an hour average?

55 on average. Okay. And then let's say somebody. And then let's say someone produces really well, you're going to look at that 30% and you're going to say, hey, I'm going to give you X amount above.

Yeah.

So.

So. So it depends on what they pay. Right. So we create a threshold, a daily threshold, how much they have to do. And so based on what your PNLs want.

Right.

For us, we want about four times. Three and a half to four times is what we want. It's not always possible, but that's the goal. So three and a half to four times that, that'll be the threshold. And everything above that is 30%.

All right, so let's say we'll just use 55 an hour. I want to be able to do somewhere around, you know, 200 bucks an hour. Ideally, you know.

Yeah.

150 to 200 an hour. And whatever that threshold is, once they get above that, you're starting to give them.

So let's say 16, 1700 bucks a day. So anything over that, they get 30%. Yeah.

And that's mathematically the same as a greater of contract. I'll pay you the greater of 30% or, you know. Yeah.

Sometimes it's not the actual formulas, the way you present it Right. To the way that they're excited about, you know.

Yeah. Good. Hey, Doc, I know I've kept you past the time. I really appreciate how generous and open you've been on this entire thing. Do you mind just maybe one more minute? I think we've. We've asked.

We have a lot of questions, and I feel bad not being able to answer. Like, there's like a thousand. Justin has, like.

Well, I've been watching. I got most of them here.

I know.

Well, everybody's just so thrilled. Maybe we'll speak to this one thing and then we'll let you go. Because I think I hit on a lot of them here.

Okay.

Just overall motivation for staff. I think people sometimes just feel discouraged. I think at times they think I'm trying to do the right thing. I'm trying to get this organized. Where do you think maybe they're missing? I mean, I don't think you're holding back and saying, yeah, sometimes you just have the wrong people, and you gotta be faster at letting them go. If you're doing all these things to support them. If you've got this compensation structure in place and they still aren't performing. I mean, the last part is. Yeah, they're just not the right fit. Right. Yeah.

I mean, for the. For staff. For staff overall, like, we have a bonus system for the whole team. So I think that's what actually helps with this team culture. And we play a lot of games in the office, and I think those are the things that make a big difference. So, for example, we have a March Madness game going on right now in all the offices. Every year we have a big March Madness, and we pit every office against each other in, like, actually in the whole bracket. So all 40 offices, they're in the bracket. Yeah. And so what happens is every week they get to win prizes. They get to, you know, to get a certain production level to get something. Every week they get popcorn cookie this week, they may get, like, sneakers next week or whatever.

Right.

And the closer to the finals, the bigger the price prices are. And it's a very successful incentive game that we play every year. And so then that they're not really

competing against each other, they're more competing against their own margins. Is that what they're doing?

Well, well, every week the goal is different. Like, hey, this week you have to, like, for example, you have to convert 30 would be a goal for the week. Right. So then every officer convert 30% would be go in the next bracket. You know, if they lose, then they don't like. So there'll be little things like that. And so we have a lot of these games go on. And then we have a bonus system called Go Green Bonus. It's just every quarterly. Quarterly bonus system. Every office has that. So I don't.

I like that you said that because I think sometimes people go too soon and then your ups and downs end up making the bonuses don't work. Do you like to do the bonus off of a net profit number or is it something that you already know ties to net profit, but it's top line or how do you think?

It's a little bit of top line and a little bit of bottom line. So it's mostly top line, I will be honest. Mostly top line because it's hard to relate the complexity.

Right. But you know what? It's the impact on bottom line.

Yeah, yeah.

So converting it to top line to make their life easier.

Yeah, basically. Yeah. And then the games, we create several games through the year and then we do those same games every year. So honestly, if you think about it, you just need to do this once or twice and really create a recurrent number of games, seasonal games every year. Then you can just rinse and repeat every year. And you know, it's. And so that's how you create a culture.

Gamified the piano you've gamified. That's awesome.

Yeah. All right.

We might have you on just to tell us about all the games at some point, but there was just so much here. I really appreciate it, Doc. You've been awesome. I think we hit on quite a bit of the questions. I might come back to you. Just occasionally, we'll bring some of the questions over into our WhatsApp groups too, that we have with DEO. But thank you so much for everybody listening. Again, if you want to kind of get in on the inside here at deo, go over to DEO Dental Group and click on getting that growth accelerator call. And until next time, keep smiling. Thank you for listening to deo's Growth Secrets podcast for Dental organization 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.