Are Your Most Overlooked Team Members the Most Important?

Hello and welcome back to another growth masterclass. Always excited to be with the man himself, Gary. Katie, I am Dr. Brian Laskin, your host. And Gary, thank you so much for being here. I am so excited to talk about why your most overlooked team members are the most important. What a big topic we have today.

Well, man, and you know, we are going to dig into this thing, but you know, here's the thing, Bry. No one wins alone. And so many of our doctors are reporting in overwhelmed and they have this team of people that are not utilized to their fullest. And if they just were, what possibilities would open up for the practice and the productivity and the outcomes and also for the fulfillment and retention of team members as well.

Yeah, I think we've talked about it a little bit before, but I think the bottleneck for the vast, vast, vast, vast majority of practices going forward is going to be those that is going to be finding, retaining and training the best team members. And so this is a hugely important topic today. And it's not getting. It's not going to get better for the foreseeable future. And when I buy better, I mean for the industry, but you as a dental practice, I think following these steps, well, that can definitely make it a lot better for. For your own situation.

Yeah, yeah, no doubt. And I want to bring in a story, one of my favorite stories of inspiration around this topic. And I think it will set the context for our whole day or whole day, like we're going to talk for a day, our whole session today. I mean, you and I end up talking for a day. We could, but it's the story of the 2000 English crew team. And you know, this English Crew team for 100 years did not win the gold medal. So they brought this management guy in and he started talking to him and he put this question in, does it make the boat go faster? Does our actions, our behaviors, our mindsets, our nutrition, how we live our life, Just all he challenged his team to do is, does it make the boat go faster? And I was like, it took back. Took me back for a second and I was like, what does that mean? Well, if they went out on a Thursday night, does this make the boat go faster? Or if they're eating a dozen donuts, does this make the boat go faster? Or going to the workout, does this make the boat go faster? And it starts allowing you to frame up, like, how does this make the practice run better, if you will. And by the way, they did win the gold in the Sydney Olympics in 2000 because they applied this one simple.

Principle and I think the power is in its simplicity. Right. And we talked last time about the job titles or you know, descriptions of the practices, the team members in our practice. So this is a building block to move past beyond that to just the title, which is hugely important. But to talk about how we can have these team members make your practice go faster.

Right, exactly. That's the context here. So we distinguished, like if you don't change the context of how your team relates to the their work, then when you give them a system they, if they're dealing with transactional dentistry, looking for symptoms and then they're going to present a certain way and they're not going to get any different results. So when you elevate the person by declaring a specific position, which we'll review today and today and then know how to use them, now all of a sudden you know how to make that boat go faster and that's what we're going to unpack today.

Yeah, I'm super excited. So you know, can you talk a little bit? Well, let's just get right into it. Let's, let's. The first team member that we've talked about last time and if you could review kind of the dental assistant position and how they fit into this role.

Yeah. So let's first start with where most dental assistants reside. They reside in, I'm in a dead end job, I can't grow past where I am. You know, some very few, like, you know, want to get into an expanded function role. They're overachievers. But mainly if you really take the 80 percentile of an assistant, they feel like their self esteem is usually lower. A person that, that, that lives in that kind of world, when you speak to how they can be and give them a future self that's better than the one they have and set that context. Let's get the name out. Ninja. No, I'm not just an assistant. I love Ninja. Ninja is like that. They, they, they, when you say you're a ninja, they go ninja. What do you mean? Yeah, Ninja. No, I'm not just an assistant. I am the most trusted person by the patient. And I know that Brian. I, I built this whole system by sitting in everyone's chair. Because when, when that doctor walked out of the room, that patient is asking that ninja or that assistant, should you, should I do what he just said? Do you trust him? Like on and on. And that's where the buying decision actually gets made right there. And if they, if you set them up first Raising their, their self worth and then giving them a platform to be in communication with the patient. Your case acceptance goes through the roof. Your patient retention is amazing because they're sharing and every word that comes out of an assistant's mouth or a ninja's mouth is heard. When a doctor talks to them, they're filtering and taking maybe pieces and parts because they're fearful of what they're either going to say might be negative or they feel like they're being sold. And again, these are trusted dentists speaking, but it's the patients listening that we have to cut through. And the easiest way to cut through is leveraging the use of your assistance called ninjas.

Yeah, I think it's great. And not, not only are you elevating the assistant by doing that, but I mean, I, I always find how shocking or how shockingly overlooked assistants are in ninjas are in dental teams. And I think it's probably because of working so closely with the dentist that we, it's easy to overlook the person that's one of the people that's working the hardest on the team that, that oftentimes it's, it's, I mean, it's not a think less job, but it's not a but. But it can be, particularly if you're working with, with a dentist that isn't. Doesn't throw a lot of appreciation your way. Right?

Yeah. And so they left. They're not acknowledged. But by the way, it fits into the psyche of a person that would choose that as a career. So what we do is the min somebody a better way to live. They start stepping into that role and their purpose comes alive. So not only, you know, we add another. A few things. First naming it, then letting them know that they're trusted by the patient. They don't relate to themselves as the most trusted person in a dental practice. When they speak that they listen. So that's the missing element, the other piece we put in this. They think their currency is what they do throughout the day. Sterilizing instruments, turning rooms, making patients feel comfortable. Their scoreboard is the measure that the doctor has for that day because they're assisting the doctor to produce an outcome. And that outcome is the measure that the doctor is committed to doing each day. Now what you have is you have the assistant driving the measure from the back and the appointment coordinator driving it from the front. So now you have two people driving the doctor's production for that day. And then we reward them when the doctor hits that number. Pretty powerful.

That's very powerful. And I love the fact that you're focusing on the dental assistant being a sort of the core trust element in the practice, because it's true. And not just with, not just with the patient, but with the kind of the connective tissue between everybody in the practice. And if you can recognize that and elevate them to ninjas, because they're not just assistants, they're basically the distributor of trust in a practice. I mean, that's what leads to case acceptance, that's what leads to your office running well. And I mean it's really the core piece of everything we do is having is trusting each other and having our patients trust us and recognizing that the dental assistants are the key trust purveyors in our practices. I mean, they would never leave a practice where they feel that fulfilled. Right?

No. And that's the other thing. You get patient, you get team retention. The other little sniper that a lot of ninjas have, Bry, is they are good video makers. So they're great marketers. So I can't tell you how many times they, they're getting reviews, they're getting, they're, they're doing TikTok videos. I can't tell you how many times I see dental assistants doing great little TikTok videos and putting them out and getting great engagement. Because when you have a fun dental practice, people want to come into that office. So these are out, these are just like nuances that are in addition. But when you get them tied to, you know, speaking and educating and doing same day dentistry and helping you get your outcomes for that day and their self esteem is up, game changer. So yeah, it's, we like to start with the ninja right there. That's at the core of, of reinventing the dental workplace.

Yeah, I think that's fantastic. And I think that I'm a huge ninja fan as we talked about last time. I think it's such a great because it also just invokes kind of this idea of the whirlwind of activity of which the dental assistants are so they're so adept at handling, which I think within the dental practice, they truly are the jack of all trades. Let's move on to the hygienists and kind of what's their superpower and how you can leverage it in your practice. If the ninja superpower is trust, what's the superpower of the hygienist?

Well, it's really transforming how the patient listens to the value of dentistry. So, you know, if you're in the transactional mode, like, hey, you're, you're, you're a scent symptom. You're looking for the symptom. You're searching for the problem, and then you're looking to solve that problem. The way I look at a dental practice is I believe that a dental practice can transform a whole community. How? Because they go to them twice a year. So what happens when they walk into those meetings twice a year, those appointments, what is being offered to them? And you know, there's four levels of dentistry. Level one is emergency care. That's where you're just doing emergencies, you know, just reactive dentistry, root canals, you know, low end dentistry. The next level is maintenance. People are showing up for hygiene once, once, maybe one and a half times two, maybe. And they're maintaining, right? Then there's optimal care. You know, person that goes in, they, you know, usually a prosthodontist, they're like, oh, everybody's clean. I do around houses all day, you know. You know, they'll tell me, everybody's, everybody's healthy and it's 100% and I have no work to be done here. You know, they're the optimal people. And then the, the one on top of that is what we call complete health. And that's where, that's where bri. That you're looking at the mouth as the gateway to whole body health, especially in soft tissue and in hygiene. You know, when we look at really what we, what we provide, do we look at ourselves as healthcare providers? Not usually. We just look as our, you know, people in dentistry look at, they take care of this part of the body. Right? But that has an impact, as we know, on the rest of the body. And, you know, right now we know that the average, you know, adult has some form of perio. 50% of the time. You know, we have. We're plugged into 10 million treatment plans. How many people do you think, Brian, of those 10 million. What percentage have you diagnose soft tissue care?

Oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be embarrassingly high. So. So I'm gonna shoot low. I'll say 12%.

Very good.

Man.

You. I tell you, you're a smart dude, man. You are. It's 8%. So. 8%. 8. 8. Snowman.

I'm 50% off. I don't know.

Dude, seriously. No, it's like 20. I used here 20, 25. It's like what they think it is anecdotally in their head. But I have the facts. 8% are diagnosed, 4% are treated. 4%, that's a gap of 46 depending on, you know, if you have AAP saying, they probably say it's 70% of adults. But the bottom line is we have this huge gap of soft tissue and treatment and diagnosis. You know, diagnosis and treatment is way off. So if you have a hygienist, you know, you know, there's a lot of hygienists who are doing bloody profies and, you know, I'm hearing things numbers like $70 an hour for a temp hygienist, 70 bucks an hour, you know, in like, places like Michigan and. But like, there's also hygienists that have a calling that on a good day they save smiles and on a great day they change and extend lives. Right. And they're in the healthcare business. They relate to themselves that way. And so if you begin to have the health dialogue with a patient and you're, by the way, the hygienist is the second most trusted person on the team, right up there with the assistant. The hygienist and the assistant are highly trusted. And when you start having dialogues with them, systematic and structured dialogues about what's healthy and what's not, and then doing probings and then doing. Using the intraoral camera and then teeing up the doctor so the doctor can get back to the chair and doesn't have to spend time in those recare visits, spending time educating the patient. And you're the educator, so you maintain and get them to optimal health. And you're the patient educator for restorative care and airway care and all that stuff. Now all of a sudden, that's the machine of a hygienist versus, you know, just doing, you know, you know, polishing or gum gardening, you know, or just like thinking that all they do is like, you know, go away, scrape teeth and polish teeth, and that's okay. Some people do that and that's fine and that's what they want to do. But like, this is the type of practice that you leverage the hygienist to do the work that you don't have to do. You're the only one that can diagnose as a doctor. You know, you spend five minutes at each of those two, two hygiene stops in your one hour. Now you have 50, 50 minutes back at your chair and. And those cases are being closed by the hygienist and the treatment coordinators. That's the game you want to play.

Oh, absolutely, because they have the trust, like you're saying. And also, I love the term hygienist again, because it's like the apple genius. They're the purveyors of the information. They know what's going on and the patients trust them already. So if you diagnose the treatment, but they do the educational piece, I mean, that's like you said, that's where, that's where you're not just treating emergencies. You go up to optimal and complete healthcare. Like you're talking about. I think it's like you're saying they're the ones that have an hour with the patients talking and doing that. And I think it can have huge impacts on your production, on your collections. That's what I've seen in my practice too.

Yeah, you bet. And they also curate and operate from what this is called. This is called the healthy mouth baseline. This goes up on the screen. So if you have a TV screen and this is like what's healthy in your practice. And so there's a way to begin to educate. This is what's going on in the mouth and here's how it affects the body, here's the general science. And you can keep it a drill, fill and build practice. But really just up level the value proposition. And because a hygienist can't, if you don't have this healthy mouth baseline, they don't go through all the, all the symptoms and all the issues that are being dealt with in the mouth. They kind of do a cursory look. This is how you expand your treatment presented, Bry, and expand your treatment accepted. So the total amount that you're presenting goes way up. We have the facts on this. It's like 67% higher presentation dollars just by using a benchmark that is like where the patient's actually asking the hygienist, oh, I have that. Oh, what about this? Oh, I have that. So it's like you're not relying on the team member to remember it all. You have it all systematized and structured. It's really powerful stuff.

Well, and actually less work for the dentist. Right. And more fulfilling work for the team members. And you're making more. And the way you're making more is you're elevating patients care from being emergency to complete health, which is way better care. It's just, I mean, it's, everybody wins so much more. I don't know why, after hearing this, why dentists wouldn't be like, I got to get on that system. I mean, it makes all the sense in the world.

Well, one of the things that we do is, and I'm so grateful to your community and you, Bry. I block out. I have 10 hours a month where I do half hour calls with everybody. Um, so they're like, hey, tell me more about that. And like, we have great, great calls. They tell me their story, they tell me like what they're dealing with and then they'll say, hey, Gary, you were talk. Brian said, at that point, he was like, Brian said, look, why the heck am I not doing this? So tell me more about how you would go about doing that night. And I really understand their nuances of their practice. Like some, some guys and gals, they come on and talk to me and they don't even have a hygienist for the last two years. It's like we have dentists doing hygiene. That's completely unacceptable.

Yeah. I think that's why I love working with you, Gary, because like, you are the right person on that call. I would be the wrong person. I'd be like, what are you doing? You know.

I have love and compassion and a little patience, but it goes away fast, you know?

Well, yeah, you don't just look at the problems, you look at the ways to help the person on the path and guide them on that path. Which is, which is, which is a skill set.

Well, that's the thing. When you're in your practice, you're mired down in problems. I get it. You know, and I, you know, I help people focus on the solution and actually give it to them. You know, there's a way to hire people. Right now we don't. And the practices that actively work with us, we do not have any, you know, like, do we have a person here or there? Yeah, but like, we're not dealing with like not having hygienists in our practice. You just have to know what to do. The only difference that's happening now is now it's a problem because there's a supply and demand issue. You just need to know how to, how to deal with it. And you'll have people in your practice because you're speaking to the calling of the people. When you, if you're selling JLBs right now, people aren't buying jobs, they're buying. I want to. After sitting through a pandemic, they're like, I want to work in a place that I get fulfilled. I have joy, I have fun. I don't want to be doing what I was doing before. And that's why it's the great resignation. 50% of people are looking for a job. And if you don't have somebody in your position, somebody's looking for it. You just haven't done the job at communicating what you're offering. That's it.

Yeah. I just read an article today that said there's two reasons why people are leaving the job. Number one is they want to make more, which I don't think is true in dentistry, frankly. And number two, it might be if you're not. If you're underpaying, obviously. Yes. And number two is that they want to have upward mobility. And if you can have someone go from a hygienist to a hygienist, that's upward mobility. Right. I mean, that's, that it's, it's a beautiful, it's beautiful what you're doing. And I think the number one position that I hear that people are down on is at the front desk. So let's unpack how, how that front desk is almost always. That's got to be the, the most. Oh, I think, I think the last one on here is probably the, the most overlooked. So much so that I almost laug. I read our outline for today. But let's talk about the front desk. How do they factor in?

Well, first of all, we call them front desk people, and we laughed about it last time. They're not pieces of furniture. We have to give them names that really set the context of what their job is. And the other thing is everybody thinks at the front desk that this person could be pulled into the back or everybody should be cross trained. All those things are the eels that kill the deals. I call it. Like, you know, so many dentists come to me and they go, gary, here's what I hate. I hate that I have better hands and better clinical skills than a lot of my colleagues, but they're making way more money than I am. If you want to make more money, this is where it's made. It's in the business side of your business. And you don't have to do it. You just have to set up the system to do it. You need two people at the front office. One managing your time because that's a commodity. You only have so much of that. And one managing the money and converting that. When I first got into dentistry, I don't know, 25 years ago or something like that, a doctor brought me in and he knew I was a small business consultant at the time. I wasn't specific to dentistry. Like, I was, you know, I chose after that and I just basically. He basically said, hey, can you help me build my practice? Said sure. Let me come in and look around and. And I go. There was no fundamentals at all, no measures, no structures, no accountabilities in the back office. There was, in dentistry, there was an assistant, a hygienist, and a doctor. But the front office didn't have delineated responsibilities and usually really mitigated down to, like, you know, sharing roles or, you know, like having a person who is like, imagine that your front office gives you your money and your time and maximizes it. If you start relating to them that way, all of a sudden, you're going to have a new relationship. Now, here's the other place that people get stopped. They live in the world of this bride. When I make more money, then I'll hire a second person at the front desk. It's the. It's. You got to flip the script. You hire two people at the front desk because here's what you can't have. You can't have a person trying to answer the phone and take in a new patient intake form and then the hygienist releasing a patient in the back that needs a treatment plan. Sit down to go over the whole treatment plan. If you're having one person do both, they're doing both job halfway. That means you're half efficient at scheduling and half efficient at closing cases. I want to stop there because I just gave you a lot of information.

No, that was great, great, great information. And I was going to say, like, every dentist should rewind that one and listen back to it. Gary, it's so great again that you offer up your time for people. Could you tell a little more about how they can get in contact with you and take advantage of the offer of your time?

Yeah, you bet. You know, just click here. It's pretty much you can go right direct to my calendar and you'll get right on my calendar. And what's really cool about this is we'll have a discussion just over zoom, like this. So it'll be in your free time, you know, over lunch. And then you could bring your spouse if you'd like, if you'd like to invite him or her, and we'll go through. I'll learn your story, I'll do some research before I get on the call with you, and. And then we'll talk about specific things that really have been prompted in today's session. We'll get right to work in there, and we'll talk about solutions and recommendations that you can take back to your practice right away.

That's great.

Thanks for doing It, Gary, it's my pleasure. I love it. It's my pure joy because it's the first step quite often for kids to get their parents back or spouses not to have to do something that they dread every day. And, you know, I'm just, just so delighted to be able to provide that kind of lifestyle impact, you know, using the work that we have here.

That's great. So I want to say as a dentist who, who is heavily focused on high quality care, that, that high quality care has very little to do with the success of my business. And as you, well, you pointed out that out very well, but I think it, I want to restate that again because I think a lot of dentists are thinking, even though they, they hear it, they're like, next time that they want to grow their practice, they're probably going to go learn about adhesive dentistry. Right. It has nothing to do with the success of your business if you provide even below adequate care. It has nothing to do with your, your business because patients can't tell your front desk furniture. The people at the front desk that manage your time and your money are going to have way more to do with the success of your business than the clinical team you have in the back. And that's. It hurts me to say that as a dentist, but it's 100% true. And most dentists don't even go up to the, to the business office upfront because it's like it's their territory, not mine. Right. And I think you don't have to, you have to work with a master like Gary that can get them dialed in. Right. And yeah, so many good points in there. But I wanted to highlight that as a dentist that cares a lot about quality dentistry. And it hurts me to say it took me a lot, a lot of years to come to the conclusion that that is the fact. Right.

Yep. Yeah, No, I definitely. And you know, one of the things that really I want to highlight here, Bri, for us is, you know, they don't now, now that, you know, you need two people and by the way, here's how you can afford it. Very simple. And again, I'm going to reframe this for you so that you can understand, you can afford not to have two people, the average. And I'm going to write, I'm going to share my screen here, Bry, because I have this new iPad where I really love sharing my screen and it's awesome. So I want to highlight something here. The average adult. Well, we'll invest. Let's say in the value of a crown and a buildup when you have a good case acceptance system. So let's just call that 1,000 bucks. And then two Profis, two exams, set of bitewings. That's patient retention. So the way to build a business is case acceptance and retention. Let's just call it 300 for two visits. The average annual value of a patient is $1,300. In a PPO practice.

This.

Now, you might think if you don't fill that hour by having a dedicated appointment coordinator, now it's worth 650. It's not worth the hygiene visit. Everybody thinks, oh, it's $100 that I lost. Because once you lose time, you can't buy that back. So it's not $100. It's. It's the hygiene revenue and it's the restorative case acceptance. That happens. 650. If you save and fill one extra hour for that day, you've taken in $650 on average, if you will.

And that's an average practice. I think a lot of people watching today, it's much higher than that. I know, because we've done this calculation for my practice, and it's a lot more than that. And I think that that's a key thing to understand. And that was the other point I wanted to highlight that you made that, you know, if you, if you think you need to grow into having another team member at the front desk, that is, I mean, that's the only way you're going to be able to grow. It's the, it's a huge bottleneck. Yeah, I think that's, that's, that's key. I love, I love the fact how you highlighted that, using the iPad to show, show the numbers because it's, it's true. I think, you know, that's why, you know, people are paying a lot of money for temporary hygienists because it's not the hundred dollars, it's the, it's the $1,300 or the 650 that people are losing. Right.

I mean, exactly. And then the management of time and money is very figured out. Very simply. Let's say you want to do a million dollars, right. And you want to take six weeks off vacation and you want to work four days a week. And you have one hygienist and one doctor. So the doctor needs to do. I'm just, you know, this is a quick overview. Five thousand dollars a day, and the hygienist needs to do fifteen hundred Dollars a day. So now your appointment coordinator, when they fill this at the end of each day, they would get $10 per column per day. Now they can make $20 extra per day times 16 days is $320 extra. And it's only paid out when you collect $85,000. So what happens here is now you have them focused on producing and filling the schedule. The appointment coordinator, and we call them DofI's directors of first impressions. Right. Just to revisit that. They're managing your time, making sure that these numbers end up. End up each day. Then they get the Scooby snack, the in the dopamine hit. And they only get to get paid if the doctor can actually collect the money in order to pay the bonus.

And it's $320 out of 85,000, right?

Exactly.

But I found, as you're saying there, what you're doing is you're saying to the DoFi that when I win, you win, we all win. We're all rowing in the same direction. Very, very powerful. Yes.

So here's what happens. We just flip the script on being busy to being productive. So, you know, we, when we hire people, we ask them this question, do you do your best or do you find a way? And they go, oh, I always do my best. And that's not what you want to hear because you want. Because people are only doing 10% of their full capacity. Right. But if you have somebody who says, oh, I find a way, you want to hire that person right there, right then. Because they find a way to get the outcomes. They're in the outcome business, not the busy business. Very, very different. Now, if you have a bunch of people already hired, obviously we need to translate this into outcome thinking. And here's what we do. We reverse engineer these positions, and everyone has one outcome per day. And that outcome is correlate with what the practice owner needs them to do, Bri. And that's what makes it a very unique position. And now you have a dofi, which is a director of first impressions, having the schedule filled. That's your time. And what we call a financial freedom fighter. They're the person that helps the patient overcome money and insurance as a barrier to get into their treatment. They handle the money of the business.

I agree 100%. And it hurts. Another thing that's hurting me today because I have a team member right now that I'm working with. We're not hitting what I would call the results that we're looking for, but it's always nobody Works harder than me. Nobody, you know, striving harder. And I just want to say, work less. Just be better. That's the job, you know, I mean, that's. You're exactly right. I think we've all been there where it's like, I'm so committed. I'm working so hard. It's like, great. But running on a hamster wheel doesn't get you anywhere. Like, let's, you know, make sure that we. And so. Yeah, I love that. Are you. Are you doing your best? Are you finding a way. And by the way, I want to say it again, I said it last time, but the director of first impressions is just such a great. Because that is such a huge, huge part of the patient experience is that first impression.

Well, what people are buying today, like, you know, we've been flattened. Like, there's a new world that we're living in. Right. And how we buy things. So we've been blessed and grateful in dentistry that you always have to go to the dentist. You can't. You can't, like, go online to go to the dentist, you know, yes, you can get, you know, teledentistry and stuff like that, but you still have to physically go. The difference maker is people, when they go to a place, they want an experience. They're. They're paying for the experience. Like they said, if you don't hurt them, you treat them right. You see them on time, they're in control. The patient's in control of their choices and of their money. And you're just educating them so that they can make good choices and they feel like they're in control and they're the hero and you're the guide and you have that perspective set. Oh, my gosh. Like, you nailed the experience. And then people will come back and tell their friends about you. And that's. That's. We needed to get that person who's answering the phone, the first line of first person who you look at and see, you know, creating that experience. And that's why a director of first impressions, we're only as good as that first impression on the phone. And when people come in.

Well, and, you know, I think it's a great prioritization to the role when you say director of first impression and the other team member up at the business office. Right. The financial freedom fighter. I mean, I think that's such a. Such a transformational term. So talk a little bit about financial freedom fighters. Yeah.

Most people who are treatment coordinators map their own financial scarcity, their own financial Issues on top of the patient. And I'm like, I gotta find a way to break. Break this, right? So I'm. I'm really interested in, like, reinventing stuff so that people can, like, sit there and they know who they are in relationship to the work they're doing. So I'm like, that's a tough one to break. So it's not about your own personal thing. Like, you're here. Your purpose is to help the patient get healthy and overcome the barriers of finance as it relates to dentistry, whether it's using CareCredit, letting them know the perspective of insurance. But if you're. A lot of times they're called treatment coordinators, and we use that periodically. But, like, really what the patient will say is, oh, that's. That's Helga taking me to the principal's office, you know, who's, like, going to beat. Beat me up and, like, have it be like a, you know, a used car sales place. Right. That's not the context. The context is if you go in and, you know, you're a financial freedom fighter. You're. You're fighting for the patient's wellbeing, and you're. You're a stand for that, you know, fitting the money so it works for them, you know, because you understand, like, there's three ways people buy paid in full when they have cash and get a discount. Multiple payments over a period of time or a longer period of time with maybe interest as well. And so they don't care how much the interest is. And when you tell them that the dentist is paying the interest for a year or two and we can spread the payments over two years, I mean, carecredit, it's like, people don't relate to CareCredit that way. They don't understand, like, yes, it costs you money, but, like, you just locked in a case that was $5,000. Now you're running an efficient day because you were able to close a $5,000 case and you're not numbing every tooth to treat a surface.

Oh, it's huge. Huge. And having a financial freedom fighter up the front desk doing that is. Is absolutely key. I think it's. I think it's such a great mindset shift that would take people from doing 1Z 2Z dentistry to doing the roundhouse for, like, the prosthodis that you referred to before, Right?

Yeah. And it's. And all it is is a flip of a switch once you get people sitting in a new context. And what I mean is, like, how do you relate to your work. So it's like, you know, look, here's the deal. If you want to lose weight, like, I just need to change my relationship to exercise and change my relationship to food. It's the shift in relationship that allows you to have a sustainable outcome and have a new lifestyle, a new normal. So it's, it's. Everybody thinks. It's like they're blaming Covid. They're blaming supply and demand for people. Bri, right now we have this no excuses rule. It's like, you know, the minute you put. You allow somebody, you point the finger on somebody else, you know, one's going out to that person, three come back to you, and one goes up to the universal power at B. And it's like, I believe, like, we can take responsibility for our situation and cause something different. And that's really what this is about.

Oh, yeah, I think that's great. Great context. And I was just listening. I heard a quote the other day. Losers react and leaders anticipate, you know, and having that transformation at the business, to have a financial freedom fighter and a director first impression. You're anticipating the relationship and giving that person who's running your practice a new identity that really is going to, like, helps the relationship with everybody in the practice. I think it's phenomenal context. And I know this is about the most overlooked team members in the dental practice. When I saw the last one on the list, I just laughed because I would have. If you said to me, list all the people that are overlooked in your practice, I would have overlooked this person. And I probably. You would ask me like a hundred times before I would have come up with this person. So could you talk about the VIP of the practice?

The very most, very important person in the practice, and 85% of our clients have them. It is the spouse in the house, whether it's, you know, a two dentist together or a dentist and a financial coordinator or dentist person working in. A lot of times, Bri, I see this person in there and my first question to them, they'll come on the half hour, you know, you know, session, and my first question to the spouse is, do you want to be in the position that you're in? And nine out of 10 of them say, absolutely not. Or they'll say, I just want to have this piece and I want to have freedom. I don't want to have to be, you know, chained to the chair in the office. They also say, you know, I don't want to be the one. You know, sometimes they're the One mitigating, like, if the dentist is gnarly toward the team, they're like. They're like, protecting the team from the doctor. There's that going on. But nine times out of 10, the spouse does not want to be there. They're there by default to protect their asset because they're like, if I'm not here, this place is going to crash. Right. Isn't that amazing?

Yeah. It's hard for me to even, like, it's hard for me to think of practicing with my wife because it wouldn't. We're both very type A personalities and very controlling. So if we were working together, I don't know. I don't know how good it would be for. I'd probably be great for the practice because it would have a counterbalance for me, but I don't know how great it would be for our marriage.

Well, one of the things that we do is, like, you and your wife are probably more on the competitive side. Right. That's the type A overachiever. Right. And that's only like 5 to 10% of our. Our couples. And they're like, they shoot and then they know they fire and then they shooting and aim. Like, they just. Whatever that is. They. They don't. They're not methodically thinking about everything. So it's perfect before they get on the court. Sometimes we have a doctor who is. Has a visionary and is a competitive. And the spouse is what we call the protector. And the protector plays a big key role. When they're in this role, it's really important to have the spouse be the counterbalance for the doctor. So you, you know, they give them things to look at. They give them another way to see they protect the doctor, the team, the investments. Now there's a healthy balance for this Bri. And then there's an unhealthy balance. And where it gets unhealthy is when there's fear and scarcity in the space or doubt about the ability that somebody has. And we help people move through this space. I can show you visually, I just want to show you really quickly how to move people out of their comfort zone, because this is where I see spouses get stuck. And here's who. Here's where the cost lies. The cost comes in because the kids don't get their parents because they're both working in the practice. The kids are 8, 10, and 11. They need their parents there. They come home and they're talking about the practice, and they can't like, really maybe spend time with. With Homework and stuff like that. So I can't tell you how many times, like, this is my biggest joy. Like, I never missed this. This guy's stuff, but it was because I had to put some structure in. And so, you know, you don't. You know, most people are like, that we work with right now are millennial families. They got young kids and they're building a business, and they work hard to build the business. And then what happens is you only get 17 years with your kids, and then they want to go on their own, and then they go off to college. Then when you have a successful business, it's like, oh, my gosh, we just missed our kids, and now they're off, and we missed the whole thing. And that's the one thing that is unacceptable to me. And we put structure in place for that. I mean, think about that, Brian. There's a lot of people that their kids miss out on. Their parents being there as part of their life.

Oh, yeah. It's a huge, huge, huge issue in dentistry and how the. You know, I think that spouses are oftentimes probably the most overlooked team member in the practice, for sure.

Yeah. And this is what we help them do. This is the comfort zone. Right. And in the comfort zone, the spouse has got like, I know where I'm going. I know what's working. I know what's not. I know who's on my team. I know my partner can do great dentistry. I know how much money we have to do X, Y, and Z. So they're in their comfort zone, and they created that, but they get stuck there. And really, where they want to get is out here in progression. Right? And progression. And what they have to cross is what we call the chaos. Chaos. They have to cross chaos. And what's in chaos is the unknown things that they. There's things that they know, they don't know know, but then there's things that they don't know that they don't know. And it's like, well, if I bang on an associate, what if it doesn't work? You know, I've heard associates don't work, and then we need more. More hands, but we can't do that. I don't know if I can afford another front desk to replace me. If, like, we have to pay somebody, are we going to be profitable? All these unknowns, and then when you have somebody that can link them all together and walk you through the chaos, you can get to progression. And then these spouses really, this is the key. They become a support to their, to their doctor spouse and not someone who's just squashing everything. Because I often hear like, oh, man, I feel like I'm the Debbie Downer on the team. I'm squashing things. But it's like they're just in survival and they want to break free, but they haven't been able to do that. And then that, that walk across that chaos portion, once they understand what they need to do, they get it and they step through and then they're to the other side and then they're out of the practice taking care of homework. It is beautiful to see a mom or a dad being home and present with their kids and, like, still having control over the practice. Because we set them up, they're running their whole practice. You know, we're going to start talking about our software that controls their profitability and controls their performance.

I think that's so well stated. I love the visual. And I think that there's so many aspects of a practice that people are looking to go through that chaos, that unknown, to get to the other, to the next levels, to progress their practice. And I think the easiest way to do it is to have somebody who knows the unknowns and like, you're, and you're, you're the best at it, man. So I very much appreciate that you have a limited amount of spots for people where they can talk about their specific situation with you and get help. So thank you so much for that. And as always, man, it's been great talking with you.

My pleasure. Thanks, Brian.