Dental Economics Solutions Lab- "Dentistry's #1 Problem, Hiring In a Post Pandemic World" (6.15.21)

Good evening everyone. It is nice to see everyone here. We are going to have a wonderful presentation for you tonight. My name is Dr. Chris Salerno. I'm the chief editor of Dental Economics and this is one of our pop up events. The pop up events, if this is your first one, are really casual and formal. No ce, no obligations to have any sort of set curriculum. We just get to meet down with experts and talk about just whatever burning topics are. My goodness, we have a real burning topic tonight. The title of this pop up event is Dentistry's number one problem hiring in a post pandemic world and even pre pandemic, you know, hiring is tough for dentists. I often hear people say where are the good candidates and how do I onboard them properly? And oh gosh, I picked the wrong person. Now I have to start the whole hiring process all over again. I had the pleasure of going to the home offices of Dental Economics in Tulsa, Oklahoma and they have every issue of Dental economics that goes all the way back to 1911. That was the first issue of Dental Economics. And since 1911, I assure you, when you pick out a random issue and see what dentists are talking about, what's keeping them up at night. Hiring has always been an issue. It will probably always continue to be an issue. But there are some best practices we can utilize and to teach us some of those best practices in the short amount of time we have. Tonight we have Mr. Gary. Katie. We're real fortunate to have him. He's a busy guy and you probably know his work from Dental economics and just being a thought leader all around the dental community. Gary's work to empower dentists for more than 20 years. After watching a movie that poked fun at dentists, Cary discovered his life's mission. Altering America's health by transforming the way the public relates to dentistry. Gary realized that dentists rely on broken business model that focuses on attracting new patients instead of engaging and educating current ones. After years of studying the recurring challenges that face dentists, team dynamics, finances, high patient turnover, you know him, he created next level practice and the complete health dentistry model. He's inspired every day by the courage and personal success of dentists and their teams. And his goal is to help create practices everywhere where teams embrace and implement change, patients respect their treatment regimens and doctors enjoy practicing. And we've got a busy agenda. We're going to be, I'm going to be asking him just a few burning questions to kick things off, but then we want you to by all means please ask whatever burning questions you have. They can be real specific, they can be very broad. In general, whatever we don't cover in our initial Q and A, ask away.

The best way to do this is.

To just start typing questions and as they come to your mind, just start typing them into the chat box. You can direct them at me, you can direct them to the whole group. I will serve as moderator when we get to the open Q and A portion in just about 10, 15 minutes or so. Our learning objectives tonight and what we aim to cover are one, how to package your practice as an irresistible perfect product for new hire prospects to buy into. Two, to write marketing ads, not job posts. I'm curious to hear what the difference is. Gary will tell us. And what are the right, what's the right hiring mindset? How do we move from scarcity, hiring, hiring too fast, to abundance, having so many prospects and having the luxury of getting to choose the right person? Doesn't that sound nice? So without any further ado, Gary, welcome. We're so delighted for you to join us tonight.

It's a privilege to be here, Chris. Thanks. Good evening, everyone. Good to see you all. Thanks for being here.

Well, my friend, let's kick it right off. What do you think is the key to attracting top level talent in today's world? For the dentists that are sending out their advertisements and they're seeing the quality of candidates that come in and getting a little frustrated, what would you say is the key to attracting the top talent?

Well, you know, Chris, it's, it's like this has been a problem. As I'm getting some feedback. Ryan, I think we have.

Oh, echo came in. Huh?

Check one, two. You got me. There we go. We're good now. Yeah. This has been an age old problem like you had mentioned, you know, since 1911, every, every issue of dental economics has some form of hiring in it. It just really got expanded during the pandemic. A lot of things really became exponential. The why it happened was unemployment. People were making more in unemployment than they were actually working in a practice. The other thing is that we had a lot of kids who are being homeschooled or being online at home and parents not being able to, they're having to be home. And when you really look at the problem, how it cascades into the dental practice, the first thing that happens is we're zapping the energy of the existing loyal team members. That really creates a problem and it even cascades and it really accentuates the need for acquiring team members and I think really identifying that because one of the things that I'm seeing in all the doctors that I get to speak to each week is the energy zap that happens. It's like everybody's overworked and just trying to cover. And the demand is higher in dentistry right now because a lot of people put off going to the practice, plus, you know, what's happening with the stress, plus the people that have pivoted are really exploding. So we're seeing a real growth in this, in the demand for dentistry. And then the ability to supply quality experience and quality team is really zapped the practice. And also the other thing we're seeing right now is, you know, it's capping the income because, you know, you can only produce so much revenue. So that's another key element of really getting this fixed and corrected. The other thing we're seeing is the valuation of practices is being capped. And we're seeing people, you know, I'm really a committed person to the private practice. And that's like, you know, some doctors are just throwing their hands up and just wanting to sell and get out and they're leaving a lot on the table and they're losing their autonomy. And, you know, this is a big cost, Chris, when you really look at it. I mean, this, this, you know, we're also seeing things like extending time to retire. So there's a lot of elements that this one symptom is creating, you know, and I know you're seeing it across the landscape and the, in the interactions you're having across dentistry as well.

Yeah, we're seeing it everywhere. I mean, the ADA just came out with some, some research talking about how difficult, especially for hygiene and for dental assist, chairsite assisting. I mean, those two in particular, it's everywhere. It's an epidemic in this country right now. And I think you summarized the reasons why very well. Okay, so then I mentioned one of the talking points is writing a marketing ad versus a job post. So that's like one of those moments where you go, oh, gosh, I've never thought of that before. That seems like it makes sense. So what is the difference between writing a marketing ad and a job post? I feel like that's a big part of attraction.

Yeah, well, you know, so often, you know, whether it's writing an ad for a job post, marketing for new patients, educating patients, chair side, we see in dentistry, people are presenting logical, factual things. You need a crown. We have this job for you. All logical, factual, non emotional. But that's not how people buy. People buy emotionally and then they justify by logical places to, to, to invest in, you know, or commit to. And so, you know, we're going to talk about, and give you specifics about writing, writing a job post and writing a marketing ad to attract somebody. Before we get to that, we really have to set the groundwork for how to write that marketing post. That marketing ad, not an ad post. And that really comes from packaging the practice as an irresistible product that team members buy. You know, you had mentioned the two key areas for attracting right now is hygiene and assistance. And this is a, this is very true. And the facts are we're down 10%. 10% of our pool of candidates has reduced. So that puts a constraint on it right there. The, the other thing that actually happened in 2016, Chris, was the move from predominantly baby boomers working in dental practices to predominantly millennials working in dental practices. And I want to bring this up because this is when we begin. We really had to make a shift in our recruiting, hiring, and onboarding. And the reason is, is because the loyalty was lost back in the day. Baby boomers. I'm the last year of a baby boomer. I know. I think you're a Gen X. Yeah. So, you know, you really have to know the generations here because there was a major shift, and that shift was, you know, for baby boomers, if I worked for you, I was loyal to you. The minute that shifted was when there was 51% of millennials, they lost all loyalty. So you had to really be engaging. You had to be engaging. And look, I get it. Docs and team members and team leaders that are on this call, it's like, do I really have to. I just want to check a box, go to work, you know, get my day done and be done with it. I get it. But yes, we had to invent new ways to engage the workforce. And the way we did that was there's. There's two primary things that needed to happen. You needed to have a purpose behind your work. If your practice is a drill fill and bill factory, right, get on the drill fill bill and just crank out dentistry, and you're selling commodities and widgets. We call it the millennial doesn't really. Isn't really attracted to that. That's why our DSOs are coming to find our secret sauce. Because they can't retain their team members. That's one of their challenges is the culture, retention of team members. The minute you put a purpose behind your practice and all it is is packaging your practice. If you think about it this way, this will help you position your business so it has a meaningful purpose behind its work. So you could take a drill fill and bill practice. And we do it all day long, if that's what you're living in. And you wrap it with something that has meaning behind it. I'll give you an example, Ava, if you can throw up this slide, this is a practice in the middle of nowhere. And I bring this one up because this is New London, Ohio, Dr. Josh Merrill's practice. And he was dealing with like he needed. He was booked out six months. When he came, you know, we work with him, he's booked out six months. He needs associates. Nobody was coming to him. He's in the middle of nowhere. How was he attracting an associate and a hygienist? He just couldn't keep up with all the work. So he was a drill fill and bill practice. And he took on the vision being that Greater New London has access to complete health living. And as Chris mentioned earlier, we have taken on a position in dentistry called Complete Health Dentistry. It's the oral systemic connection systematized. So the patient and the team are educated in whole body health. So the mouth is connected to the body, heart attack, stroke, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, dementia, prevention. You don't have to be a doctor to do this. All you're talking about is the science behind it, the basic science. And we have a systematic approach to creating that. So in this case, Dr. Josh Merrill created his vision is the impossible possibility. So when you're creating a vision, so often doctors come to us, they go, I've been trying to do this for 10 years, five years. What we do is we work with you. You'll have a chance to work with me after if you'd like to help customize this for your practice. And I work with him to really say that he is attracting in Greater New London this idea of complete health living. And then what his purpose is, you know, he thought his purpose was to drill, fill and bill, do dentistry, find the chief complaint and fix it. Right. That was his. That was his position. And what we're dealing with now is he, he and his team are inspiring people to live life better. You know, whether it's like, you know, elevate their game in some way or allow themselves to have the life that they deserve. So it really is wrapping dentistry around something that's important to the patient, not what's important to the dentist or the dental team. Like, let me diagnose. Here's your solution. And so when you begin to do this, they get A why. You know, so often Simon Sinek talked about Find your why and he talks about, you know, you can see his work on YouTube. It's really fabulous. And it's like all he. He really looks at and, and dissects all the sick, most successful businesses. And in those businesses, he talks about not what they do, but why they do it. You know, he talks about Apple thinking differently. And when you can do this simply in your practice, all of a sudden you shift the ads. And we're going to talk next, Chris, about, you know, what you said about the difference between a post and an ad. You have to start here because this is the product that you're going to create is irresistible. Now, guess what happened. He's an hour outside, Chris. He's an hour outside of Cleveland. And we wrote the ad and we're going to show you the hygiene ad. We also wrote an associate ad just like this. We're actually going to show it to you next. And what happened was he attracted an associate that was graduating. Her husband works at the Cleveland Clinic. She goes, she shows up and she does the interview. And then she observed how the practice ran because it was really delivering this total millennial doc. Awesome, right? She goes, I'm so mad right now, Chris. She goes, I'm so mad. And we go, why are you mad? She goes, because I have to drive an hour each way because this is the practice. I passed 100 practices on my way to this practice. It's going to add, you know, eight hours to my week. But I choose to work in a practice that delivers this type of work. Does it make sense, Chris?

Yeah, that's great.

Yeah. So, you know, this is the key to packaging and practice. Very simple. Create a vision that's bigger than yourself that really has an impact on human beings, lives that touch them emotionally, not, not factually. And just, you know, like on a commodity, have a purpose. Your why, that really speaks to you and lights you up. And by the way, this is how you get a team that's aligned. This is how you increase case acceptance. All the elements are rooted here. This, you do this work and all of a sudden it transforms the entire practice on how people operate. It shifts how they be, not what they're doing, but who they're being about what they're doing. And that's an element most people don't have their attention on. And then, of course, there's values. And those values, you know, in the interview, you're going to say, you know, our values are we create patients as heroes, our Patients are heroes. And what that means is H stands for health is greater than disease. E stands for excellence. R stands for respect for each other, and O stands for optimism. So how can you help us? This is the interview now. How can you help us transform Greater New London? How can you help us help people live life better? How can you help us with and operating from these values? Or where have you demonstrated that you've operated from these values? And, Chris, I'm telling you right there, all of a sudden they go, this place is completely different than any other place that I've ever done. So the strategy, answering your number one question is if you have a smaller pool of people to pull from, you have to pull. You have to be the best at what you do. Here's the other thing that happened post pandemic. The why the strategy works is because people started looking in the mirror and saying, what do I want my life to look like? How do I want to work? Where do I want to work? When do I want to work? They started, really. I don't know about you, Chris, but I got very straight. Like, three things happened for me. I stopped doing things I'm not good at. I stopped doing things I had no business doing. And then I removed anything that was, like, negative and toxic in my world. And those three things are what doctors come to us for, because they're like, you know what? I'm going back. I have a short window. Everything got broken. I want to build it the way I want to build it, not the way, you know, it's been given to me. And I'm on the treadmill, just running with no off switch. So this is step one, which is create your practice as an irresistible product that your internal customer buys each and every day. And like, Ava is a great example. Ava's on my team and she's the person. Like, she's a talented, crazy talented person. And if we didn't have our position to transform dentistry and bring whole body health to the practices, she would not be. I would not get even a chance to even speak to Ava, because she's going to be at the top place. And because we had this position, I had the privilege of attracting and really working side by side with an amazing human being. Yes, yes.

Excellent. Was there. Oh, did you have another slide to show? Did you have that?

Yeah, let's go. Let's go to. Let's go right to the. Let's show you how most people present themselves on indeed or dental post. Here's what you got. You get this. This will get you people who don't show up for their interviews. This will get, this is, this is a factual, you know, look at the, you know, looking for a. This is an actual ad, by the way. And it's look for. First of all, might be looking for this. We took this off of indeed looking for a professional person who loves dentistry to join our family oriented practice. So that's every practice in the United States.

Right.

There's zero differentiation there. Right. And then they're going to give you your times. First of all, your hours would be. The game's over. The game's over right there. Because you're having them fit into your hours. You don't even get a chance to talk to the person because I can't tell you how many times people, when you give specifics like that, like that kind of specifics about time, you can actually, if they're engaged in the purpose of the practice, they will, they will work. You can work with them and they will work with you to come up with the times that you need. Right. So you want to be careful about giving time there and then, you know, okay, part time is very attractive to a lot of people. And then the range there, you know, I do like you know, having, you know, some form of range, which is great, 10 hour shifts, okay. That might attract somebody, but you know, it's very like vanilla like you really there's, you know, it doesn't speak to an, A performer. And by the way, it goes back to what you were saying. We had A, we had to get great at this years ago because we were getting vanilla B and C players. There's a players that are bored out of their wits, that want to make more money, have more fun, make a bigger difference. But if you're, if your ad doesn't depict that, it gets killed off. So let's go to one that's that that, you know, is. By the way, this is so counterintuitive. This is two pages. We just put it on one. This is so counterintuitive. Everybody goes, oh, it has to be short and fast. No, the people. 75% of people in dentistry are humanist methodicals. So there's four types of Personas that you're speaking to. But you want to speak to the humanist, methodical. This is the person that cares deeply about people. Right. That's why they got into dentistry in the first place. Methodical is they don't want to make a mistake and they want the steps to get there. So they like detail. So you want to start out with your vision, purpose and values and say something about your office specifically so you can attract the right candidate. In this case, our team's vision. Like, who starts out with the team's vision. Greater New London has access to complete health living to inspire people to live life better. I can't tell you. There's three types of hygienists. There's, we call them the tooth polishers, the gum gardeners and the hygieniuses. Now, hygieniuses are educators. They're teachers. They want to help people. They want to use what they learned in hygiene school and they want to really, like, they want to make a difference. They're like a players, you know, people that, you know, the ones you don't want, which are, and I don't say don't want, but like, they, you know, I always say docs come to me and team leaders come to me and they go, gary, I'm just so sick and tired of like having somebody, you know, cash a paycheck from here. They clock in and they leave. They don't even care. And that's like level one hygiene, right? But when you get into the hygieniuses all of a sudden, and by the way, when we rename all the titles and they have fun with it because it gives them a new sense of being like we, and by the way, we trademarked it, that's how powerful it is in the case of a hygienist. Because the way we see a dental practice, it's the only healthcare practice that a healthcare professional sees a patient twice a year. So if you use it as the hub for whole body health, when they come in, you can begin to educate them about and transform how they relate not just to dentistry, Chris, but how they relate to their own health and wellbeing. And I can't tell you how many, you know, hygienists are also nutritionists. They are, they're into fitness, they talk health. And by the way, post pandemic, if you're not, you know, turning your practice into a healthcare practice, oral care is healthcare. And if you don't position it that way, you know, patients are, they're just going to think that you're just a general, you know, person drilling, filling and billing. And they want to be a part of something that really fits in, that's relevant in today's world. So thoughts about what I shared so far, Chris?

It's, it's really smart. And I, and I see what you're saying. Someone might look at that and Say, oh, it's too wordy and you got to go short.

Short.

But that's kind of the point. Someone that actually reads through this and gets engaged and responds to this like, that's the kind of person you want. Someone that goes, nah, too long and moves on. That may not, that's probably not the kind of person wanting your practice anyway. You're kind of screening them with this, right?

Exactly, Chris. And that's the whole idea. You don't want to get 100 people, you want to get five people of the right people. And by the way, you see what that does. It takes time out of your day to, you know, interview 20, 30 people and read resumes. Here's the other thing. We decided, you know, not to ever waste a dollar's a doctor's dollar or minute or team members dollar or minute. Because when we can make your job much more efficient and you work smarter, not harder, all of a sudden you'll have time to go home and be with your family and leave on time and do all those things. So we like, we like vetting everything. So here's what we've learned. I'm going to give you like all the way downstream, Chris. Watch this. Look at that last part. It says, please respond to this by doing the following. In the subject of the email put I am your world class hygienist. Okay, Number two in the body of the email, right? Why you're the right person for the position. Now we're seeing their verbal skill and their written skills and their self confidence. Three, attach resume. Four, include your salary and hourly requirements. So that also allows us to know what we're coming in at now for people, for team leaders on this call, if you don't have people lining up with you and you got to blow air, I call it blowing air all day. Tell people what to do. You got to remind them, you got to tell them what to do. This is the way you get people who are honest, open and willing and listen and know how to follow direction. That's how you vet all that out, Chris. And I'm telling you now, we're training people who can know how to listen and duplicate and respond and deliver. It's awesome.

I love that. That's excellent. That's fantastic. And I'm sure the example you showed before of the bad example of a job posting, I know I myself and many of the people in the audience are like, oh, that's kind of what mine looked like, but what an amazing idea for this one. So we already have some people Starting to write in comments. That's great. Please keep those coming. I've got one more question for Gary before we move into some information that Gary wants to share, some opportunities, and then the open Q and A. Okay, my final question for you, Gary. So, all right, you've gone through this process. You're getting some good people into the door. Now, how do you make sure that you hire the quality candidates without prolonging the hiring process? What does this look like, your hiring process and how are we not prolonging it?

Yeah, it's James Dobson. I, you know, I like finding things that are outside dentistry that are universal truths. And there's this work by James Dobson called the 12 Steps of Intimacy. And it really breaks down how relationships, like how do you have a successful long term relationship? Right. And it really breaks it down and when basically, just to give you the premise of the concept, when you take your time on the front end and the person really gets to know you and it's a good fit, you keep that person on the back end. It's simple, general. But what most people do is they hire fast and then they don't want to deal with confronting situations and they fire slow. Yeah, you want to flip the script here, Chris? Yeah, and we want to hire slow. It's so counterintuitive. And then really come face to face when someone's not lining up and really have dialogues. And we have a whole systematic process for when someone's not lining up, how to do that. But we're going to save that for another webinar. But this one specifically is for on the front end. So one of the things that we like to do is you. First of all, they have to do those four things. Once they do those four things, I really like a zoom call because you can see how they are they on time.

You can.

I like you, Chris. I know you have a beautiful home. Like you're, you know, you can see like you have a typewriter. It's your, your whole, there's a whole message behind you. You can actually see the message behind a person in their physical space. Very powerful tool. Um, you know, if they can't set up technology, we've had people that couldn't even in today's world knock it on zoom, you know, and you're a technology based practice, that would be a huge problem. So we like the zoom call. And then, you know, three questions. If you were to give us your ideal situation, explain that to us. So I love that question. It's because they're painting where they're starting from and they're giving you their ideal position, time, money, the type of practice that you work for. So give us your ideal scenario. And then they'll say, well, what do you mean? Well, you know, tell us about a place that you really liked working at and tell us a place that really maybe you didn't enjoy and what, what traits did, did you experience in there? Now you're going to, they're going to tell you whether you have the right practice for them or not. You know, if you, you know, I used to interview, by the way, the reason why I created all this is because I was horrible at all this. So I made so many mistakes and we've made so many mistakes that, you know, we've done this for 27 years, 6,000 practices. And we, by the way, and this is, this is a never. We never not get a team member. There's a, that's a never. And we've done this in Machias, Maine, like the northernmost point in Maine. 6,000 practices. Hays, Kansas, New London, Ohio. I mean, I'm thinking about all these rural places. And by the way, it's actually harder in New York City. My home office is in Rockefeller Center. We have our New York, our New York, our Chicago, our la, our San Francisco offices are having a harder time than suburban right now, which is really interesting. Like Brooklyn. I see Lynn's on the call. I love Lynn. She's been in business for a long time, you know, and you know, we're working on a practice in Brooklyn. And you know, in Brooklyn it's, it's very challenging to hire team members. It's like the cities now are actually even more difficult and you just have to have a different strategy. You know, you cannot go in the city and think you're going to post an ad. It is not going to work. It's just not because people are not even in the city anymore. So you know, that's why you have to go to these degrees to do it. The other thing is you want to really package. When I say package, I want to deepen that a little bit. There's no cost or low cost ways to create value. So I know some docs are sitting out there going, well, you know, packaging and practice. I can't give benefits right now. I have to build the practice in order to give that. But we created a no cost way. One of the things we institute is something called the DREAM Program. And a Dream program is really powerful and it's no cost. You appoint a dream manager. The dream Manager Asks the team members to write out 100 dreams. And my book is called Million Dollar Dentistry. And I have a bonus system in there. And we'll give that away as my gift to all dental economics readers. That'll come in the follow up email. So you'll. By the way, you're going to get the ad that I showed you so you can swipe that and customize that for yourself. I'm going to give you a copy of my book, Million Dollar Dentistry. It'll describe the bonus system. So when you have a bonus system, and I'll just give you a generic idea of how the bonus system works, what happens is doctors figure out how much time and money they want to make. So we un. Collapse time and money. So let's say you want, you want to make a million, you want to do a million bucks, and you want to work four days a week with eight weeks vacation. Well, we just reverse engineer that algorithm in dollars. Let's just say the doctor needs to do 5,000 a day and the hygienist needs to do 1,000 each a day. And now the appointment coordinator needs to fill that schedule. And then they get paid per day that they fill that schedule by the end of each day. And then the assistant gets paid when they hit 5,000 a day. And then the hygienist gets 1% out of her room on the treatment. That gets close. So it's individualized bonuses tied to what the doctor and the practice needs to produce. Now every, it's a triple win bonus system. When you have those hundred dreams and you have the dream manager and you have a bonus system. Now what happens is they have money, they have dreams, and then they tie themselves emotionally to the practice. And when they're tied emotionally to the practice, by the way, millennials, they don't want things, they want experiences. I had a team member that wanted to go to Tokyo for the weekend. She got her bonus, went to Tokyo for the weekend, had sushi, and came back like that was her thing. But I know it sounds crazy, but like, for me that's not important. But for her that was like. And she talks about it, by the way. You talk about attracting other people. She talks about that. My workplace, I was able to generate more money, create this, and go to Tokyo and fulfill on a dream. And then I have another gal who just bought a Jaguar and just bought a, a new condo. Like, so what happens is you bring joy and fun to the workplace while being purposeful. Now all of a sudden you have a grapevine. By the way, you know, there's a grapevine, Chris. You know about that grapevine, right?

What's that?

Let me explain it to you. I used to, I travel with like, Henry Schein reps, Patterson reps, banco reps, and all the reps get the phone calls and they go, hey, I'm thinking about moving. Should I go work with Dr. Tallman? Should I go work with Dr. Pavlovsky? So I didn't even say your name right. So, like, it's like they're, they're. What happens is they're getting your reputation through the representatives that visit your practice, and if it's not fun and exciting and, and that they can really enjoy it, that that brand goes out in the world. And those reps tell them exactly who to work for and who not to. And, and this is where the rich get richer. And that's. We're putting. This gives you an unfair advantage so that you can play the game with every practice out there right now, no matter what your size right now, you can create a dream program. You can create a bonus program, no cost. And by the way, the bonus, you only pay bonus when you collect the dollars enough to pay for doctor salary, all your expenses. The bonus itself, by the way, benefits. If you want to give benefits, you put that in the trigger point of when the bonus gets paid. It is awesome, Chris. And it gives an unfair advantage to the small practice that is bumping up against the DSO that you don't think you can compete with. This gives you that differentiation, and it's structured.

You're not just making it rain. It makes sense. And you're back planning. And I love it. Obviously, people are getting a taste, if they don't know you yet, of how many amazing ideas you have before we go to the Q and A. And we do have some questions already lining up. Did you have something you could share just so people could keep in touch with you, follow up with you before we go to the Open Q and A?

Yeah, Dennis. And team members and team leaders, you weren't set up to win your game, especially in this environment. And one of the things that I've dedicated my career to is freedom. Freedom for all people in dentistry. And the way I do that is I give of my time each month. I give 10 hours or a half hour to 20 practitioners. And it's on a zoom call like this, we get to talk about anything that you want to talk about, anything that might have come up today or anything, ideas that I came up with, and you want to deepen it and if you're really serious about, like, figuring this out moving forward, you know, don't take one of these spots. If you. If you're not serious about really getting in there and making changes. If you take your camera over that. That. That. That code to the left, it'll take you right to my calendar, and you'll be able to get on my calendar and the first 20 people that. That get in there and. And register on my calendar. You'll. You'll get in. I'm on vacation. I'm in San Diego. Right. This is my mobile studio today. Chris. Looks great. Looks great. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. And Ava is my collaborative partner. Ryan, my team. I have a team all across the U.S. we're in 45 states, three provinces of Canada. We just opened Bermuda, Bahamas, Puerto Rico, and people are doing this work all throughout North America. And, yeah, I'll. I'll just give up my time. There's no obligation. There's no sales. You just get to be. Be you, and I get to be me, and we just chat. And it's my. My gift to dentistry, because dentistry has been such a gift to me. I've. It's taken me around the world, and we've done some really great work. So, yeah, that's what we're going to provide for people. And you could just register here.

Well, if you're.

If you're.

We'll leave that up for a moment. If you're serious about. Actually, we can leave it up for a little while if you're serious about having this amazing opportunity to have an hour of Gary's time. That's incredible.

Half hour, Chris. Half hour.

Sorry, Half hour of his time. Apologies. A half hour of his time is incredible. It's really a wonderful offer, and I hope some of you guys take advantage of that. So while you're still getting your cameras out and figuring out the QR code, let's go over to our Q and A. And again, for those of you who haven't typed out a question yet, we still have time for you to type it in. Get as specific as you like. Get as broad as you like. That's what we're here to help with. So I believe the one that came in first was from Dr. Spilman. He asked a couple questions. We'll do them both. First question is an interesting one, Gary. So it seems as though new prospects are demanding easily 20% more than they were in, say, 2019 market value. So here's the question. How do we address our loyal employees as they respond to this surge in paying. That's a tough one.

Yeah, it's really good. Yes. They're, you know, especially in hygiene, because they know it's a supply and demand issue. I would put a performance bonus in for your entire team. You don't want to give. You don't want to increase your fixed expenses. What you want to do is, please, just get my book. It describes everything you need to do to set up the bonus plan and give a performance bonus to your entire team. And this way, you're going to be ahead of it. But here's what it does. See? And what's the doctor's name again? Chris.

That was Dr. Spellman.

Dr. Spellman. So, Dr. Spellman, this is key. The profitability at the rung above where you're at. So let's just say you're doing 100,000amonth. When you add 20 or $30,000, 70% of that next rung is profit. So that's why you can afford to give away about 10% of bonus. And then you have your variable expenses of lab and supplies and alike. But what's really powerful is everybody thinks my overhead just stays the same at like 65 to 70%. No, it. Once you cover your fixed costs, then you share the wealth. Here's what it does. See, most people want to be more profitable in dentistry. Dr. Spielman. But what they do is they try to cut expenses. Yes, that's one way. You got to look at the variance of each line item. But the real way to build your profit is to ex is raise your top line. Therefore, the percentages get reduced and the average practice is running at 50% capacity. 5. 0. So how do we know that? Let me just give you a quick equation here. There's three ways to build the practice. And you can take out a pen and paper, all of you. This is a really good exercise. So, as Chris said in my bio, most dental practices look to grow from new patients. I want you to hold that thought for a second and go inside your practice. We call it our care system. CARE stands for CA is case acceptance, R is retention, and E is the experience and acquisition of new patients. Notice that's the third one down. You have to fix the retention problem in dentistry. Why? Because there's only 20% of people that come back twice. Two, zero. Yes. Most people think it's 80%. Then 28% of cases presented are accepted. Extremely low conversion rates when you plug the hole of retention. And the way you do that is putting in complete health dentistry. So people think it's not just the cleaning, it's total body health. Raise the value proposition, raise the reason why to come in. That's number one. So if you have two profis, two exams, a set of bitewings, the value of that, let's just say in a PPO practice is $300. $300. Two profis, two exams, set of bitewings. Now, case acceptance. On average, when you put this case acceptance system in, you read it in my book or talk to me about it. When you, when you register to talk with me, the value of a crown to build up. I'm not saying we're selling more crowns and built, but it's the value of your fee, schedule, crown and build up. Let's say it's $1000 PPO. 1000/300 is $1300. $1300 is the average annual value of an adult in your practice. Multiply that times 2000 patients, 1300 times 2002.6 mil. This practice is, when we first start with it, is doing about a million dollars. So. And we have no new patients in this equation. So this is usually an eye opener for most practitioners because they don't usually think this way. And now, now all of a sudden, you start building your top line by plugging the whole of retention, plugging the whole of. Again, as I mentioned earlier, you. You have to learn how to speak to the patient. Why? To buy dentistry emotionally, not factually. And when you flip that paradox, patients invest in their care, especially when you tie it to something that they're connected to. So when you connect the dentistry on what they are already motivated by and connected to, they invest in that. And so that was kind of a long winded conversation, but I wanted to give it to all Dr. Spielman, because there's a lot of layers to building that top line so you can take care of your loyal team members, honor the new person. By the way, how you honor them is not giving them that dollar amount. You combine the dollar amount with the bonus structure, so they have the potential to make even more than that. And when you have a high purpose, they'll accept that. They'll accept that exchange.

Excellent. For those that are looking in the chat box, we do have the link available for scheduling that discovery call. So if you missed that, the QR code, that information is being posted there in the chat. Next question. This is also from Dr. Spillman, actually. How do you hire slow when you're slammed and there's no temps? I understand the pain. My brother's going through. Sometimes you're just like, I can't even hire the person in. I got temps. I'm slammed. Oh, my God. I don't have time.

I need a live body.

I need a warm body to answer this ad. And then you know what? They're hired if they have a pulse. That's the urgency that some of our practices have, right?

Oh, yeah. I see it all the time. And then what that does is it just causes disruption after disruption, and you can't get ahead of it, Dr. Spielman. So again, my empathy and compassion. I feel you. I deal with it all day long with docs. And here's what I recommend. Slow your roll first, spread your patients out. Now, I know. Like, let me just give you what's underneath the belly of this conversation. Abundance and scarcity. This concept of more than enough or poverty. If you're in this poverty thinking. The poverty thinking is, I got to pay my bills and I don't have enough money. So I got to see a lot of people. Regardless of. Of what I have in my practice. To actually serve these people, you do them a disservice. They're seen late. The experience is horrible. You get bad reviews. It does a bigger disservice trying to slam them in. What I would do is clean up my expenses. I would make sure I have enough. Most Doctors don't read PNLs. The first thing we do is get. If your money ain't right, you can't join the fight. We make sure we slow everything down. We make sure you're profitable, and we set how many people we're going to see so it doesn't overwhelm the system. By the way, Papa John's does this. I study. I'm. I'm. I'm tied to every other successful business. I am so obsessive about understanding how other businesses work. And then I bring that into dentistry and Papa John's. After 100 calls in an hour, that phone goes on. On busy. Why? Because the pizzas come out like poo, the drivers are late, and the reviews stink, and the game's over. You just killed off that business. So we do the same thing, and we slow down. So that takes away the pressure. We make sure you're profitable. You're covering your expenses, so you got to be more efficient. Then we slow down and we fix the problem right from the start. Not because here's what's going to happen. If you keep doing that, you're going to have irked people. You're going to have existing team members that have been loyal and they just get French fried out and they want to leave. And now you have to hire more people under those conditions.

And.

And you can't get it. Slow your roll for a month, get your arms around this business, then open it up. You were shut down for three months. You could shut down and slow down. You can slow down for a month.

Right? Right. So stick with the temp. Get your house in order as everything you're saying, but stick with the temp. And it's better to keep a temp than it is to hire the wrong person. It's better to wait for that right person is what I'm hearing. Right.

Absolutely. And, you know, like, I'm not even a fan attempts to be honest with you. I get the loyal royal people and I make sure they're taken care of. And by the way, I make sure they're taken care of. If you're down one or two people and they're having to work extra time, you really got to take. Take care of them proactively because they're not going to ask. But you want to be kind and generous with them. You know, we have all kinds of stuff going on where we're actually, we're getting them massages, you know, gift certificates to massages and things like that. It's worth the extra hundred dollars a month to take care of your existing team members.

So there was one more of a comment than a question. Someone in the audience said something along the lines of, you know, loyalty is a thing of the past. And, you know, even if you get a talented person, they learn what they can from you and they move on. And it sounds like this. This poor person has been burned a few times, but I think you've.

You've met.

Yeah, we all have. It seems like you, but you have. This was a comment that came at the very top of the presentation before you got into a lot of the nuts and bolts. I'm hoping that they saw from. From including what you just said. I mean, loyalty for this person might just mean, you know, I hired them and I gave them a paycheck and they quit. What the heck, they're not loyal. But you've shown how loyalty, how we can build that loyalty with our team by. By treating them differently than they've ever been treated before.

There's no doubt about it. I mean, and again, it goes back to a lot of the strategies I gave you already today. You know, if you slap somebody in. And I've never experienced this, Chris, but my friends told me they Said they would go to the bar and have a one night stand and they wouldn't want to marry that person. It was that kind. Did I, did I do to that? Okay, yeah, all right, all right.

That's a metaphor.

Yeah, but that's. This is like, you know, my wife said, look, if you want, if you want to be with me, if you do, don't come back. This, these are my values. I'm not going to be in a mediocre relationship if you raise your voice. That's not the kind of man that I want to be with. She laid out the game on the front side. We sat down and talked it all out. I was clear. See, I lined up with her values or I did not. And by the way, I am sorry. So crazy loyal to my wife. 18 years. We have a crush on each other. She helped me get sober. I am 13 years sober. My son was diagnosed with autism. He is off the autism spectrum. Like, we have taken on life and stared down life's challenges. And it doesn't mean that we don't have problems. It means that together we are loyal and we will stare down anything that comes in our space. And we have dedicated our life to having fun and making a difference. And when you do that, like, you can create loyalty, Chris, you can do that. But what I'm saying is like, the old way of. See, and I'm going to be really straight here, Dennis. Make money and are successful in spite of themselves because, darn it, they were not set up to win their game coming out of dental school. They weren't trained to be a leader. They weren't trained to be a manager. They weren't trained to be a recruiter. That I have the biggest heart for. The men and women who go to dental school and they're handed keys and saying, here, run this business. It's just not fair. And because we have the fees we have, because we have the retention, patients know they need to come back twice, but they don't. But when you get them to, your life changes. Look, you can run a successful practice, but if you want to be uber successful, retire at the top of the game, have more money, have more fun, make a bigger difference. You have to apply some basic business principles that I'm giving out today. And in my book, and when you apply them, then you just go, you're off the chain. You're playing a bigger game. So, yeah, loyalty is created in today's world. It is possible. But believe me, I feel your pain the way you wrote that. I get it. I was fried, too. On somebody who I thought was loyal to me. I also had somebody who wasn't loyal to me in a relationship. But those are gifts, because now I have a delicious wife, Judith, who I get to be with, you know, and that other person was it. So. Thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you.

We have another. More of a question said we. Dennis used to make money, but not in these current times. I'm sure you hear things like that. You know, 20 years ago, that's when it was a good game. But now it sounds like this person is. With all respect to them. I think we all feel this way sometimes. They feel like now, that's it. Games over. DSOs, student debt, whatever it is, the game has changed, and it's not in our favor.

Yeah. Yeah. My heart goes out. And guess what? Not zero. Not one person needs to suffer if you choose not to. See, I used to be a victim of my circumstances. I used to. I used to. You know, there's an organizational behavior. There's the perpetrator, there's the victim, and there's a rescuer. This is a whole nother webinar if you want to talk about organizational behavior. But I was all three. I would perpetrate, I would create upset, Then I would. I would go fix the problem because I was the rescuer. So I would. I would feel good, like, here he comes to save the day. And then I would go home to my wife, Chris, and go, Honey, I had a hard day today. Can you give me a kiss and a hug? And, like, I don't know if I could do this anymore. Here's the thing. I get it. The thing I've learned throughout my whole life with autism, alcoholism, workaholism, I had all three isms. It's not. You are not your circumstances. You are bigger than your circumstances. There is a person who has been where you've been that can walk you through to the other side. Now, here's the thing. In my book, my second book called Raise youe Healthy Deserve Love. We should give that one out, too. Ava. I'm feeling like Oprah today. Chris.

Wow.

Everyone is getting a book. I mean, you get a book and you get a book, and you get a book, and you get a book. I mean, I love that. Where, you know, Saturday Night Live heads are popping off. In my second book, Raise youe Healthy Deserve level, it is this. In life and in practice, you don't get what you deserve. You get what you think you deserve. If you think you deserve a big B. Yes. All of these are on audio. If you deserve a B team, you will get a B team. If you deserve. If you think suffering is your default, you are going to stay in suffering. Only reason why I know is because I didn't want to go to work in my own practice, my own business. I hated myself. I hated the people that work there. Yes. And now we flip the script and figure it out a way and then we give it away to Dennis. Because here's the deal. I feel your pain, but here's what it is. You can create value. Because if there's people that have teeth and gums in your marketplace and you have a business and a license, you can have abundance tomorrow. Not next week, not next year. It's the minute you choose to say, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired of not paying my bills, and I'm going to choose a new path. That's what happened to me. See, there are one of two things that happen, Chris. One of two things. You either change. Most people change on their. Don't change on their own. They don't go, hey, I think I am going to go change today. See, the pandemic was a gift. It was done for us, not to us. It was done for us to wake up and go, I got to make changes because I don't want to live my life like this anymore. And if you take it like that, then you're going to seek out the solution. And there's a solution. If you have a patient or patients and you have a license, you can then make money. I haven't had one doc in my whole career. Over 6,000 directly working with them, and hundreds of thousands like this, talking like this, that when they were ready, the only thing you need to be is ready to go. I'm ready to play, and I don't want to play this way. And I'm going to make changes right now. And by the way, it's. It is scary at first, but you just walk down a path. That's proven by the way, I drank for 20 years straight, Chris, and then I was looking at this mountain of never drinking again. I didn't think I'd ever survive. And now I have all the things that I was trying to get when I was drinking, like social connection, freedom, peace, all that stuff. I have all that now, naturally, and that is what is possible for all people. And I don't share this to boast. I share it to say, if this street kid from Jersey can do it, you can, too. Darn it.

What a wonderful and positive message. To end on. I want to thank everyone that has joined us tonight. This whole presentation has been recorded. It's going to be available on demand. So if you came a little late or you just want to get this wisdom again and soak it in, share with your office teams and whatnot, it'll be available. Just give us a week or so to put it together on our end. But thank you so much for joining us and thank you Gary for spending time with us on your vacation. Gary and his team, Ryan and Ava, you're a wealth of information and I know we just appreciate not just on hiring. You've given us an abundance of information and insight on that and turning our worlds around and how we think and put ads together and hire slowly and fire quickly but we've spilled out into so many other arenas. Thank you so much.

Thank you all. Have a good night everybody. Love to you all.