Doing It All Is Killing Your Practice: How Smart Dentists Scale with Less Stress

Dentists, let's be real. You're overworked. But do you really know how overworked you are? Did you know that one in three dentists don't enjoy coming into work every single day? That means if you're sitting in a room with two of your colleagues, one of you is miserable. Now, you know, I chuckle, but that's really an upsetting statistic to understand. And the truth of it is, if you're juggling patient care, administrative tasks, team management, and let's be honest, you're playing referee in the office, then you're in the danger. Z, here's the kicker. The most successful practices don't run on one person doing everything. They have delegation that's present. So what if delegation wasn't just a pipe dream? What if it was the key to finally running your practice without running yourself into the ground? What sort of freedom would you have if that really was the case? Well, you're going to want to stick around because on today's episode, it's going to completely change how you run your practice and give you freedom back to enjoy your life. Welcome to the Next Level Practice podcast, where we don't just talk about the business side of dentistry, we fix it. I'm your host, CEO of Next Level Practice, Kelly Damer, and today we're cutting through the chaos. How to stop running yourself ragged and finally get your practice to operate without you being in the middle of everything. I want to say that again because most of you think I might have a great thing going here. I'm able to set my own hours. I come in, you know, I have a team working with me. I see patients, you love patient care and really giving back to your patients and providing them the health that they deserve. But if you find that you have to be involved in every single part of the day in order for things to run smoothly, that's a big red flag and an indicator that you don't have a good business structure in place and you're really the one holding everything together. What's the problem with that? You might say, well, at the end of the day, it's not sustainable for long term. And it also means that you're probably leaving money on the table when it comes to running an efficient business model. Here's the deal. Every practice has that doctor, the one who's drowning in their work, constantly answering questions, handling every little detail and putting out fires all day long. Does that sound familiar? I wanna tell you about a doctor I spoke to recently, Dr. Miller. He was working over 60 hours per week. He's working through lunches, the first one into the practice, the last one to go home. And his team was really, truly paralyzed without his input. And his front office team was a bottleneck. Then we stepped in. Within a few months, he's reduced his hours by 30%. So he's working about 40 hours per week. He's increased his revenue, and most importantly, he stopped being the glue holding everything together, which is great because I rem talking to this doctor on one of our calls. Literally, the carpet cleaner interrupted him and was like, where do I go to clean this carpet? And it's like, why are you handling who's cleaning the carpets in your practice? You really want to have people set up, be managing those things for you so that you can really be using your time most efficiently. And it's not to say that any one person's time is more important than someone else's. That's not what we're saying here. However, we do want to have hierarchy for communication flow so that we can run a more efficient business. Today I'm going to show you exactly how he did it and how you can, too. Here's what we're going to be breaking down. Number one, the biggest delegation mistakes that keep you stuck in the weeds and having to be involved in every little thing. Number two, how to build a team that handles business without having to run to you for every little thing. And number three, the time management moves that free up hours in your week without sacrificing your production. Stick around. By the end of this episode, you'll have a no excuse plan to get your time and your life back. So let's get right into the heart of the matter here, right? Your practice isn't growing because you're doing too much. I want to say that again here and slow it down. Your practice isn't growing because you're doing too much. And that might seem like an oxymoron, right? Like, well, if I do more, shouldn't my practice become better? Isn't that the logic behind it? The problem with that is you have limitations for yourself as one single person. And so if you don't have good systems and structures in place to have your practice grow, you're never going to be able to outrun all of the tasks, all of the things. As an individual person, it's interesting because, you know, we talked to Dennis and they're like, yeah, I have a team, you know, But I'm frustrated because I find that I have to repeat myself and certain things aren't getting done. And it's like, why aren't the charts getting completed? Or how come we're not calling hygiene patients to fill that open spot that just had a cancellation. And in reality, if every decision is still flowing through you, that's not a team. That's what we call a staff or an infection. Right. That's a bottleneck if you do not have a well oiled team that works together and understands how to be successful at the end of the their roles. So there's a difference here between staff and team. The most successful practices don't just have systems, they have a doctor who's decentralized. So I want you to think about your role doctor owners as being really twofold because there's Dr. Smith who is a chairside producer and a provider in the practice, and then there's Dr. Smith who's the CEO and managing the business side of dentistry. You're two people and it might kind of sound silly, right? It's not like a Jekyll and Hyde situation. But you really need to be thinking about yourself as two people. Dr. Smith's CEO should only be communicating to his team leader when it comes to managing the business side of the practice. Now Dr. Smith, who is a chairside producer, interacts with the team. Of course he's not giving direction unless it's something clinically to the team. That's a very important distinction that I think a lot of our practices, you know, have gotten busy or bogged down in the day to day and they don't necessarily separate those two people. I want to tell you about another doctor that we recently started working with. I'm going to call her Dr. Sarah. Her practice was actually, it was a great practice, but the structure inside of it was a mess. I mean, she was having to be involved in everything. Treatment plans, closing cases, scheduling, marketing, ordering supplies. She was calling still every single patient the next day after their treatment to check in on them, which is amazing customer service. And you know, she was wondering why she didn't have any time left to be able to enjoy her life and her family. So when she really finally looked at her workload, half her day was spent on things that someone else really could have been doing. And here's how we fixed it. Number one, cut the clutter. She listed every single task, eating up her day and slashed anything she shouldn't be touching. So that's a process we call what should you be doing, what should you be delegating and what should you be dumping. So identify things that you can actually Just dump and get rid of that aren't a good use of your time. Some of the things she does need to do and some of the things she should be delegating. Step number two, really empower and rally a real team instead of assuming people should know she created clear roles, gave people ownership and let them make their decisions. Another key piece of things, things here too is it's like you're not just pushing things down and having people do more, right? They need to go through their own process of do, delegate, dump. I think that when we look at practice growth, a lot of times people think, oh, that means I need to be doing more. But in reality we just need to be doing different or in other words, we want to be working smarter, not harder. So really be able to delegate clear roles, give people ownership. And how you do that is by assigning everyone a key performance indicator or KPI by role by day in order for them to self assessment. Is this something that's going to be making the boat go faster if I do? Or is this something that really doesn't matter in this moment, is a little bit less on the importance level and you could be doing later tomorrow, next week, or maybe not at all. Number three, really leverage your automation. Technology is evolving obviously at a very rapid rate. And there are some things that software can step into support with, not to necessarily reduce the patient experience. It's actually the opposite, right? Sometimes software can actually improve our patient experience by adding in some automation. And so really leveraging that software is going to be your third step. The result, less time at the office, more revenue. A practice that runs without her constant oversight, and she's got her freedom back to spend time with her kids during the week, on the weekends, and really have more energy for them in general. Three actionable takeaways from our time together today. Number one might be my favorite one. It's called the 8020 rule for delegation. If a task isn't high value clinical work, why are you doing it? Identify the 20% of the tasks that only you should touch. Everything else, handoff. Another way of looking at this as well is 20% of your time should yield 80% of your results. So if you're finding yourself doing something that's not yielding 80% of your results, it's not worth your time. Step number two is understanding the why not how rule. Stop asking how do I do this? How do I, you know, clone myself and become multiple people to get things done and really start asking, who can take this off my plate? Empower a practice manager to really own daily operational tasks that you do not need to be doing. Another way of looking at this is the difference between responsibility and accountability. Now you are responsible as the business owner for all of the overarching things that happen, right? The solvency of the practice, the culture of the practice and the vision of the practice. You can delegate the doing though. So you own the responsibility, you delegate the accountabilities. And that's another way of looking at who, not how. Step number three is the two minute rule. If it takes less than two minutes to do it now, if it takes longer, delegate or schedule it. Stop letting low value tasks seal your day. Alright, so let's break this all down. Delegation isn't a luxury, it's a necessity. Your practice won't grow if you're doing everything. Your team is ready to step up if you let them. Give them the tools, the trust and get out of the way. Time management isn't about cramming more in. It's about cutting out the stuff that you don't need to do. Now, if you really want to know where your practice is leaking time, a great tool and a resource to help you identify this is our book, Million Dollar Dentistry. Click the link below in the show not and get your free copy. That's it for today. If this really hit home, send this along to your fellow dentists who need to hear it. And make sure you subscribe for more real strategies that move the needle. I'll see you next time.