Million Dollar Dentistry Masterclass June 2021- "There's a fortune in your storage closet"

Hey, practice owners, thanks for tuning in to the sixth in our series webinar series Million dollar Dentistry, based on the book, the best selling book by Gary Katie. Gary, how you doing?

So good, Steve. Man, this is one of my favorite parts of my month is when we get together and really just hunker down and unpack this thing for great practice owners out there.

Well, and me too, I think, you know, this book was written in 2006. It's just as relevant as it, as it was then. You know, we've talked a number of times how the fundamentals of business really don't change. And you know, in the dental practice world, you know, somebody who went to school four years to be a dentist thinks there's some magic in the business. And you know, there's really not. The magic is in the fundamentals and the small steps and the things that we've discussed in this book. So even though the book has a few years on it, you know, all it means is the, you know, the value of it's gone up over on ebay. This is a first edition. This is probably worth a couple of grand by now.

We're in seventh edition now, Steve.

Still, still just as relevant. So if it works for you, I want to jump right in. We, we've kind of gone through six chapters so far. A day in the life of Larry dds, the life you've. The life you're entitled to lead. Kind of talked about how you, you know, you went to dental school, you're a practice owner. These are things that you know you're entitled to. So don't feel bad about it. Chapter three, CPR cash in your pocket. Now, I love the chapter titles for one of our home run episodes. What you should really be doing with your dental hygienist. And if you haven't watched that episode, practice owners go back and watch May or may not be what you think. Chapter five, why your team hates you, which again is one of my favorites. I love the way you frame these things in something that a dentist says. Yeah, that's exactly what I'm thinking. But it turns out to be more productive than that. And then this chapter is there's a fortune in your storage closet, which again may or may not be what you think it is. Before we get started, I do want to remind everybody. I see we have a lot of people coming in as the webinar gets rolling. Keep in mind you can ask questions. There's a little button at the bottom. Comments. Put your comments in. We will try to answer every Question that anybody asks. If we can't get to them tonight, the platform actually saves it. And Gary has agreed that, you know, we'll send them to him and make sure that he gets your email address and replies to you by tomorrow. And then at the end, we have a little bit of a surprise offer Gary's going to make. I'm not going to ruin that for you, but if you stay till the end, Gary's going to give away a little something I think that will be hugely valuable to anybody who listens and, you know, finds a message in this that they say, hey, I think that'll help my practice. So with that, Gary. So I read ahead as always. You can tell my. My tabs. Paula makes fun of me. My tabs and my highlighters and my notes. When you wrote this book, this was. The topic is mostly about how to treatment plan to enable your treatment coordinator, how to build a selling system and what I like to call a selling environment. And that doesn't mean sell, sell, sell. You know, like in the old days, somebody, you know, you go to buy a car and they take your car keys and not let you leave until you sign a piece of paper that's not selling. So can you kind of explain what you mean by there's a fortune in your storage closet?

Yeah. Well, it's like a visual of having a treatment planning room, having a consult room. Because so often when I was building this business model, I started out bringing patients to the front door. And here's what I found, Steve. They went out the back door and when they were there, they didn't buy anything. I'm like, what kind of business is this? It was like missing. I started out in marketing, but what I realized was that the environment, that the thinking about sales, its relationship to dental practitioners, the patients weren't buying anything. And I saw Steve, actually, this really, this chapter really changed my career because I had this question and I said, if I can answer this question, this can revolutionize an entire industry. And it really has. I mean, it's pretty, pretty amazing. When was the last time you purchased something that you didn't think you needed, was going to cost you thousands of dollars, may hurt you and take time out of your day, Steve.

And I was, it's every day.

So. But, but you know, patients come in and there's no symptoms present. You're presenting treatment, you're doing it over. No kidding. I was observing when I built this and I wrote this business model and codified the systems that we're about to unveil. Steve, I sat in the reception area of a practice and I was observing how they're presenting cases over the counter, room full, back when we had waiting rooms of people. They're presenting a treatment plan of yanking people's teeth, explaining what's going to happen and putting them into dentures and it's going to be three grand. I'm like, you talk about an environment that even the fish in the fish tank, Steve, we're like flipping around going, I'm nervous about this conversation. Thanks for laughing at my dad joke, Steve. I just came up with that one, buddy.

I'm using that one.

Flapping around, they're going, this is weird. And so I'm like, okay. I'm a big believer in simplifying things. I'm a big believer in really setting up the systems and structures, Steve, so that the non confrontational, the non salesy, the people pleasing control freaks, oh, let me add perfectionist, and actually present something to a patient, have them understand it and raise their hand and say, yes, imagine, you know, I always say how many people when I'm at one of our seminars, we have a few hundred people in the room, and I go, how many people love to sell? And there's like about three people, right? And then the other 197 are going, no, I don't like that. But I go, how many people like to buy things? 197 raise their hand and imagine if you can share intelligent things with intelligent patients so that they can make an intelligent decision and ask you to buy. That's what we're going to talk about in this chapter.

Well, and what I was interested in, the way that you presented it was maybe a little different than a lot of docs approach it. And you know, I speak on mindset, your dentist mindset and your practice owner mindset and how those two things have to work together for you to run a successful practice. And if you want to be a dentist, you can be a dentist who's an employee. But if you want to be a practice owner, you know, we had a fellow that used to speak for us that was, you know, was a great salesman. And he said, I wrote down here while you were talking, you said something he said he would start out and saying, hey, Dennis, he said, you better get used to the S word, selling, or you're going to have to get used to the B word, broke. And he would go on to talk about what basically, selling is a part of every business. Doesn't matter what it is. If you're in business, you were selling something. Now you might fool yourself into thinking it's so awesome, people just buy it like crazy. But you had to create an environment for that to happen, the selling environment. And that's. I think that's what I was struck by in this particular chapter, was how you've taken this treatment coordinator and you've made that position really do something that a lot of dentists do themselves right now, but poorly. They think they should talk about money. They should be, you know, if it's going to be $10,000, they need to be the ones telling the patient that when they should really be over treating the patients and have a team that builds that. So that was really what jumped out at me was the sort of the process. And it's not about the words you use, it's about the environment that you create. So it's. If we could start there, and I see we got some questions coming in. Again, I'd like to encourage. I'm going to keep an eye on these and kind of lump them together so that usually there's four or five questions that are kind of the same questions. So as they come in, I'll lump those. But if you could kind of start and tell us what you mean by what's the treatment coordinator? And then you really do a good job of transitioning to what that person's area their space should look and feel like, not the words they should use, which is, I think, the trap a lot of docs fall into. Let me give. Let me give Mary Jane a script. And Mary Jane, when I treatment plan, you know, $25,000 implant case, say this, and then, you know, you're surprised when they don't buy. So if you could jump into that. The treatment coordinator and then the space that you're talking about.

Yeah, you know, and there's. There's three different types of practitioners, Steve, that I talk to. I talk to 10 people after every month. I block out my schedule, talk to 10 of your community members. And what I'm seeing in your group is I see a very high level of doctors that want to become entrepreneurs. They want to. They want to let their business run, not have their hands be the only way that they increase revenue. Right. So it's like they have a job that's with their hands. They have a business that actually has. The business is a machine that actually produces the outputs. And. And then we have a good handful of people that want to run enterprises where they want to have two or three units. So this is the only way to scale your Business. And it starts with, at the front office, there's not defined roles. So in the front office, when everyone's accountable for everything, Steve, no one's accountable for nada. That's my Spanish for the day. Nothing. And so what happens is, who's responsible for that? And they go, she is or he is. And therefore there's no accountability, there's no structure for outputs, and everybody's busy, but they're not accountable for what the practice needs them to do. And so at minimum, and every practice, I don't care what size you are, even startups, we break the front office into two places. One responsible for time, one responsible for money. One is the appointment coordinator, or our advanced conversation about that appointment coordinator, a direct director of first impressions. We're going to leave that person off to the side. That's a person that really manages your time. And if one hour goes unused, it's very costly to you. So when you have a person dedicated to that, they're filling that schedule. And when they're bonus specifically on that, it changes everything because that's what they put their attention and intention. Now let's get to what this chapter is about. And that's the treatment coordinator. Treatment coordinator is the person that is proactively ready to receive treatment that's coming either from the hygiene rooms or the doctor room. And one of the things that I got to see is you need to have a certain skill set that this person needs to have. The first thing is, is my first question for a treatment coordinator is, when do your palms get sweaty? And they go, why are you asking me that? What do you mean by that? I go, what number do your palms get sweaty at? Meaning like you're nervous about presenting the case. Now if they say $500, Steve, and your crowns are 1,000, you're in big trouble. Right. The other thing about a treatment coordinator is if they map their own considerations about their issues with money on top of the patient, they then map out over that patient and they say, you know, I know this is expensive, but everything that is after but is negated. And they think everything's expensive. So we want to get someone and you can actually train somebody not to map their money issues over the patient. They really, we call them actually the financial freedom fighter. A treatment coordinator is also known as, AKA the financial freedom fighter. You're fighting for the financial freedom of the patient. Do you see how the purpose and the context, when you shift that now all of a sudden they say, hey, I'm looking out for you. I want you to get all this care. And I want to fit it into your lifestyle. You see how that context shift is. You're not the money girl in the principal's office, you know, going to get beat over the head to buy something. You see this, Steve, how that the context shift really matters.

And you know, the interesting thing when you said that, you know, my old days practice ownership, I came into this, I came into dentistry kind of through a side door from different, different businesses. But I will never forget. I would. And you know, I'm kind of a sales guy at heart. I building a business which means we find customers and we, you know, customers who have money and want our product and we provide a better product. We all come together and we're all happy. They get what they want, I get what I want. I get, you know, do it year over year over year. And I remember having a conversation and I would say, we're going to ban. Actually had a little piece of paper. I'll dig it out, watch. And I put a circle with a red line through it. We're not going to watch anything. And I, you know, not knowing anything, I would say, what are we going to watch this? You know, you got a problem here. What are we going to watch it do? Have we ever watched one and it got better? No, no, no, we're going to put that off because they're probably not going to pay for it. And I would say, well, how do you know that? You haven't asked them. Well, and I remember this one associate doc that had started working. It was, you know, he might have been two months in and he had struggled out of dental school. And he said, you know, a lot of people just can't afford this kind of treatment. He goes, they might be struggling to pay their cell phone bill. They might not be paying their ren. Might be doing all this. And I paused for a second and I said, are you having trouble paying your cell phone bill? And he said, well, right now I am. And I realized he doesn't know anything about this person. And. But he's projecting that onto them. And I said, here's what we're going to do. You're going to treatment plan what you think they need, period. You're not going to worry about anything but what they need and then let somebody else talk about the money. But production went up like 50 grand the next month because instead of him. And so you take that down a few notches to an assistant or whoever you're, whoever's proposing your treatment, or sometimes even the doc who needs to make a payroll that comes through to the patient. And you get a lot more. I'll think about it. And a lot more projecting. But, yeah, if you're going to propose a big treatment plan, you can't propose it the same way you propose a crown, which is really what your chapter is about.

Yep. And the key thing here, Steve, is something that you're saying when your product is past what we call transactional dentistry, and you're now offering transformational dentistry. See, you're selling commodities like drilling, filling, and billing if you step into that world. But if you reinvent the vision, purpose and values of your business. And this is what we can talk about if we connect, if you hear what you like here, today, we teach you how to build division, purpose and values so that the practice delivers the end point, not the means point. You know, we just, we were just in Arizona and we had one of the foremost experts on consumer behavior, and his main thing was, don't sell the means, sell the end. How is this going to benefit you in your life? And we invented something called complete health dentistry, that on a good day we save smiles and on a great day, we change lives. And this is the way you can, if you're offering implants, sleep dentistry, if you don't have a system and a dedicated person to sit down with a patient to remove the barriers for this, make sure that they understand the value proposition, and then eliminate money as a barrier. If you don't have a system, a process, a person and a space to do that, that's where there's a fortune in your storage closet. That's the key. So first is getting the practice to stop selling transactional dentist dentistry and start presenting transformational dentistry. The endpoint, the impact relevant to what the patient wants. Right. I want to look. I'm 57. If you sell me anything so I can look younger, live longer, be healthier, that's the real product. Offer longevity, health and wellness. Looking good and feeling good, that's the product, the end product that your practice can deliver. I'll buy anything you got if you have solutions to that. But most people in dental practices, Steve, never get to that. So that's the practice. Then you need a person that is your treatment coordinator that actually that their accountability is to make sure that there's a conversion. We call it registration, meaning that the patient registered, they gave you time, money, energy, or information. If you're not getting those four things, then it's not a committed sale. And what most people do, Steve, is they go up to the front desk. After they walk, they say yes in the back. Then they walk down the hallway of amnesia, meaning they forgot everything. When they. When they walk past room 5, room 4, room 3, room 2, room 1, they get to the front, and they go, you ready to schedule? And they go, what are you talking? That was my good Shaggy. Was that a good Shaggy?

This is very good. Yes.

Millennials. There's this thing called Scooby Doo. Well, we'll leave that out for right now. All right, so look, you got to have a person that you hand off the treatment to in a consult room and a person ready to receive that. That is the key to this chapter. And it's the key to putting in a system where you're not having to sell. You're putting in a sales process. Not sales, persuasion, manipulation, sales called getting commitment and getting registration from the patient, a signature payment toward that. And then they actually know what they're coming in. And by the way, look what happens here, Steve, when you do this dramatic reduction in broken and canceled appointments. Because if a patient doesn't know how much time, how much money, what it's going to, you know, how much pain it's going to cause if they don't get those questions answered. When you, when you're closing the case, when it's most important, during the emotional time, when they're stirred up emotionally, then when it comes time for that appointment, they just call it and say, nothing's bothering me. I'm just going to cancel that. It's going to cost me 2,000 bucks. They always say, Steve, that if you, if they don't know how much it's going to be or how much time it's going to take, do you think it's. Do you think they go, oh, this is going to take less time than it's going to take? Do they. Do you think that they're going to say, this costs less than what I think? They always expand all those things. And that's where broken and canceled appointments is the root cause of broken and canceled appointments in a doctor schedule?

I think so. And you had said about the storage room, what I appreciated in the chapter about it was you sort of say, where are you going to do this? You can talk about doing a composite, or you can talk about doing a crown, a single posterior crown in the chair, and insurance covers it, and it's going to be 100 bucks out of pocket. But if you're going to propose, if you're going to amp your practice up and talk about the bigger cases, you want, or ironically, the cases you've been, you know, you've, you've done six implant courses in the past three years and you can't sell any implant cases again. It's because your staff can't talk about a $25,000 treatment plan. They're talking about, they're shaky, talking about a twelve hundred dollar crown. So what you say is find a place, find a space that's all about all the emotional parts. And I'll let you, I'm not going to steal your thunder, but all the emotion that goes into that, and it might be, you know, a corner over here, it's definitely not the chair. It's definitely not the. At the front desk. You know, hey, it looks like, you know, doc says you need some implants. It's going to be $23,400. You want to schedule that in the reception room. But find maybe a storage closet that just got stuff, old computers and junk stored in it. Empty it, clean it, and that's your storage room. And what struck me, Gary, was, you know, there are a lot of docs who are pretty savvy at the value of an hour of chair time. And if I'm not treatment planning, you know, $700 an hour for each chair, then you know, I'm doing something wrong. But they don't stop to think of the value of that space, the storage closet that, you know, you clean it up and create a little. And I've seen some really nice sort of treatment plan areas where it's private, it's quiet, it's comfortable. You can do the smart part of selling, which is listening. Let the patient tell you what they want. But it converts that space into like revenue producing square footage in your office. But more than that, it takes your treatment coordinator and makes them much more powerful and valuable in that process. And again, as you, you also say, and I heard it like four times, you wrote it in there. What do they say? You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. I think it might have been Wayne Gretzky or somebody. But you say it in here in a different way, that you're getting $0 of the treatment you're not proposing or you propose in the wrong way, or the patient kind of blows through it and you watch it for six months and they come back and you're still not doing the implant. So. But what's interesting is they have all these things chair time figured out. But nobody says that storage closet could be, you know, I don't know, we could treatment plan, 50 grand a month more in this type of scenario, in this type of environment. But we're using to store brooms and we're putting patients in an awkward position. So is that, I mean, any comment on. Because that's really the thing. A broom closet becomes a treatment room, becomes a comfortable place for. For a patient to get in a situation to say, yeah, I need this.

Yeah, there's no doubt, Steven. This is probably the biggest and most expensive real estate that needs to go into dental practice. And what happens typically is, you know, well, first thing is most important. I've done all the studies on this. When a patient is sitting in a chair, in a dental chair with their neck turned to the side and they're trying and they're looking at this way, first of all, they get tired, they stop listening. And you don't have the environment, the safe environment, because when they're in the chair, they're in the mental state of like being receiving treatment. When you shift into a business environment, they shift their hat and they know a transaction is going to happen. That's number one, that happens. The other thing that happens here, very importantly, is when you have a quiet environment and you shifted the energy, all of a sudden they can focus in because they have to hear it five times. So when, when the doctor does the recare visit, like the doctor just comes in for the recare visit. If the hygienist is set up to tee up the doctor, you reduce your case presentation time by dramatically, like five minutes. All you're having to do is confirmed the diagnosis from all the education that the hygienist was doing. So you talk about efficiencies. This is a big deal. The second efficiency that happens is if you're doing single surface, then you want to move to single tooth or quad dentistry or the larger case, big case dentistry. You have to change the system around it because it won't if you don't treatment plan it and you don't close it. You can't do large cases in your schedule. And then therefore, you're numbing them up every time for small treatment. And this is the biggest thing that your community comes to me for. Steve, I was blown away because they're like, we're here, but we want to get to here. And most people think, oh, if I just treatment plan better and differently. If you don't put a system in, it's never going to work. And here's the other thing. It's called the associate cliff. I see this a lot too, where the founding Doctor is so tired, exhausted, can't do another surface, can't do another tooth, Steve. And then what happens is they go, oh, let me get an associate. They send the associate into the recare, visit. The associate only diagnoses what they treat, not what the practice treats. Your case acceptance shrinks, by the way. Your conversion also shrinks because they don't have the confidence and the trust of the patient. That's why building this system that we've been talking about for the last six months allows you to eliminate the associate. Cliff. Scale your business. And not only in your own single unit. You can scale to multiple units using this process. But if you don't have a dedicated person in a dedicated space, it doesn't work. One more thing I want to add here, Steve. We do this program works in rural. It works in the city. I just want to let you know that sometimes, Steve, people come to me and they go, I have no room. I have 1400 square feet, or I'm in New York City. I have two treatment rooms. No worries. If you're sitting at the desk and you're a dentist and you have a desk, that is your treatment consult room. When you should be chairside during the day, open that thing up and use it. And now, by the way, you know what the next thing is that docs come to me for, Steve? They go, my desk is a mess. Now, I want to say this to you. If your desk is a mess and you want to reduce stress, we have an agreement at our company that you have to leave with a clean desk every day. Why? Because your, that is your brain. If you look at your desk, that's how filled of the space is. When you clear the space, you clear your, your headspace, too. So it's, it's directly coordinated and, and, and totally connected.

I thought of, I was thinking of somebody from my old, from the, you know, consulting days. I worked with a doc that we were trying to figure out what was going on. Treatment acceptance is going down. You know, the practice is just struggling. And what I found was she would, and I'm not naming names here, she would, between every patient, go back to her office, and she would get on her computer and go to. I think it's like Zappo or it's like a shoe. It's a. You buy shoes, like women's shoes. She would buy. And we, so we went back and started looking. She would buy three grand worth of shoes in a month. But you, like, you shop for them. And it's not like you just bought Them, they would, you know, it's kind of like an auctionee thing. We've got these 20 pairs and you know, you bid on them and you buy them. She would literally get excited like, like she's seeing a patient, she's hustling through it because, you know there's an auction or something going to close in 20 minutes. Number one, we locked the office door and production went up and it was a thing. She just couldn't help but turning that into a treatment room would have been genius. I wish I would have listened to this, you know, 10 or 12 years ago and basically just said, listen, this is, here's what we're going to do with your office. She didn't need an office. I mean, she could do. We ended up creating what we call a stand up desk for her. And she would keep everything she needed there. She would come back, she'd stand, she'd. But she never really left the area where the operatories were. And suddenly production goes way up. And I think those are the habits that you fall into. And I think you're right on. What are you going to do in your office? I mean, you know, you can put stuff in there, but wouldn't it be neat to treatment plan 50 grand a month in a space that would allow for that, you know, leave up your diplomas and things, but create a space where it suddenly turns into a productive part of real estate for you?

Yeah. And here's the thing, Steve. This causes. When you change the physical space of things, it causes the mental space to change. Clean your desk off, clear up your head. Ever clean a drawer, clean up a garage, you feel better. That's what's going on there. The other thing that's important, when you move the treatment coordinator from sitting in the front desk, you remove the unproductive time that happens between people at the front office. And we have the treatment coordinator sitting in and proactively going forward and listening in hygiene rooms. So if you have two or three hygienists, the bigger case goes to the treatment coordinator. Then we have a secondary treatment coordinator that does the smaller cases. So this is not just a reactive position, this is actually a proactive position where you, you, you can't be doing Candy Crush in your space. Like if you're not, look, if you're not 100% productive, you know, not putting on roller skates and doing thousands of patients, but methodically figuring out how much you need to, you want to make, how much time you want to spend, and then when you're spending the time at your office, be a hundred percent productive. And if you're not, you'll figure out what's missing. And by moving these pieces around and moving the treatment coordinator out of that front desk and moving them into the consult room and having him or her pay attention to what's being released. Now all of a sudden, you have a person that's tracking the pipeline, and when they have the tools in that room set up the right way, it's an environment that invites the patient to buy. You know, I don't know if you ever noticed, like, but some businesses are all set up to, for you to purchase what they're offering. Like, on the walls. Like, I like having posters of, of satisfied people. Like, if you're doing cosmetics, if you're doing implants, if you're doing sleep, these are your poster children for those conversations that you're going to refer to share your proof story about whatever that treatment is that you're offering. This is Mr. Smith. He came in, he had the same condition you did. He applied the same treatment plan. We did that treatment plan. Now he has a job, he's married, he's got kids, he's got all this whole world, and we're really proud. And that's what's available to you. So you have an environment that tells a story. Even look at you, Steve. You have all the magazines. I mean, I think the guy to your left is the sexiest guy in there, by the way.

Bill Williams over here. Oh, yeah, he's a handsome guy, but, you know, Dr. Bill's awesome.

You have a story, it tells a story.

That's right.

You know, and then you need the tools. Like, you don't walk into, you know, a treatment room without your, your tray. You don't walk in without a handpiece set up. You know, that kind of stuff. And if you treat your treatment coordinator as important, or I'm going to say even more important than the treatment that you're delivering and elevate that up and invest in this person on training and putting this, this beautiful office, by the way, we have a checklist of this. And I'll offer that to anybody who we talked to this month. I have a checklist of everything that goes into a treatment planning room. How the desks are set up, not across from people, but side by side and having a big screen. And then when you release the patient from the back, you have all the intraoral pictures up on that screen, Steve. And now you're highlighting the problems. So they say in the back, they Say yes, they walk down the hallway of amnesia. You have to bring every little detail matters here. If you don't reestablish the problems of the pictures, then the patient doesn't think they have a problem because it's all asymptomatic. Once it's all up there. And then you tie it to what the end is for them and what's going to happen in their life tied to what they're already motivated by. We always say connect the dentistry to what the patient is connected to. When you do that effectively, when you connect the dots, I'm buying whatever you got in order because it helps me make my life better and take away the things that my life doesn't want to be. And this is a game changer, Steve, on the outcome. It really is.

I had two point. I got a question here. I wanted to make sure that we got. Because there are several that fall into this category. But this person phrased it a little bit better. It says, what's the best way to present treatment? So I don't feel so sleazy selling treatment. And I think that's again, that's back to where we started. If you're, if you feel sleazy selling, you're doing it wrong.

Yeah, yeah. Well, the first thing is you want to get your. One of the things we do is we set a practice purpose. But if you really want to get granular, you should create a purpose for yourself. So my purpose is to provide freedom for dentists and their teams so that they can go out and transform their patients lives. Right. And the freedom I provide are in five areas, Steve. Money, finances, physical health and wellbeing. Social, mental and spiritual health. That is what we provide. So when I come from my purpose, my ground of standing and educating right now, like I am in my purpose, that is why I love being with you. When I meet with doctors after this, I'm in my purpose because I'm listening for how do I give them more freedom. Now if I didn't distinguish my purpose, then it could show up as I'm trying to force you to do something and sell you something. So it's the context with which you come. I know for myself that I am a purpose driven person to help people. Right? But if I'm here to take from you, then it's going to show up that way and people are going to perceive it that way. It's like the front of the hand, the back of the hand. It's my hand. But is it purpose driven or is it selfish reasons why? I'm trying to get this. So that changes the sleaze factor right there. That's number one. Then you need a sales system that walks a person, Steve, down the pathway that they want to walk. Not that I want to walk you down. I'm walking them down the path they want to walk. And all I'm doing is putting my arm around them and assisting them in there. That is very different, Steve, than trying to persuade, manipulate, force and push something on you that doesn't work. So how do we do that? It's a five step process. First is understanding the patient's personal motivator. People buy on why. Why do you want this? And for me, I'll give you my why. I want to look better, I want to feel better, I want to be healthier. Why is that? Because I want to be around for my son and share the experiences with my son and my wife. And I want to travel around the world and have all these dreams and aspirations. But if my body and the way I look doesn't match that, it's not going to work. And I will invest in that. And in today's world, millennials invest in sustainability and baby boomers invest in longevity. Sustainability and longevity are the same things, just different context, number one. Number two, you got to establish what is healthy. This is what a healthy mouth baseline is. When you establish what is healthy and you go, here is the benchmark in our practice. Then you go to highlighting the problems and consequences using intraoral cameras, using your perio charting, using a systematic process. The patient then experiences a gap, a gap between what's healthy and where they are. Then the next thing is they need to come to you and raise their hand and say, how do I fix this? And you go, great. And by the way, my suggestion, doctors and people in the back office do not present money. Here's the way I respond to that. Great. I can help you out with that. I have a dedicated person, Lisa. She's our treatment coordinator. We call her our financial freedom fighter. Meaning because she's going to help you fit this into your lifestyle and she knows all the nuances of your insurance. She's going to maximize your insurance. She's going to help you figure this out so that you're not going to have to feel it and you're going to be able to get all the care you need and remain within the lifestyle that you want to want to make. I'm going to bring you up to Lisa right now. You see how that is, like, seamless. You hand it off to Lisa. And you go. Lisa, this is Gary. He wants to be sexy. He wants to live a long life because he and his wife and his son have a lot to do in this world. And Gary has bleeding points around his implant. He's got a cracked tooth on number three. He's got all these problems, and Gary wants these to get corrected. And we recommended this treatment for Gary. Please take care of him, fit it and treat him like family. Fit it into his lifestyle so that he can get his care as quickly as possible. He's also a busy guy, so he wants to get all this treatment done in a very quick way. He wants to come in, get it all done, so figure out how that he can get it all done and invest in his care. Thanks for coming in today, Gary. See you. Lisa is going to take great care of you from here. That's how you drop somebody off into the consult room.

And I think that's. So we got several questions here, and I think you answered them. You know, I got a lot of, shouldn't I be the one presenting treatment? I'm anxious, talking about money. You know, I keep the questions coming, but that's the type of questions all bundled into one. And I think what you're saying is you're the dentist, you went to dental school, you find a person whose whole job is to take the clinical part that you did magic with and the treat, the amazing treatment you're going to do once they say yes, and let that person bring the two things together, the diagnosis and the treatment. But I mean, would you ever recommend a doc doing all this? Do it. Proposing the whole treatment plan, you know.

The money, any of it, everything but the money. The doc sole position is to highlight and validate the problems that were originated by the two most trusted people. And the origination is just awareness. So you bring up awareness, then you get acceptance, and then you take action. But if they're not aware and you're a doctor walking in the room and you're presenting asymptomatic care, they think you're trying to buy your next portion, their mouth. But when it's done by the assistant, we call them ninjas. No, I'm not just an assistant or the hygienist. That's another level of hygienist. When you have them beginning the education process, the patient really thinks that they're the advocate for the patient, believe it or not, as trusted as most docs thinks they are. Every time I tell somebody, Steve, what business I'm in, they go, I love My doc, but he's always trying to sell me something that I don't need.

Right.

So when it's originated by other team members, just the education process, just the awareness process, there's a benchmark of what's healthy compared to what's going on in their mouth. Irrefutably using visuals. Then you go in and just acknowledge the assistant and the hygienist, and all you need to do is call balls and strikes and bobblehead Steve. This is why I got this. All you need to do is bobblehead Steve.

I got my Steve bobblehead. You know how many emails I've gotten about this bobblehead Steve? It's more famous than me.

Teach doctors to bobblehead Steve. Yes. Validate your hygienist and your assistant. Just call balls and strikes and get out of there. Get back to your chair. Five minutes, not 20.

Right. Let me ask you about language, because this was interesting, and I heard this about the language, and I hear this with docs, and again, I think a lot of it is that dentist mindset contrasted with your practice owner mindset, your business mindset, your dentist mindset is very rigid and protocol driven. Step one through 27. Your business mindset needs to be flexible enough that, you know, if we get hit with something, you know, the practice catches on fire, you know, DSO opens down the street, there's a worldwide pandemic, whatever. There is no formula for fixing that. You are the owner. You figure that out. A lot of it's trial and error, but I think the dentist language can sometimes be very clinical because that's what they know. And somebody and I have this written down. It was, speak to your patients in a language that they understand and they'll feel understood.

Absolutely.

Part of that might be exactly what you're saying. Not that you can't speak to them, but I get the impression I'm looking for your opinion here. I get the impression that as a patient, they want to know the doc is really good, really trained, going to do a really good job. But sometimes they feel like the doc is talking up here, where your treatment coordinator is speaking to you in a way about, like, you just said, your smile, the outcome, you're happy, or all these great things that will come from it. And that's probably a good dynamic for everybody, including the doc, who is uncomfortable having those conversations.

Steve, when we put this treatment coordinator in place and I sit down and analyze with the treatment coordinator, I say what percentage of your patients truly leave the back office and understand what was Presented to them. What do you think that percentage is?

No idea.

20% only. If you don't understand the problem and you don't understand the consequences and you don't understand how it's going to impact your life, you are not going to create value. And patients are not like if you want to go fee for service, if you don't have this system in, do not go fee for service. Because what you're doing is people say, do whatever my insurance covers. Right? They always say that. You know what, what they're really saying, you didn't show me any value. I don't really pay for this. So just if it's covered by free, then I'll do it. If it's not, I'm not going to do it.

And that's. So that's a good segue into. I want to make sure we get this question in the last few minutes. And again, I've got probably five or six here. They're all fundamentally the same thing. What do I say when they tell me, you know, I'll think about it, I can't afford it. When the money conversation, the money part. And even though the doc may not be the one talking money, in the chapter you say to have four payment options ready, including third party financing for the treatment coordinator. So what are those four payment options and how does that factor into third party financing?

Yeah, so this is really important. So if somebody says I can't afford it, say we understand empathy first. We have created a way to fit this treatment into your lifestyle and Lisa is our expert in doing that. Okay? She's going to sit down with you and find a way to get what you want so you can have it all right now. Okay? So my job is to let you know what you need and why you need it. And then Lisa is going to then do the backside of that, which is fit it into your lifestyle. So let me give you option number one. Option number one. So Lisa comes in there and she says, today the investment for Your treatment is $5,000. I've been able to maximize your insurance for $1,000. Your responsibility, not your out of pocket, Your responsibility is 4,000. Our first option and one of our most popular options for people is what we call a pay to day courtesy. Not an accounting courtesy, not a prepay courtesy, a pay today courtesy means when you pay today, when you get all this taken care of and then you don't have to see the front desk for transactions, you could just get it all done and get a courtesy and focus in on your Care. A lot of our patients really like this option. We give you a 5% off. So 5% off of the 4,000 is boom and it's $3,800. Would does that work for you? Say anything, right? Don't say anything. Does that work for you? Then step number two is if they say no, that doesn't. Now the people with money. By the way, my grandfather, when I went to buy my car, he took me there and I was too dressed up. He goes, go in there and put crappy clothes on and he had this beautiful Cadillac in 70s and he's like got the broken down Sanford and Son pickup truck. And he goes, you can't negotiate like this. By the way, don't judge the patient. Flip flops, broken jeans. You know, people have more money than the bank and you don't know it and you're judging it and think everybody doesn't have money. So please don't prejudge people. So pay to get courtesy, they like that. So they get a courtesy, they get it out of the way. Option number two, I like going to third party financing. Here's why. Because most people are afraid to do third party financing, Steve, because they think it's a big expense. Here's what I've learned. The money you make above the revenue that you've been threshold, that is about 70% profit because you've got variable expenses at 30. So below that the profits 30, above that it's 70. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Meaning when you get the case closed and you get paid for it by a third party finance company, broken and canceled appointments go down and you're selling cases that are larger than if somebody had to pull out a dollar amount and get it done. So I'm a big fan of CareCredit, been a partner with them for 25 years. And the reason why that is is because they do it right, they have a system, they help you pay for it and it is amazing. So I like offering that as the second option and how we present it using CareCredit's software on your desktop, it breaks it down per month. So I like to say, you know, Dr. Smith has paid, will pay your interest and because he wants to get you your care. So as long as you keep your payments, you won't pay any interest. Does 500 and $500 a month work for you? So in this amount of time, then they break it down to 250 and then they break it down to 100. So you give them three payment and here's what we've learned. People will spend in health care the equivalent of equal to or greater or equal to or less than their lease payment of their car. So if they're paying 600. Yeah, this is a proven number. That's the threshold number for. For health care. So, you know, if you got somebody paying 600 bucks for a car, they'll pay 500 bucks. If you've done the job, they'll pay up to 500 bucks. So you're getting this larger case, close, closed. You efficiently deliver it. You reduce broken and canceled appointment. It's a game changer, Steve. It's a game changer. Using that as a second option. Third option is for people grandfathered that have proven that they can follow your payments. So it'd be half down and half at insert or whatever that is. You'll decide. But you want to write down the specific dates of both of those. So there's no question they know when that. When each thing is paid. The fourth payment option. And only deliver this after. See, people have the script flipped here, Steve. They don't present a $5,000 case, so they never get that into the schedule. The patient never gets to work out the payment plans. And guess what happens? Instead of doing prefix, like when we go to restaurants, when we're traveling with the girls, we just call. I just call my wife our girls, you know, Paul and Judith. Right. The ladies. The ladies. Much better. Terrible. But when we go to John George in New York City and there's a prefix menu, we're getting an appetizer, we're getting. We're getting an entree, Steve. And we're getting our dessert. I may not want to have dessert at the end. I might say, let me. I'm too full. But if I pay for it up front, I'm eating all of it.

Right.

And the same is true with dentistry. Get the prefix case done, not the a la carte. Because then they buy a piecemeal. And guess what happens, Steve? They may have to make a buying decision every time they come in. Have them, you know, all. All inclusive, Steve, you know why they. They don't have you pay. Pay each time? Because you, if you have to pull your wallet out, it's painful. You just have to pull out one time and have it be painful at the end, not through your vacation. So I've done craploads of studies on this. It's a systematic process that works. Just follow the system, and it works. The four steps, Steve, is then and only then do you cut it down. To 2,500, you know, and phase the treatment as the fourth option. Then you run them through, do you want to pay today, do you want to do it over a period of time, or do you want to pay half and half? So, but don't give them the pre a la carte up front because you'll never close big cases.

And I think a lot of the practice owners listening tonight, you're exactly right. They've got it backwards. They start with, you know, it's normally 3500, but let me lop off a thousand before they even ask you, before they even told you what it was. I've watched this a thousand times and, you know, if it's worth this, then it's just worth this. You went to dental school, for crying out loud. You know, you, you've taken the risk on your practice. You're paying people and taxes and all this. It's worth this. And, you know, the first step is start taking, you know, giving gigantic discounts and, and taking money off. So, no, I'm, I'm with you there. So we, I wanted to make sure before we finished here where I want to keep mindful of time. You, we said at the beginning you're going to give an offer, you're going to offer something, and you do. You've done it every month so far. We appreciate it. You know, we appreciate the time that you, first of all, that you just show up and share. I think the idea of following the book has been very helpful. We're going to put a link at the end of this, should be popping up here shortly where you can download a copy of the book and if not, you can get a hold of Gary and they'll send you a copy of the book. But by all means, get the book. It's a good read, it's fun. You know, what you should really be doing with your hygienist. I mean, there's a chuckle in every chapter and it's a great way of presenting a pretty serious topic, which is your practice. But what you've been doing is for the first. And you should see. I can't see what they're doing here, but there's going to be a little slider that pops up for the first 10 docs who are listening and sign up. You're going to do a 30 minute sort of, you know, I hesitate to call it a consult or whatever. It's just a chat session with Gary.

Yeah, they just hang out.

Yeah, you can say, you know what, really, should I be doing my Hygienist. Or you can talk about, you know, the Yankees now. Awesome they're doing or whatever that, you know, whatever it might be. You can, you know, you can just chat with Gary, pick his brain, and, you know, he's done this with 6,000 practices.

Yeah. And it's Steve. It's been really incredible. Like, I love that. You know, they always say, oh, Steve's a rock star. Like, you got a lot of fans out there, Steve. They think you're funny. Like, you know, really? No, you got a lot of fans. And, like, they're really appreciative, the people that really have linked up with me. And I'll tell you, it's really interesting. Tons of ladies, like, the ladies are really. I'm seeing. And again, this is like, I'm just waking up some. Some guys out there that are afraid to pivot post pandemic. The thing about. I'm seeing female dentists are really, you know, taking action. And Canadians, I'm like, I can't believe all the Canadians that are, like, raising their hand and saying, let's rock and roll. It's been, like. It's so interesting to see, like, the pockets of people. But right now, if you're sitting there and you're going, man, I know I got to change. I don't want to keep doing this and just get on my calendar and Look, I got 10 people. Use this time wisely. I'll chat with you. But everybody that's come on Steve has been like, I have this nuance. Will it work here? They have specific questions. Like, I'm in a rural area. I'm a solo practitioner. I want to become an entrepreneur. I want to develop three practices. I need an exit strategy. You know, all those different things bring to me your nuanced, you know, concerns questions. And then we'll just have a no obligation half hour. And then, you know, from there, you'll be able to, you know, learn more about other things that we can do, or I can recommend you to somebody that would be the best fit for you. But I just care deeply about providing freedom for people, and that's my purpose, and that's why I'm here. And that's why I offer, you know, 10 slots in my calendar each month to be able to have these conversations that are really incredible, Steve. Just incredible. The work that people are doing out there and the courage that it takes to raise your hand and say, you know what? I am sick and tired of doing this myself. I am going to seek somebody else out to learn more about how I can get help to get this thing solved once and for all.

Well, you know, there is that old stereotype. And, you know, my wife, well, she is way smarter than me. So when we can't figure out where we're going, her instinct is, let's just ask somebody. And you know, not to sound sexist, but sometimes guys hesitate to ask for help when they need it. So we're fine being lost for an hour before we, you know, we find our way. And I think the word you courage is the exact right word. Especially now. Don't be afraid to just say get. You know, click the button, sign up for Gary's calendar. I appreciate you blocking the time out to do that with our readers and viewers and listeners and just ask, you know, just chat about whatever you want. If you're struggling, chat about that. If you're, you know, you're right. There are a lot of docs wanting to do small groups now. Great conversation to have with a guy who's done it, you know, with 6,000 practices. So.

Oh, yeah, my pleasure. One thing I want a quick story and we'll close out here. A lot of docs come to me. Like my wife. Like my wife. I go, honey, you work so hard. I want to get a maid service here. Sweetheart, I don't want you cleaning this house anymore. You deserve that. Let's invest in that. And she goes, cool. Thank you for that, sweetheart. And you know what she's doing the day before the maid comes?

Cleaning the house.

Cleaning the house.

Yeah, I know how that works.

Yeah. Listen, listen, I'm screaming out loud. You don't have to have it all handled before you raise your hand. It doesn't need to be clean because here's what I've learned. Steve, you keep applying. Look, you know, I am 13 years sober. I just celebrated last month, right. If I am an alcoholic, I can't unalcoholically think out of alcoholism. I had to raise my hand for help and find somebody who knows how to do it. And I just followed that system and I am 13 years sober, one day at a time. So that is my inspiration for ending here today. Steve.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, Gary, again, chapter six, there is a fortune in your storage closet. And appreciate you coming on. Appreciate you just doing this and sharing with our readers, listeners and viewers and practice owners. If you have any questions, keep putting them in. Gary will answer them either via email or, you know, click and sign up through a 30 minute phone call about whatever you want. And with that, Gary, any parting words?

Keep it simple. Steve.

I am as guilty of that. They call that Scope creep. You know, I got a great idea that's this big, and by the end of the week, it's this big and all this junk's coming at it. And then I say, you know, then I get, you know, mad at myself, throw everything out and go right back to where I started. So you're much smarter. You get there faster, buddy.

Love you, Steve. Love you guys. Thanks for joining us again this month, practice owners.

Thanks for tuning in. See you next time.