"Your Money Mindset Matters" The Elite Provider Track Webinar February 2022

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Perrier Protect lead provider trick. I'm Tanya Dunlap with Perrier Protect, and I am thrilled to be here with Gary Katie from Next Level Practice. Welcome, Gary.

Hey, Tanya. Glad to be back. We got the residency here. Man, this is special. So grateful for Dental Learning to allow us to keep coming in each month and provide the elite provider track.

I am, too. If you've been following along with us, you know that the elite provider track was originally designed for periprotect providers. It's one of the value content pieces that we offer, but we decided to open it up to everybody who wants. So all of you here at Dental Learning, we're thrilled that you are with us. And the reason we have offered this elite provider track for. For many years is because Next Level Practice has special systems that make their clients, their community, really successful. We're following along in the book Million Dollar Dentistry. You should have a copy of it already, at least digital there. Gary's got the most recent version. We're in chapter three. And today our talk is about cash in your pocket right now, cpr. This is a topic that makes a lot of people uncomfortable, Gary. So our key takeaway that we're going to focus on are making you comfortable with your practice. As a business that runs on money, helping us get comfortable with our own relationship with money. This is really, in my experience, problematic with people who are presenting treatment and how you can do something about this relationship with money and then getting the entire team to pull in the same direction. And, Gary, this is no easy task.

Yeah, no, it's, you know, it's a blind spot for a lot of practices. You know, there's two. There's two relationships to money. Either you get it and you release it and you keep it away from you, or you get it and it comes in and you're okay with it and you don't squander your money. You know, lottery winners, professional athletes, 80% of them go bankrupt within five years. Tanya. So I learned a big lesson, and we have this in dentistry, too. Not that our dentists are going bankrupt, but when you really look at what's so. And this is really profound, I'm going to bring up a little visual that will help people really see. This is the destiny. If you don't get this, here's the destiny for most practitioners.

This.

96% of dentists do not retire financially free according to the idea it's unacceptable. Only 4%.

Let's go back. That means only 4% are retiring debt free.

Or ready for retirement debt and financially free. What it means is, is that your assets will take care of your liabilities and you don't have to work. Right. So this is 4%. Here's the 96 percentile. And I studied this because I'm obsessed, as you know, I'm really. I have a mission. Our company's mission is to get a quarter million dental professionals, Dennis, and their team members financially free by the year 2030. So, like, that mission has a whole, you know, backdrop to it. First, we have to acknowledge where we're starting from, and where we're starting from is not a great place. The other thing to add to this, you know, from 2020. No, from 2000 to 2020, the retirement age went from 62 to 69 for Dennis. So they're working longer and they have, you know, only 4% of them are going to retire financially free. That's not acceptable to me. And it's a couple of tweaks that when you shift. When you shift these things, and we're. We're providing these in the elite provider track. Why? Because it originated in the elite provider track because, you know, most people were saying, like, well, I can't get patients to accept treatment. It's too expensive. I don't like talking money and hygiene like this, this, this. All these myths and belief systems, and they're real for team members and docs, but you can transform it and you can help people along the way. And that's what we're going to talk about today.

Yeah, And I appreciate so much that you're here because you have changed so many periprotect providers ability to get not just their own relationship with money healthier, but for the whole practice. So it does make a lot of people uncomfortable, in large part because they feel like they're putting money ahead of their patients. Right. How. How do they become more confident in speaking about money?

Yeah. Beautifully stated, Tanya. I love that you're putting, you know, money ahead of your patience. I want to just say that there's money, like, let's. Let's talk about money for a little bit. Money. I want to give you a new frame for money to go into. Right. Because if you're walking in and your belief system is, I'm putting money before my patients, that belief system will stop all progress right there. This is where you'll see a manifestation of high accounts receivable, low fee schedules, giving away dentistry, not on your charity days, but all day long thinking, like, that's the right thing to do. When people don't pay for things. Like if you go to the supermarket and you don't pay for your food, you know, it's like there's an out of exchange. You see, money is the vehicle for exchange. I want to go back to my 104 year old grandmother who taught me about money. She said, Gary, when we were kids, you know, everybody in the community and Italy is still like this. I'm getting my Italian citizenship. Italy is still like this. If you do business with somebody outside of the community for like masonry or bakery, each person had an asset that they offered and they would exchange services. But you know, in life it got so complicated, you couldn't find the specific thing that you were looking for. So money was the vehicle for transactions. And we do know in our lifetime we've seen it with all the PPP stuff, we just print more money. Money is an invented thing and it's really a mindset and when people make it the, you know, a belief system about it, it stops all progress. So if you put a belief system in there, you can acknowledge it and pull that belief system out as, as updated. And I want to just share a quick story about a doctor who undergrad. This is where he learned his relationship to money. Undergrad, he got into an Ivy League school and he was on his way, picked his classes. He was on, on his way first day and his father said, no, you're not going there, you're going to the state school. And in his head he made up the story that he was unworthy and undeserving. And from that moment on, he would always take the backseat. He would always. He did not think he was worthy. And every single human being that I've interacted with has some version of unworthiness or undeserving. And when you begin to acknowledge this, then all of a sudden you can transform it. Are you tracking with what I'm saying here? Because it's a little theory based right now and I know our docs want to get their finger on something and we'll get to it, but I just wanted to highlight this here because it'll allow for a new conversation to happen.

Right. You need to know that your services have value and frankly, your practice has to be profitable. I don't want to go to the grocery store and take food and not pay for it. I mean, I wouldn't do that.

Right? Nobody would.

I wouldn't do a bloody profi and tell a patient they don't have periodontal disease because that's not fair either to the patient or to the practice.

That's right. And, you know, people take oaths to serve without, you know, the whole thing. I was like, really heal people without hurting them. Right, right. And are you in integrity with the oath that you took, or is money in the way for you as a practitioner? Because here's the thing, you know, over the years, you get reprogrammed as a doctor, and I've watched it happen where patients say, this is too expensive. And there's a reason why they're saying that it's because the value wasn't created. Now how do you begin to transform this money mindset and this thing that you said, Tanya, which is putting money before the patient? Voila. You now go to, I'm going to share my screen. You now create the purpose behind your work. And so where that begins is what we call the companies or the practices, vision, purpose and values. Now, when I ask people for this, they typically go, well, we want to offer high quality dentistry in a high tech environment where our patients are comfortable. That's. That's not a, that's not a purpose. See, the purpose of a business, excuse me, the purpose of a business needs to be the value proposition that you're offering your patients. So in this case, let me give you a great example. You're the go to practice in your town to look better, feel great, and be healthier. You see how all of a sudden, you know, the first vision that I shared with you, which is 99% of the practices, you know, high tech office comfortable, where our patients get the best care, is about you, not about the impact that you make. So you have to flip the script and put it on the outcome that you're providing. That is key in this removing money as a barrier between you and your patients. Does that make sense, Tanya? Vision?

It does. Because you want them to be able to see it from their perspective and understand the value that they're getting out of the service you provide.

Exactly. And here's the thing. The ground of speaking, if it comes from money, that's one ground of speaking. But if it comes from purpose, and here's the patient, right? You're actually, you're actually putting. When you're saying, I don't want to be about the money, you become about the money. And the patient hears it. Right. I know this is expensive, but it gives you your ground of speaking. When you speak from purpose. Now all of a sudden, you're speaking from a place of why you do what you do. And by the way, for those of you Guys that are having a hard time attracting great team members right now. This is also how you attract good team members because they buy into a vision and a purpose. Look at that purpose. Enhancing the quality of people's lives, starting with your own. This means that the team gets their lives transformed by working in your practice. See team members, the reason why it's so hard, it's just a supply and demand issue. There is more than enough practitioners and professionals to work in practices, Tanya. But are they, they get a choice to where they want to work because of the supply and demand issue. Right. So if you make it enticing, where it's a purpose driven practice where you're taking care of people that work there and then in turn trans transitioning that purpose to the, to the patients, you have a winning formula. This is a blind spot. And most of the time is theoretic or the, the practitioner thinks they have this handled, but they just have some words on a, on a gothically designed calligraphy sitting in their hallway where nobody even knows what it is or it's too long to remember.

So, Gary, I think this conversation is important because people gloss over this often. You know, your vision, purpose, values. But what you're saying is that the vision, purpose and values actually ties back to how you value your service and the kinds of care that you can provide for your patients. And then adding a dollar amount to that because you do have to make your practice profitable.

No doubt.

Another question we get all the time from Perio Protect providers has to do with making prevention profitable because Perio Protect is about putting perinatal disease into remission. And some of the patients, your offices are amazing at practicing what we call complete dentistry. They don't want anybody to get to the point where they have gum disease. Right. So you might, let's say periodontitis, bone loss. 90% of Americans have some form of gingivitis. So we can just assume periprotect is appropriate. If you want to get rid of gingivitis, you want to stop the chronic infection inflammatory cycle that's associated with gingivitis. Periprotect is awesome and it will help prevent bone loss, further problems down the line. But as we talk about making people more confident and speaking about money, how also do we bring prevention into this equation?

Yeah, you know, if you remember on our last session or if you haven't seen our last session, I would go back and there's four levels of the type of philosophy that we find. Four categories of dentistry. Lowest levels, emergency, all reactive. Next level Is maintenance. The level up from that is optimal. The top level is complete health. So, you know, it depends on where you're starting from. Right? You know, not everybody is going to be talking about, you know, heart attacks and strokes and dementia and, you know, that's complete health. But optimal means that you're going to share the value proposition that dentistry is. The mouth is the gateway to whole body health. And, and, and the impact of taking care of your oral cavity has an effect on your overall body. And you can keep it as simple as that, or you can go very advanced. But minimally, you need a tool that allows you to really bring education forth. Now, here's what we don't want in all of these. What we don't want. Well, maybe on the emergency level and in some maintenance classes, that's where this happens. The practitioners were trained by their professors to find the chief complaint and fix it. So what that does is they're asking the patient, what brings you in today? What's bothering you? What's hurting you? And what they do is they give all their power away as a practitioner. Tanya. And they put the decision making in the hands of the patient, which is the problem, because the patients were not trained. You'll never get to preventive care if you're using this chief complaint. Locate the chief complaint, try to, you know, dig for the symptoms that are present versus here's the other model. And we see this in some maintenance, definitely in optimal, and definitely in complete health. This is where you hold yourself, first of all, like, imagine now you're purpose driven and you don't have money in the way, so you remove that. And the other thing you removed is that that the patient's problem is your problem. One of the things that we see very often is that practitioners make the patient's problems, their problems. So disengaging from that, and now you're in the position, you are the guide, the patient's the hero. You're the advisor, the patient is the hero. Because they courageously came into your practice. They're there in a vulnerable state. You have compassion for them. And now you're taking the advisory role. You need a tool to do that. So we invented one, and together we created this one, which is really amazing, which is called the healthy mouth baseline. So this is going to come up now, and this happens to be Michelle Huckies down in Jacksonville or Jackson beaches. And the first thing I just want to have you highlight is how healthy is your mouth? What's your number? Can you share a little bit about what does that mean? What is your number?

Yeah, what's your number? So this is something that Perry Britannic I built on your healthy mouth baseline. You know, we've been working for years together. And the healthy mouth baseline, at first I was like, okay, does this really work? And then I saw it in action, and it works. And one of the things that's important to be able to do when you're communicating as a team or to a patient, you want to bring something new into a practice, it needs to be easy. It needs to be based on data that you already collect. And when you're talking to patients, your conversations need to be simple. They need to be something patients can understand very quickly. So what's your number? Refers to the number of bleeding points your patients have. You can download one of these papers. We've got a white paper on it to give you all the details and facts and why it's important. But the basic idea is pick a number of bleeding points that you're acceptable. That's acceptable for you, right? So let's say your patient has 168 bleeding points possible in their home. If you want 10% or less bleeding, let's say it should be 17 or less. I know a few offices that go to zero. I personally don't think you can get every single patient to zero, but I know with prescription periotra therapy, you can get patients to single digits. So we recommend that you put the number at 10. If their number is 10 or more, you start talking to them about perio, protect or especially, and you're paying attention to their health histories, and you see that they have type 2 diabetes, right? And usually their number's way past 10. But the idea is creating a standard in the practice, just like the healthy mouth baseline creates a healthy standard, it educates the patient on what's healthy and what's not. And in this case, what's your number? It gets your whole team organized. If you want to implement periprotect super successfully, you know your standard, you know what you want to be able to do for patients, and you've already collected that data. So put the number of bleeding points on there. We know from research that goes way back, if you can get bleeding under control over time, you can consistently reduce the number of bleeding points and inflammation that is a very high indicator of no further periodontic damage. And that's what we're after here in the book. It's super important. I want to just bring people's attention to this point. You make present comprehensive Preventive care to each and every patient. This is why you went to school. This is why you went to dental school or hygiene school or why you work in the healthier field. You want to get patients healthier. And frankly, patients don't know what's healthy. They just know what hurts. They need you to be able to explain this in a really simple way.

That's why this tool really works very well, Tanya. Because what happens is that it automates the system. It sets your team up. So when you come in for a hygiene check, they've already had these conversations and this becomes the report card for the patient. Now all of a sudden they're looking at this and they're co diagnosing their condition versus here's what we've learned. When you tell somebody they have a problem, or if you're searching for a problem and it's only auditory and it's not visual, the patient doesn't trust it. The other thing that this does for you is now that you have a vision, purpose and values that you're going to be, you know, easy to remember, bringing alive in your huddles that becomes the ground that you're operating from. So you're not taking from somebody, you're giving to them. What this tool does is it, it, it lands on the shoulders of that vision, purpose and values, and it allows your entire team to mobilize that the patient's problem is their problem. And your job is to identify what it is. And once identified, then give them a solution. So it takes out all, you know, it helps remove this low deserve level, this unworthiness using the system. See this? People, you know, can't rely on themselves because they get nervous whenever they have money. But when they, what we found over 25 years and 6,000 practices is when you put the system in, the system automatically helps you overcome where you get stuck, where you want to go. Oh, I'm not feeling good about myself today and I have this patient coming in. I feel bad for them, so I'm gonna just give it all away. And so it helps eliminate and enable getting you through. And then here's what we've learned. Doctors are like, Gary, I am in such regret because I practiced for 20 years without this tool, without living a purposeful life. And this, this doctor who said he went to sunny Binghamton instead of an Ivy League school, and he patterned his fee schedule, he had $250,000 in accounts receivable. Tanya. He was giving away dentistry. And once he identified this and put this system in, he didn't he couldn't. Because what doctors grapple with is trusting themselves when they're put chairside. So it's one thing to become aware, and once you become aware, then having a structured system. And here's what happens. Sometimes I need help. Tanya, as a leader of the business, you're a leader of your business. Sometimes I need my team to carry me when I feel weak. This system does that because your team will go, doc, you undid everything that I did in that hygiene visit. I had the patient educated. I had them ready to go. All you had to do was not mess it up. And that's a kind word that this hygienist said. And you come in and then you turn this practice into a watch factory. He goes, what do you mean, watch factory? Like a Timex factory, watching people's health decline. And they were already there. I showed them visuals. I showed them the healthy mouth baseline. I checked off their report card. They feel like they were failing. People don't like to make feel like they're failing. And that's what the healthy mouth baseline does.

So. Well. Yeah. And as a patient, I get that you might say, we're going to watch this and see if it goes. If it gets worse. But as a patient, I don't want it to get worse. I don't want to. I don't want to go to the point where if I could just do abrasion as opposed to a drill. Let's do the abrasion now. Right. But this is just my own point of view, and I just want to clarify. Gary, you're not saying people shouldn't do free dentistry. Sometimes you shouldn't have your days. What you're saying is you shouldn't do it every day at every appointment.

Here's what it is. When you have this. I feel bad for them feeling. See, it's one thing to be compassionate and caring and adjust. You know, a lot of our small practices, we're like in rural towns, everybody knows their. I think they think they know their P&Ls and their. Their tax returns. Like, oh, he doesn't have money. My grandfather used to say, you know what? Tell everybody you don't have money. Drive a crappy truck. And then he was like the millionaire next door. He had more money. He would lend the bank money. He literally lended. Lend the bank money. There was this private bank and he would lend the money. It was unbelievable. And I don't come for money. But, like, he lost it all. But, like, he had cash and he just, like, said, act like you don't. And so please don't judge people on what they have because they're gon, they're not driving into your practice and going, man, I got to really show them how much money I have. They're driving and going, man, how do I let them know that my 401k has become a 201k? How do I let them know? Like, because they're vulnerable and you're going to recommend treatment and it's going to cost money. And nobody has money for something that they don't think has value. That's what this is all doing. Getting you out of the way of yourself about your own experiences of money, replacing that with purpose, and then giving you a system so it stays in. Now here's another big one. Not only does the doctor have it, the team has it. Let's talk about that, Tanya.

That's right, because sometimes you get this conflict between doctors and teams and it's all over money. And the team is trying to look out for the patient as opposed to really focused on getting them healthy. That's the goal.

Right? So that's why you have.

How do you do this, Gary? How do you help the docs and the teams communicate?

Well, first thing is, especially with millennials now, Tanya, millennial team members, which is like 70% of our team members working out there, when they're plugged in and rooted in purpose, they know why they're there. So, like, if you walk into, like I walked into a Patagonia, they know why they're there. They are there to help the environment and give you equipment and tools to maneuver across the environment. And they dedicate money to open spaces. And that's why they all work there. They, I mean, every single one of them, they don't sit there and go, you're spending 600 on this coat. They're going, I know why you're spending 600. First of all, there's expenses here. Second of all, we're running a business. Third of all, we give part of that money to open spaces and we, and we can show you what we're doing with that downstairs. And then I feel good about working here because we're a purpose driven business. We care about the environment and we care about the people that interact with the environment. And we want you to be comfortable. And that's why you should buy the best care, best jacket and coat and pants and all the good stuff. And the same is true with a dental practice. When you get them connected out of transactional dentistry, drilling, filling and billing, you know, finding the chief complaint and fixing it, you know, moving to a transformational model where, if you remember the purpose, you know, our purpose is to enhance the quality of people's lives. You're changing people's lives. You're helping them, you know, sleep at night and sleep together with their spouse. If you have sleep dentistry, live longer. If you're using perio protect so that you arrest bacteria and inflammation that, you know, is directly connected to those, you know, diseases of, you know, diabetes and heart, and all those connected, you know, games, depending on your belief system, depending on how high you want to go, but ultimately, when you start flipping the script and becoming not a person who feels badly about recommending treatment, but a responsible human being with a high purpose to give value and make a contribution to the person that's trusting you in their treatment. They're sitting in your chair and they trust you to do that. That's. That's the game. That is the game. Now, how do you get your entire team on board to do that? Right. That's the game. Right, right. And.

And I would also. I just want to talk a little bit here. I know, Gary, you meet with teams, you meet with doctors first. And so I'm going to share this slide so that everybody has an option to see it. What we're offering here is 30 minutes just with you for the doctor and to get really grounded and to figure out what is my vision, purpose, value, what are my goals, these kind of things. One of the points that I often make to peri protect providers, and we've learned this from you, is, okay, so your fee schedule is what it is for a set of perio trays and four tubes of gel, for example. But think about what you're doing also for the patient financially and for their quality of life. Right. They're going to have the freshest breath of their life. They can get closer to the people they love. This matters. This is a huge quality of life issue. They're going to have a brighter smile, they're going to have more confidence because the hydrogen peroxide is going to whiten your teeth. This is a huge quality of life issue. If I have generalized gingivitis, but not significant bone loss and not a stage one period yet, I would end that bleeding. I want fresh breath, white teeth. But the value in that, to spend the money now so that I don't become a perio patient, who is always a perio patient, you know, tied down in periodontal maintenance for the rest of my life, that matters. Also, so finding the value proposition. These are the kind of things that your, you and your team coaches and automated system people can come in with coaching. You offer all these things. So can you just talk a little bit about what they, what this 30 minute call is for and what you're offering? And first I just want to say thank you for doing it. Thank you for doing it all these years for periprotect providers and now for other people in the profession who want it.

Well, you know, I take five hours out of my schedule and I dedicated to people that are, you know, interested in really elevating their game. Tanya. And it gives ten half hour segments throughout the month. And what I really love about this is I get to really, you know, doctors sometimes feel that they can't share authentically. And I'm a very safe space for doctors. And a lot of times 80 to 85% of our doctors are husband and wife teams, whether they're both dentists or they both work in their practice and they feel like they can't have a straight conversation there because usually one's a visionary and one's a protector. But when they come to me, I can listen to their story and they tell me what got them to hear. And then we talk about where they want to go to. And then I do some quick diagnostics to find out what their true potential is right now. And then, you know, we also do some conversations about the team and where their headspace is, what their mindset is. You know, is there a scarcity among the team? Are they trustworthy? Do they have a connection to a purpose? You know, just some basic questions and it really opens up the eyes. I love seeing the light bulbs go off with the docs that we get a chance to talk to on Zoom. And by the way, this is on Zoom. It's really cool. And if you're shy, you don't have to put your camera on. Some docs go, Gary, I feel awkward. I can't do that. And we just do voice. And so we go slow and very safe. And it's just beautiful to watch, Tanya, to see people have hope again and not even hope. Like we work with almost all of our clients are successful and some just don't know it. When I share with them, I'm like, you actually have a very successful practice. I know you don't feel that way right now, but they all of a sudden see what I see in their practice and then they see like, where they can go and they're like, oh my gosh, I thought I'd never get packed. Right now. People are talking about pre pandemic levels. I'm like, why? Why just go back to that, let's bust that out, right? And you know, this is the perfect time to make change because everything has been disrupted. And if you're going to make a change, if you hate change, this is the, this is the time to make change. A lot of. And by the way, we're getting a lot of mid adopters now. The early adopters are already like breaking records. And I'm not kidding you, if you reinvent it right now, I mean, ton, you see the numbers in Perry protect trades, I read the P Ls, I mean they're literally breaking records. There's like a big divide going on right now where people are still struggling. You don't have to please make struggling unacceptable and just get on my calendar and we'll have a conversation. And if I can't help you, I'll send you on your way to who can. But I really care about people who, you know, have, they're, you're heroes to me. You dedicated your life to being a great clinician, but it's the business side that you don't, you know, weren't set up to win in your game. And that's really what we talk about here, right?

And they're not making any long term commitments with this necessarily. Although I do highly recommend you guys think about a long term commitment. And here's why. Offices that plug into this model of complete health dentistry, they get it, they get re energized, excited about dentistry again. If you are at like the end of your rope and you're like, I do not want to go into the office. This is a way, this is a step you can take to make it exciting for you to go back and love your work and to have your purpose again. And if you already have that, wouldn't it be amazing to have a whole team like that? I mean, this is where it's at. This, it's not just about making your business profitable. It is about that, but it's also about finding your passion and your purpose for your work. To get patients healthier, to enjoy being in the office and working with the people you work with. Those are real qualities. Reality of life issues. And they matter.

Yeah, you bet. You bet. I mean, you know, here's the thing, Tanya, I want to leave you with this. Never, never doubt that a small group of committed citizens could ever change the world. And your practice, indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. So mobilize. It all starts with you, docs. It all starts with you. If you say we're going this way and you don't know how to get on my schedule or get on somebody's schedule, that that has experience, knows how to move through these spaces, knows how to a money sensitive driven practice, the sensitivity around money to a money abundant practice, leading with purpose, honest and ethical purpose that allows your team to speak in a way that has your parents, your parents and your patients truly understand the value that you're offering and then they get a choice to do it. This is the philosophy. Share intelligent things with intelligent patients and let them make intelligent decisions. There's no selling in that. There's the guide and the hero in that conversation and that's really what we're talking about here today. So thanks for joining us, Tanya. Thank you so much.

I appreciate your time and everybody who's here. We really value what you do and we want the very best for you. And so we hope that this series is giving you real value and new things to think about. And join us for the wood next month. You can check it out on the dental learning platform.