Lori of First Wave Dental | Gene St. Louis Consulting | San Diego, CA

I'm Jean St. Louis Consulting, and I am sitting here with Lori, who is the office manager. And, Lori, how long have you been in dentistry?

I've been in dentistry for about 31 years now.

Okay.

All right.

And I know. I just spoke with your husband, Dr. Jason Brown. And how did you end up in the dental practice? Was that the original plan when he started the practice, or was it just serendipitous that he called you in one day and you were stuck for the rest of your life?

It was not planned.

I was.

Actually.

When he bought the practice, I was still in college and I needed a job, and we weren't married yet. And I said, I'll come help you for a little bit and get. Get you going. And because I had corporate experience, and so I stayed. And then I stayed. I stayed. I'm still here. I never left. The hours are good. The environment's great.

Good. Nice boss.

Nice boss. The boss is nice.

Paycheck is on time.

Yeah, exactly. Patients are the same, so it worked out.

Good. Good. So, Laurie, when Jason had kind of discussed, I'm sure, with you, like, hey, I'm thinking about hiring a coach or what do you think about hiring a coach? Did you have any feelings about that? Did you give it much thought or.

I did. We talked about it. Well, we had talked about it for several years before, and we were kind of at a point where we knew we needed help with the practice to get it going in the direction we wanted it to. And neither one of us have business experience, so it's nice to bring in someone else. And he had heard about you and through a friend, and let's give it a try. So it was a little nervous to, you know, change things up a little bit, but it was. It was. It was very good for us.

Good. And I know you, you know, at the time were the only person at the front desk, and you were also doing everything else. And there were two assistants and two hygienists. And now we have three assistants and three. Three hygienists and have another person at the front desk. But how, you know, when we first came in, how did you feel about that journey of us coming in and kind of, you know, we don't really teach anything different from the clinical perspective of the dentist has to do dentistry a certain way, but more so the systems? And how did you feel about being introduced to some new systems? And how did that kind of work in your practice?

I was a little nervous about the systems because we've never done anything like that before, but we thought we'd give it a try, and I think it's helped keep us very organized. For me, in the front.

It kind of establishes roles like what the back office does, what the front office does. There's not a whole lot of mixing between the front and the back, which is. It's worked out a lot better for me in the front when I can concentrate on my front duties and not be in the back much.

Good.

Yeah, I think it's helped us a lot.

And I know when we first introduced kind of like ideal day scheduling or the new patient wow experience, particularly deal day scheduling, I think that was something that really kind of made you a little nervous. Would you agree with?

Yeah, it's because I've been doing the same it the same way for, you know, 30 years. So to make a change like that was a little stubborn. It took me a little. A little time to get used to it. And a lot of coaching people telling me, you know, what they want here and there and how to get it right.

I still mess it up sometimes.

I think you weren't stubborn at all. My recollection was you weren't stubborn about it. You were just wanting to get it right. Yeah. And I think the back started noticing the flow of the day went so much better. Because you understood more of the scheduling.

Yes. You know, it was like, right?

Yeah. Like the kind of staggered scheduling and you understood, like, where to put people, that it wasn't going to be like two root canals back to back or something like that. Yeah. So that seemed to work.

Still learning to perfect it. But I think that's been the biggest game changer for us.

Is the scheduling.

Good and how did you feel? I know we also kind of coached with you and the rest of the team on how to help patients understand and make dentistry affordable and, you know, offering payment options to help them make dentistry affordable and to follow through on you know, tracking of patients that maybe didn't schedule at the time, wanted to check their schedule or check with their spouse or anything like that. How did you feel that worked out for you?

I think it's worked well. I mean, there's a lot of, like, wording that goes into things now that you have. Like, it's not scripted, but it's, you know, it gives you more ideas on how to present things. There's the CareCredit payment options. You can print that out and.

Right. Oh, the payment calculator.

Yeah, the payment calculator. That's a really good tool, which I didn't know Existed.

Yeah, that was.

That's a good one. Yeah. Everything's been good. It's working smoothly.

Good. And let's talk about some of the leadership that you know from you going, having been an office manager and really not having clearer job descriptions than you do now. How did that help with you in coaching your team and kind of guiding them what they needed to do? I know by nature you're not a bully by any way, and you're more laid back with your leadership style, and I think the staff appreciates that. How do you feel that helped with having some clearer job descriptions and responsibilities laid out for you?

Yeah, I think it's worked really well.

Everyone's not just expecting people to do everybody's job. Everybody knows what they should do. It's all laid out and we all help each other.

Yeah. You guys work really well as a team.

It's really good. So if one person doesn't understand something, like, they'll ask somebody else. And we all try to help each other, so it's. Yeah.

Yeah. I think you guys work really well as a team and you have a lot of mutual respect for each other. And I think that makes the difference, because like you said, if one person isn't understanding something, the other person steps up and is like, hey, you know, I think we should discuss this and let's, you know, make sure we're all on the same page. Yeah.

And they're not afraid to ask for help.

Yeah.

Especially the newer members of our team.

They'll just come up and say, hey.

What do we do here? We have more systems now where we can lay it out, and it's kind of just laid out for everyone where you don't have to guess.

Right. It's clearly more clearly defined. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Anything else that you'd like to share? Was there anything that you picked up on from the coaching that maybe you didn't expect to have happen?

I didn't expect the.

Revenue. We had untapped potential in the practice, but I didn't realize it was that significant.

And also, like, in hiring you, a little nervous about the initial fee.

Right, Right.

But that's been well worth it.

More than we can expect.

Yeah. That's good. Good. Great. Well, thanks. Thanks for sharing everything. I appreciate.