Achieving Success In Dentistry

You're listening to The Dr. Phil Klein Dental Podcast from Viva Learning.com. Welcome to the show. I'm Dr. Phil Klein. Today we'll be discussing the recipe for achieving success in our dental practices. Our guest is Dr. Todd Snyder, a popular speaker on VivaLearning .com, a cosmetic dentist, author, international lecturer, researcher, and instructor at various teaching facilities. Dr. Snyder is a consultant for numerous dental manufacturing companies. and has had the opportunity to research and recommend changes for many of the materials now being used in dentistry. You can reach Dr. Snyder at www.legion.dentist. Before we get started, I'd like to thank our sponsor, Saikan. a world-renowned company that provides a complete range of infection control solutions for dental practices. So if you're looking for equipment or products in the area of infection control, look no further than Sycan, known as the maker of the statum cassette autoclave, the fastest cassette autoclave out there for sure. Sycan offers cutting-edge solutions for efficiently washing, disinfecting, and sterilizing dental instruments. Really phenomenal company. Great products. You'll see it at the dental shows or showrooms and so forth. Super cutting edge stuff. They make any stereocenter stand out. So we thank SICAN for their support for this podcast series with Dr. Snyder. Dr. Snyder, it's a pleasure to have you on Dental Talk. Thanks for having me, Phil. Always a pleasure. Yeah. So your other podcasts have been doing phenomenally well on Viva Learning. We really appreciate all the insight you've given us through those podcasts. And I know you have a podcast program of your own. How is that going? You know, it's been a lot of fun. We've got a lot of downloads and I've got a lot of great compliments and feedback, so I'm enjoying it. What is the name of that podcast program? Delusional. Delusional. What does that mean as far as what the topics are? Well, I think a lot of times in dentistry and just life, many of us are delusional in things that we approach and what we do. And so basically, I pigeonhole this just for dentists and saying, how do we win the weekly war of dealing with patients, employees, and insurance companies? And so we're... Where we're delusional, think we can't do something or it's not possible, we talk about all the problems and things in dentistry that we can actually improve upon, but most of the time we fail to do so. So it's kind of a reality check. Yeah. A lot of limitations we put on ourselves, everyone else has the same limitation we believe, and yet there's many of us out there that don't have limitations that others do. So yes, it's bringing to light many of the problems. as well as showing people how they can accelerate their career and do better by many of us that have already been through things. We can show them how to get over hurdles faster. We're looking forward to hearing more about that podcast, and I've listened to a couple of episodes, really enjoyed them, and I wish you the best of luck. Keep us informed on how that's going. So my first question could theoretically, Dr. Snyder, take you a full day to answer. It's a question that you can go on and on about, but because you're... of those that loves challenges, and that includes being a race car driver. I'm hoping you can answer this question within the timeframe of this podcast. So here we go. What is the recipe for a successful dental practice? You know, it is a long-winded answer, right? So I'm going to simplify it for you. We call it the trifecta inside of Legion. So it's ACD. What it means is attract, convert, and deliver. If you can learn how to attract customers to your business, regardless of what type of business you're in, obviously we're dentists here, but if you can attract the people that you want, and then once they get there, if you and your staff can convert them to stay and move forward with treatment, then you get to deliver. And that's when you get paid. So attract, convert, deliver. So the goal, of course, would be to execute those three components and we'll be on the path to a successful dental practice. That's impressive because you did that in a little over 30 seconds. So let me ask you this, Dr. Snyder, as a practice owner, should we be on a mission to be an expert at all aspects of dentistry? You know, that's up to each individual person. But if you look at most companies that are successful, they offer one thing. And that one thing they offer is in all their advertising and marketing is what draws people in. Now, it doesn't mean they can't sell other items or do other things. They certainly can. But, you know, you look at like UPS, they do shipping. You look at Amazon, you'd say, wait a minute, they sell all kinds of stuff. no they don't they sell one thing they sell the luxury of you being able to get whatever you want in one place and they get it to you quickly right you look at like pepsi the main thing they sell is pepsi cola but they also have subsidiary colas they sell but the one main thing that you see in all their advertising is their product not all the subsidiaries so in dentistry it's kind of similar in that you could say well if you're selling one thing like an endodontist or oral surgeon or orthodontist we know that specialists make more money Because they do one thing and they do it well. As general dentists, we try out very often to do everything. And it's hard for us to do everything well, right? We just can't be specialized at each one of them. So we're offering everything. And so a patient doesn't really perceive us as being different because we offer everything the same as everyone else. I would say if you could market one thing. Even though you do everything else as a general dentist, you might find you get more people to come in for that one thing and you become more lucrative. And that goes back to the Pareto Principle 80 -20 rule. Figure out what the one thing is you like to do and market that one thing. Yeah, so that leads into my next question about marketing. I'd like to have your thoughts about marketing and what should a dental practice be thinking about and doing when it comes to marketing their practice. And if you could attack that question from what stage that particular practice is in. They're fresh out of dental school. And then you get the next level where they work with an associate for a while. They decided to move on to their own practice and so forth. So the strategy is probably a little bit different, right? Depending on where you are in your career. Yeah, you're definitely correct. And I was just having a conversation the other day with a potential associate that, you know, he's young and out of school and he's got a little bit of money, but he doesn't want to spend a lot of money either, right? So I told him, well, look, I was in the same position as you when I opened my office from scratch. I didn't have the money to spend. So what do you have to do? Well, you've got to take some kind of guerrilla tactics, as I would call it. You've got to go out and meet people, hand out business cards, kiss babies kind of thing. You've got to go out and meet people. So where do you go to meet people? Well, you go to the places where you're trying to find the people you want. So if you want people that shop at Nordstrom's or Mercedes or at the country club, you need to go to those places. So you really have to decide. who your customer's going to be early on and figure out how you can get in front of them. Me personally, I went to like the Kiwanis, the Rotary Club, Chamber of Commerce. I went to these different types of places where they gave you a podium to speak for free. And so in doing so, I've got a captive audience for 15 minutes to half an hour that instantly I'm gonna drag 40, 50% of those patients up to the microphone by the time I get done. They're gonna ask me questions about, hey, can I come see you or tell me more about this procedure? And so that's how I found patience, was literally going out and talking. Now, obviously, the number one fear in life is public speaking. Number two is death. So obviously, I've got my priorities backwards. But I wasn't always, you know, happy to speak in front of our audiences and whatnot. That came with time and effort. So I would tell you that's the first thing. Now, if you're later in your career, okay, you've got more patience. You don't have time to be outside talking to people as much. So now you're looking at different avenues. And with the ability for the Internet to give you just a ton of places to market. you can actually pinpoint who you want on the internet or in the world as far as putting marketing in front of certain people. And so whether you're in the middle of your career or the end of your career, you can pinpoint exactly who you want to be coming to your practice nowadays in your marketing efforts. So that's kind of how I discern between the two, whether you're earlier or later. Now, do you need someone specific in your practice that helps you market? I can't see with the schedule of a typical dentist who's got a lot going on to be really proficient at their own marketing program. Well, and I agree, most dentists are not, and they usually outsource it, whether you work for it. DSO and the DSO manages everything, or whether you're a private practitioner and you, you know, give it to a dental marketing company, or whether you're someone like me that you go, okay, I want to see less patients. But by seeing less patients, I'm offering more, you know, high value procedures that, you know, maybe take less of my day. And so I have more time to go and work on my own marketing, as well as hiring specific companies to do things for me. So as far as, you know, depending on what type of business model you have or systems in place. You have to decide if you're going to be doing the marketing or someone else. I would say the majority of dentists let someone else. But then when you do, usually I think you get less than desirable results. And I think most dentists agree. Do you think word of mouth is still the number one driver to fill the patient chairs over time? I think that most dentists, once they get to a certain comfort level where they're making a certain amount of money, that's where they just kind of rely to some extent on word of mouth and maybe do a little bit of marketing. versus I, for me personally, I don't want to rely just on word of mouth, hoping someone's going to talk about me. I want to actually spend some money to get, you know, a four or five, 10 times return on my money. And so I want to see more patients in less time. And to do so, I've got to spend some money on my marketing. I find I get a huge return by marketing and most dentists won't market the way I do. So it becomes very easy to shoot fish in a barrel. Here in Austin, Texas, I get cards in the mail, which is kind of archaic and it will have. the picture of the dentist and maybe it has the picture of the facility uh an operatory whatever and it says they're using the latest equipment and they do the greatest procedures is that still something that you recommend to do male marketing Depending on the message of your marketing, that's going to drive a certain type of patient. Now, a lot of times in that marketing, if you say it's technology-based, okay, so you're going for someone that wants new technology. A lot of those have usually a fee on it, and so you're going for someone who wants a less expensive type of thing or an inexpensive lead-in. So you're getting a certain type of patient with that mindset. That can work in certain geographic areas or certain cities, towns, but recognize the type of patient you're potentially getting from that. And if you try it once and you find that the, you know, call it the analytics, the results that come from it, if they're not desirable, if you're looking at it, then maybe you need to look at something else as far as a better return on investment. Me personally, I wouldn't be investing in something like that because it's far easier to spend money to literally target someone, like I said earlier, on the internet or through their cell phone, through geotagging or display ads, things that are very inexpensive. They get put right in front of the type of customer I want as opposed to just. throwing things out in the world by mailers and hoping someone calls me for an inexpensive lead. No, that makes a lot of sense. So I'm going to throw a few words at you in the final minutes of this podcast and tell us what first comes into your mind as it relates to our dental practices. So the first word is profit. Platinum offer. Platinum offer. Platinum offer. Find the one procedure that you like to do most in your career. that pays you the most and has the lowest overhead or the biggest result, whatever it is, or the least amount of insurance write-off, whatever it is, you want to market to those people. You want those to come in. The big cases that you really would like, market to those because you only need a couple of those each month to be profitable. So when I think of profit, I think of how many big cases do I need a month? I need two and I'm profitable. Okay. Expenses. Employees. Your number one expenditure is typically employees. Most offices. If you look at your employees, I would say there's probably someone that's not pulling their weight that either needs a career opportunity or a discussion, or you might find that other employees can step up and fulfill the role of someone that's not doing as well as you'd like. And by doing so, you instantly cut some of your overhead out. Now, in addition, 98% offices don't train their staff. So what's your biggest liability? The ones that aren't trained in doing their job well. So either invest in training them. or start to figure out who's your A players and get them to play a little bit higher and take on the role of others and or remove people that are not playing at the right level. Yeah, and before I get to the last word, which I'll give you in a second, in your training program, Legion.Dentist, do you train only dentists or could a dentist refer their staff to you for help? I'm typically talking to the dentist because they're the ones overseeing everything. They're kind of the leader of their office. And so what I would like them to do is learn the concepts and then disseminate and train their staff accordingly, because every office can be slightly different. And so my training doesn't spell out like you have to do this, that and the next thing. It's like, OK, here's basically the concepts that work. Now, being that your business is slightly different, take the concepts and now apply it to your business. If you want to have your employees watch your programs inside my group, go right ahead. But we don't really have them coming into the actual. discussions, we're going to let that kind of, since everyone's different, be handled by each individual dentist in their office. And do you think training staff helps reduce turnover and the employee is happier and more satisfied with their career at the office? Or do you think too much training is kind of burdensome to the employee and they kind of think, I already know this. I went to school. I get how this practice works. You're kind of hitting me with training all the time. What's your feeling on that? Two things. I think you hit it on the head in the beginning that research actually proves that the more training that an employee has had, the better they perform, the less turnover, the less problems, the more happiness you have in your office, which they've shown again through research. But for the same token, you may say, well, OK, I already trained on that. Well, I can tell you any one of us. could go through training on the same subject over and over and usually find a pearl in there. Hence, we all go to continuing education programs and usually find a pearl. So I think constant training is a good thing because you can always learn and perform at a different level if you're trying. If you're not, you're just comfortable and staying where you're at. Right. And we forget things. If we don't use things we've been trained to do, we forget them. So additional training or a little redundant training isn't the end of the world. What do you recommend to a dentist to do to make sure their staff... gets not only regular training, but quality training. Well, there's a number of different ways. Obviously, I think you need to make time in your schedule where a lot of dentists are like, well, wait, I don't make money when I do that. You'll make more money if you take the time to train them and educate them on how you want things to work. That's been proven many times for Medicare, Medicaid, HMO offices, PPO offices in private. Anyone that's come through my program will tell you the same, but it's not common sense to most of us as dentists. Like, no, no, I need to be behind the chair. I need to be producing and making money. Okay, so last word. We'll wrap this podcast up. Write-offs. Insurance. So I was talking to a dentist last week. I consult dentists every week, basically. And so he was doing $3 million. And I said, wow, that's impressive. And I said, so did you write off a million? He says, yeah. And I said, how did that feel? He said, it hurt. Imagine how hard he had to work to make that much money just to have a million dollars wiped clean off the plate from the insurance companies. And I said, so again, Pareto principle, if we wiped out the insurance patients or some of the insurance patients, and maybe some people left because you were no longer accepting their insurance or whatnot, do you think you'd make the same amount of money or less, possibly more? And he's like, well, I don't know. And so obviously fear steps into our mind. We get scared. And I said, well, I can tell you as an out-of-network provider, I get paid better by every insurance company. I don't have a problem. And I've been doing it for 22 years and I'm in a busy area with a lot of other dentists that are in network. And so again, that fear holds us back. But I told him, I said, I guarantee you'll make more than 2 million and not have it to write it off. I said, so the question becomes, is it really close to 2 million still, just like it was, or does it get to 2.5 or is it 2.8? What is that number? You'll never know until you try. So you can either sit there and be comfortable and write it off or move forward and do something. These are write-offs that you're talking about in this particular example. of money that's not collected for services rendered. So you have your UCR fee and then you have your insurance benefit plan fees that you've been contracted. And so when you look at the amount that you've written off there, that's a fair amount. And so most offices that I talk to, usually it's about a third. That's a lot of time, effort, money, overhead, et cetera. And so instantly, if you add some of that money back in, you can imagine how profitable you could be just by adding a hundred or 200,000 back in that you would have written off that goes right in your pocket. So the argument is, though, from the dentist who's doing this, is that I would not normally have gotten these patients into the office unless I accepted those plans at that fee. I would lose all that. I would lose all that business. Yeah, that's their assumption, where oftentimes we're delusional to think that, oh, the patient wouldn't come to us if I wasn't on that plan. So you think somehow my office is different, that they will come to me because I'm not on their plan? Because everyone asks me the same question when they call them, that they call to any office. Do you take my insurance? It's at that point, I better have good education and good systems in place for my employees to be able to talk to them in a way that they understand why coming to my office and still getting to use their benefits, but not being contracted in network is a benefit to them. That approach where you're willing to take that chance to some extent, where you may not get that patient, even though with your techniques and strategy, most of the time you will. um that's kind of a mindset right with their training and say this is the approach this is the strategy we're going to lose some patients but in the long run according to you that office will come out ahead if you have the right systems in place and everyone's been trained if you're trying to do the same thing you've always done when you were on insurance and now you're out of the insurance you may have some problems right Exactly. Okay. Well, that's great stuff. As usual, Dr. Snyder, we love having you on the show. Thank you very much. And in closing, I'd like to thank our sponsor, Sycan, a world leader in infection control products and equipment. Dr. Snyder, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Phil.