Making More By Doing Less

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 how to be more productive and profitable by actually doing less. 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. A 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. Oh, thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it, Phil. Yeah, we want to appreciate all your input that you've provided to Viva Learning over the years. Really good stuff. Webinars, podcasts, great insight into so many things. A great portion of our audience has already tapped into many of the things that you've offered. So we're happy to do this one with you. And it's a four-part series. So this first part titled Making More by Doing Less obviously is tied into efficiency and workflow. So to begin, simple question. Most people believe you have to work harder or longer to be more successful. Do you agree or disagree? I would empathetically disagree. So I see it as... So we're starting off on a good note here, right? Yeah, well, you know me, I go the wrong direction sometimes. But it works extremely well for me. I think if anything, I'm not following the herd. And that's what I think part of my success comes from, is I'm willing to do things that others would never dream of doing or too scared or afraid of doing. So yeah, I think too often in dentistry... mindset is I've got to treat everyone. I've got to do everything. I've got to learn everything so I can offer everything to my patients. And if you come into this and say, OK, instead of thinking like a dentist typically would, let's think like a business owner. Most businesses do not try to offer everything to everyone. And granted, there's always exceptions. You look at like an Amazon or something. Yeah, of course, they try to offer everything to everyone, but it's not them doing it. They're just a, you know, a Web page, let's say, where everyone gets to show their goods. So most businesses try to offer something specific. And, yeah, they have some variations on the product line. And so as a dentist, it's not that you can't do everything or offer everything you can. But in my mind, it's kind of the old the old pickle jar that Stephen Covey used to talk about. And the pickle jar was, OK, if you have rocks and gravel and sand, you can put the rocks in first. You can then put the gravel in behind it. And then you can put sand in to fill up the rest of the little holes. And then you could actually grab water and put even more in there. Versus if you did it in the opposite direction and threw a bunch of sand in first and water and then threw gravel and then tried to get the rocks in, it wouldn't fit because you did things the wrong way. And I see dentistry in that sense pretty much being the same is you want to try and do. more of the bigger items to be more successful financially. And if you're doing more of those initially in your week or your month or the day, you have the rest of the month, the rest of your week, the rest of that day to fill in all the gravel or sand or water. And so you can still do all the procedures, but if you're doing the main ones, you're finding that you're more lucrative in less time. the little stuff you can still do, but you're no longer trying to run around and do everything for everyone, trying to make that dollar each month. And so that's kind of how I approach my business. Yeah. So conceptually that makes a lot of sense, but to implement that in an office, that's another whole story, right? When doctors are running around from operatory to operatory, trying to keep everybody happy and assistants are saying, Hey doctor, we have Mrs. Smith in room six, all this conceptual stuff. It'd be nice to adhere to all of it, but it's not always so easy. So how do you do that? You know, and it's a big switch. You know, it's a big change from what most dentists are used to, because most of the time you worked as an associate somewhere and you had that kind of environment and you carried it over into your practice because you thought that's how it's supposed to be done. And that's how everyone else does it. I'm telling you, it doesn't have to be that way. So to switch gears, you know, you've got to drop the fear. You've got to drop all the lies and all the excuses and say, you know what? It can be done. Other people are doing it. Now, how do I do it or how do I learn from these other people? So that I can do the same thing. And how do I get the staff on board? You know, so there's a lot of training that goes into it, but it totally can be done. And I'm not to plug myself, but that's one of the things we talk about inside of Legion is how do we do these things? Right. And we mentioned that in the introduction that your program is at Legion.Dentist. Could you give us some insight into the first step without going to go through your program? How does a dentist focus on the concept you just talked about? Well, you know, there's a lot of different systems in your office. And so you have to pick a system to change. And where I said, you know, like rocks and gravel and everything else, you could say it's the number of patients you see, how often you see it. I would say my personal opinion of seeing and working with so many dentists is they're usually most dental offices are overstaffed. And so let's let's try and make this simple on everyone. Because SICAN is a sponsor here and I use all their products. Let's use this as an example. So where I simplified my. sterilization area, the sterilization center. A lot of offices have a sterilization tech or they have a rover that goes in and handles it. Some places just have a dedicated person. There's a lot of time wasted in sterilization in my mind. And there's a lot of time wasted in other systems, but let's just confine it to this one area. And you go, okay, how much time is someone in there scrubbing on an instrument to clean it or scrubbing on burrs, trying to save a $4 burr, however much it is, but you're paying for a $20 employee. That makes zero sense. And so you start looking at the traditional cold sterilization systems and how much time and effort is to clean that thing. And it's just a mess. And isn't there a better way? So anytime you see a problem, that's an opportunity to change. And so I look at a problem every day and say, oh, here's another gift in front of me. I get to change. If I recognize it's a problem, that's truly a gift. I have a positive mindset and say, yeah, we're going to change it. So in sterilization, if you say, all right, let's get rid of this cold sterile. It's a waste. How do you get things cleaned then? You know, if you got bloody soaked instruments or you got dirty burrs, there's other devices out there. So like Sican has their hydrum. And so the hydrum is like this dishwasher on steroids. You know, you think of this robust, crazy system that's got all kinds of crazy heat and detergents that are, you know, have bases and acids and things that just go in here and just literally clean everything. It's awesome. And so you're no longer having to worry about an employee. cutting themselves or filing a complaint that they got cut or they can't work and the time wasted to clean these things. You just start looking at money differently going, wow, if I invest a little money in one of these devices, I can either remove that employee or now my existing employees, when they drop their equipment, they can drop it right into the machine and walk away. And so it saved a ton of time for everybody. Right. And so this kind of follows what you said, Dr. Snyder, about the dentist who may have been working at another practice and that's the way they did it there. And now they're on their own and they're carrying those. those habits, those behavioral processes that go on in a daily routine to their new practice, because that's what they did before. So you're saying the way to do this is to think beyond that and say, evaluate what you're doing every day and figure out where you can simplify things. So you use the SteriCenter, for example. So that actually could eliminate an employee, this washing. system, this instrument washing system. And I know Cycan is the leader in that. Oh, definitely. Based on the size of one's practice, if they got 20, you know, operatories and have six dentists run around, they may need someone. But I'm saying is the majority of us don't need a dedicated person to hang out there and waste their time. And so, yeah, you go, okay, well, you get the hydrant. You got this crazy unit to clean things. Once it comes out of there, then what? Well, you know, for like your hand pieces, someone trying to spray lubrication in them and get it right so that your $1,200 electric hand piece stays working for many years. You're relying on someone to do that. Well, maybe if they get it wrong, you're now out a handpiece. So what would be better is to say, OK, here's a problem. How do we simplify it? How do we remove the person? You know, Statum has their Statmatic, which is basically a device you put your handpieces in and it instantly lubricates them properly and purges them and runs them. So they're doing it better than typically an employee or person is going to. It's very specific. It's technology. Make sure it runs the right amount of material through it and cleans it properly. And so you have a properly lubricated treated handpiece that. Again, I think it's faster and easier than have an employee do it. And then from there, you take all of your equipment. You can drop it in either to the StatClave G4, this crazy fast sterilizer that's two times as fast as anything else out there. So you've got better efficiency, better speed. So you get everything back more quickly. And so you go, wow, I've just instantly streamlined the whole process. Literally, someone has to walk by and just take something from one thing and throw it in the other and walk away again, push a button. And you say, well. Yeah, absolutely. In fact, what's interesting is when I was an endodontist, I actually worked at some GP, large GP practices that had an oral surgeon there, a periodontist. I was the endodontist. It was up in Pennsylvania at the time. And these people were waiting for instruments to dry. I mean, there were people getting paid. I don't know what their hourly rate was at that time. It was a while ago. I was ready to get set up and they were waiting for the sterilization process to finish because the instruments weren't dry. And I thought, my God, that's so inefficient. I mean, what a waste of time for this staff. The patient's in the chair. And the scheduling was actually affected by it. But they didn't have the kind of equipment they have now with this pre-vac and post-vacuum drying system. And I know SICAN has that now. So again, these are reasons to update the office to make sure. It's not just so it's another gadget. I mean, I know some dentists say, no, a salesman came in. They want to sell. I have an autoclave already. I don't need that. or they want to sell me some other gadget. But there are reasons to look into these solutions where it actually could reduce your overhead and bring huge added efficiency to the workflow. Definitely. I mean, if you start looking at like computer technology from 20 years ago that you may have had in your business and you go, wow, think of how slow that was and dial up technology for the internet. And you go, wow, things have certainly, you know, expanded with 5G technology and everything else going on with computers, like how fast it is that you can have all of it in your smartphone. And so, you know, the same kind of thing goes into the technology behind the SciCam products is they've made things that are substantially faster, both, you know, like you're saying, the vacuum, you know. before and after, so the sterilization process is quicker, as well as getting something drier faster, which we didn't have in the past. Like you said, you got to sit and wait. So again, I think SICAN is leading the industry as far as their technology to allow that area to almost be autonomous and free. You just walk in and drop it and walk away to some extent. When you're looking to purchase equipment that solves these problems of inefficiency and makes things more efficient, what are you looking for overall as a... dentist, as a business owner, what are some of the key things you need to look out for? Well, you know, for me as a business owner, as a race car driver, it's always about speed and efficiency. And if you can do that consistently, you get to win. And so where I see is, okay, I've got this technology that makes it extremely efficient and streamlined, which makes it fast, which means I can keep doing my job and have less of my employees pulled away from helping me and being productive. Because let's face it, your employees are not making money. while they're cleaning and handling instruments they're making money when they're helping you chair side or treating the next patient and so again to get them out of that room as fast as possible that speed that efficiency i'll pay for that i'll pay extra for that because i recognize these people can make more money you know for me doing that their job as opposed to not making money sticking around in the sterilization area trying to clean things Also, what's interesting is they have that G4 technology, which, again, is another help toward overhead because what it does is it checks on the machine to make sure that it's running properly, and it alerts you if something is malfunctioning, which is not usually the case, I hope. The reputation of the equipment is quite high. But in the event that you're not getting the sterilization results that you should be getting, you're alerted by the connection to their system through the Internet. And that's what that G4 technology offers. So that's another practice efficiency that they employ into their machines. And I'm glad you mentioned that because in the past on my old systems, again, technology has changed, where I used to have to buy the test strips and put them in there and mail it off. And then they test it and then mail me back the results. That used to be a pain. And so to have everything monitored right then and there, that again, I'm not worrying about a person handling their job. I'm not worrying about the mail getting it done. It's now handled internally within the system and it's communicated through the cloud. So again. Technology has sped things up for the office. We just covered one form of efficiency as far as making more by doing less. And you're saying that you're using technology and tried and true equipment that is designed to make things work better for the practitioners. So like you said, they could use their staff towards something that makes money, which is something that happens inside the operatory, not in the stericenter. So that's an example. Now, other examples of this you have talked about with me in the past. If you are interested, and I'm talking to the audience now, please check out Legion.Dentist. Dr. Snyder, we look forward to having you on the next podcast, Profitable Ways to Cutting Overhead. That'll be next. Thank you very much. Thank you, Phil. Appreciate it.