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The Delivering WOW Dental Podcast

Business & Economics Podcasts

This Podcast is for you, the Dentist, Entrepreneur, or Small Business Owner. Voted one of the "Top 25 Women in Dentistry" by Dental Products Report, Dr. Anissa Holmes has effectively mastered the skill of the use of Social Media, with a Facebook following of over 50,000 fans. Dr. Holmes has discovered that the most effective way to get massive results is to first have a vision and to focus on what matters most. Dr. Holmes teaches you actionable steps to develop your dental practice's culture, systems, and brand. Dr. Holmes is going to reveal what works in Social Media, how to build an amazing dental team, and well as strategies to increase your productivity and profitability. Dr. Holmes has figured out what works to create a dental practice full of "Raving Fans". Dr. Holmes interviews Dental Experts and Non-Dental Entrepreneurs such as Dr. David Moffet, Dr. Mark Costes, Mike Michalowicz and John Lee Dumas, to bring you BIG, powerful strategies to help you scale up your business so that you can achieve more while working less.

Location:

Fort Lauderdale, FL

Description:

This Podcast is for you, the Dentist, Entrepreneur, or Small Business Owner. Voted one of the "Top 25 Women in Dentistry" by Dental Products Report, Dr. Anissa Holmes has effectively mastered the skill of the use of Social Media, with a Facebook following of over 50,000 fans. Dr. Holmes has discovered that the most effective way to get massive results is to first have a vision and to focus on what matters most. Dr. Holmes teaches you actionable steps to develop your dental practice's culture, systems, and brand. Dr. Holmes is going to reveal what works in Social Media, how to build an amazing dental team, and well as strategies to increase your productivity and profitability. Dr. Holmes has figured out what works to create a dental practice full of "Raving Fans". Dr. Holmes interviews Dental Experts and Non-Dental Entrepreneurs such as Dr. David Moffet, Dr. Mark Costes, Mike Michalowicz and John Lee Dumas, to bring you BIG, powerful strategies to help you scale up your business so that you can achieve more while working less.

Language:

English


Episodes

210 The Right Way To Give Bonuses To Your Team

8/16/2022
Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Delivering WOW Dental podcast. I am super excited to have you guys here. Today, we're talking all about team bonuses, how do we create bonuses for our team members, when is the right time to be able to provide a bonus and what is the most efficient, effective, and profitable way to be able to provide bonuses to our teams. And so we're going to cover all of that. If you've not yet had a chance, I would love to invite you to join us inside of our dental boss entrepreneur Facebook group, where we have thousands of dentists coming together to be able to learn how to better run, grow, and scale their businesses. To join us there, you can head on over to dentalbossentrepreneurs.com. So inside of our Facebook group, we did have a question come in that was asking about team bonuses. How do we incentivize our teams? What percentage of production should we give to be able to bonus our team members? And so I wanted to spend some time answering this because there are specific strategies that we can use and things that I want you to actually consider that perhaps you might not have considered. Now, I will tell you, I remember being that practice owner early in my career, making a lot of mistakes. And the mistake that I made was that if I want to have team members do the things that I'd like for them to do, which is to be able to have patients follow up and schedule treatment. If I want team members to go out and help me with marketing, if I want team members to help to hit our practice goals that are in our whiteboards, I would need to just give them extra money to do the things. And I really had that mindset and I was telling myself that story of that is how I can actually get them to do the things. Until I remember one of my early coaches coming to me and she said, "Anissa, let's look at your numbers. Let's look at your profitability." And once I did that, I realized that, and I really knew it to be honest with you as well, that I really didn't have the money to be able to do that. In fact, at that time, I was actually not really paying myself much of a salary. But I love my team members and I wanted to be able to do more for them. And again, I had the belief that in order to get them to do things, I'd actually have to pay them bonus. And so again, I was just taking money out of basically my own pocket, what was not even there, and paying them. And so maybe you're that doctor right now that is paying team members bonuses. That's looking at production and saying, "Okay, I'm going to give them this amount." And maybe you don't know your numbers yet. And so I want to make sure that this episode really serves you and that you understand exactly how to know when is the right time to give a bonus, and again, how do we actually provide a bonus? Because believe it or not, the lie has been told that we are to give a bonus on production. And oftentimes many of you might have even heard me tell my lemonade story of when I was back eight or nine years old, I had this idea to get a Rainbow Brite doll. And my mom said, "Okay, we can get it for you at Christmas." And I said, "I want to get it sooner. Can I go out and have a lemonade stand?" And so we went to Winn-Dixie, we got the sugar and the ice and the cups. And the next day I literally went around knocking on doors and I said, "I'm Anissa. I love around the corner. I'm wanting to get a doll. I'd love if you could come out." Gave them my address, "At 12 o'clock and support me so that I can get this doll." Well, 12 o'clock came and the line was down the street and I actually sold all the lemonade. And I got really excited. I'm like, "Mom, I'm going to be able to get my doll." And she said, "Anissa, I'm so proud of you. You had a great idea for a business. You actually had a great product, and your marketing was great. All of your lemonade was sold. But I really need you to understand that today you did not make 17 dollars and 58 cents. Today, you made...

Duration:00:11:29

209 How to Analyze Your Team and Get What You Really Want

4/4/2022
Hi everyone and welcome to The Delivering WOW Dental Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Anissa Holmes. And today, we're talking about how to effectively analyze your team and get what you really want out of your practice. This podcast really was inspired by a doctor who posted inside of our Dentalbiz Chiks Facebook group that she had a team member that came to her and said that she was offered more money in another practice and if the doctor would match it and would give her an increase in her salary. The doctor thought about it and the doctor said, okay yes, we'll go ahead and match it. And on Monday, the team member didn't show up for work. And so I don't know how many of you have been in this situation where you have had something similar happen to you. But I actually want to talk to you today about the analysis of team members and really looking at how do we build and scale that multimillion-dollar practice and what sort of team is it going to take to get there? And how do we analyze a current team to see if they are at the point where they have the capacity to support us in building our practices? Do they want to be there? Have we been clear with them on what we want? And so I want to take this time to really focus on really analyzing our team, because oftentimes what we discover when we have team members who leave, is that we will actually go through this process of frustration. Why? Because we have to now look at getting another team member. But what I often hear is after the fact, it was the biggest blessing because the person that came after them was the best person that they have ever had in that position. And so I actually want us to start looking at, and I'm going to give you a process today, to actually evaluate your team because perhaps the team that got you here is not the team that's going to get you there. And so I want to talk to you about how we build that team that's going to get us to that next level of growth. Being able to grow, scale, and serve more patients. Being able to grow in a way that you don't have anxiety, that you're able to be really happy, doing more dentistry that you love, and earning way more money so that you can support your team, so that you can support taking them on trips, giving them those benefits, being able to purchase equipment cash, being able to have way more money to put into your retirement account, your investment accounts, being able to take care of your family and take amazing vacations without apologies. And so, as we start looking at our team, what I want you to start doing is to really ask yourself three specific questions, right? And the first question is, does your team, and I want you to do this, take a sheet of paper out and write down each team member's name and ask yourself these questions. Number one, does this particular team member understand what you are having them there for? Does the team member understand their role? Does your team member understand how to be the most effective in their job? Does your team member understand what the deliverables are, and what guarantees that they're being successful in their role? Have we been clear? And one of the biggest things that I see oftentimes is, because we are so busy that we don't have the ability to train our team, or we don't have the skill set in the knowledge of how to be able to have our team to be able to step into being the highest performers within their role. Oftentimes what happens is that our team members really are not clear on what they are supposed to do. And so I really want you to ask yourself that question is, does your team member understand their role, right? Do they get what they're there for? Have we been clear about what they're supposed to do? What are their measurables? What are their deliverables? If they are a treatment coordinator, do they understand that X percentage of patients that come in, that they're talking to about scheduling treatment, we want to have actually scheduled, or are...

Duration:00:17:16

208 How to Build Leverage Through Associates

3/21/2022
Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of The Delivering WOW Dental Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Anissa Holmes and today I actually want to talk to you about something that is pretty dear to my heart, and it really is all about building leverage in your business through associates. Now, I know some of you who are listening to me right now, you perhaps have associates in your practice. Some people who are listening, you might be thinking, "Well, is now a good time to bring in an associate or what's the benefit of having an associate?" And so I actually wanted to talk to you to address this because what's been really valuable, instrumental and transformational and allowing me to grow my business, my dental practice allowing me to be able to earn a significant amount of income, grow my wealth, and honestly be able to serve our patients at a much higher level has been by bringing in associates. Now, some people bring in associates and their thought process is, "Well, I can now bring in associates and I can do more high-value procedures," which is really, really great. But I actually want to challenge you to actually think a lot bigger than that. And I remember when I hired my first business coach, one of the things that I really ask myself is, "What do I want in terms of my business? What is my business going to look like a year from now, three years from now? How am I going to be able to build the ability to have time to spend with my family If I wanted to work three days a week, how could I do that without apologies? How could it take a month off in the summer? How can I build a business that actually serves to me versus me slaving and doing all of the things in my business?" And what's really interesting is a lot of times because we especially as women have never had an opportunity to learn how to run a business effectively. We are doing our best. We are running our business, we are at the same time managing a household, looking after our partners, taking care of our kids all of their schedules. And we actually have a very unique situation where we are really trying to manage doing all of the things. And unfortunately, what happens is oftentimes time for us comes up short. And we don't have the ability to go to that yoga class or sit down by ourself and read that book. And so for me talking about this topic for all of you, especially for all of you who are women is really to understand that it is not only important and valuable, but it is almost like oxygen. Something that we need to really start understanding leverage, what leverage is, how we can build leverage in our businesses so that we can have the ability to collapse timeframes in terms of growing our wealth, growing our plans for our retirement. How can we have the ability to duplicate ourselves so that we can have more procedures being done and offered in our businesses so that we can serve way more people at a higher level? How can we have the ability to have other people doing things so that we as a business owner have the benefits, the true benefits of being a business owner, which is being able to choose how we're spending our days, what services we're providing? What are we doing with our free time? Are we able to make a decision to go into work at 10 o'clock because we want to be able to have some personal time every morning for meditating or going to the gym or going to yoga, being able to and work at a certain time. And again, while we're there be able to do the things that we want to do. And again, just going back to me, my mindset when I hired my first coach because I didn't know how to do it. I said, "My goal is I want to be able to take a month off every summer with my kids." And in order to do that, I have to be able to build leverage. I have to be able to have somebody who is making sure that things are not slipping through the cracks who's not me. I have to make sure that systems are in place and I need other people that are producing in my...

Duration:00:16:27

207 How To Get Your Team to Do Their Jobs Without Being Told

3/14/2022
Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Delivering WOW Dental Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Anissa Holmes. And today we're actually going to talk about how to have a team that does their job without being told. So this was actually a question that came into our Dental Boss Entrepreneur Facebook group. If you're not yet a member, we'd love to have you in our community. We have lots of amazing doctors that are getting together that are connecting, collaborating, and communicating. But again, we had a question that came in, and it said like, "How do I get my team to do those things? I'm feeling a little bit overwhelmed. I'm feeling like I am not having accountability. I'm to telling people what they need to do and they're not doing it." And so I actually wanted to address this because it's something that is extremely common as we all probably can imagine. And it's something that I can tell you, I'm extremely proud of that we have inside of my practice and that we've been able to actually create frameworks for practices, to be able to implement certain tools, certain systems, to be able to have that accountability, which is really great because a few things happen. The team members actually become happier in their positions. They see that they're being able to give their feedback and come up with ideas that are actually being listened to and supported. And what happens is, as a result of it, we have more things happening because we have more people working together for a common goal and for their personal goals within their role in the practice. But as a result of it, the doctor can now focus more on what they really love to do. And what they're really, really good at, which is the dentistry or saying, you know what? I really want to take this course and learn a new skillset, or I want to invest in upping my knowledge of how to run my business. And now that I have my team, that's taking care of these other things, I can feel focused on my learning, my personal development, my professional development. Again, really looking at doing what you really love to do the business and being able to have more time as an owner of a business, to be able to reap the benefits of that, which is being able to not have to work extremely long hours after work doing things, because now you have leverage built-in. And so one of the first things that I always say when I work with colleagues is we definitely want to look at having three separate steps. So there are three things that we always want to be able to look at in terms of being able to get this accountability. Number one is we want to have the right people in our business. So we have to have people in order to have leverage. If we're trying to do everything ourselves, or we say, you know what? I asked my team to do this. They didn't do it. I got frustrated. I just did it myself. You're never going to have freedom that way. You're never going to be able to take a vacation. You're never going to be able to take time away because everything's dependent on you. So you definitely want to make sure that we look at the people component. And the first step really is people because without having a team that you can empower to the next level and I get it right now, a lot of people are saying, well, we can't get team members. I'm not talking about necessarily having to hire people to do this. I'm talking about the people that are currently within your organization. How can we elevate them to actually become leaders within the organization, to have specific things that they are accountable for and they're actually doing it? Okay. So we're going to talk about how that process works, but we first need to again, have the right people. The next thing is we want to have the right processes. So this is something that is done consistently every single day, every single week. A process is something that is not something that we choose to do one day. And then we kind of do it next week. And it's...

Duration:00:22:10

206 Why Not Understanding Your Profit Margins is Costing You Too Much

2/23/2022
Hi everybody, and welcome to the Delivering Wow Dental Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Anissa Holmes, and wow, it feels really good to be here podcasting. It has been far too long as many of you may have noticed. We haven't had an episode in a while, and honestly, it has been a very busy last four months. I have been focusing on quite a few things. Number one is just building out the most incredible experience for our platinum practices that are in our platinum mastermind. We have been focused on our dental entrepreneur Facebook group, by the way, if you're not yet in that group, I definitely recommend that you get in there. It's a great place to be able to connect with other doctors, to be able to have a great community of people who are there inside of your back pocket, cheering you're on and really being there to help support you. And we've also spent the last six months actually building out our CE modules and our messaging platform for our Dental Boss Academy. And so it's been a really, really great last six weeks. Some of you guys might have even been in our boot camps. We had our first business acceleration Bootcamp, free Bootcamp back in November. Had it again in February and so that was honestly one of the most impactful feelings I had. We had about 300 practice owners that joined us on both bootcamps and a few nights we were on until 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock at night, and it was just pretty special. And so today what I'm actually going to be doing, and what I'm going to doing over our next episode is I'm actually going to be answering questions that were asked inside of our Dental Boss Entrepreneur Facebook group. And so the question that I ask is that, if I had a magic wand and I can give you anything inside of your business, anything inside of your practice, or if there's something that you would want to learn, what would that be? And so we actually had a ton of responses. And so over the next episodes, what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to take time and I'm going to help you to understand what it really means to be able to grow your practice, or how do you build a business that scales? And so if you are a beginning practice owner and you know, I want to be able to take my business to the next level, I don't want to take a lot of time, I don't want to make mistakes or if you are a practice owner that's been practicing for 20 years, maybe you are not where you want to be yet still, or maybe you've even had some coaching in the past or a lot of coaching in the past. And you want to learn new things. This is definitely going to be a really great episode for you. So today we're talking about profit margins and how do you understand profit margins? And so before we even get to understanding profit margins, I really want to help you to understand why this is so critical. Now, as many of you guys know, as many dentists are coming out of school or starting their practices or acquiring practices, one of the first things that oftentimes people do is say, "Well, how do I get new patients?" And so what I want to do is go ahead and sign up with a bunch of insurances because now I will be able to have patients and I can go ahead and have an opportunity to treat them, to be able to help patients and to be able to earn income for the business. One thing that I say to coaching clients inside of my Platinum Coaching Program, and also within our Dental Boss Academy, one I teach inside of the academy is that, what's most important inside of your business is having information. When you have information, then now you can make decisions that will allow you to scale, make decisions that there are certain things that you may want to stop and you can actually create a roadmap and plan. And so, as it relates to profit margins, I'll tell you a quick story. So one of the doctors that I was looking at her last year's revenue, her last year's production, collection, her profits, we were actually having a circle of focus call. This is...

Duration:00:18:16

205 How To KEEP Patients Coming Back to Your Dental Practice

7/19/2021
Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of the Delivering Wow Dental podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Anissa Holmes. And today, we're talking all about how to keep your patients coming back to your dental practice. Now, this is something that's actually pretty important and I'm not sure if you've thought about it recently, in terms of how many patients are actually leaving out of the back door or how many patients are actually leaving every single week without being scheduled. And I can tell you this is something that you're definitely going to want to create a system for because it's really interesting. A lot of people are focused on new patients, new patients, new patients. But if you are focusing on new patients and you have patients who are not scheduling, then essentially your business is not going to grow. It's going to be flat. And so, today I'm going to talk about how you can really think about making sure that your patients are coming back. So, obviously we can look at marketing and not marketing from the standpoint of getting new patients but marketing to our existing patients. And I absolutely love to think about this and to really focus a lot of attention on marketing to my existing patients. Why? Because they are already trusting us. They have already had great service. They know what our culture's like and they can be walking advocates for our practice. And so, as we start thinking about even external marketing campaigns, we want to make sure that we're always involving our patients. So, what does that look like? Well, maybe you decide that you want to do a clothing drive. Well, you definitely want to make sure that you're posting that on social media but you want to make sure that if you're doing, for example, a Facebook live video talking about it, on your social media pages, you're also taking a photo of that. You are sharing that link to that video, to your patients in an email and they're seeing what you're doing to serve the community. And also, of course, you're inviting them to participate. You are putting up flyers so that your patients will see what you're doing inside of your community. And what I love doing inside of my practice and what I love helping practices with is actually having these monthly community engagement campaigns. So, now you can go ahead and really be consistent with marketing internally to your patients. And as we start thinking about how are we marketing to our patients, we want to make sure that we are 100% being consistent. So, that is looking at having a monthly newsletter where you are sharing what you did last month for the community and what you're doing this upcoming month. Sharing an educational article that is talking about a new service or a service that you want to focus on for that particular month. And of course, having that link for people to go ahead and schedule online or sharing your phone number or asking that they email you back to go ahead and make an appointment. So, that's another thing that you definitely want to consider. Another thing that you want to look at in terms of making sure that your patients were coming back is making sure that when they're there, they are scheduling their next appointment. And a lot of times, what I hear from teams is that they are giving patients an option to schedule maybe even for a hygiene appointment and the patient says, "I'll call you back." Well, what I need you to understand is that most times patients are saying that because they don't know where they're going to be in six months. And so, now if you can create a system that says, "Okay, I would love to go ahead and make your next appointment. We can do it at the same time of day on the same day, if that works for you. We'll give you a call a week ahead of time. And if that time doesn't work, we can always move you." Now, your patients know that they're not going to disappoint you if they are not able to make it. Maybe they're going to be traveling for work. And...

Duration:00:08:37

204 The Truth About Why Patients Don't Schedule

7/12/2021
Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of the Delivering Wow Dental podcast. So, excited to be here today. So, today we're going to be talking about the truth about why patients are not scheduling. Why are patients saying, "We will call you back. We will think about it," and how do we actually overcome that obstacle so that we can actually help our patients get the treatment that we're recommending for them. So, I remember back inside of my office when I would have so many patients say, "I will think about it. I want to talk to my husband." And as we started to look at why patients were not scheduling, I would ask my team "Guys, do you know what's going on?" And they would say, "Well, you know what, they don't have the money," or "The real thing is that right now, they just don't have a lot of time." Like, "They're really busy right now." And as I started to really think about it, I started to say, "There's actually probably something else." And so, I actually went on this journey a few years ago to really understand advanced psychology and understand why people actually make decisions and why people don't make decisions. And so, I actually invested in working with some psychologists and also working with coaches who actually teach sales and neuro-linguistic programming outside of the dental industry, interestingly to real estate agents. And I went there with this idea that I wanted to understand, how could framework be created for my dental clients so that they could increase case acceptance. And so, that within my own practice, we could do the same. And what was interesting is once we learned what was the real secret, then all of a sudden our case acceptance skyrocketed. And so, I want to talk a little bit about that process and why our patients oftentimes will not actually schedule and why they probably will never schedule. So, no matter how many times we're actually calling them and saying, "Hey, you remember doctor says that you have that bridge to do," or, "You have that implant to do." And so, the first thing that I want you to think about is the reason why a lot of people are not scheduling is that they are really confused about how they're actually going to fit it into their budget or how they're going to find the time. And so, what's has been really interesting is understanding this process, that once we are now providing the answer to that question that's actually confusing them and how it has actually worked for other people to solve that same problem. Then all of a sudden, that problem essentially goes away or that issue essentially goes away from them. And so, you might be saying, "Okay, Anissa, what are you talking about?" And so, as we start looking at case acceptance. So, one of the things that we teach in our different frameworks. We've got about five or six different frameworks that we teach for different aspects of case acceptance. But as we start looking at presenting treatment, one thing that I will always ask the doctors that we work with in the teams is, "If you had to go to the dentist seven times or five times, would that be hard for you or would that be easy for you?" And for many of them, they say, "You know what? That would be really hard for me because I have to see my patients. I'd have to find a time to come in and not have patients scheduled." Or if they work for the dental practice, they say, "It would be really hard because I work in a small business and I have to find somebody to cover for me and that would be really hard." And so, as we start looking at, why is it that patients are not scheduling? I started to really think about the time factor and think that, really, patients are just like us. They're a business owner. They work for a company. They're self-employed and it's really hard. And so, as we started looking at letting patients know that we recognize that this is hard and letting them know how patients are able to get their work done anyway, all of a sudden, a light bulb...

Duration:00:09:24

203 The Best Marketing for Dentists Who Want to Grow a Successful Practice

7/5/2021
Hi guys, and welcome to another episode of the Delivering WOW Dental Podcast. Today, we're talking all about the best marketing for dentists who are wanting to grow a successful practice. So I absolutely love talking about this topic. As many of you guys know, we have done some pretty cool things inside of my dental practice with marketing. We have for years now been able to get over a hundred patients a month, which is crazy. We obviously keep growing and we've been adding on associates. But the great thing is that we are at the point now where we're not having to really look at much in terms of marketing. So what I'm going to be doing today inside of the episode is actually sharing how you too can get to that point where you have more patients than you perhaps need and more patients coming in without you really having to think about a lot of paid marketing, expensive marketing. So let's talk a little bit about the journey of a patient and that journey typically will start with them not knowing who you are. As you're bringing them into your world, they are first becoming aware about your practice, about what makes you different about, how you serve the community, about the services that you provide. From there, we are looking at taking people along a journey, from awareness to making a decision to pick up the phone and call to coming in and having a great experience to becoming a patient who's a raving fan, and then ultimately, ideally a patient that will be with us for life, for them and their families, right? So as we start looking at building out these raving fans, people who can't stop talking about us, because to be honest with you, if we can focus in terms of marketing on creating an army of raving fans, then again, marketing gets really, really easy because they're actually doing the work for us. So the first thing I want you to think about is number one, are you providing a great experience? Are you doing dentistry that you can really be proud of and that people will want to talk about, right? So if not, then obviously that's where we want to start. But once you know that you're providing a good service, then what we want to look at is how can we start the process of getting known in our community? Many of you guys know, I'm a huge fan of Facebook marketing for a few reasons. Number one is the target demographic of who we are wanting as ideal patients are primarily using Facebook as far as their social media channel. So what do I mean by that? I'm looking at patients who are between the ages of maybe 38, 55 people who are at a point where they are able to take care of investing in themselves in terms of the investment, the financial investment. They're starting to perhaps see their parents age and understand that right now is a time to take care of yourselves, right? So I love using Facebook marketing. It's also super, super cost effective as well. Honestly, I've never seen anything work like it. We have worked with hundreds and hundreds of practices and what's really cool is they start to build this following in the community where people are coming up and saying, "Oh my God, aren't you the doctor at so-and-so." Or they are having patients coming in and saying, "I've been following you for a while and I've been telling everybody about you." That's so cool and we can get to that point. So you definitely want to look at number one, are you utilizing Facebook marketing? Are you using Facebook effectively to actually showcase what your practice is known for and to get out there and start doing some community service events as well, really showcasing the culture of your practice? Because let's face it, dental practices, many of them, they'll all provide hopefully a similar level of quality of care. What makes your business stand apart is the culture. It's what people see when they walk in, the smells. It's how you make them feel, right? So utilizing social, you're able to essentially put a lens of the outside world...

Duration:00:09:11

202 Outlining the Effective Team Meeting

6/28/2021
Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Delivering WOW Dental Podcast. So excited to be here with you today. Today, we're going to be talking about effective team meetings, why you should have them, how you should have them, and the components of an effective team meeting. Now, the first question that I want to ask you before we even get started is, are you having consistent team meetings? The majority of people that I talk to, they are actually not having team meetings. They are saying, "Well, we meet once a month, and at the end of the month, we'll review everything," or, "We meet quarterly," or even some practices say that they're meeting annually. And the reason why you definitely want to implement an effective weekly meeting for your team in addition to your team huddles is that now you can actually have a time for your team, if you're the doctor, to come and have your devoted attention, where they can ask you questions. And that way, you're not getting bombarded with questions throughout the week, you're able to look at your metrics in the middle of the month as it's actually happening, and you can actually make changes based on what is happening, what's not happening. You can also look at actually having a new team initiatives that are getting started, whether it's a marketing campaign, maybe you decide that you want to implement a new service, and so now it's a time to come together collectively as a team to be able to decide what is it that you're going to be working on? Who's going to own the task by which date? And what's also really effective and powerful inside of a team meeting is that it does allow you and your team to be able to connect, not only professionally, but also personally. Inside of our Platinum Mastermind, one of our foundational tools that we look at when you're joining for the first four months is to help you to make sure that you are effectively having a team meeting. And not just following an outline, but you're actually having accountability. It's actually a tool that will allow you and your team to be able to come together and change "I can't" statements. "I can't have multiple $10,000 days." "We can't have effective team meetings." Whatever the issues, it's a way for you to be able to come together, have that accountability, and again come together collectively so that you change those "I can't do it" statements to "how can I" and you are looking at, how can you do it together? So as you are looking at implementing a weekly meeting, the one thing that you want to look at before you even get started, if you've listened to my last episode on the podcast I talked about, before you start looking at putting in systems, before you start working on the business, you really do need to be able to connect with your team. You need to be able to have that way to be able to open up and be able to communicate, to understand outside of what's happening in the practice what's going on personally. Because, ultimately, if you have a team member that may be having a family issue, maybe they have a parent who is aging and is not doing very well. Perhaps you're having stress at home with a child or within your marriage. These things actually do affect our practice. And even though we say, leave that stuff at home, it's really important to really understand that we are connecting with people in our practice and that life is actually happening. And so a lot of times when we actually know what's happening, we understand why our team may be showing up in a way that's not ideal, or why even the doctor as well? I mean, we're all people, and so when you're able to connect in your meeting, the very thing that you do at the very beginning is say, "What went well this week? What went well this week at home? What are you proud of?" And you may find somebody who says, "I'm really excited I got to spend time with my husband. We had a great weekend together. It was amazing." Or they may say, "You know what? I had an opportunity...

Duration:00:10:54

201. How to Build Your Dental Practice From the Ground Up

6/23/2021
Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of the Delivering WOW Dental Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Anissa Holmes. And today we're talking about how to build your dental practice from the ground up. So recently I've had quite a few people reaching out to me for practice growth strategy calls who are telling me that they are overwhelmed, they are exhausted. Some people have just been in practice for a few years. Others have been practicing for quite some time and still feel like they don't have a grip feeling like they're doing all of the things, feeling like their team is not yet the right team to be able to grow and scale with them. And so I wanted to spend a little time today talking about how is it that we are able to build an engaged team, a team of leaders who get us, who want to be able to grow the business with us? How do we get people who are becoming leaders? How is it that we have a roadmap to be able to follow, to be able to grow our businesses? Whether it is to implement new services, to be able to increase our revenue, to be able to save for a rainy day, how is it that we're able to also look at making sure that things are not slipping through the cracks and we have accountability? And so I wanted to spend a little time talking about these different areas today to give you some insight of what you want to start thinking about as you are wanting to remove the overwhelm inside of your practice. And so the first thing that we look at before we even put in any systems into play with any of the doctors and teams that we work with is I want to be able to really empower the team. I want the teams to understand that the practice is how they can not only be able to grow professionally, but how they're able to also achieve their personal goals. And so one of the things that I will commonly ask doctors and team members collectively is how many of you want to be able to not only impact your patients' lives, but to be able to do more for your families? And I will say, "Let's be honest here. It's okay, doctors, it's okay to share in front of your team. Doctors, it's okay to be vulnerable. Team members, it's okay to let your doctors say, 'How many of you guys want more for your family's growing than you had growing up?'" And I will typically put up my hand really high and I say, "I know that I am." And so what that means is that we have to serve our patients hard. We have to be able to work in a healthy business so that we can be able to achieve that impact and change lives, but ultimately so that we will have a business that will allow us to be able to all earn more. And what I will often say is that there are many pieces that make up having a successful case accepted. So it's not just the doctor doing the treatment. It is the scheduling coordinator scheduling the treatment. It is the financial coordinator making payment arrangements and getting that payment and getting that patient scheduled once that's done. It's also the assistant making sure that everything is set up and also following up with patients in the lab. It's collective effort. But my question that I always ask is who is there to be able to cut the teeth that no one else can? Who can actually do the procedure and that is the doctor. We have the skillset to be able to do that. And so with that being said, I will always ask is it the best use of the doctor's time to be able to do all of the things? Should the doctor be, for example, answering the phones or should the doctor be ordering supplies? And the answer is no. There are a lot of mouths that have to be fed inside of a dental practice. For me in my practice, we have about 18 team members. If you multiply that times their spouse and their kids and perhaps they have a parent living in the home, that's perhaps 80 or 100 mouths that are being fed. And so what we look at as far as setting our practice up for success is really making sure hat our team members that are doctors as well understand that the best...

Duration:00:11:50

200 Teaching Your Dental Staff How to Get Your Patients to Come Back

4/12/2021
Hi, everyone, and welcome to another episode of The delivering while dental podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Anissa Holmes. And today we're talking about teaching your dental team, how to get your patients to come back. Now, this is one of those topics that I absolutely love. Because a lot of times, as many of you guys know, we're focusing so much on what's happening day to day, we're focusing on marketing, and we have a huge back door problem. Patients are not necessarily making their recall visits, they're coming in or setting treatment plans, they're not scheduling. And so this is a topic that's really extremely important for us to consider. So as we start looking at having our patients coming back, creating a process for that, the one thing that we want to look at is do we have a system to actually track what happens with our patients week to week, how many patients do we have that came in last week, that actually left without an appointment? Now what you're going to want to get to, you're going to want to develop a system, that now your team can actually come to you in a weekly meeting and a weekly meeting. And they will say, Doc, letting you know, last week, we had 10 patients who were unscheduled, and this is why they were unscheduled, this patient went to see the endodontist, this patient didn't have any additional restorative treatment, this patient is going to go ahead and apply for financing. I'm going to follow back up with them next week, Monday, right, you want to get to that place. So as we start looking at getting patients to come back, the first thing that we actually want to do is see how many patients are actually leaving out of the back door. Right? Really, really important. So obviously, that's one of those things that we want to look at, as we're looking at building out our systems, we also want to look at as well, what is our AR looking like week to week, right? Is it going up? Is it going down? I actually had a call yesterday with a doctor who was looking at coaching, and she was saying that they had a huge accounts receivable issue. In fact, statements had not been sent out in over a year and she had no clue. And so that's another system, as many as well as many other systems that you're going to want to put in place that you're tracking week to week. But as we're getting back to getting your patients to come back, once you have that system in place to just see where you are, then now you can actually go ahead and create processes to improve. So as we're looking again, as how we're going to train a team, one thing that I hear a lot of and I see it a lot in Facebook groups are people saying let's have a morning huddle and see which patient that comes in that we can ask for a referral. Okay, now, that's all great and fine, where we're actually having that discussion and asking for referrals. But the first thing that we want to do just to kind of push it back a little bit, is to actually think about why would somebody want to refer? Right? What is our what is our culture and our practice look like? What sort of experiences are we providing for our patients. And one thing that you're going to want to make sure that you put in place is a system, again, a way to be able to make sure that you're giving consistent, great experiences to your patients. And so definitely those different touch points I've spoken about in the past, having coffee table culture books, where patients are coming in, they see how you're serving the community, they see what you're doing, in terms of taking care of your team doctors, they see that you're doing continuing education they're seeing before and after pictures of the great work that you're doing. Perhaps you're offering complimentary coffee, tea, perhaps you have, you have a toy box where kids actually go to the toy box first, right? That can be an experience for the kids. you're offering a tour. You've got your core values on the wall, perhaps you're offering a warm...

Duration:00:12:01

199 Treatment Plan Presentation Dos and Dont's

4/5/2021
Hi guys, and welcome to another episode of The Delivering WOW dental podcast. Today, we're here talking all about treatment plans do's and don'ts and how can we increase our case acceptance rate? How can we present treatment plans in a more concise way. Things that we definitely need to consider. And things that we don't want to do with our treatment plans. And so, so excited to be sharing this episode with you. So as we start looking at treatment plans, some things that we want to start thinking about is number one, do we have a way to be able to communicate so that our patients are doing as much treatment in one visit? I'm not sure if you've ever thought about that but think about it. If you had to go to the dentists five times or seven times to be able to get your work done, would that be easy for you, or would that be hard for you? I can tell you, for me as a business owner it would be really hard to be able to pull away from my business. If I were working for a company, it would be really difficult as well to have to keep saying, "I'm so sorry I have to go to the dentist. I have to go to the dentist." So, as we start thinking about treatment plans and presenting treatment plans, one thing that I want you to think about is how can we make it easy for our patients to actually complete treatment? And that has a lot to do with the verbal skills that we're actually saying so that our patients will understand that we can actually get all of their treatment done within one visit and how we're able to do that. And to share a little pearl one thing that we coach practices to do within our mastermind and what we're also doing inside of my practice is as we're presenting treatment plans, we're actually asking the patients, "Would you like to do this in many, many visits, maybe five or six visits, or would it be easier for you to actually get this done in one or two visits?" We find that most of our patients either work for a company or they're self-employed, and it's a lot easier for them. So what we have actually done is we've created longer time blocks in our schedules, listening to what works better for our patients so that we're able to go ahead and book everything in one or two visits. Would that be easy for you, or would you prefer to do that? Now, as we're doing that we know that we do have patients who will ask a question, for example, "How much is that going to cost? I'm not sure if I can afford to do everything in one visit." So as we start having that conversation, we already know that that's going to come up and so we are prepared. So now we can say something like, "Most of our patients are just like you. They're not able to fit everything out of pocket in one visit. But here's how they're able to get everything done in one visit anyway." Number one, they have a credit card. So they will use a zero-interest credit card or a credit card that they have so that they can go ahead and get their treatment done and they can pay it off over time. What other patients may do is that they may want to go ahead and get everything done in one visit and they can actually pay it off over time with low monthly payments. So that's another option that works extremely well for a lot of our patients. And number three, what a lot of our patients do is we can actually go ahead today and see all of what needs to be done. And we can actually go ahead and pre-book all of your appointments so that you now know your budget for every visit. And you can go ahead and block the time so that now you have a way to go ahead and get everything in place. And now we have a way to hold you accountable for getting everything done. So, as we start having these conversations, one thing that we definitely want to do is we want to let people know the benefits of getting everything done in one day, they will say, "You know what? That really makes sense." And then by using the verbal skills of, "Here's how our patients just like you are able to fit it into one...

Duration:00:09:58

198 Low Cost Dental Marketing Strategies for New Practices

3/29/2021
Hi guys, and welcome to another episode of The Delivering WOW Dental Podcast. Super excited to have you here today. Today, we're here talking all about low-cost dental marketing strategies for startups or new practices. So excited to be here today with you talking all about marketing strategies. As many of you guys know, I absolutely love marketing. It is a way that we are able to have all of the people who are there out in our communities who need dentists to actually find us. And so, again, so excited to be talking today about what actually works for startup marketing. So about four or five years ago, I started working with startups to be able to understand how to be able to bring in new patients before they open the door. And what that looks like is having patients not only scheduled but have patients who know what we're known for so that when they're coming in, they're actually telling their friends and family so that when you're out at the supermarket, at the gym, they're saying, "Aren't you that dentist? Aren't you that dentist that just opened a new practice?" Getting you to a place where you have other businesses that are actually sending patients to you, having people in your community who are sending patients to you, that's the type of marketing that we're talking about. Now, as we know, there are many types of marketing and as startups are looking to get new patients, and a lot of times what happens is as you're getting your practice loan, the banks are saying, "Well, this loan is contingent upon you actually having a marketing plan, knowing exactly how you're going to be able to get customers," or, in our case, patients into our practices. And so that's the first thing that we want to look at, is creating your marketing plan. How are you going to get patients in? How are you going to get patients to refer to you your community? What are you going to do in terms of external marketing, whether that's going to be building out your website or it's going to be building out business cards, if you still are looking to do business cards, right? What's going to be your Google strategy, your Facebook strategy? It can be very, very overwhelming. And so what we've actually done is we want to talk about how can we simplify this process? Because as we know, there are so many moving parts. As you have a startup, you're looking at the build-out, the equipment. And at the same time, you do need to think about where are you going to get patients coming in? And so, one thing that we want to look at is how can we, again, create a marketing plan that allows us to be able to get patients in without having to spend a lot of money. Now we've got a few options. Number one, we can go ahead and drop down $5,000 and do a mail drop. Now I am, a little bit, not the biggest fan, to be honest with you, of mailers. Not that they do not work, but the problem with mailers a lot of times is that they are very expensive. And if you are doing mailers, many times it does take two or three months to kick in which means that you've spent about $15,000. The other thing with mailers is that because a relationship is not built, a lot of times you have to provide a gimmick or a freebie or some sort of hook that's going to get people to actually call. The other thing with mailers is that if you stop putting out that $5,000, a lot of times what happens is that your leaves dry up. And so what we want to do instead is we want to create marketing solutions that allow us to be able to do the work once and essentially have the results or get paid forever. And that's the type of marketing that I'd love to be able to help you guys with implementing for your startups. So the first thing that we are looking at with our marketing is number one, having that marketing plan. Number one, you want to make sure that you have that in place. The next thing that we want to look at is how do we build rapport in our community as fast as possible with the lowest cost. And what...

Duration:00:11:32

197 How to Add An Additional Million in Revenue To Your Practice

3/25/2021
What's up, everyone? It's Anissa Holmes here with a new episode of the Delivering WOW Dental Podcast. And today we're talking about how you can add an additional million dollars of revenue to your practice this year. I'm so excited about this. We have been over the last few months working with doctors as we are in the beginning of a new year, looking at how we can create this Circle of Focus. And as we're going into these meetings, I am sharing, okay, let me go ahead and say this. You have probably heard me say in my practice that I've been able to double profits in my practice. I've been able to double revenue in my practice and it may sound like a marketing thing, but actually, I'm going to show you exactly how you can do the same thing too. And so that's what we're going to actually be doing within this call. And so, as we're creating our Circle of Focus calls, what we're doing is we are creating opportunities to look at what was done last year and to decide what was most profitable? What were our bottlenecks? What is it that we need to focus on in terms of additional services training for our team? And now as a result of it, guess what happens? The doctors are able to say, "Oh my gosh, I see that I don't have to be overwhelmed. I don't have to be stressed out if we just focus on this one thing and this other thing, this particular quarter, then all of a sudden, Oh my gosh, the compound effect of that for Q2 Q3, Q4 and the compound, that effect for the year is going to be exponential." And so I wanted to take you a little bit behind the scenes of what we're actually doing in these calls and share how this can again make a huge difference. Now I've been in practice for over 20 years and over the last few years, we've actually doubled our profits multiple times. And it's actually as many of you guys know not very uncommon to increase profits if you have a startup practice. But if you have a seasoned practice, that's not quite as easy. So what we're going to be talking about is a sneak preview of the process, okay? So the first thing again is that we're going to be looking back at the previous year and we want to make sure that we're working out the opportunity gaps that could have a massive impact on your practice. For example, if you look at even X-rays a lot of times we're thinking, "Well, we're too busy to take X-rays." But the thing about it is that as we start focusing on providing the best patient care, the question is when we are having our patients coming in if we're not doing X-rays, are we missing out on seeing if there's pathology or are we seeing if there are infections that are going on or are we missing that? Are we seeing if there are issues with cavities on second molars because of impacted third molars? A lot of times we don't understand that these things are really, really important. And so we say, "Well, you know what?" Or we say that we're too busy, we don't have enough time. Again, not really focusing on the best patient care, but from a profitability standpoint, if we're able to focus on even things like X-rays then now what happens is that we can easily add an additional 50,000 revenue into our practice for the year. Or they've been many examples when I've asked the question of, "Do you truly believe that a sealant can prevent a cavity?" And the doctor will say yes and I'll say, "Well, I certainly believe it. I have sealants on my teeth now. I'm an adult. Why is it that we're not talking about sealants to our patients?" And it always boils down to, "Well, the insurance is not going to cover it." And the real issue is that our team doesn't want to be an objection block because they've presented sealants before and because insurance doesn't cover it and patients say it's okay, they stopped presenting it. And so if we started looking at how can we focus on training our teams for verbal skills so perhaps putting out there, there is something that we can do to prevent cavities. Would you like to learn...

Duration:00:14:47

196 3 Systems You NEED To Put in Place to Grow Your Dental Practice

2/8/2021
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Delivering Well podcast. Super excited to have everyone here today. So today we are actually talking about something that's going to be pretty exciting for you, and hopefully we'll share some pearls that you can implement in your practice right away. But today we're talking about systems you need to put in place to grow your dental practice. Now, one of the areas that I see a lot of people struggling with is actually having accountability in their practice, having all of their team rowing in the same direction, and really having a proven plan and process to be able to grow their production and to be able to serve more patients at the same time. And so the first system that I actually want to talk about is making sure that you have a system to create your morning huddle with a purpose. A lot of times I hear people saying that within their huddles they're focusing on making sure that they're prepared for the day, looking at what patients are coming in that are having medical issues, things that they need to look at. They are looking at financials, who owes money to the practice. They're also looking at what patient can we talk to, to ask them to refer another patient? And while all of those things are well and done, I think there are actually better systems for making sure that you are being held accountable to those things. One thing that I would love to make sure that everyone is focusing on is being very intentional in terms of adding in accountability, in terms of empowering your team when they're successful, and making sure that you are on track to hit your practice goals by what you're doing daily. And so one system that I love to help practices with is actually implementing in a whiteboard. This whiteboard will allow you to, number one, look at all of the services that you're providing in your practice, make sure that you're having the conversations, make sure that you are actually empowering your team to help you to hit your goals or to help each individual team member to be able to hit their goals. And also have an opportunity to be able to look at when you're hitting your goals, what can you do to change the dynamic? And so you might be saying, "Okay, Anissa, what do you mean by that?" So what's really interesting is over the last few weeks I've been working one-on-one with our coaching clients, mapping out their plan for 2021. What's going to be your roadmap so that you can double your revenue this year or double your profits issue or grow 40% or whatever the goal is of the doctor. And so it's really interesting is looking at doctors who say, "Well, I want to start implementing a new service this year. I want to start doing more dental implants." And so now that you've declared that goal, if you have a whiteboard, it is now your circle of focus to focus on dental implants. And so you can now say, "You know what, we want to start doing four cases a month, or we want to start doing 20 cases." Maybe you've been doing implant cases and you want to really focus on it this month, or you want to do 40 cases, whatever your number is. Now you have a way to hold yourselves accountable to the behaviors that will happen. And so what that means is what sort of marketing are we doing? Are we implementing Facebook or are we implementing Google ads? What are we doing to be able to have conversations with our patients? Do we need to focus on our verbal skills and our case presentation? Do we need to make sure that we have our schedule set up so that we can accommodate new patient consultations and making sure that we're time-blocking for actually completing and scheduling these high value services? What is our financial policy like? And so the first thing that we want to look at, and what's the one domino that can actually knock down the other dominoes, is actually having this metric, having this goal, represented on a tool or a whiteboard that you can look at daily. And so, as you are setting...

Duration:00:14:40

195 Why Production is NOT the most important thing in your practice

2/1/2021
Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Delivering Wow Dental Podcast. I am super excited to be here today. So today I'm actually here to share with you something that is perhaps going to be pretty insightful for you, as you are looking at, how can you have an amazing year for this 2021? And one thing that I have had a lot of our coaching clients come to me and say is that they want to be able to grow their practice, they want to be more profitable this year. And one thing that a lot of people have the wrong idea about is that if they increase their production, then all of a sudden they will grow, right, or a production is what's most important. And so I'm actually here to share some insight that production is actually not the most important thing that you want to focus on in your practice. And so I'm going to be giving some specific examples today of exactly what I mean and exactly what you can start to look at, some pearls that you can think about for your practice as you are mapping out your plan of how you're going to hit your big goals, how you're going to hit your profit goals for this year. And so one thing that we are looking at with our coaching clients is actually looking at historicals from the previous year, and seeing what were the different services that made up the production that we have every single month. And that way we can see were we consistent month to month to month. If we said that we wanted to implement a new service, were we actually implementing the service? What does the report show? Right? One thing that we're also looking at is not just production, right, and what makes up production, but we're looking at another metric, which is of course our collections, but even further than that, our collections percentage. And so you might be asking, "Well, all right, what does that mean? What is collection percentage? I'm listening here." Right? And so collection percentage is the percentage of the funds that you produce that you actually collected. Okay? And so what that means is that obviously we want that number to be as close to a hundred percent as possible. And unfortunately, most times it's not. And so as we start to look at our collections percentage, then now it starts to see where things are perhaps slipping through the cracks. And so a few examples of that is looking at your adjustments, right? Are you doing adjustments for friends, for a family, for people that you see out in your community and they come in and you feel like you have to give them a discount, right? Looking at adjustments is a great way to see how you are perhaps not collecting what you really should be, and really analyzing your adjustments. Another thing that you can look at as well, and if that number is not as high as possible to 100%, is that, are you having statements that have not been sent out? Unfortunately, sometimes people come to me as a new client and I realize, "Oh my gosh, your AR is really, really high." Right? And we look at the reason why the real issue is that statements have not actually been sent out for eight months or 10 months. Right? And so you have patients who are happy to pay their balance, but they just never knew. Right? And so if you're looking at your collections percentage by a monthly basis, month to month to month, then now you have the ability to say, "Wait, we have dipped, why? Why did that happen?" And that would be one of the metrics that you're looking at. Another thing that you can analyze with your collection percentage is that, do you have your checks, right? Perhaps you have checks that are coming to the practice. Are they being input in a timely fashion? Is it that your team is so busy doing calls for unscheduled patients to get them rescheduled, which is a whole nother podcast in of itself, of why that is not the best way to be able to schedule patients. Then what happens is that they're saying, "I don't have enough time. I'm going to get to those checks." And there's...

Duration:00:08:45

195 Why Everyone's SO EXCITED about the new Clubhouse App

1/25/2021
Hi, guys, and welcome to another episode of the Delivering WOW Dental Podcast. I am so excited to be here. Today, we're actually talking about the newest craze and social media app called Clubhouse. Within this episode, what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to share what you need to know about Clubhouse, why I'm so excited about it. We're going to talk about some of the features of ClubhouseI'd love to discuss how we can utilize and leverage this particular platform to actually get the word out about our practice and to be able to get new patients. I'm super excited to be sharing information about this app. Interestingly, I have been on the app for probably about maybe five to six weeks, and what I've seen happen over the last five or six weeks is seeing dental professionals now have a place where they can come together, they can connect, they can collaborate. They can share, they can have conversations in real time. I have seen myself get into different dental rooms as a moderator. I've also been in rooms where I have been a listener of conversations. And what's really exciting about the app is that this is not obviously a dental app. This is an app where you can learn about all things. I am personally very fascinated in trying to learn a lot more about cryptocurrency. I'm actually in rooms learning, taking tons of notes. Really, really excited about this app. A lot of people are asking, "How can I get access to Clubhouse?" Well, right now Clubhouse is an iPhone only application and how you're able to get access is to go ahead and to reserve your username. And then other members of the app, once you're reserving your username, your friends may receive a notification that you have requested your username and they may have an option if they have invites. Sometimes they get that option even if they don't have invites to go ahead and get you into the app. If you know people who are inside of the app, you can also have them to get you in by having them to add you in as a contact and by you actually giving them access to your iPhone telephone number. There's a little bit of a mysterious algorithm as it relates to how are we getting invites. Invites are coming as you are opening up rooms, and this is an engagement app. So as we're opening up rooms for discussion, Clubhouse is giving us more invites. And that way we can, again, get our friends inside of the app. Once you're inside of the app, there's a few things that you're going to want to do. Number one, you're going to want to go ahead and set up your profile. And that is where you can go ahead and put in your information. If you are a dentist, you can go ahead and put in where you practice, things that you're passionate about. If you're doing some things outside of dentistry, you can go ahead and add those things in your bio as well. What's most important with your bio is to actually go ahead and make sure that your first three lines, that's the preview, that's what people see when they're scrolling, you'll want to make sure that that has a lot of really pertinent information so that people can quickly see what you're known for, what you're doing inside of your bio. The other thing that's really interesting about this app is that as of this recording, there's no way to actually message people within the app. You do have the ability to go ahead and link in your Instagram profile, as well as your Twitter profile and your settings. You're definitely going to want to do that. I personally have seen my Instagram following grow significantly. As people are in rooms, as you're in rooms listening, as you're in rooms talking, then what happens is that people are looking at your bios. They're seeing what's on your Instagram, and they have that way to instant message you within Instagram. A few other things to consider as it relates to Clubhouse is, how does it work in terms of the rooms? Typically, how it works is you have rooms and these are discussion rooms that anyone who...

Duration:00:16:21

194 How to Get Dental Patients TO KEEP COMING BACK For Lifetime

1/22/2021
Hi guys and welcome to another episode of the Delivering WOW Dental Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Anissa Holmes. And I am so excited to be here today. Today, we're actually going to be talking about something that is very dear to my heart, and that is how to get dental patients to keep coming back for life. As many of you guys know, I absolutely love the whole concept of marketing. Why? Because there's so many people out there that need to find us. We have a gift to be able to help them to be able to serve them, to be able to make them healthier, to be able to change their lives. But at the same time, we want to make sure that once those patients come in, that we keep them coming back for life. We keep them referring to others. And so I'm really excited today to actually share some pearls, some tips that I have actually implemented, I've used along the years of my practice, I've been practicing for 22 years. And so it's been really exciting to have patients who've been with us for years and not just patients, but team members that have been with us for a really, really long time. So really excited to be able to share these pearls with you today. So as it looks at, how can we start to get patients coming back for life? What we have to really start thinking about, and I talk a lot about this within our programs. I talk about this a lot here on this podcast and our Facebook group as well is as you're starting your practice journey, as you're opening up your practice, or as you're starting to think about getting your practice out there and becoming known, one thing that's really important that I always ask is what do you want your practice to be known for? What do you want people to say about you when you're not around? And for me, absolutely, it's all about delivering an amazing wow experience. In fact, at the end of our patient visits, we actually send out an email. And what I'm looking for in that survey is for them to say one word. I'm actually waiting for them to say the word wow. I want them to say, "Wow, I can not believe that my kid was able to go to the toy box first." Or, "Wow. I can't believe that the team was so kind and so nurturing and they listened to me." Or, "Wow. I actually got a hand and arm massage before my treatment." Or, "Wow. I cannot believe that every month, they're doing amazing things to be able to serve this community." Because when you start creating what you want to be known for, what's really exciting is that now your patients will start to tell other people what you are actually putting out there. So it's really interesting. And as we look at, for example, the demo space. I remember when I first started this podcast, about four or five years ago, I was fangirling on all of these amazing dental coaches, dental speakers, dental gurus that were out there. They were speaking on stage and I just wanted to be able to pick their brains and to be able to learn from them. And so I remember interviewing so many amazing people and when I decided to create my first live event, my Delivering Wow summit that was held in Jamaica, I remember reaching out to a lot of the people that I had interviewed on the podcast. And one of those people was actually Sandy Pardue. Many of you guys know Sandy. She is the guru of scheduling. And I reached out to Sandy, and I said, "Sandy, I would love if you would be willing to speak at our conference." And Sandy said, "Absolutely, I'm there." And she's like, "I'd love to go to Jamaica." So Sandy's there. And all of a sudden, I start sending out information to all of the speakers. And Laura Hatch was a speaker, many of you guys knew Laura. Elijah was a speaker. Bruce Baird was a speaker that year. We had a lot of amazing speakers. And as I sent out the information to them, one of the things that I started to say that I sent out to them was that this was going to be the dental event of 2018. And I kept saying it. Well, next thing you know, Sandy Pardue was saying it. Now, this...

Duration:00:19:52

193 What to Say to Your Dental Patients if the COST is Too High

11/2/2020
Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Delivering WOW dental podcast. Today we're talking all about what to say to your dental patients when they say that the cost is too high. Now I don't know about you, but inside of my practice, sometimes we have people that come in that are saying, "Wow, that much for an implant?" Or, "Wow, I didn't know that Invisalign would cost so much." And so I wanted to share with you, because I'm sure I am not the only one that has patients saying that inside of our practices. And so one thing that I want you to really think about before we start thinking about even verbal skills, is really understanding the actual cost, the actual fee, your profit margin, what it actually takes for you to be able to run your practice and to be able to deliver services. One thing that's really interesting is over COVID, with our mastermind, we started to have a lot of marketing intensives, and practice growth intensives, and business intensives, and numbers intensives. And so one of the intensives that we did was looking at making sure that every owner knew what their profit margins were. So profit margins are the actual cost to be able to do a particular service, and that is taking into account the supply costs to be able to do that particular service. That is taking into account our fixed expenses and our variable expenses per hour, to be able to do that. And what's really interesting is as we had the workshop, one of the first things I said was how many of you know how much it actually costs to run your practice per hour? And what I mean by that is looking at what are your costs per hour for salaries? What is your cost per hour, including your rent or your mortgage, your costs per hour, including your utilities, looking at your marketing cost, dividing that into the number of hours you work. Because a lot of times what happens is that when we are not certain and sure of our actual expenses, when we're not certain of what it actually costs to do even a crown, taking into consideration that we have the fee for our materials, that we have the fee for our lab, and not just that breaking down our adhesive or our etchant or our tips or our burrs. Once we are not really understanding what our costs are, then sometimes we get into this whole thing in our mind of, well, maybe our fee is too high, or maybe I should try to reduce it. One thing that worked really well for me in my practice that really gave me the confidence, and one thing that I teach our clients, is to look at your profit margins, because when you know that, for example, it's going to cost you $140, for example, to do a filling in your practice, then you know that if a patient says, "Wow, $160 for a filling," if that's what your fee is, hypothetically, that you know that you're not going to feel bad about it, because you know what your actual costs are. It was really interesting, as we started looking at profit margins years and years and years ago, what we discovered is that, wow, it does cost a lot of money for us to be able to deliver a crown. And so when a patient came and said, "Oh my gosh, doc, a thousand dollars," for example, to do a crown, we're able to confidently say, "Absolutely." We know our cost. We know our expenses. And we know that the fee that we have set is extremely fair, based on our expenses. And so because of that confidence, now we had no problem quoting our fees. And it's really interesting, is a lot of times you start getting into understanding case presentation and verbal skills. And for me, this is a foundational piece that's really important for you to know. And not only for you to know, but for your team, because as we know, many times, they're like, "Wow, the doctor's getting $1,000 for this procedure or $2,000 or $3,000." And without knowing the actual expenses, even when you start getting into full mouth reconstruction, full mouth rehab cases, once you're using a high quality lab, high quality adhesives,...

Duration:00:09:39

192 Training Dental Team Who are Not Good With Patients

10/26/2020
Well, hello, everyone. And welcome to another episode of the Delivering Wow Dental Podcast. Today, we're talking all about training a dental team member who's not good with patients. So question for you. Have you ever had a team member that was afraid to talk to patients or was not outgoing or really building connections with your patients? I can tell you, I certainly have had that throughout the years. And so I wanted to share some insight and tips to be able to help you navigate this if you find that you have introverted team members or team members who are just not making that connection. So, in particular, what I'd love to discuss today is really looking at behavioral styles, and how can we assess all of our team members to be able to understand their behavioral styles? And what's really interesting is, as you start to get deeper into understanding and learning how this works, what you will discover is that the same things that apply with our team members in terms of behavioral styles also applies to our patients and why they make the decisions that they make. It also applies to our family and our friends. And so, what we're talking about today is really looking at different behavioral styles. And what's really interesting is a lot of times we may look at a team member and saying, "Wow, they're not making the connection with our patients," and we start to really investigate why this is happening. And some of it is really just inherent. They may be an introvert, but digging deeper into behavioral styles, it's really interesting because we start to look that there are actually four main types. So you may have heard of DISC assessments. And with this, there are four main types. There is the D, which is the dominant personality style. They tend to be the leaders. They tend to be people who are okay with taking risks. There's also another behavioral style, which is the I. The I is going to be the person who's very outgoing. They are the life of the party. Really interesting with the I, what we tend to see is sometimes they are not very good with follow through. Not always, but that's something that we typically see with the Is. And also going back to the D, they definitely are that dominant personality, and as a result of it, sometimes they can come off as being pushy. So as we start looking at the S style, the S style are people who are very, very connected to other people. They're very sensitive. They have a lot of strong feelings of connection with people. And the flip side of the Ss is sometimes they are taken advantage of, because they're so kind, they're so loving. And then you have the C, and the C behavioral style is someone who is very detail-oriented. These are people that typically are going to be accountants. They're the type of people that may be surgeons. And the flip side of the Cs is sometimes they are very, very serious, and sometimes they are really slow as well to make decisions. And so, as we start looking at behavioral styles and the roles of our team members and the roles that they occupy in our practice, it's really important that we really understand where they are in terms of a natural behavioral style. And what's really interesting is sometimes when we get into a work environment, we have an adaptive style. But what I've discovered over the years is, I remember in the early days wanting to have, for example, social media done in my practice. And I gave that task to someone who had more of an S style, so there were very calm natured, definitely an introvert, and they really struggled to be able to ask people for video testimonials. And we switched it up and we gave it to a team member that had more of the I style, very outgoing and very excitable and loved talking to people. And all of a sudden, it was really, really easy for her to make that connection and to get those video testimonials. And so as we again start looking at building out our team, one thing that I always coach on to my clients is...

Duration:00:09:44