Dental A Team Podcast

Kiera provides very specific tips for how a visionary CEO can keep their practice(s) flourishing on multiple levels without sticking their fingers in all the pies. She gets to the quick with a single question a leader should ask anytime a new task comes across their desk: Just because you can do something, does it mean you should? Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and I'm excited about today's topic and I hope you are too. Delegation, I feel like it's such a, ⁓ feels so hard. It feels like what should I do? What should I delegate? What should I not delegate? And this is for like helping you get to multi-level success. So whatever your success level is, whatever you want it to be, delegation is a huge portion of leadership. And I feel like,   especially in multi-practices, if you want to get to multi-practices, that's kind how I'm going to highlight this today. You have to ⁓ really get good at delegation. It's not about doing more. It's about doing more of the right things ⁓ and doing less of everything. And so really, really, really getting into that zone of genius, helping you out with that. So I'm excited about this. ⁓ I'll kind of work it through in a couple of different parts to make this easier for you. It's helping you know, what should I delegate? What should I keep?   and how to lead across all the locations with clarity. Because as you scale, a lot of people forget that they have to delegate, that they have to get different pieces. And so what happens is things just start to fall off the wagon. And that can get really, really scary. And then you're trying to like catch it all. And so many people, when they get into multi-practice ownership, they tell me like, I wish I would have just stayed at one. And I think, well, yes, there are benefits to staying at one. You had a call inside, you're so wanting to grow. It's just hard right now because we didn't set it up as   successful as we could have. Now, I am not one to judge. I did the exact same thing. And so I know the the taffy pole stretch of trying to do every single piece when you're a multi-practice ownership. And so this is coming from real life tactical, curious life experience of what we see with clients to give you the tips of the trade, to give you the secrets to success and doing it here on the podcast in such an open, friendly, welcoming, no judgment zone. More to just give you a hug to tell you, hey, you're doing better than you think you are. And let's give you some tactical practical tips to help you out.   So, A Team, we're obsessed with single practices, so multi-practices. We love to help owners build thriving practices at all levels. We love to work with practices anywhere from the startup zone all the way to the multi-location zone. Whether your plan is to build it into a legacy practice or to sell to a DSO or to whatever it is, there is no right answer with Dental A Team. It is your right answer. It is what is best for you, your life, your practice, and also allowing you the freedom to change that. So.   working with doctors and their teams to get to that high level success. ⁓ We are ultimately here to help you have the most profitable practice, the happiest team, the thriving practice of your dreams, and to do it on the easiest way possible. So that's what we're about. This is for ⁓ true, true, helping doctors become true CEOs, not ⁓ operators of their businesses to own their businesses to act in that seat rather than being the managers that oftentimes they are. So step one, when you're moving into this multi-practice ownership,   you are shifting and I want you just to know your identity is going to be stripped away. You're going to become the same thing that you feel very uncomfortable in because you've never done this, but this is what your organization needs and I think so often owners fail to rise to the need of the organization of what it needs and they like to stay where it's comfortable. And I remember as an office manager, I like when I truly stepped into the office manager role, I'm like,   Well, this is weird. I don't even know what I'm supposed to do. And you've got to just settle in and you'll figure it out very quickly. so helping you just know as the owner CEO of the company, what you have to own, like your true role is to own the vision strategy and culture. These are things that do not get delegated out. They're the core of the leadership. They're you setting the example. And when I realized, like, I remember one day I Googled like, what does a CEO do? Like I truly did not know.   ⁓ because I'd been a manager for most of my life. I'd been a doer most of it. I did not realize that my job was to own the vision, the strategy, and the culture. Now, not all CEOs, not owners of businesses actually enjoy the vision. You might not be a visionary and that's okay. You might just need to have somebody paired with you who's a really strong visionary. There's usually a visionary integrator according to Traction by Gina Wickman that I choose to, I subscribe to the strongest. So I'd be like a CEO and a COO. ⁓   The CEO is the visionary, the CEO always operations the day to day making the dreams happen. So it's like Walt and Roy Disney ⁓ are some good examples of that too. So when I'm looking at as a portion that you cannot delegate away, you've really got to own this vision strategy culture. That's you, you're the culture master, you're the strategy, you're the vision. So where are we headed? What does that look like?   ⁓ What's our 12 month? What's our three year? What's our 10 year target? That can still be, you set the like framework, the team builds it into a full complete picture. And then what's the culture that we want replicated across all the teams. So ⁓ when we start to get that vision strategy and culture aligned and ⁓ owners don't delegate that, you then can bring in hires faster. You can have core values. You can have KPIs like, because we know it's very clear. How do we act?   What are we going towards? And then what are the things that we need to measure? So this is truly something that when I realized like that was my job and it was the bigger picture piece, there's other people that do the day to day. It felt awkward. I'm not gonna lie. Like I was like, ⁓ I feel like I'm putting on a different t-shirt today. And like, I don't even feel comfortable. Like I don't look good in yellow. Well, you might not look good in it, but this is what the organization needs and nobody else is doing this besides you. So ⁓ the question is, if you're a multi-practice ownership and you're in this ownership role, question one is,   have I clearly communicated our vision? It's like, if Kiera or the Dental A team were to walk into my practice today and ask any team member, would they know the vision of our company? That should be a resounding yes. And if not, you have not communicated it enough and it has not been clear enough. Does your entire company know the core values and do they live them? And does every single practice know what their targets are for that practice and the KPIs they're tracking?   It's very simple way to ask yourself this. And I love to ask this and I love to come to offices. If you were to ask any member of our team member, they would be able to tell you, yes, we know exactly what our core values are. We know what the mission is of our company. We also know where we're headed. Now, I think I could be a bit more clear of where I'm headed in the three and tenure. My leadership team knows that a lot better. My core team knows where we're headed this year, what our core values are, and what the core values are of a company. We have this on a...   So some of them could rattle it off, our new team members, this is part of their onboarding. So helping you really figure that out is going to be paramount because now all your practices, all the locations are operating the same way and there's strong clarity. Step two is you're going to delegate operations for leaders. So this is kind of like the CEO versus the COO. So like realistically owners of like CEOs of DSOs and multi-practice ownership, you don't have to be a DSO for this. It can be multi, it can be private still.   I have a lot of private practices that are three, five, 10 locations. That's totally fine. You can do that, but you can't scale if you're still solving the supply issues and front desk drama and putting them. So you have to have a regional manager and a lead at each location. That's paramount. You need to have it. They need to have their KPIs and what they're tracking. They also need to know how to make decisions. Like what's the decision framework and how, what do I have decision making autonomy over at the office manager or regional monitor level versus what needs to get approval?   And then also we've got to have like training, not just tasks. So that way everybody has training of what do we need to do when we have that set up consistently. So you teach your team and you have a set protocol and process of how to run huddles. Like a system to me is something that no matter who you are, where you come from, whether you've been with us for one day or 10 years, you should be able to do the same thing and get the same results. So a huddle should have a form that everybody follows. You can have it broken down for me. I even have minutes next to it. Like this part's two minutes, part's five minutes. So it's a true 15 minute huddle.   for every single practice. Our one-on-ones have a set protocol of how do we do them, when are they run, and how often are they done, where are these things stored? We have a process of how we set up our rooms. We have a process of how we schedule. All these things that you start working on, and doctors who are owners and visionaries might not be good at these processes. S

Onboarding a new team member has turned into a very transactional process. In this episode, Tiff and Monica discuss how to add authenticity, connection, and engagement to the mix. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:01) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. Welcome back. I am just so happy to have all of you. know there are so many people out there that support the Dental A Team in so many amazing ways. And you guys being here downloading these podcasts and having that little, I know Apple allows the like auto download. I always love that. Cause when I'm on flights, I can just, you know, podcast. But you guys being here.   pushing those through for us, being here to just support who we are, what we do is so truly incredible, whether you're a client, a future client, or someone who's just here to listen and you're like, ⁓ you know, never gonna sign up, we don't really have a preference of how you get to us. We just love that you're here. We wanna deliver all of the most amazing information that we possibly can. You might notice we share a lot of information, a lot of tips and tricks, a lot of like, I don't know, feel like, Monica, I feel like they're like.   secrets, trade secrets, right? And people are like, gosh, I'll just listen to your podcast. I'm like, fantastic, do that, do that. When you're ready for someone like Monica, who I have here with us today, you guys, to be like, I'm gonna push you a little bit further. She's here, we're here, and we're ready to help you get to that next level. And as I said, you guys, this is a truly, truly exciting day for us. I have Monica back on the podcast with me today. I am so excited to have you here, Monica. I know.   Monica Gomez (00:57) ⁓ yeah.   The Dental A Team (01:20) Previously, I've kind of given a good spiel of who you are and how we found you. And we got to record a podcast, if you haven't listened to it yet, about this really hiring tips and strategies. But there's so much to learn about Monica, her coaching style and who she is in that episode. So if you haven't listened to it yet, go do that. And as an introduction today, Monica, welcome. I'm so excited to have you here. And I just I'm excited to pick your brain. love I love watching.   I feel like I get to watch the flow of how thoughts come to you and it's just really fun and I love our time together. Thank you for blocking out your morning and being here with me this morning and Monica, how are you? How was your weekend? How's life? How's Monica?   Monica Gomez (02:05) ⁓ Life is great and I'm starting off my week with podcasting with you ⁓ and this is so fun. This is my second podcast and I'm so excited to be here. Our first one was really, there was a flow to it, right? It was a ⁓ great little conversation, valuable. We dropped lots of gems, you guys, so go listen to that podcast and I'm excited to be sharing this space again with you, Tish. Thank you for having me.   The Dental A Team (02:21) Yeah.   Thank you, thank you. I do love this and it actually makes me think this is like a little off topic here, but just for a smidgen of time. love the podcast space with you consultant ladies ⁓ on our team because I love that this is a space where I get to, I think I get to share how much I love you guys. Like how much admiration I have, how much I look up to you guys and get to like extract so much.   knowledge and input from you. And I think this is our space of like, truly having some connection time. And we have our one on ones, I mentioned that before, but those are so goal driven and work driven. It makes me think I love relationship and community. And I think that's something that humans are learning again, we're relearning that we need that. I think we lost that for a moment of time here recently and   in the years and we're coming back to that. You kind of don't know what you have until you lose it sometimes and we lost that space. And I think this is our space of true community. We do have our weekly meetings, we have our one-on-ones, we have our data-driven, work-driven time together, but the podcasting space is actually really special to me because I do get to, I get to get to like, want, we get to put you guys out there and I get to just spend this time with you.   And it makes me think you mentioned something on the last podcast that we had recorded together. You mentioned that intentional team time together and that like just clicked. As you're talking, like it clicked for me. This is our intentional time together and instilling that into, infusing that into the workplace. It's really special. And I want doctors and owners and leaders and anyone who's here, dental assistants, treatment coordinators, I don't care who you are. I want you to...   know from the bottom of my heart, this is a really special place and you don't need to go start a podcast unless you want to. But having that intentional time, like coffee time, like go in the break room and have coffee together and talk about your weekend. Like me getting to hear about Monica's family life and Charlie, her puppy, getting to know those pieces of you personally, it changes and it shifts our dynamic. So I wanted to highlight that because as you were speaking, I was like, my gosh, this is   Monica Gomez (04:44) Yeah.   The Dental A Team (04:57) something we haven't had yet because this is only our second podcast together, but that I know I do have with the other consultants and it just totally clicked for me because we just, think, mentioned that in the last one. So Monica, thank you for being here. Thank you for letting me say all that and for giving me this intentional time today.   Monica Gomez (05:15) Yeah, thanks, Tiff. Yeah, I think ⁓ this time together, we get to peek, a little peek behind the veil, right? And yeah, we do have a lot of connection time. It's structured time, right? But the value of unstructured time is just gold. is, ⁓ it builds trust, it builds ⁓ camaraderie, it builds affinity, it builds ⁓ an endearing, right? An endearing kind of sense of   The Dental A Team (05:23) Yeah.   Yeah.   Monica Gomez (05:44) of viewing the other person in a different light. So yeah, I think this is a powerful, like meaningful time. I agree with you. I agree with everything that you said. This is definitely a special magical space. Yeah.   The Dental A Team (05:53) Yeah.   Yeah, thank you.   Awesome. Well, thank you for being here. And again, if you didn't listen to the last podcast, I know this is the third or fourth time we're saying it. You should. This is kind of I think Monica actually helped me choose today's topics that she wanted to speak on. I think they actually naturally flow together. So I would maybe even listen to this one after the last one or listen to this one. And then I don't care which order you do it in, but listen to both of them is my is my point here, because today we really we're going to talk about onboarding.   Monica Gomez (06:07) You   The Dental A Team (06:28) And you can onboard anyone, but I think maybe when we add in onboarding the right team member, because the last podcast we recorded was really how to hire the right team member and hiring with intentionality and meaning behind it. And the onboarding, Monica, I think has to flow off of that. If we're not continuously showing up as the person we wanted to hire, like we talked about in the last one.   If we show up in the interview space and we're like, this is who I want you to be, but then we're onboarding and we're like, meh, meh. We're like, this is boring person and we want somebody who's dynamic and fun and engaging and speaking to the patients, but we're like, not that person. I think it makes a huge difference. So Monica, as you've trained people, as you've onboarded, you've trained practices to do this, what are some key highlights that you like to infuse into the onboarding process?   Monica Gomez (07:16) Yeah, great topic. And I agree, this one goes hand in hand with our previous podcast. know, onboarding traditionally has been very much transactional, right? Here's your cubby, here's what you do, here's where you sit, here's how you answer the phones, right? We've got to move. Well, there's a part of it that has to be transactional because you have to learn, you know, what your job is and, you know, the daily to do's.   But I think if we lead with that, it's a mistake. ⁓ As I mentioned before, and we talked about how the workforce has changed, ⁓ and we're leading with connection and engagement and authenticity and all those components that make us unique, I think we, I really feel that we need to move.   from a transactional place to a transformational or transcendental. ⁓ It's gotta be more about behaviors, right? And how we wrap our arms around like this new person that's joining our little family, right? How would you like to be welcomed into a team that would make you feel welcome and received with open arms and warmth? That's how we have to welcome our new people.   The Dental A Team (08:19) Yeah.   Monica Gomez (08:37) You know, we've invested so much time and energy in interviewing our job post, our, you know, filtering our candidates, interviewing, that whole hiring process, offer letter, the whole nine yards. And then we just throw them in, sink or swim. We've got to add, we've got to be intentional and we've got to add more value to the onboarding piece because, you know, people sometimes are left thinking like, gosh,   The Dental A Team (08:55) Yeah.   Monica Gomez (09:06) this is not the place that I thought it was gonna be, right? Like make it the place that you post it on your job ad, right? Like create, you get to be the creator. You're the co-creator, right? This is your platform. Like what do you wanna create for your new people, right? And I think transaction.   It's always part of our industry and in the workforce, right? T

Kiera goes into the key pieces for a worry-free practice, including systematizing your stress points, providing boundaries around time and energy, and leading proactively. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and I hope you're having an amazing day. I hope that you are excited for today's podcast. I am, because like, why don't we create a stress-free practice? That sounds like, sign me up. Yes, please. Thank you. Happy to take you guys through that and how to create a stress-free practice, at least at a base level, at least certain tactical tips that you can put into place today to start exploring that, experiencing that. And honestly, I just love, I love the game of business. I love the art of business. I love.   ⁓ I love the impact and the change we're able to make. And I truly just love human beings. I love helping people just experience their best life, whether it's my sister or my friend or my neighbor or our community or our podcast family, whomever you are, wherever you are, I'm just so grateful and honored that you're here with us today. So if you love our podcast, if it's changed your way in any way, shape or form, do me a favor today and just share it with somebody that you think this could make their day better. Whether it's today's podcast or another podcast.   Go to our website, TheDentalATeam.com, click on our podcast tab, search any topic that you ever could want, make sure that you're able to access all the free resources that are available to you. And if I can help you personally or professionally in any way, you guys, truly like, I built this company to be a friend in the industry, to be somebody who has vetted all the different people out there to help you out. And it's so fun because I used to work at Midwestern University's dental college before I started consulting. And it was so fun. The other day I was on a call.   and my phone, like I was on a video call and my phone lit up and I looked at it and it was literally a dental student. we're talking throwback to the past, shout out to my Midwestern family. And I was like, oh my gosh, I've not seen that name on my phone and we're talking eight plus years. And so as soon as they finished the call, I called them back and I was like, dude, it's been so long, how are you? And it just like, my cheeks hurt from smiling so much right now.   It made me so happy to be able to have been in the industry long enough to have worked with so many different clients and have so many different resources that no matter what has been thrown my way with different clients, this student that I haven't talked to in eight years who's at a pretty awesome crossroad of their practice and their life and what they're doing, to be able to truly give them ⁓ advice, to give them resources, to help them out. And I realized once again,   that that is why this company exists. It is to truly be that friend in the industry. And he's like, Kiera, like, your time is valuable. And I was like, are you kidding? Like, this is what my time has meant for my time is meant to help and to serve and to be that resource and advocate. Whether you work with us as an active client or whether you're an massive advocate of the podcast, ⁓ or if we're just someone who have we met in passing, just know that you have somebody out there who is truly committed to making you the most successful, the happiest.   all the best resources I can possibly bring to you. That's what this podcast is about. So share this with somebody who needs this. Make sure that you get this into the hands of all these dentists that need the help, that need the resources, because this is a free resource. There's no strings attached other than just asking you to truly give back to those around you, in your community, in your study clubs. Make sure everybody is a raving fan listening to the podcast, because my job is to help you become the best that you can possibly be.   So with that today, like I said, I teased it out a little bit. We're gonna help you figure out how to create this, you know, stress-free practice. And it's honestly going to be through nothing sexy, nothing hard. I hate hard things. I like it to be easy. One of our core values is ease. So everything I bring to the podcast, everything we do in consulting should make your life easier and not harder. like honestly, stress-free practices come from systems and leadership. That's the bottom line. It's systems and leadership all day long.   And it's the discipline to follow through on both of those. That's what it is. So this is something where it's like, we're going to reduce the chaos. We're going to protect your energy and help you truly feel so much better in the practice because this is what we're about. Like this is how we're able to get you guys there. And so the systems and the leadership done with consistency will help you have stress-free practices. Now, a lot of times it's, know what you should do, but you don't do it or you don't consistently do it. It's like parents, it's like, I know I shouldn't give my kid candy, but I do it because they're screaming and I just want the screaming to stop.   Well, is that a temporary fix or is it a long-term solution? And so for this, making sure that we're systematizing. Now systems for point number one are going to be exhaustive. You will never be fully systematized. You will never be fully done and perfect in all the pieces. There will always be an evolution. And I just want to like get rid of the hope and the wish that, my gosh, like maybe I could do this or maybe it would change or I will one day reach this mountain. You won't. So when I work with offices, like how do you get them systematized? How do you do it? What's your magic diet pill? And I'm like,   Well, I systematize the stress points. I systematize what's causing the most pain that's going to give me the most gain. And I do that immediately because then the screaming stops, but it stops forever. Did you hear the difference? The screaming stops, but it stops forever rather than just feeding my baby candy. So they stop screaming temporarily. Well, then they're going to start screaming because they get a tummy ache and then they're going to throw up on me. And then that's a whole nonsense rather than just giving them the food that they actually need and want and doing that consistently to help my baby out.   So for your practices, we're gonna systematize those stress points. So what happens from this is, I usually when I go into a practice or our consultants go into your office or we're working with you virtually, we're going to look for the top three pain points that you tell us are the pain points. Then we're gonna use the data to actually tell us additional pain points. And then we're gonna look at those two things combined and we're gonna pick out the top three things that are going to move the practice forward. Like literally this is what we do.   So sometimes it's a scheduling and efficiency. It's a communication like that happens all the time. It's a billing, it's a profitability, it's a lack of production. It's a, don't know what my next step is. It's whatever your pain point is, like, my gosh, like I was talking to an office the other day and like, I'm so sick of the like time off requests and people calling out sick coming to me as a doctor. And I said, that's funny. Who's your office manager? Like what's your office manager doing? Because that should never be coming to the doctor. Should definitely be going to the office manager. That right there.   is a simple, easy fix. We put up a system, we put up a process, we just tell the team, here's the new organization chart, here's who goes to who, boom, pain point gone and resolved as long as you stick with it. So what we wanna do is we wanna look at what our top three recurring pain points are. Again, we talk to the team and then we look at your data. What do your numbers tell us are truly the issues that you're having? And then what we do is we create systems, SOPs or protocols, and then we have accountability with it. So like when I go into a team and,   there's an issue of our scheduling. Well, great, let's put a scheduling template in. Let's roll it out to the entire team. Let's let everybody know what the rules of the game are. That way everybody can play the game. And then we put it into place for six weeks and we reassess and we refine and we change it up as need be. And when you start to do this and you start to systematize, and for me, I don't like systems that you have to remember. I like systems to just be in place. So a scheduling template just goes in place and everybody can follow it. We tell them the rules of the game, but it's very easy. Like don't make it where it's like,   This green block is for just treatment, big treatment. Well, what the heck is big treatment? Let's do this green block is for a $2,000 and you can have X, Y, or Z that can go in there. Fantastic. Well, now I know when I'm looking for green blocks, any person who's a crown or quads of fills or endo or implant, like anything 2000 or above can go here and I can stick it in. Now, now that's easy. I know it's $2,000 instead of big production. That's so much easier. Then what happens if I can't fill that?   Well, great, 24 or 48 hours, whatever we decide as a team that feels good to us, we hold that block for that long and then we can go and change it. Now what happens is somebody is like, but Mrs. Jones just wanted to go in that spot. I know I'm not supposed to. What happens then? Well, great, the person who's scheduled gets to call Mrs. Jones and move her. We don't play the game. We don't get to do this. Like unless it's 24 or 48 hours, that block is held for that exact procedure. And I checked to see whose name did it and they get to call that patient with me.   awkwardly

Happy Thanksgiving! Kiera gives ideas of service opportunities, from a personal to a practice-wide scale.  Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and happy, happy Thanksgiving. I am so honored to share today with you. You guys, I love Thanksgiving. It used to not be one of my favorite holidays, but gosh, you know, the secret to living is giving and to have a day dedicated to gratitude, a day dedicated to love, a day dedicated to families and friends and to just come together and to remember how good our lives truly are.   I think is beyond special. And I just want to say, for me, it would feel crazy for me not to jump on here and to say thank you to all of you. You guys are my favorite humans. You're the people that I love, that I get to talk to so many times a week, that I get to hang out with, that I get to see your stories, that I get to know personally and professionally, that I get to see your wins. I get to see you tag us on social media. I get to see the emails that come in. I get to see your reviews that you leave. I get to see you positively impacting the world of dentistry. And just to truly know,   that you guys are doing so good out there. And I just want to say thank you. Thank you for being here. You guys, this podcast was a hope, a wish, a dream when I was hiking up, I'm not joking, Half Dome in Yosemite. And I thought there is nothing out there that's serving dentists and teens. And it's a niche and it's a space. And I'm going to come in and I'm going to positively impact. And I'm going to get both sides of the coin to come together to really, truly influence and impact dentistry in the greatest way possible. And that is such a huge testament to all of you for being here.   for being a part of the Dental A Team family. So I just wanna say thank you for being here. And to this, I just wanna say like, if you've been an OG, thank you for being here from the beginning. And if you're a newbie, welcome. I hope that you feel loved. I hope you feel appreciated. I hope you just feel great. And I hope you remember how amazing life truly is. So I want you guys to just know that watching this podcast evolve, to seeing millions of downloads, to seeing us in so many countries, my like...   It's mind boggling to me. It's crazy because when I built this, didn't know how many people would listen and to see the fans, to see the love, to see the raving fans, to see the clients come through, to laugh with you, to celebrate with you, to cry with you. I just want to say like, gosh, like this is a journey. It's a joy and it's an honor and it's a privilege because I know your time is your greatest asset. And so I just want to say thank you. And today with it being Thanksgiving, you know, I really just want you to know   that I believe that the secret to living is giving. And we have a portion of our company called Live To Give. And I've talked about it on a few other podcasts. I've talked about how like, you know, it was back in 2019, I went to a Tony Robbins event. And a lot of you know how much I love Tony Robbins. That was because I caught one of my lightning moments in life where I was in a space so focused on myself and it was random because I was building a company called Live To Give.   and that was where we were non-believable and we were like getting donations to help these nuns who didn't even have a house. Like it was crazy and we raised so much money so quickly and I've done it a few other times. Like another one idea was the Vibe prison ventures where inmates were actually like I went I actually went to the prison and it was crazy and I was scared out of my mind ⁓ but I saw these inmates take their skills that got them into prison which were not the best.   and turn them into good and they pitched us their business ideas and to be able to sit there with them. That was another business that I got that was part of the Live To Give to be a part of that and to give back. And I found that so many of the times in my life that are my happiest moments are those where we like went above and beyond. And a few years ago, I talked about like probably my favorite Live To Give moment that we've ever had was when we were able to, one of my friends in Arizona, her son was struggling with stomach cancer and   I really wanted to do a make a wish and make a wish is like really, really hard to get in touch with. And I had committed that year. I was going to do a make a wish. I didn't know what it was going to look like. I didn't know how we were going to do it. I told my team, this is what we wanted to do. And we found this boy and his goal, his dream was to go to Italy. And I was like, this is it. Like guys, this is it. We have a team member who's a stomach cancer ⁓ survivor as well. And I was like, this is it. This is our live to give. And our whole team was able to participate in it. We're able to give this, this   child who's 12 years old, him and his family, a complete all expense paid trip to Italy when he got done with cancer and to give him the hope and the wish. And you guys like that moment in my life, I think about the ones that really impact us the most, the ones that changes, the ones that are like those lightning bolt moments. And I, the bulk of them are ones that we've been able to give to serve, to love. ⁓ We were able to last year as a team go and like help so many kids at the children's hospital.   our team has done angel tree where we go and like shop for these families. And Shelbi and I, I remember we went shopping for a family of nine and that was the exact of my family. I think back to when I was at, ⁓ United Way and I was able to bring holiday magic to hundreds of families from the donations of others. And I remember there was a time where I just was feeling grumpy about life. I realized like, I haven't checked my, giving like vitals.   in me in a while. I think about businesses and I think about all of you and we are constantly looking at our KPIs of our business. We're looking at the KPIs that drive us to success, but I'm like, what are the KPIs of our life that drive us to success? And maybe those are some of the pieces that are there. And I've just realized that giving and serving and loving should be an area that maybe we want to check those vitals, especially today.   of where is my giving my love, my service, KPI? Is it high? Is it low? Is it on track? Is it off track? And I will say that if it's off track, today's a great day to get it on track. And maybe a couple of ways for us to give back is just to love a little bit more, to text someone today that you might love. A few years ago, my brother-in-law and I have a kind of a unique relationship. When I met...   He was a business owner and I always thought he was so grumpy. I didn't really like him that much. was like, Jason, your brother is so just rude. I did not care for him. And as I become a business owner further into my career, I understand this brother-in-law so much. And he's kind of like, I don't know, I would say like a little crusty on the edges. He's not soft, I'll put it that way. And I was actually really, really scared to text him.   But just cared about him so much and I appreciated so much of what he's done and he's been a mentor to me. And I just said, take a risk, a gamble. I remember I was sitting on the beach in Maui and I texted him and I just said, hey, I just want you to know how much I appreciate you. I value you. And how much of a mentor you've been to me and you've given me hope when I didn't know that there was hope. And I'm just so grateful for you. And he wrote back, he's like, Kiera, I don't usually cry. And that text meant so much to me. And I just think that's our giving.   KPI. So what little love bombs could you send out? What service could you and your team do together? Our team, every year in December, we do a Live to Give. Could you guys adopt that in your company and together collectively as a podcast family? Think of all the lives that we could give back to. I think about my husband was talking about another brother that he has and this brother literally is in such a hard place in his life right now and   does not have a lot of money, has a lot of family dynamics, I won't get into it. And when I say like, pretty much homeless, that's literally what's going on with him. And I only highlight that because his situation is so hard. we were, Jason was talking about struggling with something and he was like, ⁓ I could help you with that. And Jason and I talked about it and we thought about who are the people that give to those that are struggling? A of times it's those that are like, not hardly better off than they are. And I think like,   Could today or this next month, could we maybe boost that live to give side of us where we look for people in need, we look for opportunities that can be in our patient base, that can be in our team base, it can be in our community, it can be in our families. Can I give out little love bombs? It might be cold in your area. A few years ago, we did a coat drive and this came from one of my friends in Utah who...   would ask all his friends to donate coats that they're no longer wearing and would drive around and hand out coats to people on the side of the road that could really use it. I'm not here to say you've got to go do that, but I just think like, what a blessing to those people. What a space for us to be able to share and to love and to give back. Like you guys, are so insanely blessed. I promise every single person listening to this podcast today, we all collectively could say that we have been unruly blessed.   in our lives. And so where is that? Could I text a team member and tell them like, Hey, you're doing such a great job. I'm not joking. I have a little list over here to write thank you cards to my team m

The Dental A-Team often hears from team members who feel like they're not good enough. In this episode, Kiera shares with listeners how to switch from harmful self sabotage and comparison to a healthy awareness of growth and positivity. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and today I want to dive into something that I think is really important. I feel, hear this from a lot of people. I've coached a lot of dentists. I've worked with a lot of team members. And so I feel like I've got a pretty good background on how to talk about this. And I think just as human nature, and I'm not saying that all of us are there, but   Every dentist, every office manager, every team member I talk to, no matter how successful or how terrible they're doing, they say, I'm not doing well. I'm not doing enough. Like I'm not doing good enough. And I just wanna like dig into this a little bit today because I think it's a lie that we all believe to some level. We feel this imposter syndrome. We feel this... ⁓   I don't know. It's just this weirdness that I want to help you rewire that story and to maybe give a different perspective on that, because the reality is you're doing better than you think you are. And I want to reset and reframe that internal dialogue because I believe being your own best cheerleader or your own worst critic, both of them have pros and cons. And I think like there's so much icky in the world that why don't we start to become your best cheerleader? I truly do believe the quote that ⁓ Tony Robbins says like where   where focus goes energy flow. So if we're focused on not being good enough or why am I not good enough or I don't know how to do this. Well, yes, there's a line of humility that I appreciate. There's also a line of self sabotage that I think we need to start to cut that script and become even stronger. really, Dental A Team's mission is to positively impact the world of dentistry in the greatest way possible and to help you build thriving practices, thriving leaders, not just surviving, not just hoping and like skirting along. Dentists always want to know how they're doing compared to other dentists.   And so really just giving you kind of that baseline to help you out. ⁓ This is the emotional side of leadership. This is the self-worth, the confidence that rewiring the not enough trap that I wanna just like dig into. And it's just more of a conversation and hopefully bringing some insights and some highlights to help you stop that narrative to really highlight the growth that you can have and just to give you some better. I don't know, just a hug. You're doing so good out there. And I think like as a proud mom of you.   ⁓ Just reminding you of how good you are doing, not better than you are, not worse than you are, but realistically where you are. And I think so many of us accidentally self-sabotage the goodness that we have rather than celebrating how great we're doing. ⁓ And again, momentum builds. So let's build momentum of positivity rather than momentum of negativity. So ⁓ I think the first thing that I like to look at is like, what is the root belief that causes you to have it? So like these thoughts are coming from somewhere. So is it past experiences? Is it comparisonism? Is it perfectionism?   ⁓ I went to a Tony Robbins conference. I do love Tony so much. I have a great time there. I don't think everything's perfect, but I think a lot of great things are, are good in it. And I went to, my favorite thing is date with destiny. And I went to it last year and, ⁓ Tony always has this talk about our towards values and our way values. And, he says, why is it that we try it? We do so good in life, making it hard to feel good and easy to feel bad. And I think about this a lot. And so last year, my word was comparison and.   He actually has you go on this whole rant. So if you can imagine, I feel I present in such a different way than how I was at that conference. ⁓ The beast was unleashed, we'll put it that way. One of my dear friends was with me and they said that they've never seen Kiera like 4.0 version come out. And what Tony has you do is you actually go through, cause comparison was actually one of the biggest things that was holding me back in life. I was comparing to all these other women about my body, about my looks, about my business, about everything.   I realized that my self-sabotaging was from a deep-rooted piece and like prior to that, ⁓ was fear that I let go of. was fear of all these things. And what Tony has you do is you go on this monologue, this rant to basically just see how much of life you've lost by having this. So I went into comparison and I said like, Kiera Dent, see, hear, feel, and know that I will never, ever succumb.   to the limiting and self-sabotaging and ludicrous lie of comparison. And then you go on a rant. And luckily Eminem, I do have a side nickname of DJ Skittlez. Yep, I wanted to be a rapper with Eminem. So I figured Skittlez with a Z was gonna be my rapper DJ name. So if you ever come voting with me, DJ Skittlez does come out voting to make your perfect playlist.   But Eminem was on and it was such a good thing for me. And I remember just unleashing the beast of this comparison and you yell and you scream and you just like, you know, like, and the goal is that you, you look at your life from this lens of how much has this self sabotaging piece taken from you. And when I looked at it, like I wasn't participating fully with my family. wasn't working out at the gym because I didn't want to be compared to other women. I wasn't, ⁓   being as bold in business because I was comparing myself to what other people did and just how much of life was being sucked away from me. And so with that, if that's something like for you to just look to see where is it and what's maybe the one or two ⁓ values that you're holding onto that make you feel bad, that I would encourage to be a way value, not something we want to go towards. So for me, I have on comparison and like comparison only shows up for me when I forget that I am like just, ⁓   For me, like what I will say, I do believe in God, that I am God's greatest creation. when I, so now what I've done is I've taken comparison and I flipped it. So like, if I ever start comparison, it's only due to me forgetting that I'm God's greatest creation. And that quickly for me eliminates that. And so, and it's like fear only if I forget that I have like magic and brilliance that spews from me.   So what the goal is, is you take that root belief and you flip it and you figure out what it is. And then what is something like, it's only if I were to forget that I am like brilliant and have like unlimited potential within me. So like for fear or comparison or perfectionism or whatever it is. And so what is that? Where did that story begin? And maybe you don't know. ⁓ And maybe go through a rant if you want, or maybe just write a new definition and make it harder to feel that. So for me,   It's actually pretty hard for me now to feel comparison. Like I can go back to that, like Kiera 4.0, if you were to call my friend Pierce, he's been on the podcast, he will tell you Kiera 4.0 came out on that comparison rant to where I feel like I literally was able to obliterate it to where it's not there. And for you looking at why am I not good enough, maybe if we can find one or two of your route towards values and away values, what are those away values? And could we...   Could we acknowledge it? Could we see why it's there? And could we maybe decide to put that to rest for a little while? ⁓ And I think when I do this exercise and I write out what success means, it's crazy how many weird rules I have to put in to be successful. And maybe even for yourself, writing out like today what you feel you have to do to be successful. Oftentimes this is why we feel like we're not enough is because we've made this laundry list where it's impossible for any person.   ourselves or someone else to ever hit that level. ⁓ I talked to a friend once and she was like, yeah, for me to be successful, I have to have, I think she told me like 10 million in her bank account, which she was not even close to that. She had to have her body size be X. She had to drive a certain car. She had to live in this. And it was like, wow, well, no wonder we feel this. That's the root belief. It's so hard for us to even feel successful versus I feel successful anytime I make a patient happy.   What you do on that is we're not changing the rules of the game, but we are making it easier to feel good and harder to feel bad. So the only time I'm ever going to feel comparison is when I forget that I'm God's greatest creation. Well, yeah, like I'm not going to forget that. Like I really do think that. And not to say that I'm better than anybody else. I just truly do believe that all of us in our own way are truly God or the universe or whatever's greatest creation. I, gosh, like I feel emotional about that. I really do just believe that that's who you are.   I believe that human souls are that way. I believe that. and so it's one of those things like as a proud mom for you, if you want to take that on for a hot minute, go for it if you want to write it. But when doctors can rewrite, when you feel behind or you feel like you're not enough, maybe what enough feels like you could look at it, like list it off, but then maybe make it a bit easier for you to feel enough today. maybe being enough is reminding myself that like just being alive is enough.   Like think about how the magic of being a living soul is. Well, shoot, that is enough. And like, what does enough even mean? What does success even mean? And what's wild about that is this, there's maybe a few pieces to it. So call to action on it. Cause I like to make this tactical, even though it's s

Tiff and Trish spell out exactly what practices should do to shift into growth mode — whether that's case acceptance, patient base, or whatever else — as well as how to commit to positive changes long-term. (Positive changes, by the way, including what's too much for a team member or practice's workload.) Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review  

When it comes to scaling smarter, not scattered, there are three mistakes owners make that hurt efficiency, profitability, and leadership. Kiera talks about how Dental A-Team helps practices simplify methods so that success is humming across all locations. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and I hope you are having such an amazing day. Today is podcasting day and I actually did a little reel for you guys to come and enjoy getting ready for me on podcasting day. My husband and I, we did this funny thing when I got like amped myself up and we're like, I love my life. I love my job. I love podcasting. And I don't know if you guys have seen that little girl.   who does that where she gets so excited about life and it's like, I love my bed, I love my hot tub, I love my view. And truly I love all of you. And I'm just super excited to be here with you podcasting, to be talking about great things in dentistry. And today I think that this one's going out to our multi-practice owners. And these are three costly gaps that I've noticed within multi-practice ownership that really try to highlight some of the gaps because at the end of the day, the podcast was created   to help all dentists elevate, to help all of us rise, to positively impact the world of dentistry in the greatest way possible. And that's what we're about. That's what our mission is. That's what I'm about. And so today going out to those multi-practice owners, or for those of you thinking about multi-practice ownership and do you want to do this? do you want to like, what are some of these gaps that maybe could also impact solo practice owners? So at Dental A Team, do work with solo practice owners, multi-practice owners. We work with...   like from basically one million, you know, you're maybe at that 650, one million range, all the way up to that 10, 15, $20 million range as well for practices. And there is a no one size fits all in Dental A Team I'm very, very, very, very big on who we hire and who the people are within our company. And with our clients that this is your life. This is your dream. There is no ultimate destination that we're trying to get all of our practices to. There is no final   You've got to hit this in order to be excellent within Dental A Team. is what is your life? We have some owners that are working at two or three days a week. We have some owners that are working six days a week. We have some that want multi-practice ownership. have others that want solo practice ownership. We have some that are solo practitioners doing 4 million in one location of about six to seven operatories. We have others that are in multi-locations doing 2 million. So really there is a no one size fits all. It's more what do you want to be? And we call this the yes model. So where do you   personally and professionally want to be. stands for earnings to make sure you're profitable and S stands for systems and teams to support that. So really making sure that way you can say yes to your life, yes to the things you want in life. That's what we're about. So with that, like when you look at multi-practice ownership, it does not necessarily mean adding more profit. I've talked to several multi-practice owners that are actually making less money in multi-practice ownership than they are.   prior to expanding to multi locations. Think about it. You've got one location that's doing really well, the other one's not doing so well, well, your good one has to then support your not so cash flowing one. So sometimes it actually can be a lot more costly for you. And so for you to just realize that some of the ways that we can do this will actually impact solo practitioners. ⁓ And so the three things that we're gonna work on today are like,   things that hurt efficiency, they hurt profitability and they hurt leadership. So when we look at this, doing a deep dive on that, that's really what I want you to look at of like how you can scale smarter and not scattered because really with multi-practice ownership, I remember the day we opened our second location. Our first practice was doing, it was 500,000 to 2.4 million in nine months. And then we opened our second location and you better believe that it was like just adding more fuel to this already burning chaos fire. I think that's really, really clear. And I hope you heard that it was adding more fuel.   to the chaos fire, not to the profitable fire, but to the chaos fire. ⁓ And that was really, really, really struggling. ⁓ It was hard on me. It was hard on our practice. It was hard on the team. I was not showing up as a great manager. I was not showing up as a great ⁓ leader. I was not showing up as a great partner. ⁓ I was not showing up great in my marriage. It was like literally just trying to swim through and feel like I was trying to survive rather than doing it smart. And so that's something really big that we've been wanting to do for all of you is   to give you this smarter way. Dental A Team was really here for you. It was built by people who are just like you, who have been in your shoes, they don't just understand you, but have actually been in your shoes, who's walked the walk, talked the talk, and we've done it very successfully. So I love to help offices. Hopefully we're helping you. ⁓ And if you love this podcast, please be sure to like it, start, share it, because that's how we're able to help and influence more people. number one, the biggest number one miss is no centralized operations. So that means ⁓ we don't...   we don't have a central plan and instead our practices are individual islands. This was very much my practices. We had our one and it was doing certain things and we had our second one and it was not doing certain things. And so going from each practice felt like I was going to multiple different locations, multi different pieces and that really gets hard. And so we have inconsistent systems which means we have unpredictable outcomes. And then on that, like we did not have a set way that we'd schedule. So we'd schedule one way at our first location another way at our second location.   Our billing was not the same. The way we were insurance verifying, our fee schedules weren't even the same because we were in two different cities. And so we had different fee schedules. ⁓ Reporting was not the same. We did not have leaders in both practices. We did not have SOPs that could scale. Like truly our operations manual was not done and we just thought buy another practice and let's go through this. Rather than having a set standard, and this is something I'm really big on when people want to go to multi-practice ownership or they're already in multi-practice ownership. This is really where we start. There's a practice that we're working with and   I think about them, were, the solo doctor was running around to every single location, trying to out-produce the problems instead of fixing the problems at the base level. And that's going to be through this of like centralized systems and getting systems in place and like having our scheduling and our billing and our cashflow consistent and looking at each of the individual practices ⁓ to make sure that they are centralized. And so when we work with multi-locations,   What we do is we actually simplify it down. So you don't necessarily have to have centralized billing or scheduling like right away. Once you get to that four or five, usually it's very recommended to have centralized billing or I've got some practices that are multi like it's one location, but they have about 15 to 17 operatories. Well, that does count in my opinion as multi ops, multi practices, cause a lot of times multi practices are like five ops or more. So you think about a 15 op practice that's like three practices, but just under one roof.   So even in this larger practice, I often recommend we start to centralizing. So we have a set standard of how we're doing billing. We have different reporting metrics. You've got to have the KPIs. We've got to have the set system. So what we started to do is we standardized the operatories. So all ops are the same. We standardized how we're scheduling. We're all in the same softwares. We have an SOP. So we've got our front office, our back office teams, and we do the exact same way. So how we're doing it. We had both practices auditing each other so that we standards were not getting missed and it wasn't.   Well, this practice does it this way and this one does it this way. No, we're trying to make these standardized. that way, again, it's not so that way we can't have our own flare and variety at the different locations, but it's so that way when practices show up and doctors show up, we're actually able to be efficient and effective because we're able to have it be the same. It's like, could you imagine ⁓ if your practices were like everybody's varying different houses? So the way I put my silverware in my house might be very different than where you put your silverware in your house.   So just imagine we've got five different houses, how much easier it would be if we all walk in and we all agree that silverware goes to the right of the dishwasher. Well, now, no matter where the dishwasher is placed in a house, we know silverware will always be to the right of the dishwasher. Just like when we walk into an operatory, we always know that the ⁓ disposable, so our gauze, our cotton, is always to the right of X. It all practices. So as much as we can get them similar, so that way it's just more efficient, it's more streamlined, everything is working together rather than against each other.   but truly getting centralized operations in multi-operatories or multi-locations is going to be one of the biggest ways to cut costs, to save time, and to make it more efficient for a better patient c

Fostering leadership growth within a team takes intentional execution. Tiff and Trish discuss what it takes to lead a team versus managing, including self-awareness, delegation, team-wide trust, and more. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review

Operatinging a practice is very, very different from owning a practice. Kiera walks listeners through what the path to CEO ownership looks like, including the difference between the clinical and business sides, how performing a time audit will get you started, the ideal approach to establishing a vision, and more. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent (00:01) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and today is a great day. I am so excited for this podcast. I am excited to be chatting with you. I feel honored. Where are we at? Are we hanging out? Are we going on a walk together? Are we getting ice cream together? Are we picking up the kids? Are we driving to work? Are we driving home from work? Are we sitting in traffic? Wherever we are, I hope it's a great day. And I hope that even if it wasn't the best day that you're choosing to make sure that today is going to be an epic day, that you're choosing yourself, that you're choosing happiness.   that you're choosing this incredible life. And you remember at one point, at one point, the life you're living is the life that you were dreaming of. And how blessed are we to be able to live this magical life that we get to. So today I just wanna walk you through how to go from a practice operator where you're doing all of it to a true CEO and what needs to change to be able to lead at the next level. So I think this is so fun because owning a practice is very, very, very different than   operating a practice, would you agree? And so like if you're still in the weeds, you're still doing the day to day, you're not yet the CEO of your practice. And so this is something where I wanted to kind of walk you through like, what does that even look like? Because for some of us, we don't even know what the destination looks like. So we're like, well, I can't even visualize it. So therefore I can't even like create it. And I want to make sure that I help you see what that path can be, help you understand what it can look like if you choose that you want to do it.   This is something where Dental A Team's mission is to truly help doctors stop running on survival mode and start leading strategically. So whether you want to be the CEO where you're out of the chair, whether you want to still be the operator where you do some dentistry, but you have the options because you know what that can look like. So that's what we're about. And today it's going to be going from busy operator into visionary, going from day to day to the big picture. And so fun because I actually was talking to a client this morning who actually it's been about a three year journey has now   rounded the bend to where they had their last day of clinical dentistry and they're stepping fully into the CEO role. And as we were chatting, we talked about how it's a mind trip. It's a full blown mind trip and how I told them, said, it's crazy because I'm actually doing this podcast today. I had already planned that I wanted to talk about this. It was so serendipitous that we chatted today. ⁓ But I said, isn't it wild how like what we dreamed of, like you go through dental school and you go through all these things. ⁓   to walk away from that, have associates, to have different people. Just like me, I consult, I still do some consulting, but I do a lot more of running the business, owning the business, and not as much in the day-to-day anymore. And I'm so grateful for the team of Dental A team that allows me to be in my sweet spot, the visionary role, to enjoy it and to allow them to be in their sweet spots. And this doctor and I, were chatting and he just said like, Keir, it's weird.   I don't even know what being a CEO looks like. And I have another doctor and he said, Garrett, it's so weird to go from being clinical all the time to working on the business, but it's so fun to work on the business and to be the CEO that can look. And as I was talking to the doctor this morning, they're thinking about doing a DSO and wondering what they want to do with that. And he's just like, you know, I don't even know. So we started talking and we were rattling off all these things. And he was like, that's what I need to be doing as a CEO. That's why I need to have the time not in the chair is so that way I can.   I can drive this business in the direction it needs to go. And so again, today's podcast is not to say that you need to step away from the chair. As you can see, there's one client who is completely out of the chair. There's another client who works one or two days clinically. Myself, I still do ⁓ a day of consulting and then I still do podcasting and I do the things that light my fire that I still enjoy doing. But there's a path of how do you get there? And it was kind of like when I used to be a treatment coordinator and a dental assistant and I became an office manager and I'm like,   I don't even know what I'm supposed to do. All of these are different layers. I almost want you to think kind of like the wifi symbol. Like you just, you go through different layers and it's different identities. And it's kind like you pop through and you look around and like, don't even recognize this neighborhood. Like I don't even recognize the neighborhood of CEOs. I don't even recognize the neighborhood of working two days of clinical. I don't even recognize the neighborhood of where my leadership team does the bulk of all the pieces that I'm doing. Like I don't actually have to do the hiring and firing anymore. I don't have to do all the one-on-ones anymore.   you pop your head up into a different neighborhood and it's a loss of identity and it's a taking on of a new identity and it's a morphing. I remember talking about this, gosh, this is like in the archives of podcasts. If you wanna go look, go to TheDentalATeam.com, click on podcasts and type in like sloughing and snake and you'll probably find it. But I talked about this years and years ago of how when you evolve from being this operator to this owner, it's kind of like a snake and you have to like literally like slough off.   the old version of you to allow space to become the version that you need to be. And so just kind of going through like, what does it even look like? And if I wanted to, or just maybe propose or think about, because I always believe like the more knowledge you have and the more, I think vision or maybe just like thought, right? Like I never even thought about it. Like I never even thought that my practice could make a hundred thousand. Like what if it made 200,000 a month or what if it made 300,000 or.   There's a practice doing 550 a month or there's a practice who's literally doing a million a month. I have an office that like all their offices are producing. They've got multi offices and they're producing between 350 and 450 a month. Every one of their offices. And I say this not for you to compare and to beat yourself up and say like, my gosh, I'm not even there, Kiera, I'm only doing 30,000. I want all of us just to say there are other neighborhoods, there are other visions. And I wanted today to just show a picture.   And then you get to pick up whatever you want or don't want from this vision. There is no right you have to get here. It's just, I want to show you and paint a picture in case you're thinking about it. So that way you look at life, look at your practice, look at your decision-making differently at whatever stage you are in your business. So there's no judgment. There's no expectation. That's something I love about Dental A Team is I've got clients that are producing 7,000 a month and I've got clients that are producing, oh gosh, like 1.2 to 2 million a month.   It's insane. I've got clients that are at 80 % overhead. Don't worry, they're brand new. All the way down to a 35 % overhead. All of us are in different journeys, we're on different paths, we have different priorities. And there's not a one size fits all in Dental A Team. It is a one size fits you. And then let's just make sure that we expand your knowledge base. That way you're making decisions educated rather than placed upon you. So step one, as you're kind of shifting into this role, is going to be...   shifting from doing to delegating. And this is something where I think as founders, as owners, myself included, we build the, like we've built this so we know how to do all the pieces and it's very hard to let go. The CEO builds the machine, they don't run every part of it. And so really thinking about that, like your job is to build the vision, your job is to do these bigger partnerships, your job is to build the culture, to be the lighthouse on the hill, but not the one rowing the boat. And so,   The way we do this is kind of like a time audit. So we write down every single thing that we're doing and we look to see who could do this 80 % as well as I can that we could delegate. And there's ⁓ in some of our other podcasts and on our summit and in some of our things, we talk about a delegation ladder. And basically we like look at administrative tasks and scheduling tasks and TC tasks and then all the way up to marketing and leadership tasks. And so how can we start to delegate these tasks out? And so you're not doing them all.   And then what we do is we have leads and we have scorecards and we have ⁓ decision pieces to help people understand what decisions they can or can't make. And what happens is when doctors start to let go of this, empower their team without letting go, so they're still in the reins, they're then able to work on growth and strategy and you're able to build the vision. You're able to have the time to go to those big networks. Like the doctor here, like Kiera, all the people you told me like, that's why I need to go make phone calls with. making those phone calls are big decisions for the business.   don't happen between patients and they're not happening aft

When it comes to assessing practice success, understanding various returns on investment is critical. Kiera and Kristy explain what the Dental A-Team is looking for when it comes to understanding the success (or lack thereof) of various investments. They specifically touch on the power of five different KPIs that'll keep your practice in line. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and today it's the KK podcast. Kiera and Kristy hanging out today. Kristy, how you doing today?   DAT Kristy (00:10) Good, it's a good day.   Kiera Dent (00:12) It's a great day. you like, I feel like I want to like KK. I mean, it's not, it's only two K's everybody listening, but I feel like it's like the Kit Kat. I don't know. It feels kind of like that between you and me. don't know why, but yeah, double the, or we could be like double mint, like double the flavor, double the fun. It's Kieran Kristy on the pod. Like there's just the two of us cause there's no other K names in the consultant world. It's just Kieran Kristy. So I mean, we got   DAT Kristy (00:36) That's right.   Kari and Kristy, you got it.   Kiera Dent (00:40) Kiera and Dana, so that could be my initials, cute. Then there's Kiera and Trish, but there's Trish and Tiffanie. Then there's Kiera and Brittany, no BS, Britt, she's on her own realm. And then we've got Monica. So, see, it's the two Ks, it's the double the, like, we're just gonna have fun here. Like, you get two of us, two brilliant brains. And believe it or not, Kristy and I actually might just be rivaling for like some of the biggest gains this quarter, so.   DAT Kristy (00:55) Yes, it does.   Kiera Dent (01:07) ⁓ not that we're here just for gains on clients, but Kristy does give me a run for my money, which all the consultants do. And Kristy's just like, she's, she's coming on hot this, this quarter. So I thought it'd be really fun, Kristy, for us to kind of dig into. Like either quarterly or twice a year annual reviews that we kind of do with clients and how you assess it. And we show the ROI that clients are getting, just cause I think it's important for clients to see like, what should you be assessing in your practice quarterly or two times a year?   How's the practice going? And Kristy, I think you're really, really strong in this. And I think you're really talented at looking at the practice and about their numbers and about, like, you love that. You and I will geek about numbers all day long, which is why it's the KK club, the KitKat club. Like we're here for the numbers. We're here for the fun. ⁓ But yeah, Kristy, kind of take it away of how do you set this up? What do you look at with clients when you're assessing their practices? Because always client style is like, I want ROI on consulting. And you do like,   amazing job at showing that ROI. So kind of take it away of what do we look at? How do we determine ROI? And I know this is your jam. This is what you love to do.   DAT Kristy (02:15) I love it. You're right. I do. You know, we all.   Kiera Dent (02:18) Do hear that little   giggle? I hope everybody heard that. Like that's Kristy's like. Kristy lives for this stuff and it makes me so happy because I do too. Like it's fun. It's fun to get the gains.   DAT Kristy (02:28) Yeah,   absolutely. Well, you and I have talked about this before. So many doctors just look   their bank account to see if they're on track or off track. And it's such a false sense of security looking at or lack of security, one of the two. with that being said, ⁓ there truly is like five   Kiera Dent (02:36) you   Mm-hmm.   DAT Kristy (02:48) KPIs that we're going to look at. And a couple of them are lag measures. A couple of them are lead measures.   ⁓ first view would be production net production collections. Yeah.   Kiera Dent (03:01) Yeah, don't even get into that gross. We don't want gains that are fake all y'all, okay? Like get   out. ⁓ Jason and I were talking the other day about guys, there's this, okay, Kristy, I'm gonna go on Tanger for a second. There's this really attractive actor on this show we're watching and I'm like, truly I was so disappointed when they kind of cut him from a couple episodes. I was like, no, she's gotta get back together with this guy because he's so good looking. And my husband and I, we look, because he looks pretty short.   DAT Kristy (03:13) you   Kiera Dent (03:28) So I like scoped him and I was like, how tall is this guy? And he says he's six foot and Jason's like, there's no way he's six foot. He's like, but do you ever hear some guy come in and they're like, yeah, I'm like 5'11". He's like, no, they all push them to the six foot. And I feel like that's what gross production is. It's like all of us are like, yeah, like I'm basically six foot. Yeah, I'm basically like a millionaire. Yeah, I'm basically there. Like, so we're talking, no, get out. We're here for like actual gains that you're actually getting net production.   my little side tangent, it's okay. It's okay if you're 5'10". It's okay if you're 5'9". It's okay if you're 5'11". We in production want to know the real number that we can actually collect, not the artificial one that makes you feel good when you're chatting with friends. You can fluff your height, but don't fluff your production.   DAT Kristy (04:15) love that 100%. So we got the net production and then the collections,   Kiera Dent (04:16) you   DAT Kristy (04:22) dollar for dollar percentage. Obviously we want them to be 98 % or higher. And then on the flip side, where are we diagnosing? What's our case acceptance? And so many people just look at the percent of case acceptance, but I also want to look at the dollars of what you're diagnosing because is it enough to reach your goal?   you know, where's your profit point at and what do we need to hit? Because we can celebrate 100 % case acceptance, which I don't think anybody ever has 100%, but you know, if you're getting 50 % case acceptance, which is still a very good percentage, 50 % of what? If we need to hit 150 every month and we're only hitting 100, it's not enough to get us there. So those would be the main five KPIs that   ⁓ tell us the health of your practice, right? And go ahead, care.   Kiera Dent (05:18) I   was gonna say, and Kristy, as you said that, diagnosing, don't think people realize is as important as it is. For whatever goal you wanna hit, there's a industry standard that you need to diagnose three times what you wanna produce. So if you wanna produce 100 grand, you need to be diagnosing 300,000 minimum to be able to get there, and you better hope you've got a great treatment coordinator who can close. And this is actually like...   I'm gonna like give a little secret away that we'll see if people are smart enough to pick up on in future years. This is the number one thing I actually look for in a consultant. I look to see, do an interview, we give them some stats and if a consultant cannot pick up this practice like without fail, they come in and they wanna talk block scheduling, they wanna talk other things. But I need a consultant to be able to see that a lot of times the reason a practice is not hitting their goals is due to a lack of diagnosis. And another reason we do that is because   Kristy and I are not dentists and we're not here to tell you how to diagnose. We're just here to help you see that based on industry standards and what you should be diagnosing of a healthy practice. If you're not getting enough diagnosis and doctors, you've got to hear this. If you are not diagnosing enough, this is a doctor issue and we're not saying to overdiagnose, but you have to diagnose enough. If you're not diagnosing enough and there's not enough treatment coming through, your practice will not grow. And that's not your team's fault. That's a you problem.   And so making sure that you, your hygienist, you use AI, but Kristy, I'm so glad you brought that up because production collections are always easy. But what impacts that, like you said, is the diagnosis, then the case acceptance, the new patients. And that's where it says lead and lag. Like everybody's looking at the lag of production collection, but it's like, what did we do to get there? And Kristy, I love that you bring these five things up every single quarter, every single, like twice a year with your clients, because people don't realize your bank account is a lag measure.   of what you've been doing in the practice. And then like another one is your overhead and what are you spending? Because if those things are in check, but we're spending everything we're making, we're not saving for taxes. Well, yeah, that's a real fun moment. Your bank account's really gonna look bleak, even if everything's working in the practice. So I really hope people take note because it's such a good thing for people to be aware of.   DAT Kristy (07:09) .   Absolutely. to that point, Kiera, like so many people think if that number isn't where they want it, let's go get more new patients. And then they want to spend more money on more new patients. And nine times out of 10, this is exciting time of the year because we're halfway through the year. Take a look at what you did treatment plan. I mean, I see a lot of practices, you know, let's for easy math, they're diagnosing a million dollars and we've closed 500,000. Holy cow. Even if you captured, you know,   percent of that difference like what would that mean to your bottom line and this is a perfect time to take a step back and go my gosh we have five months left in the year what would that look like break it down chunk it down to simple   pieces that your team can digest and you guys have fun with it. It's all about getting patients healthier. Let's face it, you're not diagnosing things patients don't need. So let's go get it. Let's get our patients healthy

Revamping your financials is as easy as … Kiera shows off her savvy financial skills by sharing what it takes to know what's being spent in your practice. Her spreadsheet tips will answer such questions as: What can be cut? How can you make sure your overhead is in check? What do you need to produce? And much more. Want a sample spreadsheet to get started? Email hello@thedentalateam.com.  Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera and I hope you're just having an amazing day. Like a great, great, great, incredible day. ⁓ just, today's topic is one that makes me excited and it's so dry and boring, ⁓ but I love it. And I'm like, that's probably a buzzkill for the podcast, but you know me, one of my core values is fun. And Dana, shout out to Dana, DanyDane over there.   ⁓ She gave me one of the best compliments. We do a thing on Wednesdays called core value shout out in our company. And I will tell you if you do not have this in your company, I would strongly advise you do this. What we do is every single Wednesday, our company goes and our whole team says that this is our favorite. You guys, we have gone from a very small team to a much larger team and we still do this. So just know small teams, big teams, it is doable and it is very   relevant and very essential. And I think it just goes so well. I am okay to take a little bit longer on this morning huddle because of how good it is. so core value shout out is where we just randomly will pick somebody and then it's popcorn after that. So they'll choose the next person. So for example, we would start and I would say, okay, Shelbi starting today and everybody chooses somebody on the team and they highlight them for a core value and it has to be a core value. It has to be something specific. And so Dana gave me one of the greatest compliments.   She said, Kiera, she said she wanted to give me the core value of fun, because fun is really one of our core values. And she said, I want to give it to you for fun, because she said a lot of times topics that are so hard ⁓ or things that people wouldn't necessarily find fun. She said, you just know how to sprinkle the fun and the confetti and the glitter and make things that are hard or something that teens wouldn't want to do or doctors wouldn't want to do.   you make them really fun. And honestly, that has stuck with me. It is a few days later since she gave me that compliment and I'm still remembering it. So not only is core value shout out day amazing, it also helps you just enjoy and to have like, to be happier. ⁓ It also infuses core values into your company. And I'm excited and grateful that I'm able to bring fun things to the podcast, a dry topic. I hope I've teed this up enough to where you're excited about it.   But this is, think, the discipline side of business of owning a dental practice that you need to do. And this is really, think, for office managers or billers and doctors. And this is something that I think will give you so much confidence. it came actually from our doctor mastermind. We have ⁓ a private doctor only mastermind that we run every single month. It's a virtual one. And then we do an in-person one ⁓ that's more for doctor and leadership teams. But our monthly one, call it Think Tank, and it's on the first Tuesday of every month. And a doctor was saying, she's like,   I just don't know where to cut. I said, send me your PNL and tips like, and she's going to want your credit card statement and she's going to want all your stuff. And while yes, I am obsessive on this. have helped family members. I've helped offices. I've helped myself. something that I will like toot my own horn on it. I actually think I'm very talented with money, with saving, with figuring out solutions and helping people understand where you can cut. This podcast also came about because this morning on my, ⁓ Shelbi Britt and I were meeting and we were literally going through.   our finances to see where could we maybe squeeze the tube of toothpaste a little bit more, where could we maybe change a few things. And I think that that's just so relevant and so helpful. And so this is something I do in my day in day out life. It's something that I think for you to go from chaos and lack of financial clarity to confidence is something that I really want to just bring to the table today on the podcast. If you're new to Dental A team, welcome. We are obsessed about helping you have your best life and ⁓ doing it in a fun, easy way through dentistry. And so   helping you with our yes model. So you as a person getting your life, your vision, all of that in place, then moving into earnings. So ⁓ financially, that's the piece today. And then using those financial pieces. So your analytics, your PNL, your overhead to also help us figure out what systems and team development need to go into place to make sure you have this thriving practice. Because honestly, I believe that being successful, being a successful dental practice does not have to be hard and it can actually be easy. So that's what we're here for today. ⁓ With that.   So today it's going to be like, how do you actually like figure out your costs? So I did this a long time ago and then I like met a lot of really smart financial people. I'm not a financial advisor. I will throw that out there. So just make sure you talk to them and you have your, ⁓ like you chat with them of what's best for your state, but I will teach you how I do it. This is annoying. It's a little cumbersome, but people love to hear like, how do you actually do this? I'm always like, how do people get like jacked? Like how do they work out? Like.   me like what time do you work out like what do you do for your nutrition and just so I understand the full landscape and then I'm going to pick and choose of what's going to work well for me that I'll actually implement so hopefully that will be effective for you today as well.   So this is what we do. I have a spreadsheet that I have for monthly costs. We do this with all of our clients too. So if you're like, this feels too hard, don't worry, join the Dental A Team. We'll help you get it put together. So we have a monthly cost. And what I do is on the monthly costs, and this is probably my most visited spreadsheet of my entire company. And I'm super excited because we're bringing in another team member who does financial.   Forecasting and has a whole background in finance. So my method might get revamped to 2.0 and there's always another layer. But what I have is I have on our monthly costs, I have all the salaries and all of the pay. Now for offices, I do include doctor pay. Again, I'm not a CPA and I do believe that doctors should be paid. So I put in either your W-2 salary and or your doctor compensation of 30%. Now I do lose numbers. So our consultants are paid very similar to how doctors are paid.   ⁓ And so you can get a general idea. So mine are general ideas. It's not my highest month. It's not my lowest month. It's the average is what I've selected to do for these costs. So again, this spreadsheet will not be absolutely perfect, but I think it's a really great tool to figure out what can I cut? How can I make sure my overheads in check? What do I need to produce? How do I basically figure out my BAM, my bare ACE minimum in a company? And so that's what we're gonna be looking at. So with that, I first list all the salaries and...   I want everything in there. And then what I have is a current. So I'm gonna have a current and then I'm also going to have like a future. So for example, if you're planning to hire somebody, but they're not hired yet, that's something that you're going to wanna know, what is my cost now? And what is going to be the future cost? Because those two things are actually different numbers. And so for me, it's really helpful so that I can look at you guys honestly.   When I started this, had like three team members and now we have tons of team members on there and outsource people and virtual assistants. And ⁓ the list just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. I can go back and I can look at things that we've done before. And so mine's on Google Sheets. And again, we've built one of these and I'm even happy to share, reach out, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. But this is something, so I go through all the salaries. And then for me, ⁓ if you do health insurance or you do a health stipend or whatever it is, you add that in.   as well, but then what I do, and again, talk to your CPA, see what your payroll tax are. For me, I just estimate 10%. I always like to air higher. So you will notice in all of my projections and everything I do, I'm going to always air higher than it actually is rather than lower. And so just looking at that, just so you know, that's how I do. So my CPA told me 10%, we have business in four different states. I think we're actually up to five now.   So I estimate high, no matter what state they're in, I just do a 10%. So I'll do my total salaries of the month, an estimated 10 % payroll. And then I've got that in there, my total payroll. Then we have our health stipends or health insurance, our 401k costs in there, how much it costs me per user, what the 4 % is. I actually go grab people's salaries and their bonuses, put it in there. So I have a pretty good idea. Then what I do is I check every single month to see based what I have here, is that close?   to what I'm actually paying or is it not? I know some of you might be like, well, here, I just get it from my CPA, I get a P &L. I agree, but this is a good checks and balance between my CPA and myself. And also when I'm trying to project and forecast, can I add people in? How much is this gonna have? Where can I cut? If I can see it all line itemed out, it's actually for me at least much easier for me to see what are all my costs and w

Tiff and Kristy spell out what it takes to onboard to the best of your ability. They touch on the questions a hiring manager should be asking themself during interviews, how an applicant will be learning about your practice, the appropriate vibes to give out for your business, and more.   Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:00) Hello Dental A Team listeners. I am here with you again today with my fave podcaster I'm sorry rest of the team. She's got that title right now. She's got the crown Miss Kristy is here with me today And this one we had to talk about it beforehand and I'm excited. I'm now excited for this We had to brainstorm a little bit before recording this podcast to ensure we were on the right track and like minded on this which I think speaks volume to the   you know, podcast topic, but also to how well our team works together and how well our team really is bonded. And Kristy, before we get into today's topic, first of all, welcome. Thank you so much for giving me, it's Monday today, so giving me your Monday afternoon so we could record a couple of podcasts. How are you?   DAT Kristy (00:50) Good, I always look forward to my Mondays when I get to spend them with you.   The Dental A Team (00:54) Thank you. I used to do these on Fridays, which was like, it's a fun way to end of the week. But I was like, I think it's a fun way to start the week too, because we get time together. And then I just like them better on Mondays. So hopefully you guys do too.   DAT Kristy (01:08) I agree.   The Dental A Team (01:10) So today's podcast, you guys, if you're subscribed to our newsletters, you know that our podcasts kind of follow the same topic and genre of our newsletters. If you're not subscribed to our newsletters, hop over to TheDentalATeam.com, hit subscribe because there's actually, I mean, we follow the same cadence and the same topics, but they're gonna be a little bit different. So if you're looking for more information, a lot of times they have downloads in them too. So if you're not subscribed, go do that.   Our marketing team would love me for that little plug, but truly if you're not getting those yet, you should be, so go grab them. ⁓ Today's topic may be, I think today's topic on podcast might be a little bit different than topic by newsletter. And Kristy and I wanted to take a stab at really kind of switching the mindset on this space. And Kristy, think I'm gonna like boost our egos. I think you and I actually do really, really well.   at seeing something and flipping it and being like, well, what if we looked at it from this angle instead of that one? I think you and I actually do really, really well at that. So thank you for working together with me on that. Today, you guys, your newsletter coming through, like I said, it's gonna be a little bit different. Today's podcast, we're really gonna be talking about not off-boarding, like what to do, how to let someone go, because we're really not here for that. Like the consulting team is here for...   doing everything we can to hire the right person and to make sure that there's complete clarity around everything that each individual is doing, that the path is set and you actually have no questions about keeping them on or off boarding them. Like that's in your court, that is not in our court. So we thought it would be more beneficial and more fun for the two of us to really talk about onboarding correctly and like even before you're onboarding, what that looks like.   Kristy, I think this might actually be fun. I'm just spinning us a little bit, but I kind of want to talk about us attracting you into the Dental A Team because you haven't always been here, right? We have met you, Kiera, I have met you a long time ago, but you haven't been with the Dental A Team forever, even though to us and likely to all of our listeners, it does feel like you have been a part of this team since   DAT Kristy (03:20) No.   The Dental A Team (03:33) the very beginning, which I think also speaks volumes to our topic today because that goes right along with what we're thinking. Now, how did that happen, Kristy? Like, how did Dental A Team, how did we attract you? You found us. ⁓ We are so thankful for it. But how did we attract you, who fit so seamlessly into the dynamics of our team, our goals?   you literally like consult just like we do like everything about you embodies who we are. How is that possible? How did we do that?   DAT Kristy (04:11) Yeah, you know, with every place you go, there's little things that may change a little bit, but the heart of things don't change. And so you're right, if we align not only in process, but also culture. so ⁓ when it came time for my journey to shift and change, it was important to find the like minded space and people. ⁓   not only for me to help them grow, but for you guys to help me grow, right? Like they say, look around who you surround yourself with because you're kind of like the top five people you hang around, right? And so ⁓ it was really important for me to find that culture and process both, you know, and I'll make sure we were aligned.   The Dental A Team (05:05) Yeah, thank you. I think if you guys can hear what she's saying, right, Kristy's saying that she was able to see that she was in alignment with who we are as humans, that our goals, our vision, our company standards really aligned with Kristy. While there might be some caveats and some spaces of learning or some spaces where it's like, okay, I thought it would look like this, but let's try this or and let's try and let's create this. ⁓   DAT Kristy (05:07) Yeah.   The Dental A Team (05:34) That's massive because offboarding, offboarding does, it's not easy, you guys. It's not, there's not an easy peasy process that takes emotions out and just makes it to where you're the robot that can easily just fire people whenever you want. What I do instead is I try to make sure that I'm representing our company to the best that I possibly can in everything that I do. So when I'm going through, I'm the hiring manager for our consulting team.   When I'm going through, I'm doing the same thing Kristy said she's doing. I'm looking to see, does this candidate align with who we are? the response is coming back in alignment with how we speak to each other or how we speak to clients. Is it in alignment with what I would love to see a timeline as, right? Like I've gotten, I've had candidates where I'm like, my gosh, their resume is fantastic. This is the experience that I want, spot on.   I'm gonna reach out to them and I don't hear from them for like a week. I'm like, well, that's not in alignment with us. And so ensuring that on both sides, we're taking a step back and we're questioning the alignment of those pieces, I think is a huge, huge reason why it's been successful. Now, in order to do that, this is a caveat, you guys. You can't just show up and just,   expect everyone to know how to show up, right? You've got to really lead by example. And in my opinion, we are leading by core values, mission and vision. We are driven by the why of this company. And that is what attracts people. That's what attracted Kristy. Kristy was attracted to the why of our company, our mission, our vision.   and how we show up, which are our core values. I show up in our core values, Kiera does, Britt does. When Kristy came to the interview, she was like, okay, got it. I can see it in real life. So Kristy, as an outsider, you're applying for a job. In what ways were you able to see that we did have an alignment or at least enough alignment to say, let's explore this in that... ⁓   hiring process, like in the application process, you're sending your resume outside of listening to us on on podcasts, I'm thinking how can offices kind of emanate and represent that in a space where like minded people can find them?   DAT Kristy (08:06) Yeah, if I'm understanding you correctly, think it's truly... ⁓   You have to make sure you're painting clarity for people on, you have to speak your culture. Like for instance, how many times do we talk to our own clients and say, do you have a mission statement? Do you have core values? And they'll be like, yeah, we do, somewhere. You know what I mean? You have to live it and you can't just say, yes, I have it. You have to show that you have it and you use it and it means something.   The Dental A Team (08:37) Mm-hmm.   DAT Kristy (08:47) Right? And so when I found you guys, you could recite it. You lived it. You wove it into your process. Right? And it told me that it means something to you and you live by it. Like it's our code of conduct, if you will. Right? And it can't just be put in a drawer. You have to keep it alive in order for it to serve the ultimate goal and mission, if you will.   The Dental A Team (09:15) Mm hmm. Yeah, I totally agree. And it's just a it's a rep an outward representation. And so I think even in our job ads, right, and I know I work a lot with clients on this. I know I see you guys doing it, too. I know Monica just helped a client last week with some job ads. But making sure those job ads speak to you because I can write a job ad. But if you copy and paste the job that I wrote, even writing it for you, even my clients that I've worked with for seven plus years,   DAT Kristy (09:16) Thank   The Dental A Team (09:44) I can write it for you and I know you, but unless you go in and speak some of yourself into that ad, it's not gonna hit, it just doesn't resonate. And so a lot of practices too are very different than who I am. So if I write your ad and I attract me to your practice and your practice doesn't, you're not me, that person is likely not gonna be a good fit.   DAT Kristy (09:51) Mm-hmm.   Right.   The Dental A Team (10:13) Right?   It's just, she could or he could for sure for the, maybe for the long run, but attracting

Kiera shows listeners multiple places in life where there's likely opportunity for more balance, freedom, play, and ease by: Maximizing the hours you already work. Protecting your time like a CEO. Empowering your team to own their roles. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera and I am so excited because I love this topic and I hate this topic and it's such a great one and all of you are gonna be so excited about it and it's work-life balance without sacrificing production. Yep, you better believe that it is true and I'm here to show you today how you can do this.   but I really hate this terminology of work-life balance. So if you're new to the Dental A Team, welcome, hello. I'm so excited to have you here. If you've been here with us for a long time, high five, hugs. I'm so grateful you've been a part of this journey and I'm so excited to share with you tips, tricks. ⁓ And again, remember, sometimes the greatest form of learning is remembering what you already know. So these might be tips that you've heard before, but hopefully today it hits you differently because no man who's walked through a river is ever the same man because he...   is not the same man and the river is not the same river. So you today, you're not the same person, you're not the same practice, you're not the same scenario. So wherever you are, I'm super excited for you to figure out how to get this like balance and bliss in your life. And I hope you're ready for it. So the reality is like, I used to feel, and I don't know where this came from, like, why do we feel that we always have to like grind like our nose to the brim? Like we have to work so hard and we have to just grind so hard to get to success.   that like you just hate your life. Like why is it, why is it this like busyness and this exhaustiveness and this tired to be successful? Like why, where? And so I do believe that you can have balance and performance that can coexist, that you can be productive and balanced. And so the reality is we're going to walk through some of these pieces for you to help you see where could I maybe strike a little more balance, a little more freedom, a little more play, a little more ease in my life.   And that's maybe the better term of like work-life balance is more ease. It's more flow. It's more, I think just intentional. And how can I do that? So you guys, I love this. think that you should be something that I'm really passionate about is work and life. I'm very passionate about you being the best version of yourself in your life. That way you can show up as the best version of yourself for work. do not believe, Tiff and I talk about this all the time. Like outside of Dental A Team public's eye.   all the time about how work and life are not separate. It's like we think about these two halves and it's like, no, it's one. You're one person. You're going through this and it's like, well, here's half of me that's work. Here's half of me that's life. And it's like, no, no, no, no, no. How can I, Kiera, be the best version of myself that like feels balanced or ease or flow or calm or any of those things? Cause balance to me, don't love. Balance feels like I've got to like have my weight in front of me be equal.   ⁓ But flow to me is like a river flows and sometimes it's faster and sometimes it's slower and all of that's correct. And so this is something where for you to be the best version of yourself, for you to still be productive at the office while being the best version of you, ⁓ I think is what today's podcast will be about. So this is something where it's like, if you feel you are stretched thin or overwhelmed or you don't know how to produce without overworking and if you stop or slow down and get off the hamster, well, you're afraid that it's all gonna crash and burn. Well, hi, I'm Kiera.   I'm your personal therapist today ⁓ and I'm here to help you realize that that's not the reality, that there's a better, easier way to do it. And I'm here to give you a couple of quick steps that hopefully will take you through that ⁓ because I was there, I've seen offices do it and we've helped offices, hundreds, like literally hundreds and thousands of offices get out of that hamster will.   and into the flow that they were looking for. Tiff said it once and she was like, imagine Phoenix traffic. If you've never been to Phoenix, we'll do Chicago traffic, we'll do Texas traffic. Like you name it, big city traffic. She's like, just imagine if you're sitting there and this is like your life and you're sitting there and you're in this bumper to bumper traffic. And then all of a sudden you see that like better than even like an HOV or carpool lane. Like there's just like the way it strikes me like a lucky charm. Like it's like, ah, like the angels are singing. It's this gold path over there or like the yellow brick road. And you're like,   say, well, like I could get out of this nonsense over onto that lane. And like everybody, there's no traffic. There's no slowing down. It is just this easy breezy, like truly like, hope you guys can visualize this like golden path road with gold light over it. And everybody on that road is just so happy. And yet you're sitting here hating your life because you're sitting in all this nonsense traffic. Well, that's kind of hopefully how this feels of like, let's teach you how to get over into that.   that lane that you didn't even know existed today and give you some tangible tips to that. So number one is going to be maximize the hours that you already work. So let's have it like, ⁓ we did this awesome thing ⁓ at a conference and ⁓ we're talking about this and this is so fascinating to me, okay? So in a given week, there's 24 hours in a day. Yes, everybody following? And there's seven hours or seven days in a week, okay?   So if we take that, I love some good numbers, I love some good math. So 24 hours in a day, and we have seven days in a week, that's 168 hours, all right, in a given week, okay? So now, let's say I'm gonna be really generous to you. We know, let's say, let's just, mean, Dennis, let's give you, like, we're gonna work 40 hours in a week. You might say I work more than that, that's okay. I'm just gonna subtract 40 right now, okay? So that leaves us with 128 hours in a week.   Now you're like, well, Kiera, we also have to sleep. I got you. I'm going to be real generous and I'm going to give you eight hours of sleep times seven days. That's 56 hours. None of you are out there probably sleeping eight hours. As you should be prioritizing this, I do not want to be scrimping on sleep because I think sleep is one of the most important things you can do for yourself. So we have 128 hours after the 40 hour work week. We've got 56 hours of sleep minus 128. That leaves us with 72 freaking hours a week. And my question is, what are you doing with those hours?   Now you might say, Carrie works 60 hours. Fantastic, you still have 52 hours if you're working a 60 hour work week, which I hope and pray you're not working 60 hours. So let's get it to where maybe I don't wanna be working even 40 hours and I would prefer to even work 30 hours. Well then if I gave you 30 hours, you're up to 82 hours a week of extra time. And people are like, Carrie, I don't have time, I don't have time. 72 hours, 72 in a week outside of sleeping and work.   Now you're like, well, I've got to make dinner and I've got the kids fine go for it, but there's still so many hours. And I, when I heard this, I was like, yeah, what am I doing with those 72 hours? Like, all right. So maybe I could do like an hour of workout every day. All right. So like, let me just put out like seven hours there. Like, okay, 72. Let's just take this down 72 minus seven hours. All right. I'm down to 65 hours. Well, you know, I've got to like, hang out with my kids. Like we're at soccer, we're at camp. Like that takes, okay. Count it up. How many hours? Like drive time and all of that.   Let's give you like, okay, shoot, you're at 15 hours a week, which honestly, I guarantee you're not putting 15 hours of soccer and camp and all that in a given week. Maybe you are, but honestly, that's a lot. That's like two full days of work plus some extra time. So if we're at that, you're still at 50 hours and we're not scrimping sleep. We're not scrimping work. We're not scrimping kid time. We gave you an hour of workout every single day.   something to think about. So in this step one, to be able to have this balance or flow or best version of you is to maximize the hours you already have. So ⁓ me and Chad GPT, I named her Wanda. I hang out with Wanda all the time and I'm like, all right, you're the most brilliant scheduler of all time. You're the most productive business coach. Like you teach me how to maximize my time. And Wanda gives me some really good things. And it was interesting because I started looking like I realized   that I was spending an extra 30 minutes going to the gym every single day with how far away it was. And I was like, all right, well then that actually adds up. What if I just bought a home gym? Like there are solutions. What if I got weights, free weights? have my personal trainer. She could create some. So I go to the gym X amount of days and I work from home X amount of days. Could that help out? Like that would give me some time back in there. And so it's really like, how can you maximize the hours that you already have in your life to then maybe have a bit more fun?   Like I don't want all scheduled. I want fun. I want to hang out with Jason. I want to be able to like you guys I used to not watch TV at all because I felt like it was an absolute waste of time because I wasn't making money and I wasn't doing something productive. Literally I was like, nope, this is an absolute waste of time. And I'm like,

Tiff and Kristy provide guidance on how to assess your practice's financial health as 2025 begins to wrap up (and what to start thinking about for 2026). They touch on… Reviewing those P&Ls monthly Aligning spending habits Keeping emotions in check And more! Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review The Dental A Team (00:01) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. I am so excited to be here with you today. I truly love this portion of what we get to do in our worlds and getting to get you so much valuable information out to the masses is something that Dental A Team has worked and strived just so hard to achieve in our.   consulting world of just getting you all this information and I have with me today one of my faves. I seriously, I have the most amazing consulting team and if you guys haven't heard from all of them yet, you soon will and if you don't know them personally yet, they're not your consultants. I hope that you get to meet every single one of us even if you're just coming to the events, however it is, but I...   have a personal favorite here for recording podcasts with. She calms me, she just keeps the energy light and fresh and I love any time that we get together. Kristy, thank you so much for being here today. How are you doing? The weather is like weird today. I always tell everybody about the Arizona weather and it's so much fun to have everybody here in the same place. We all live in Arizona in the Phoenix area. Jane is down in the Tucson area, but.   We really love it. And Kristy, how's your world over there? You're just in the beautiful little pocket of Phoenix. And how is it?   DAT Kristy (01:23) Yeah, it's awesome. I love that you say that because we do pride ourselves on the weather here, right? But even with that, this weekend we got a lot of rain, what they say the most in like seven years. Yet all of us, even as close as we are, we experience it so different, right? Like some places flooded. I didn't get flooding, thank goodness, but it downpoured. It was fun and it's made it for cool mornings. So we're taking it.   The Dental A Team (01:42) Yeah.   I agree. I agree that humidity is hitting us hard. So we're not super used to that, but it is making for some, some really beautiful mornings. totally agree. And yes, Britt and I were actually in Reno at our quarterly in-person traction event where we have a, implementer who comes in and leads it for us. And he helps us to build out the company structure and,   teaches and trains us on how to run large meetings like that. So it's always super cool. But we were up in Reno with Britt and or with Kiera Shelbi and Britt and I actually got stuck. Jenna got out. She got back to Denver, which is crazy because Denver always shuts down. And so she got back to Denver. But ⁓ we got stuck until Saturday because the airport was shut down. And then there was a storm in Vegas because we thought, OK, well, we'll fly to Vegas because it's only a five and a half hour drive from there and we'll still get home. And then ⁓   that flight got canceled too. So it was wild. was meant to be, got more time in Reno and got to spend a little bit more time with Kiera. So that was great, but it was kind of crazy. It's not usually Phoenix that disrupts the flight patterns. And it was a hundred percent Phoenix. There were so many flights canceled because so many planes were stuck here and other planes couldn't get in. So it was wild, Kristy. It was wild to watch it from afar. We just got like TikTok notifications and you know, news articles are like, my gosh, all the Waymo's stuck in the puddles and things like that. So.   DAT Kristy (03:15) Yeah,   they just stopped in the middle of the road like what the heck.   The Dental A Team (03:18) Yeah,   that's why whenever somebody says, you use the way most? I'm like, heck no, I have seen them stuck in the middle of intersections far too many times. I'm sure one day it's going to be fantastic, but I haven't built that trust muscle just yet.   DAT Kristy (03:30) Yeah, agree. Well, I'm glad you made it home safe. And ⁓ yeah, the humidity is odd for us too.   The Dental A Team (03:34) Thank you.   Yeah,   yeah, it totally is. And my son was like, Oh, you go to the East Coast enough, Mom, you're fine. Stop complaining. And I was like, Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. But but in the spirit of planning, we we truly had an amazing time really just one getting the time together as a leadership team and then to really looking and projecting like where are we at? What's Q4 going to look like? And then also kind of prepping and planning for 2026. So super relevant in this conversation here.   today and really looking at ⁓ practice health from a financial standpoint. And this is something that your CPAs and your financial advisors and all of those professionals should be looking at with you as well. This is the time of the year that we're really looking at what is this last year? Because we get to Q4 and it's like, well, it's kind of like the end of your senior year, right? You get to the end of your senior year of high school or college and you're like, well, everything's kind of basically submitted. So from here,   It's really just like, let's do our best and make sure that we really cross that finish line strong, but there's not a ton of pivots to be made to really change the game. So kind of prepping and planning. And I think looking ahead at 2026, putting in some really solid ways of checking in on that financial health, something that I've seen that, Kristy, I know you do this as well, but something I've seen a lot of clients really ramp up is a monthly pulse and even like,   weekly sometimes pulse on what the financials of a practice actually look like has really been beneficial in helping them to really reach those goals. And Kristy, you are really fantastic at figuring those financial goals out and then like backtracking them to see, okay, well, what do we need to do to get there? And how do you help practices really keep that financial pulse top of mind and that   running that way so that they're constantly looking at those numbers without feeling overwhelmed and also without losing sight of it. Because you know sometimes you do something too often, you start glazing over it. What's that fine balance that some some tactical tips that you have that you and your practices are working on right now?   DAT Kristy (05:52) Yeah, well, first and foremost, I believe that you have to be getting your P &Ls from your accountant monthly, right? We can't be waiting. I have seen some clients where they're begging for them for three months ago, you know, and it makes it really hard to stay on top of it if we're not getting them monthly. So first and foremost, make sure you're getting them from them monthly so that we can take a look at them and evaluate. And I like what you said, Tiff. ⁓   you can be, you can go over the top. It's a fine line, right? So I love looking at them every month and I'm not going to freak out if something's out of whack one month, but certainly let's look at the quarter, right? And make sure that those metrics are in alignment for the quarter. And to your point, I always like to speak in terms of like, we're going to crawl before we walk and we're going to walk before we run. Like,   In the crawling stage, let's just make sure where's your overhead, right? What percentage are we at there and what is our profit or EBITDA, so to speak, right? Where are we ranging there? That would be my first little steps to take and start looking at it.   The Dental A Team (07:10) Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. And I think what time of the month do you usually push for those PNLs to be received? I have my judgments, but what are yours?   DAT Kristy (07:21) like to say by the 15th. I'll give you a little grace and give you by the 20th, but the 15th is my ideal target.   The Dental A Team (07:28) Yeah, yeah. I think I'm a little stricter. If I don't have those CPAs reaching out to us by like the eighth to the 10th, I'm like, my gosh, how are we supposed to work with this? There's a lot of, and I ask that because there's a lot of clients out there that are getting them like the first week of the next, next month. And so maybe December, we're finally looking at October.   DAT Kristy (07:35) Thank   The Dental A Team (07:53) And that is like, gosh, such a lag that we've got these questions floating around of like, where's my cashflow TIF and how do I fix this, Kristy? And it's like, I don't know, because I don't have eyes on what's happening. The P &Ls should be much quicker and much cleaner than that. And realistically, it's just it's the bookkeeper going in and allocating the certain expenses to the category that they should be in. So it's time consuming.   but it shouldn't be too crazy. And if yours is too crazy, then we probably need to look at your spending. Do we need to dial back the number of orders that you're placing every month? Do we need to make sure that things are a little bit more simple on that side, that it can be done quicker? Because we wanna be able to make real-time adjustments as quickly as we can. If we're on a two-month lag.   then we're adjusting for two months ago, it could look totally different. And then next month we get two months ago and it's like, it was totally different. We didn't need to change it. And so we're just constantly spinning our wheels in that way if we're not getting the data fast enough. And that is, in my opinion, one of the easiest ways to ensure that you're financially healthy is really just ensuring, like you said, Kristy, that on an overtime basis, things are consistent and they're clear, that they make sense.   DAT Kristy (09:08) 100%. I like that you said push to the 10th, because obviously if, you know, in the walk or crawling stage, we're just learning, right? We have a little bit of buffer, but as we get to the top

A practice built with character is a practice made up of loyalty, positive culture, and long-term growth. Kiera provides listeners with a list of questions to ask that will set the tone for showing up as the best, truest version. She then gives specific takeaways to meet that ideal culture and stay consistent. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:01) Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera. And today, I hope you're having an amazing day. I hope you're having fun. I hope you remember that dentistry is honestly the greatest profession we could ever get to be a part of. So I hope you're just so excited. I hope you're loving your life. I hope you're happy. I hope that if you're not, that you're committing to make a change in the next week so that way you can be happy. My husband showed me this reel the other day that said, it was from like, I don't know, a Buddhist monk, I think. And he said that yesterday is dead.   Today is all we have and tomorrow is not born yet. And so don't wait for the happy life. You want the happy day. And I've thought about this so much because I think so many of us wait for happiness. We wait and we think, once I get this or once I do that or when I have the team or when my practice doesn't have this, then I'll be happy. Then I won't be stressed. And it's like, no, it's actually on the day. It's today. It's the decisions I'm making today. It's the pieces that I'm doing today and finding that happy.   And they said when you can have a happy day is when you have the happy life. I think when you can have the less like the more stress free day more consistently, it's when you have the more stress free life consistently. And so with that, just reminding you that it's okay. You don't have to do this alone. And I'm here for you and our team's here for you. And dentistry really is one of the greatest professions you could ever be a part of. So welcome. I hope that if you're new to the podcast, welcome. I'm Kiera. I love dentistry. I love helping people. love life.   And I love helping people get the life that they always dreamed of and making that a reality. Today, I wanna talk about ⁓ character. My dad and I were talking and my dad said, in the word character, there's the word act. And I had never picked up that the word character has act. ⁓ And I wanna talk about some leadership pieces today and culture pieces for your practice on building a practice with character and how people act. And...   I think character is something that you hire, yes, of like how people are naturally and who they are naturally, but also I think it's something that you do lead. ⁓ when we look at this, like when you have a practice of character of how people are acting, it does create loyalty, it does create culture, and it does create long-term growth. And so for everybody just going through that, ⁓ looking at that and seeing what is your character possibly? What is the character of your practice possibly?   And what things can we do to evolve your character to make it be a place of things that you want, of the loyalty, the culture, the long-term team. ⁓ And when I look at really awesome practices, the way people act and the character that that practice has is truly something embedded deep into the roots of that practice. going through that, ⁓ Dental A Team's goal is to help offices build to scale, to have the life that they want, ⁓ but to do it in a way that's meaningful.   that it's fulfilling, that it has purpose for you. And so ⁓ this is truly trying to help build a culture for team members to stay, for patients to be raving and for leaders to truly be proud of the practice that they built. So character with this act, like step one, if you want, like we'll just kind of go into this whole process is like how you act when it's hard. ⁓ And I think when I look at teams,   Culture is something that's like not built during easy times, it's revealed during the hard ones. When our production's not hit, when the cash flow's not there, when like all the things are pushing upon you, how do you act? Do you respond with conflict with consistency, clarity and compassion? Do you admit mistakes as a leader? Do you prioritize long-term trust over short-term comfort? Like how is your character in those hard times? And for you as a doctor, and there's the book, Extreme Ownership by Jacque Willings, and I think about this so much of   Like, okay, what is my culture of my company? But what is the culture of me? Because my team ultimately is a reflection of me and how do I act? In high school, I was nominated as most poised and I thought that was such a weird phrase for me to get like most poised. But I actually think about that a lot and like when things are hard, do I lose my temper? Do I yell? Do I shout? How do I act? For me, I almost think like I have the tiger like queen strength. Like what if I was the queen of this   I don't know, like kingdom, my business. Who do I need to show up as? And that character, like really looking to see how do you act. And it's crazy because when you look at a team and you want a team to be a certain way, you got to look at the leaders and how are they showing up? How are they acting? And when my dad talked about this character, it's all about how you act. It's how you act in the hard times, how you act in the good times, how you act when no one's watching. It's how you act when people are watching. And what is your ultimate character in your practice? And so, ⁓   When doctors start to have consistency, clarity, and compassion, when you say like, kind is clear, ⁓ when you're more clear, when you admit mistakes and you have humility, but in addition to that, you also are focusing on making sure that I don't just admit the mistake, but I find the solution to the mistake so it doesn't happen again. ⁓ When we're doing long-term, we have uncomfortable conversations and we're building trust over short-term solutions. Like I'm not just saying things.   And who I was at a leader at the beginning of the NLA team compared to who I am today, she's a much more mature grownup version of herself. ⁓ And it came through a lot of these hard conversations. It came through a lot of these hard awarenesses. It came from asking people, but also asking myself, did I show up as the person that I want to be and the leader that my team needs me to be? And if not, what do I need to do to change that? And so   Thinking about that, that's the culture you're building. And as much as I don't want to be like a rip on leaders, leaders are the mold. Like how you, what you do and don't do is a subconscious theme that runs through your practice. And so I think when people feel like they have no hope and they have no way of changing things and there, there is no solution. The answer is like, there actually is a solution. There actually is a process and a path out. It just sometimes is starting with you.   and not sometimes starting with you, it's always starting with you. And so if you can focus on building that and the culture you're building constantly, that's going to help and that's gonna lead into the next phase and that's gonna be through core values. And core values, I used to think were so laissez-faire. I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, core values. But ⁓ really it's hard to hire the character you want. It's hard to continue to create it if you don't even know.   what it looks like in your practice. so core values kind of give this like framework. call them like, to me, they're like a cookie cutter is how I envision it. Like here's the cookie cutter, not like that we're a cookie cutter practice, but it's the shape. So a cookie cutter shapes the dough into what they want it to be. And core value shape the practice into what we want it to be and helps us have this, I would say filter of who we're hiring for. And so it's, what are the three to five core values that define your team and how you work? Now owners,   Go back to when you first started your practice and what were the three core things that really made your practice what you want it to be? For me, it was always do the right thing, fun and ease. Like from day one, those were the pieces. Those are our core. And if you look at it, it's do the right thing for the company and the practice. We like to have a ton of fun when we're doing it. I I love sprinkles. I love to the sparkles. I love to add the glitter. I love to add the fun. I love to surprise and delight. And then it's to do everything with ease. How can I make this easier for a practice? I don't want things to be hard for an office.   But like that's truly the core of when I started a Dental A team. Now we've evolved into who we want people to be on our team. We have other people, pieces of ownership. We have pieces of passion for excellence and results focused. We have pieces of grit. And so there's other core values that have come and there's core and then there's aspirational. ⁓ But I want to make sure that the people we're hiring and filtering through have that character in them already. I don't want to try to develop that in them. I want to expand it once they're a part of our company.   but I don't want to try and convince somebody to have grit. Like grit's a core portion of you. So what that does is once we figure out what our core of our company is, then we have those in our hiring, we have those in our reviews, we have those in our meetings and decision-making. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to the core values when I've been looking at team members and I look to see rating this person on our core values, how do they fit? And a lot of times the people that are not elevating our team are the ones who usually are getting lower scores on the core values.   And it becomes very crystal clear for me. And so what we do is we hire. So when you're having this, you hire based on core values. You filt

Office autopsy time! Kiera and Dana review a "practice" that went from broke to success in a handful of months, and how tracking their numbers saved them. Every single office will go through a cash flow crunch at least once, so it's important to understand the right flotation devices to utilize. This could mean pulling overhead apart, identifying production and collections percentages, analyzing fixed costs, and more. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and today is a special day. I have the one and only Dana Morsell on the podcast today. And prior to this, asked her, she's gone through a few nicknames and Dana, believe it or not, I was actually thinking about this last night. No joke. I was thinking like, there's Spiffy Tiffy and there's no BS Britt. And I was like, Dana, you've been with me for a long time. Like, why have I not gotten like a good nickname for you? And like, Britty Gritty.   And I was like, okay, I just like throw wise on the end of these names like Tiffy, that is their TT DM does not sound quite right. Like that's like DMing on Instagram. And so I thought like, it's just Dainey. And now you told me I to do it with a Southern draw. So it's going to be like Dainey on the far. So well.   Dana (00:44) Yep, it has to   have it. I feel like it reminds me so much of my dad and like it just has to have that.   Kiera Dent (00:51) Well, it's my dad. grew up on a dairy farm for all the listeners. Don't worry. We have like a really good podcast today. It's an office autopsy that Dana has taken these three incredible practices, like one owner, like they went from just stress and chaos and burnout to complete an absolute just like freedom, which and Dana has done it so quickly. So we're going to get there. I'm just going to tell you about this dairy farm real fast. ⁓ my dad grew up on a dairy farm and he used to say his mom would always like, Ricky, like that's how he would call him.   imagine myself on this like beautiful estate and like sweeping my porch and having this like big white porch out there. And I'm like, Dainey!   So that's how I envisioned this so, you know, that's that's the vision over here So whether you like it or not, otherwise we can go back to donuts with Dana. What do you prefer?   Dana (01:38) ⁓ I actually love you standing on your white porch shouting that, so we'll take it.   Kiera Dent (01:41) I think   it just fits and if you haven't heard other podcasts, if you haven't been with us as long, Dana has the most random stories like running her bicycle into a deer. She has so many animals. She's got kids like Dana will always come to the table with the most random stories and she whoops everybody on trivia. We play games in our company and it's always like team trivia. Dana will whoop them. So, you know, here we go Dana. Welcome to the podcast. How are you over there Dana? Special Dana?   Dana (02:09) doing pretty   good. Yeah, doing pretty good. think all of my wild stories and my trivia comes from like, I don't know, I just have this like weird memory thing where I can like memorize things very quickly. Even like applying for a car loan, they're always shocked that I know all of my account numbers, all of my balances down to the penny, like just off the top of my head. And so I think that that's kind of where some of that comes from.   Kiera Dent (02:28) No.   I didn't   even know that about you. So that's also a really interesting thing to note. All right, so Dana will remember, mean, is this okay? Is it something where you can remember numbers like past past? Or is it like your banking out is just current right now, but you couldn't remember like a month ago.   Dana (02:47) No, so it is   past-past, but it's because I don't know, my brain does this weird, like I make a riddle out of everything and I'm constantly like, okay, well, if I run and remember something, like if it's, you know, two, three, six, I'm like, well, two times three is six. And like, I just, I don't know, create like weird connections, especially with numbers in my brain and like riddle it so that I remember it.   Kiera Dent (03:07) Fascinating. Fascinating. Okay. Well, there's   another random fact about Dana. So Dana is one of my absolute fave humans in the entire world. Dana, truly, I say that on the podcast and I genuinely mean it. And we have talked about it on show, off show. Dana is just a super incredible human and offices who get to work with her are so lucky. So we thought it'd be fun. Office autopsy time. If you're new to the podcast, this is where we kind of go behind the scenes. ⁓   We mash up a few practices. just so you know, you'll never really fully know exactly who it is just to keep a client patient confidentiality. But we want to highlight of things that we do in real life, because I think consulting can be kind of hard. Like what do you actually do and what are the results you actually get? And so Dana just had some really solid wins with some practices. And I thought, Dana, let's get on the podcast and do our office autopsy, where we lift up the hood and we look behind the scenes. And what were some of the things you as a consultant did for this practice?   What are some of the wins and gains that they've had? ⁓ that I think will just be fun. So Dana, let's take it away. ⁓ kind of like, where did this practice start? What have we implemented and where are they now? Maybe even tell them like where they started, where they got to. And then we'll talk about the how, because that's really fun. I don't like to wait for the like end result. I want to know quickly like, okay, they were like dying, drowning, broke, and then they got like hundreds of dollars and they got it in like a month. How did they do it? So take us away. Where were they? Where did they get to? And then let's go into the house.   Dana (04:30) Yeah, and I think that this practice is just a really cool example of like the importance of knowing your numbers, especially when you have multiple practices and knowing what each practice is bringing to the table and having really clear separated numbers for those things. And so it was just really fun and I think a cool way to highlight how when you know those things, then you can fix systems that are broken or aren't working to see massive progress. So when this office came, they were at a negative profit.   ⁓ each month and   Kiera Dent (05:03) We're talking like they're losing money, losing sleep, stressed out of their minds.   Dana (05:04) Yeah, yes.   So stressed, they're pulling personal, you know, they're pulling boatloads of personal cash every month to cover expenses to keep these practices open. ⁓ You know, doctor is going from office to office. And it's truly, truly really stressful time and they don't really know where the leaks are coming from. And they can't put their finger on what's going on that's causing it. And   yeah, stressed out to the max and just really, really wanting help and wanting to kind of pinpoint and give them a clear picture of why they are so stressed and why these practices that feel as if they're booming or are starting to get busy aren't profitable at that point.   Kiera Dent (05:35) This   And I think this is so common for so many practices, which is why we were talking morning huddle. We share all of our client wins every single day. You guys, we have a morning huddle. It's very fun. We talk about team wins, client wins. And when Dana talked about this, I'm like, Dana, we're podcasting. Like, can you get on the podcast with me? I think this is such a big win because it, yes, it's, it's quote unquote one practice that we've kind of mashed a few of them, but this is like every single office. And so many of them don't realize what's going on with my profit numbers. They feel like it's booming.   but they have no money left over and then they're stressed to the max and they're countless hours. And this isn't just a brand new practice. Like this is a business owner who'd been in business for a long time. Like it's almost that I should with air quotes know what I'm doing, but I just don't know where it is. And Dana, I'm so proud of you for saying like they need to know their numbers. We harp on this like crazy because when you actually can dig in, which I'm excited for you to kind of do like the grand reveal and then the how, but I mean, how many practices, Dana, this is, I hope people realize one,   practices all go through this. So this is not just a siloed to one or two practices. This is every office at some point is going to go through cashflow crunches, stressed out, working all hours and not being able to pinpoint. And just because you're profitable today does not mean you're forever going to be profitable. It is something you have to constantly work at, constantly be vigilant on. And it's not just like, set it, forget it, we're on our way. And so I think for that, but also I think so many people because they don't know what to do.   they spin their wills that creates this cycle of death in my opinion. Like you truly are spinning, you're burning the candle at all ends. I remember when I met, cause I'm, I talked to this office when they were joining our company and I'm like, my gosh, like I can't want this more than they want it. Like they have to make the decision to join us, but my gosh, I see your problem. see your pain and we have got to fix that like an ASAP and get CPR because   the owner was just running frantic and it was impacting family life and financials. And to me, you worked so hard that you should not be living that life this far into business ownership, whatever stage you're in. So I'm ready for the grand reveal. I hope people just realize this is not siloed and it's not something that's permanent. And it's also once you become profitable, that's also not permanent too. No season is

Are you starting to panic over how to reward your team for another year well done? Should you show appreciation in the first place? Kiera gives advice on how to figure out those end-of-year bonuses, parties, trips, and more, plus how not to stress about it. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent (00:01) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera, and I hope you're just having an amazing day. I hope you're loving your life. I hope you remember that, honest to goodness, this is such a blessing. We get to work in dentistry. How fun is that? And I just hope you remember that we are so blessed to give back to people. We're blessed to be in dentistry. Dental A Team's mission is to positively impact the world of dentistry in the greatest way possible. So that's what we're here for. And the job of this podcast is to give you tactical practical tips that elevate your mind, elevate your thinking.   help your practice be more profitable, more fun, more successful. That's what we're here for. So with that today, I just thought it'd be fun. Like end of year bonuses, trips, parties, like how do you even decide what to do? This comes up often in our consulting offices, like I don't know what to do. We had an in-person mastermind meeting and I remember the doctors, there were team members there too, so we had it. Doctors and leadership team members and the doctor was like, team members, just tell us what you want.   And the teams are like, we just want to be appreciated. And they're like, we know you want more than that. And so I just thought today it'd be fun to just kind of do a rift with you of what are some of ideas? What are some things you can do pros and cons? So doctors, you can work with your team of really what can I do for this end of year and what's the most powerful and hopefully just giving you some food for thought today, making this tactical for you. So when I'm looking at end of year bonuses, number one, ⁓ I hate surprises. So me as a business owner,   I actually set a budget for what our end of year will be, whether it's bonuses, trips, parties, I don't care what it is, I try to set that. And right now I'm trying to release this early, so hey, you could be proactive on it, but for me, we actually have a budget for it. And then I don't like to do big expenses, that's just not my jam, I don't enjoy it, unless I'm buying like a big vehicle or something like that, that I can have an immediate write off. But even that, I try to keep my cash and just get the write off for it. So with that, when I'm doing end of year, like I said, budget it out, project it out, and then start saving.   whatever month this is releasing, however many more months you've got through end of year, let's say we're going to do $5,000. We'll break that up over the next, let's say we've got five months left, save $1,000. I put mine into a high yield savings account. That way the money's there, I can spend it it's not hitting me in December when everything else is hitting me. So that's what I'm going to do is whether it's a bonus, trip or the party. Like you can set a budget, doctors, you don't have to let your team decide what you're going to do. And oftentimes I like to set that as a percentage.   of what we're doing. So if I know that we're going to do XYZ and I know my overhead's at 50%, well, I could do like 1 % or 2 % of that. That way my overhead's at 51 or 52 % with this cost, right? That makes it really nice and easy. And then I'm going to be able to figure out the budget from there. So that's one piece. Or you can just say, I want to do $5,000 or I want to do this. Or like, let me look this up if we want to do a trip or a party, let me figure this out. So for our team, we figured it out. This is how much we spend every single year per number of team members.   I can then plug that into my projections for the next year. So I know based on the size of the team, where we're going, how much this is going to cost us, it's really going to help you then just budget it out. And I think knowing the budgets, putting it into our projections, then we're not getting these psycho surprise expenses. This is hopefully going to help you not cry in December, because so many offices are like, I had the worst December. And I'm like, well, yeah, we have all the holiday time. We're not doing as much dentistry. And we get hit with all the expenses. Double, triple, quadruple whammy.   not a super fun month. So let's cut the crying in December and make this easy. Now, how do I decide if it's going to be a bonus, a trip or a party? Well, that depends on your team, depends on what you're doing it for. What's our why behind your, why you're doing this? What do you want to achieve out of this is really something I want you to look at of why are we doing this? So for some people it's like, Hey, we set this huge lofty goal. So we're going to do a bonus of X amount. Again, looking at your numbers to determine that amount. I love percentages.   ⁓ or dollar amount so that way you just know what you need to do. So that could be a bonus system that you put into place of, hey, we crush it, we hit this. It could be for your leadership team possibly. It could also be for your teammates, whatever it is, but that can also, that could be a bonus. It could also just be, we want to thank you. ⁓ Do we go on a trip? That's again, dependent upon your team. Is your team more bonus? Are they more trip? Are they more party? Is it a combination of it? And also what feels good to you as the owner? What do you want to do? What's going to help you celebrate this?   That's going to be a decision for you to make. And so when I'm looking at this, you can have an anonymous survey. Some people get so excited about trips, but then when you start to get into the logistics, it's like, well, how much is this going to cost? we do a plus one? How much time is that going to be away from the business? What is this really going to cost all the way around? And is that worth it? I tell teams, I'm like, rock on. If you want to do this, figure out the cost. Let's figure it out. Put it in our production. Let's add it into our monthly piece. That way we can pay for it. Awesome. Again.   I don't want these things coming out of craziness. I like to plan for them, prepare for them and have the whole team help you. Now, if you're gonna do a party, a lot of times I like parties over bonuses. And I know I might have unpopular opinions on this, but what I found is as a team member, like X amount of dollars doesn't weight as heavily as something that maybe I wouldn't buy for myself. So for example, ⁓ those like red light masks, that's one of the things that are out there.   The Dyson and then if you don't know what I'm talking about, go check these out. The Dyson blow dart. Like that thing is insanely expensive. I'm probably not gonna spend it on myself, but it would be awesome if I were to get it. ⁓ What other things? The Aura ring. A lot of people want the Aura ring. They don't wanna drop 400 bucks and they don't wanna pay the monthly subscription. ⁓ Other gift ideas like a Roomba, a Roomba lawnmower, a fire pit, a, I don't know. We've done like AirPods. We've done the virtual realities. ⁓ Like the Apple Vision Pro.   Those are the things people are not going to buy for themselves oftentimes, but that weights heavier than if I were to give you 500 or a thousand dollars. Now I understand that people like cash, but as a team member, what I will tell you is I had an office, give me an end of year bonus. We got it in our card. It was based on longevity. It was based on these pieces. That cash did not actually weigh as heavy because what I did is I went and spent it on bills.   And so instead, like getting an Apple Vision Pro, I remember the day I got that, I was like, oh my gosh, like this is so rad. I never would have bought it for myself. How incredible, or getting a KitchenAid, or getting a Louis Vuitton wallet. And I understand that not everybody's going to want these things. like, no, I don't care about those things. But what's fun sometimes on the parties is you're able to have this really fun time. We do a raffle in our company. That's what I've decided to do. And I picked this up from Midwestern University's dental college, is every year we did a raffle. We all got to do that.   all these awesome prizes. And then every year they gave us some type of swag and they gave us like a holiday party. So I didn't get an end of year bonus. And what I noticed was people enjoyed those so much. Everybody looked forward to it. Everybody got excited about it. Everybody walked out with these awesome gifts. Nobody knew what they were walking out with. We could see all the gifts. So was like, oh my gosh, who's going to get the huge TV? Who's going to get the MacBook Air? Who's going to get XYZ? And they like, all the gifts weren't super high end. All of them weren't low end, but it was something really, really awesome.   And then I thought they were so smart because they gave out branded swag. So it was umbrellas, jackets, ⁓ just things that we would use like lunch bags that were super appropriate. But think about it, that's amazing marketing power. I was walking around with this swag. I still have it to this day. I have a lot of the stuff that I got from it. But that's what I decided to do because it would just be fun. So for us and our company for end of year, our team knows.   I do it on Cyber Monday, happens every year. We do a holiday party, we dress up, we have an ugly sweater contest, and then we raffle off. So we play fun games at the company. We all just get together. We're a virtual team. Otherwise I take everybody to dinner or we do an awesome fun experience. And then we raffle. And I go hardcore on these prizes. I go do fun things for our team. And for me, it's more fun for me to do this than to write them and just g

Tiff and Dana discuss how to achieve full team alignment on periodontal policies and protocols, even when it's the last thing you feel like doing. Their tips include which habits to build upon, which templates for conversation with the patient are most educational, maintaining team alignment, and more. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript The Dental A Team (00:00) Hello Dental A Team listeners. We are back with you with us today I have Ms. Dana and I'm so excited to do these podcasts. I have podcasts all day I have podcasts with you Dana. I podcast with Britt today I never get Britt on these suckers anymore and then I think I'm Kristy later, too So it is a whirlwind of podcasting day. Thank you for letting me, you know Just bust it out and get all of you guys here today   I'm really excited. I'm really excited for the one we just did. We record these just kind of like back to back to back just so you guys know in case you were wondering how this actually happens. We're not live right now. I wish we were. That'd be super cool. But it'd be really time consuming at the same time. But we just did a really fun one. I'm excited for them to hear about it. Dana though, I haven't asked you lately just how's life. had, it sounds like a full weekend of kiddos sports.   Dana (00:54) Mm-hmm.   The Dental A Team (00:54) ⁓   But you personally, you guys, talked about consistency in this last one. And you personally, you have some of the best consistency that I've ever seen anyone maintain. So number one, I think my big question that might be on everyone's mind is why? How do you maintain that consistency? You show up for everyone, but you still show up for yourself. You still do your workouts. You still make sure that your path   for your own health is one of the most important aspects of your life. So Dana, how do you maintain that?   Dana (01:29) Yeah, I think that just I learned early on in life, right? Like, especially with my health, like I had a point in my life where my health cup was pretty much empty and I had nothing to pour from. And so I just promised myself when I made it through that, that like,   I would always prioritize keeping that like as a priority. And ⁓ it's just something that like, I've shown up for for myself. ⁓ And to like, because I've shown up, it just, I don't know, like it just keeps me   saying it makes me a better mom, it makes me a better friend, it makes me a better partner, it makes me like, just better in so many ways, because I do take that space. And I don't always like, there's guilt, for sure that I do it and that I take the time and that you know, like I put other things aside to do it. But I think what it like, reaps and benefits and rewards for me outweigh those things. And so I'm truly on to the point now where I have kept it so consistent that   when I fall off I feel terrible.   The Dental A Team (02:43) Yeah, yeah, that's the real deal now.   Yeah, I love that. I think that the things you pointed out there just your why is big enough. And I think a massive reminder to everyone that typically for a human being to make a change in life, it has to be hard enough. Like, we don't change things that don't feel like they're not working, right? That haven't like sprung up as a quote unquote, like broken piece of life yet, right? Like however you want to word it.   If it's not hurting, we don't typically think, we're not thinking about it. If it's not hurting, we're just not thinking about it. So why are we addressing things we're not thinking about? So when it finally does get bad enough, I think I had a similar story, not the degree of health, but a similar instance where it was just like I hit the spot where it's like I actually don't have a choice. I either take care of myself or my health continues to deteriorate.   So was honestly, it was easy at that point. So it's interesting because it's so easy, I think for us from the outside, especially for you and I for fitness and health, like I think you and I have, I can imagine you're the same like my whole life. It's been in my, it's been in my being for as long as I can remember. So it was very easy to see that in myself and to see that in my life and to see where.   the consistencies or the inconsistencies are, but it's interesting to take a step back and see how relatable it is to just so many aspects of life. And if we applied those same steps and processes, the same thought to other aspects of life, how different things could look. And we narrow that focus because I think fitness and health just like, I don't know, I feel like it's like a box to check instead of like,   away and for you and I like it's a way especially for you and so it's just gives you the template for other areas which I think for us makes a lot of times consulting fun. I think it's more fun and it's a little bit easier for us to sometimes see the structure of what needs to happen because it's literally mimicking the results that we've seen in other areas of our life and first   So happy you're here, Dana, because had you not taken that initiative, things could look very different today. And I'm very happy that you did and that you dedicated to yourself and that you continue to. Second, you were teaching your kids the most important valuable lessons of their entire life. And it's so cool to watch you do that and to watch you show up for yourself, but for them too. I've always taken that stand with it. They're like, Brody's going to know that exercise is for health. It's not for the other.   ideas in there. So I never wanted him to, you know, have whatever complications with health and fitness in his life. So I made it a priority for me pretty early on in his life because of that. And then really had to about six years ago. So I applaud you for those pieces. And I just think it's really, really cool. And I think it kind of stems and spurs into a more fun version of today's podcast.   Because I really do think that that consistency and again that template that you have for like no I'm just going to do it and some days, you know I'm sure you wake up like I do or I'm like today's not the day and then it's like no just go just go it's 30 minutes It's an hour of my life. Like just go and you will always feel better afterwards So sometimes life comes in and this task or this duty comes in and it's like this feels like it's gonna be really hard I don't really want to talk to this person about this thing   I'll do it next time. And the I'll do it next time only slides us backwards. And we see that with the health and fitness very easily. If we don't go to the gym today, like we're sliding backwards to tomorrow. But in these conversations that we're talking about today with the perio, everyone's favorite word, perio, and being in alignment on the periodontal care kind of makes me think of those areas where we really do slide backwards because we're like.   I don't really want to have that hard conversation or, that kind of borderline or I don't know what we would classify this as. I'm just going to probe you today. Maybe they'll see somebody else next time. Like you're my, you're one of my favorites, Brits, my other favorite, ⁓ perio brain to pick when it comes to stuff like this, because really getting alignment on that can look like so many different things and consistency on the alignment I think is one of the key pieces. And Dana, there's so much to pick apart in there.   I'm obviously alluding to have the hard conversations with the patients when they need deep cleaning, even if they've been coming to your practice forever. I don't care, just do it. But how are the doctors important in your opinion and from a hygiene standpoint in gaining the alignment within the periodontal care, within the periodontal policies and protocols? Because we can tell a hygiene team to go do it, but I feel like without the doctor, we're like 90 % there.   Dana (07:22) Mm-hmm. ⁓   Yeah,   and and I really and truly feel like the doctor is so crucial in to me. It's like, ⁓ we have to do in this situation is build a plan and then create habits stacking for our hygienists like to do it right. And I think that the doctor is so crucial in setting up the standard of care for perio like what are the expectations for the hygiene team for each specific perio service within the practice? What are our parameters? What are our guidelines?   That way, when a patient walks in, no matter which hygienist they see, the same thing is recommended. Also too, it gives a very clear roadmap for the doctor to back you up. You've built it together. So you know that if you follow the protocol, the doctor can confidently back you up. You know that you'll get that every time that they walk in the room. And then lastly, importantly, just as important, it allows you to ⁓   confidently have the discussions that maybe you haven't. And I've seen an office as to where we built the protocol and there are moments of maybe we disagree, right? Maybe we see something different on an x-ray or maybe we see, you know, we probe slightly different or our angles are a little bit different or I've got a doctor versus a hygienist that one presses a little bit harder when they probe, right? But it allows us to definitively be able to make a decision and say, we default to the protocol. This is what the protocol   The Dental A Team (09:08) Yeah.   Dana (09:16) says when we have this many millimeters in probing depth, this many, and this is how often we do those things. This is the cadence in which we bring them back. These are the results that we expect to get it. And so when you have that outline, whether you are so far from it when you start or whether you're like pretty close to it when you start, it's okay. It's just build your roadmap of what you want your   The Dental A Team (09:23) Yeah.   Dana (09:41) period to look like in your practice first. An

Kiera joins the Raving Patients Podcast to talk about obtaining that CEO mindset to systematize your practice. This mindset does not mean doing it all yourself, but leaning on others to maximize their skillsets. Kiera also discusses with Dr. Len Tau how to separate yourself from having your entire identity associated with dentistry. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Speaker 1 (00:00) Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Raving Patients Podcast. As you know, I'm your host, Dr. Len Tau, and I am super excited today for multiple reasons. Well, first, before I get there, I want to first thank my sponsors, both Dental Intelligence, CallRail, and a new one, Net32. You'll be hearing their commercials as well, so check out those companies. And again, the only reason I'm able to do this every single week is because of their support. I also want to remind everybody about   my event, is only one week away. One week from now we'll be gathered in Fort Lauderdale for Supercharge with Dental Practice 2025. If you wanna be a come out last minute registrant, you can reach out to me. I will be glad to add you as a guest of me. So please reach out to me. You can check out the content at SuperchargeYourDentalPractice.com So I said I was super excited and I'm super excited because of our guest today. And she's been a guest before and I just recorded an episode with her on her podcast. ⁓   We're talking about Kiera Dent, who is from the Dental A Team, and we're gonna be talking the CEO mindset systematizing your practice for freedom and growth today. So before I let ⁓ Kiera take it off, I'm gonna go ahead and introduce her. So she is the founder and CEO of the Dental A Team, an entrepreneur, consultant, speaker, and podcast host dedicated to helping dental professionals reach their highest potential. Through customized in-office and virtual consulting,   She empowers dentists and their teams to cultivate an ownership mindset and achieving lasting growth. With experience spanning every role in the dental practice, front office, dental assistant, regional manager, and even practice owner, here brings unique first-hand perspective to her coaching. Alongside her team of expert consultants, she has partnered with hundreds of practices nationwide, leading them to greater efficiency, profitability, and fulfillment. As she often says, we don't just understand you, we are you.   So please welcome to the Raving Patients podcast, Kiara Dent. Kiara, thank you so much for being a guest on my podcast today.   Speaker 2 (02:03) Oh, Len, thank you so much. so excited to be here. I loved our podcast we did together. I love the podcast we did in the past together. I'm super excited about Supercharge. Everybody should go. We're going to like sneak peek, be there in 2026. Like Len, huge fan of you guys. Just excited to be here with you. So thank you. Thanks for having me. And yeah, it's always a little weird and fun to hear your bio read right before you get on. So just grateful to be here and just like have a good time with you. It's always a great time when we podcast together.   Speaker 1 (02:30) Well, I'm excited to spend the next 30 minutes or so with content from you. So I always like to ⁓ start off for people that don't know who you are. I obviously read your bio. Can you just tell dentists and other people reading or listening and watching this episode how you help dental practices?   Speaker 2 (02:50) Yeah, absolutely. So with the bio you heard, I started out as a dental assistant and then went throughout and I've owned practices. My first practice I took from 500,000 to 2.4 million in nine months and opened our second location. And that was with a Midwestern grad. I worked at the dental college there. And so helping practices, what I learned was   I've been a team member, I've been in so many of the team roles. And then in addition to that, I've owned dental practices and I understand the business and I've run multimillion dollar practices and businesses. so bringing that perspective, I feel like there's the dentist perspective, there's the owner, the CEO of the practice, and then there's the team perspective. And both are necessary for practices. And so Dental A Team, say like, it stands for dentist and team. So what we really do for practices is whether it's virtual or in person, it's...   I call it the yes model line is what I like to say is number one, you as a person, we're going to focus on your vision, where you want to go as a doctor. Like what is your vision? The practice should serve your life. ⁓ because I believe that when you're supported, you're actually a better owner, a better boss, a better dentist. And then we go to E stands for earnings and profitability. We've got to make sure it's a profitable practice. And then we use those things, the vision and the numbers to then tell us what systems and team development we need to put into place. I'm really much a custom.   Let's see kind of like dentists do with patients. Like let's do a comp exam. Let's see where we're at. And then let's go for what's going to make the biggest impact with the least amount of effort. And being team members ourselves, I really think that we're able to like, Hey dentists, we want to hear your vision. We need to know where you're going and then go do your like favorite thing. It's dentistry. And then let's help your team be empowered to learn how to run the practice. So it truly is like a self-managing team, utilizing every single player in the team to their highest potential, but doing it with a ton of fun and ease. Like as a team member, I didn't want more hard work.   As an owner, do not want you to give me more homework. I'm already busy. So I feel like we really come in and bridge that gap of like where we are to where we want to go and do it in the easiest, most efficient and most fun way possible to help like team and patient experience be the top that it can be.   Speaker 1 (04:48) So I guess someone's listening to this podcast and they say, you know, want to, I want to change the culture in my practice, but I'm very much a micromanager.   So which means they're not focused on their dentistry, they're focused on managing the team. Do you help with that? Because there are so many micromanagers out there. I always wanted them for a very long time. And honestly, wasn't until I gave up that micromanaging and I just did the things I was going to do that my practice excelled. So ⁓ that's something, if someone's a micromanager, do you get them off doing that? Or how do you deal with that?   Speaker 2 (05:19) Yes, and I'm so glad you said that because I think most   Founder owners are micromanagers. think leadership we believe I I think so many there's this belief out there that we just come into this world as great leaders and we should just know it like you went to dental school you should just know how to be a leader and leadership is a journey and so for those micromanagers I think it's really fun to have the doctor and the team perspective and to be able to help both of them say like no doctor like these are the things but what I found is doctors micromanage because there's a lack of communication feedback loops so it's a lot so it's either a lack of communication and feedback   loop, a lack of knowledge, or they just like genuinely want to be a manager and they don't want to be an owner. And I'm like, great, let's just figure out what the the reasoning is. And then let's find the solution to that. So if team members have doctors that are micromanaging, first question I'm looking at is like, where's the feedback loop and what are we missing? Next is like, hey, doctor, I understand that this is where we're at. This is where I need you to be for the growth of the practice. What do you need to feel confident to be the dentist, to be the like not micromanaging like   there's a lack. And when I realize there's a lack and when teams can realize that there's a lack, like there's just something missing, we fix that, dentist is now able to be happy, team's able to flourish, everything starts to move in in a good motion. absolutely. I think being team members ourselves, we're not doctors, we're not dentists. Like, Len, I'm gonna lean on you for clinical. Like, that's not my world. I'm not here to even discuss it for one minute. But what I am here to do is to bridge that gap between doctors and teams.   Because ultimately it's same team, like everybody wants the best experience for the patient. We want the practice to flourish. So if we're all same team, let's help get people right seat, right person, help them understand what they should and could be doing. But also like office managers, there's this whole weird world for them too, where they've never been taught to be managers. They've never been taught what they should or shouldn't be doing. They've never been taught like what the difference between an office manager is and a biller and a scheduler and a treatment coordinator and how all those roles are different. And so helping people understand even what their job entails.   I think really can cut that micromanagement passion project. It's just a lack of knowledge and so teaching teams and teaching people, but we're very hands on. I really don't like fluff. That's why think when you and I get along well, I want it to be tactical. I want it to be practical and I want it to be something that's sustainable as well.   Speaker 1 (07:34) And that makes a lot of sense. And that was a great answer, by the way.   We're talking about, obviously you're very systematized. You put systems in place, the team follows, everybody knows what they're doing, runs like a well-oiled machine. Okay. And that's how my practice was when I left, when I was traveling. ⁓ I knew things, I didn't worry. I knew that things were going to be done like this. They knew the roles, team

Tiff and Dana discuss what they've seen across hundreds of practices as the best time to hold those weekly meetings. They also touch on the benefits of third-party insight, finding pockets to create consistency, the right cadence for your team, and more. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. We are so excited to be here with you today. I snag Dana once again, and I always say that I snag Dana. I say that because I pre-schedule these, you guys. Pretty far out in the calendar, I always have the podcasting scheduled. And then I do a really great job of being like, ⁓ actually, I know that it's on this specific date, but maybe we could squeeze it in here. I am always looking for ways to try to maximize a schedule, but sometimes it.   requires me moving things around. So I do really truly snack, Dana, where I can and push it into our schedules, typically somewhere else other than where it had originally started. So Dana, thank you for always knowing your schedule, always considering it, and always, think, one, we typically are able to just pop it in there, which just reinforces my bad habit, but... ⁓   I do know without a shadow of a doubt that if it doesn't work, you'll tell me too. So thank you for being the kind of person that can look at something and can confidently say like, oh, great idea, Tiff, but I can't do it that day. What about this day? I appreciate that about you, about your leadership style. And it makes me super confident in you training leaders and practices out there in the world. So Dana, welcome to the show today. Thank you for all that you are. How are you? It's the beginning of our week. How's your Monday so far? And again, thank you for.   just sliding this in here today.   Dana (01:24) Yeah, of course. Thank you. And you know, like, as a fellow efficiency hacker, I love when you look for ways to just pop it in spaces, especially with how busy our schedules are. I definitely always appreciate the snag and the time with you. And yeah, my Monday starting off pretty good, you know, meetings, catch up, client projects, all the things Monday can be a fun and yet sometimes wild day.   The Dental A Team (01:49) It's so true. It's so true. My boyfriend's always like, gosh, it's Monday and like, why are you always so exhausted? Isn't this your meeting day? And I'm like, yeah, well, you know, we got lots of meetings and today I decided to snag everyone possible for podcasting. So I've got meeting on meeting and then podcasting and you're totally right, Dana. And I think it's actually really beautiful. Something we did a few years ago. I don't know, Dana, if you remember when we started, probably, probably pretty close to when you onboarded as a consultant, we started shifting.   into Monday meeting day and Friday kind of meeting slash catch up kind of admin work day because we were getting really wild with our schedule. And it's just something I think that has changed and shifted the culture of the company pretty drastically. And it gives us that space to really dial in and work on the company and not just always working on client stuff or our own personal stuff that gives us space. So kudos to the Dental A Team there and Dana that was really   really kind of ties into today's content, honestly, of really structuring a schedule and being able to see where we can best create, you know, which I know like people, gosh, what am I trying to say here? Practices are like, where am I supposed to do a meeting? Where, and then where is it most beneficial? And I know I get asked a lot and Dana, you might too, like, can I do my meeting on a Friday? I'm like, totally, you sure can. But I think from our experience, what we've seen is Mondays tend to be the best because it sets the week up.   in advance. You can set it up on Friday for sure too, but I think it really just starting the day with our Monday meeting that first, you know, level 10 style meeting first thing in the morning on Mondays really gets the whole team energized and aligned on what our week is going to look like. And for me, working from home, like it really like motivates me to get moving. And Dana, do you, do you kind of feel that same way? And do you see that with practices?   Dana (03:41) Yeah, I do. agree with you. think if Friday is the only time that the entire team can get together for a meeting short have it on Friday, but I do feel like end of the week meetings, whether your last day is Thursday or your last day is Friday. It doesn't allow us to really jump off and get started right away. There's this whole weekend kind of a lag. And sometimes I feel like we come in Monday and it's like, we maybe lost some of the priorities that we talked about, or they get filtered through our weekend a little bit. So if it is the only time that you can, absolutely. And then I think Monday just a little like, guys, don't   forget, right? Bullet points of what we talked about, what we're working on this weekend, again, just to start the week fresh. But I think if you can do them on Mondays, it is a great way to really get everybody focused for the week to be super intentional with the week and with your time and just a jumpstart for everybody.   The Dental A Team (04:27) I totally agree. I think that's super important. I love how you brought that back together on Monday morning as a refocus moment. So maybe it's not the whole hour to hour and a half, however long meeting, but it's a quick like 15, 20 minutes. Let's just jumpstart this week to get us off on the same foot and make sure we remember the things we committed to. So I love that. I think that's brilliant. And again, it ties into what we're going to talk about today. I   Love stats. love pulling the consulting team's stats. love seeing what you ladies are doing for your clients over there and really just seeing the successes of the clients. And I love sharing those successes and those tools. Something that my team loves to do is just really share all the tools we possibly can. And when you're ready to work with us, we do it side by side with you. But until then, you've got these resources that you can kind of self-implement to the best of your possibilities. And we are always here to help as much as we can.   So Dana, I know we've chatted about this client ⁓ ourselves and we're not going to get into the specifics of the client, but the specifics of the results itself. And kudos to your diligence, ⁓ to your accountability and really staying on top of what a client needs. And I think what we've seen a lot is that mostly a client needs someone doing it side by side with them as in,   sharing the emotional load and being willing to have the hard conversations when they need to be had and answer the text when they need to be answered and get on those calls every single month for an hour and a half and really bust through the struggles that the numbers are showing us and really implement the right tools and put the accountability lines into it. So when I say we do it with them, Dana, that's like a very hard line that we've learned to take.   And we do it with them by ⁓ actions of training and support. We're not doing it for you. not calling your patients. Dana's not calling on unpaid balances. But she is someone who has been able to support many clients, but specifically these results. She has been able to support practices in achieving this specific one is tripling their collections within two months of working with Dana.   That sounds magical. It sounds beautiful and it is. And the clients who do experience these kinds of results, which all of our clients experience some tremendous results. But something I do want to put a caveat on is that our clients experience results in varying degrees. And there are just so there's so many results to be had and so many results to be shared. And I think something that has to be taken into consideration is where you come into the game.   Where are you starting and where are you going? Right. So this practice had some room to grow coming into it and as do many practices. so generally speaking, Dana, I think my first question is tripling collections. Number one freaking fantastic way to go. You offered some incredible support, some incredible training and awesome, awesome tools that they will be able to use for the rest of their careers.   What did you, when you see practices come in like this and you're like, holy, holy cow, there's room here to triple your production or your collections. Like, let's do this. What kind of demographics are they coming in with? What are you seeing their stats as when they onboard?   Dana (07:52) Yeah.   Yeah,   yeah, and I will say a client like this is really exciting to onboard because when you can kind of instantly see where you can help, right, you can instantly bring some relief, you can instantly reduce stress because, you know, collections is an area that can cause a ton of just.   emotions, stress, because that's money in the bank, right? And, and that is the money that we use to pay our team and pay for expenses and keep the doors open. And so to be able to have a client come in, I can just like instantly pinpoint where I can be super helpful and massively impact just their life and their practice. It is really, really exciting. Now to get results like triple the collections, this office came in with collections sitting at around 40 % as well   as needing some growth in their production, right? So ideally what they were needing to collect, there was a fairly decent gap ⁓ there that allowed for these results, but it definitely was hugely impacted in their just willingness to jump in and get to work too.   The Dental A Team (09:04) Yeah, I totally agree with you. I think that that space is super fun when clients come in and I'm like, heck yeah, here's a target. And most clients, whether i