#913: How To Win Your Patients Over

Kiera is a guest on Dr. Gallagher’s Podcast in this crossover episode! There is a lot of important ground covered here, including how to establish the ideal practice flow, the differences in consulting between speciality and general practices, why being a human being feels like a lost art, how to hire the best people, and more.

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Transcript:

Brendan (00:02.346)

Of the Dental A Team, this is Kiera Dent, right? So this is, I love that it's dent because there's dental dentin, part of the tooth and stuff. So it's just perfect. It really worked well. And you have a consulting agency, right? Dental A Team. And how many years have you been in around?

Kiera Dent (00:16.95)

Yeah.

Kiera Dent (00:25.494)

Thank you.

Kiera Dent (00:30.976)

Yeah, so we've, the company is almost eight years old. She's about to have her eighth birthday in November, but yeah, it's been fun. It was a complete random idea that I came up with to start it, honestly, to help a bunch of dental students and here we are. So it's been a really fun place to be.

Brendan (00:49.738)

Two more months and eight years, congrats!

Kiera Dent (00:51.796)

I know. Thank you. Thank you. It came from, I worked at Midwestern University's Dental College for three years while my husband did pharmacy school. And one of the students straight out of school said, hey, Kiera, I want you to come help me start my practice. And I said, my gosh, like, absolutely. I've always wanted to be a practice owner. I was a dental assistant and a treatment coordinator and an office manager prior. And so I went and I helped her start her practice and

We took our practice from 500,000 to 2.4 million in nine months and opened our second location. And then I thought, my gosh, like if I could help her do this, there's all my other like favorite dental students. Like I'm sure I could probably be a resource and a help for them. And so that's really what spurred the consulting company. I had never worked with a consultant before. And then I started helping practices and adding, you know, 25,000 of production to their schedules very quickly. I was adding, increasing case acceptance to a hundred percent.

within one day and I just thought, okay, there's something about this and it doesn't have to be hard, but I'm gonna be a resource for all those dentists in school because you guys go to school and you're so passionate about what you're doing, but then there's the business side of it. And so if I could be a resource, a trusted resource, knowing what you're learning in school, so that way you guys can be so successful, positively impact your world, help your community, help your team, help your patients, and you guys are living your best lives.

That really is what spurred me into being a consultant. So here we are all with the love. have no clue what consultants should do. I just keep making up what I believe my students from Midwestern would want to have and just keep coming from love of you guys, just doing the best to support dentistry and us supporting you in that vision.

Brendan (02:30.004)

Excellent. And so you're not at Midwestern anymore. That was only in the beginning for those years. So roughly eight years ago.

Kiera Dent (02:33.068)

Mm -mm. Yep. Yep. I worked there for three years. No, so three years. And then I went and I worked in Colorado for two years. And then I started the company in 2016. Yeah, 2016. So it was great. It was a good time. And here we are now, eight years later.

Brendan (02:48.904)

And in Colorado, that was the practice that you brought them from X to that would be roughly five X. Wow. Well done. Well done. So they started for a year there. You knew them. You had a good rapport, good relationship with them over a year or two. You grew it from that. then you're like, and that's when you decided, OK, let's scale. How did you take that next step from there? So it was just you working at her practice. Right. And then from there, you said.

Kiera Dent (02:55.008)

Mm -hmm. Yeah. Thanks.

you

Kiera Dent (03:08.384)

Totally.

Kiera Dent (03:13.344)

Mm -hmm. Yep.

Brendan (03:16.136)

So you don't work with her anymore. was like a see you later. I'm going to figure it better.

Kiera Dent (03:18.072)

No. It was incredible. And we had such a good run. And I have to give mad kudos to her as a dentist, because I think we were really a dynamic duo. I came in with amazing like management and TC skills. We both didn't know what we were doing. And I think that that's part of doctors opening practices. But kudos to her for bringing me on because she knew I knew pieces she didn't know how to do.

but yeah, it was, I think more her vision. We both were very gung -ho. We wanted to serve more. We wanted to have a bigger impact and footprint. And so it was, we got this practice going and then we bought our second location and then there ended up getting like seven practices all together. But things I learned from that was, it was over the course of like five, six, I ended up leaving. She continued. and it was something very interesting that those are like sexy numbers to put up on a scoreboard and.

Brendan (04:00.019)

In two years?

Kiera Dent (04:12.268)

Everybody always has the bright eyes of like, my gosh, like how did you do that? But I think my obsession has come, like her and I were both on like death row. Like we were working 2 a to 10 p It was insanity to try and get that success. And while yes, there's sexy numbers on the board, we both realized that there's more to life than what we were doing. And are we gonna just like slay and try and drive this through or is there maybe something more to this? so yes, it was, we did part ways and I'm just so proud of everything that she created.

But I, like one, my marriage, my life, all of those things were falling apart. And I realized me traveling back and forth from Reno Tahoe area to Colorado all the time was just really hard on my marriage. I wasn't seeing my husband. I was completely anorexic. I was like 98 pounds and I'm 5 '8". And it was just, everything felt like it was deteriorating. And so that was where it had to be like, let's do a step back. Her life was deteriorating. And I thought...

there has to be a better way to success than what we've done. Like, yes, we've got sexy numbers to throw up on the board. Yes, we've got all these cool things, but is there not a better way that we can do this where you can have an incredible family and you can have incredible numbers and you can have a thriving business. And that really has become my passion and obsession is helping more dentists live a fulfilled life, hitting up those sexy big numbers or whatever they want to do, but still maintain their life, their identity, their freedom is really what I'm obsessed with within our company and our culture.

and really helping dentists get that life.

Brendan (05:41.89)

yeah, and that's such a great pitch to where it's let's let's seize that life that we dreamed of again. love that now in where it started to get a little rocky there speaking of Colorado, but while it started to happen was that the first two years when you were there was that within the five six years when she scaled to seven or so practices first two

Kiera Dent (05:47.68)

Yeah.

Kiera Dent (05:51.634)

Hahaha

Kiera Dent (05:55.564)

Mm

Kiera Dent (05:59.692)

No, so that was my first two years. Yeah, absolutely. And both of us were there. And I think that that happens, right? You've got all the student debt. I used to call her 2.5, like when she's hunched over, not like good ergonomics. I'm like, hey, 2.5, we're 2.5 million debt. Like with student loans, the practice acquisition, within our first couple of months of owning the practice, our building was being torn down. So we had to move our patient base to another location, build up another practice. So

And I think oftentimes it's how people come out, right? Like you've got a lot of debt, you've been sitting in residency for so long, or you've been in school for so long or whatever it is, or you're an associate and you feel like, okay, I bought this practice. I think there's this like innate desire to just hit the ground running, but we forget that that can only sustain for so long. Like we are human bodies, we are not human robots. And realizing that there's...

so much that can happen. We also were very naive. We did not have systems in place and we just kept adding more fuel to our fire that was already burning and blazing bigger than we were. And so we got to a good place. We were hiring other doctors, but I think that that's where my obsession has come of, like, let's give systems.