Dental A Team Podcast

Dental A Team
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This podcast is here to give dentists and all dental office team members, in EVERY position, TACTICAL and PRACTICAL TIPS to: - Be more efficient - Have more fun - Improve doctor and team communications - Eliminate frustration - And make your life easier! Jump in! We are thrilled you have decided to LEVEL UP and be part of the DENTAL A TEAM! New episodes every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

  1. 4d ago

    #1,174: Communicating About Communication

    DAT podcast listeners loved this episode, so we're re-releasing it! The Dental A-Team is hearing a lot about practices' struggles with communication. In this episode, Kiera and Brit discuss ways to enhance communication in a practice, and even reach a breakthrough point. They touch on the following: Establishing ground rules of communication in your office Stop assuming everyone knows how to communicate How to bring up that you want to have better communication practice-wide 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 we are bringing you something so special. I am so excited because this is one of our most popular episodes from the archives. Whether you're hearing this for the first time or catching it again, I am so excited because it's jam packed with a ton of takeaways that you can start using right now in your practice. We have released thousands, literally thousands of episodes. And I wanted to start bringing a few of these amazing episodes back for you. So I hope you enjoy. And as always, thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time.   on the Dental A Team podcast.   speaker-0 (00:32) And you guys, I have a really, really fantastic consultant on the podcast with me today. If you don't know her, you should get to know her. Her name's Brittany. ⁓ Britt has joined our team. Gosh, it's almost been a year rolling in on our year, and Britt is just a breath of fresh air on our team. She is somebody that inspires me, ⁓ pushes me to be a better consultant as well. So I'm super jazzed to bring Britt back on the show. Britt, how are you today?   speaker-1 (00:56) I'm good. Thanks for the introduction, Kiera. Always fun to hear what you have to say 'cause it's always delightful.   speaker-0 (01:02) I know. It's probably the best part of the whole podcast, actually. Like I just get a rave on our team on the podcast, which is something I definitely love. So Britt, you are a a unicorn of a human. It's kind of funny, guys. The way we interview consultants is pretty an in-depth process. Like we have an initial call, then you we encourage them to go through an online course, then we do a mock coaching call where they have to actually coach the consultants as if we were a team. And then typically we have them fly out and go to a practice with me to see if traveling's like in their DNA.   Because I've had a lot of people say I can travel and it just is not their thing. Like there are people who can travel and then there are people who like really can travel. And so Britt, you kinda like skated right through that. We interviewed you and it was just this like, yep, we're gonna hire her. And lo and behold, here you are a year later. It just I'm shocked at how great it worked out because you're just a dream and I love it. It worked out so well.   speaker-1 (01:54) But lo and lo and behold, I could actually travel.   speaker-0 (01:58) Well what I I did ask you the question of how many bags do you take when you travel? Because you can tell if somebody's a traveler or not a traveler. But yeah, you are a solid traveler. You and I we trend   speaker-1 (02:11) I've been stuck in a foreign country, yes. So I feel like that's a pretty good qualify qualifier.   speaker-0 (02:17) ⁓ but no guys, if you have not met Britt, Britt is one of the traveling consultants and offices genuinely love Britt. when I when she goes to offices, I love getting emails or text messages from those offices saying that Britt just knocked it out of the park. So today I'm excited, Britt. You are ⁓ really fantastic on this and you and I actually just consulted a practice together. I I need to stop saying we don't say each other that often because you and I actually do run into each other quite a bit on the road. ⁓   we do. It's pretty fantastic. So we were just at a practice together a couple of weeks ago and I thought this was such a cool thing that you did with this practice. So ⁓ just to give a little bit of a background, we were with a practice and communication was just a struggle, which I'm not going to lie, every single office. But you tell me if it's on your end, but every practice before we go visit them as the Dental A Team, we send out an anonymous survey. well it's actually an   Anonymous. It's not anonymous. We know who you are. So they it's it's branded. We know your name. ⁓ but it's a survey sent out to all the team members to find out what are their issues in the practice, things that they love about the practice. And I will tell you, without like it's happened a hundred percent of the time, at least one person says communication on every single office. So I know this is a big deal. Britt, how about for you? I absolutely   speaker-1 (03:37) Every time. Mm-hmm. And it comes up often. And I communication is a constant effort, which is why it comes up often, because it's so important.   speaker-0 (03:47) For sure. I mean, if you think about it, communication is what we do all day long, whether it's with our patients, whether it's with each other, whether it's with our spouses or our families, like communication is super important. I just think it's always interesting when people say communication, I feel like it's this really broad umbrella for problems. And I'm like, no, no, no. Like let's get to the nitty gritty. Is it communication on? Cause there's great communication, but I think it's just such a large, vast net.   that we cast that it's hard sometimes to pinpoint like what is the communication because I'll have practices that will over communicate. Everybody knows this, this, and this, and they still deal with communication. And so with this practice, ⁓ I think it was just a lot of missed expectations, which I found is typically the reason communication comes up. People are expecting or assuming other people will do something. And then when that's missed, that's when people get frustrated. And so it tends to fall back under communication. But Britt,   Take it away, you did a full team training with this office. It was kind of a retreat style, which I don't know what you've been doing right in this world. You're getting a lot of those retreat styles.   speaker-1 (04:48) I don't know either, but I'm glad it's working.   speaker-0 (04:51) So typically our style is like we go in, we'll consult. We're doing like hands on training with an office and then we usually do like a two hour meeting. But Britt's been getting a few offices that are wanting like these three to four hour meetings, which honestly as a consultant, that's like when you guys see your schedule and you just have like crown prep after crown prep after not crown prep, crown seat after seat after seat, where you're like, that's gonna be busy. That's like a four hour meeting for a consultant. I would equate that to like, Whoo, all right, it's gonna be busy.   But kind of walk us through with this practice and other practices. It just wasn't this one particularly, but kind of walk us through what you did to help enhance this communication and really bring some breakthroughs to this practice.   speaker-1 (05:30) Yeah, for sure. I think you you hit one really key point, which is expectations when it comes to communication. And I think the other thing that goes hand in hand with that when expectations aren't being met through our communication is then we start to lose trust with our team members. And we start to lose trust in communication. And so people really just start to shut down. And it's hard to kind of get that motor going again because everybody goes into a protective mode.   And so we're all just kind of walking on eggshells. We're nervous to have conversations that need to be had. And then it just starts to kind of spiral, unfortunately, into a place where we don't know how to get out of it. And so with this office, I was realizing that that's kind of where we were. We had hit the point where we've kind of lost our trust. We talked about some tools on how to have uncomfortable or crucial conversations with team members.   But they were just still really struggling to see like how does that actually go into play because it's kind of like I've been there, I've tried it and I got burned. So   speaker-0 (06:33) Well, 'cause like you said something that I thought was I've never thought about this. Because you said people lose trust and then we spiral downward. And I was thinking like, and what's bummer and also awesome is the only solution to it is communication. So the thing you've lost trust in is the key to your success and freedom and happiness. But if you lose trust in that, there's really nowhere else to go. Because if you're not communicating, things won't get better. So   I had never thought about like the thing that caused the problem is the thing that's going to get you out of the problem as well. But you have to really regain each other's trust. And you're right, it's kind of like, but how? I logically understand it. I conceptually can see this, but how is this really gonna work? And I thought you did a brilliant job of breaking down this how.   speaker-1 (07:20) Yeah. And so it comes down to like yes, at some point someone's gotta put themselves out there and be vulnerable to try it. And it can be really hard when we know there's old habits in play. So we kind of went back to the basics of communication to where we we created and it was with the team, we had their input. All right, what are our ground rules gonna be for communication? Kind of like our rules of engagement.   What are the things that all of us right here, right now today are gonna agree to so that we can feel more comfortable to start engaging conversations with each other that need to happen. And so we created it,

    26 min

  2. 5d ago

    #1,173: Three Lies and Three Truths About Growing Your Practice

    Kiera shares the three most common pieces of bad advice out there when it comes to growing a practice. She encourages doctors not to keep applying new pieces of information to growth, but to understand how to filter the best pieces for your practice — and shares three truths to making this happen. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent- Dental A Team (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera. And today we're gonna talk about a couple of lies feel so harsh, but I think these are maybe some misnomers, some beliefs that a lot of dentists are told about growing a practice that aren't true. Or they could be true, but they don't have to be true. So again, like I don't want to say it's lies. I just think it might be a possibly wrong way to look at things if you want. And so I want to talk about some of those like what are the   like three biggest lies, if you will, with air codes around lies. Because I think about a lot of advice is given to you about how to grow a practice, but I don't think it's all true. I think that there's ways that we can look at it differently and get different outcomes. And I don't think people are trying to mislead. ⁓ but I just I feel like it's incomplete. And so I want you guys to recognize that growing your practice and evolving your practice isn't about following more advice or doing more things. I think it's actually about filtering like what is the best way to do it. And for me,   Lazy or efficient, take your pick. I prefer the term efficient. ⁓ let's just get you the most efficient way to grow your practice that keeps you sane, that doesn't burn you out. Because again, I'm about the yes success model. It's all about you, making sure you're living your absolute best life, followed by earnings and profitability and then systems, structure, and scale for you. We've got to have those in place for you. And so I'm really, really big on growing, not for growing sake, but to grow in the way that's best for you, which is why vision and you are the most number one important thing. So when you go through this, I just   I want you to realize like we don't have to stay stuck, we don't have to say overwhelmed, and we don't have to plateau. But there's ways that we can walk through the most common lies, if you will, that are talked about with growth. And then three truths that actually will drive real sustainable growth for you. So number one that I hear a lot is like you just need more new patients. Now, this can be true. Like I said, lies are with an air quote, and you don't always have to be doing marketing spend and you don't have to constantly be attracting people. And like to me, it's constant marketing spend.   Attracting instead of retaining and full hygiene with low case acceptance. Like that can be some of the things. And what's wrong with that is a lot of offices, like when they're telling me, Kiera, we're at like 90 new patients a month. I'm like, cool, you got a backdoor open problem. Like, if we just close that back door, you probably wouldn't need as many new patients, but your ego is screaming, I need more new patients. Or I've got just all these patients coming through, and that's again, we're not retaining them. Or our hygiene schedule is full, but like our doctor schedule is wide open. Well, we don't have great case acceptance. So to me,   Gotta have like great patients coming in, retaining them, and follow through. So growth actually comes better from conversion, not volume. You do need both, which is where I don't think it's a lie. Like you do need patients. We gotta have at least 30 new patients per doctor per month in a like a GP practice. Pediatrics usually run in like 75 to 90, depending upon the the location and what we're looking for. So, like more patients aren't gonna fix leaky systems. So another   Another one, like I said, I'm gonna go through them and they'll tell you like some solutions to fix it. Work harder and produce more, like outproduce your problems, add more days, work longer hours, do more dentistry personally. But like that's burnout. I just had a doctor and she's like, Kiera, we talked about production and I just can't do it. And I was like, Yes, because you're not supposed to do it. We're supposed to have goals. We're supposed to have the whole team. Like I I was with an office and their goal is like twenty-five thousand a day.   But the dentist isn't doing all that and they're out by like four o'clock and we're just scheduling better and we're making sure all the hygienists are up to goal and each doctor's up to goal. Like profit doesn't always follow production. I don't care what your top line is, I care what your bottom line is. So you have to like there is a zone where a lot of doctors work more, but they don't actually make more or they like take home the same. And to me, that's nonsense. Like I'd rather you scale it back and have a small practice than having this high, I don't know, ginormous one and not taking home profit. So   You've got to have, we've got to have efficiency, we gotta have systems, and we gotta make sure it's not all on hue. And then like let's talk about what growth and profit are that we actually wanna hit, not just a top line number. So I I'm really big on like you don't have to work harder and produce more. There's actually a way of how like what do we really need to produce? How do we actually build a schedule? How do we use the entire schedule? How do we use our morning huddles to win rather than just produce, produce, produce? Okay.   Another myth is hire more people and we'll fix it. Like just throw money at your problems through hiring people, through doing this, like this thing will help us. Like, let's add team members. I have an office and I think they've got like 10 people in the front office. I'm like, my gosh, that's psychotic. Like, but everyone feels overwhelmed and overworked. And I'm like, yeah, because no one has clear job descriptions. No one has an end-of-day checklist. No one has like ownership of it. We just keep piling more and more people on rather than like, all right, what's broken? What's a true system? Because I typically say,   Per doctor, I want one for an office team member, except for if there's only one, then I want two. But that's usually a pretty good ratio. Office managers are like debatable if they're there or not. So if you look at that, this is where, but like we overstaff, but we don't have clarity. We got payroll, but like our payroll sky high, but we saw the same issues. Payroll should be sitting at 30%. Like that should be where we're at. Even if you're like here, it's so expensive. I'm like, I know, but we also can't overpay. We can't have so many team members. There are ways that we could like.   You can outsource. There's so many things that we can do. And that's not for me to say we can't hire people. It is for me to say, like, we got to be smart business owners too. So a lot of times people don't fix broken systems. Confusion scales with headcount. Trust me, I used to have a team of five. Now I got a team of 25. It's crazy. It's very thrilling. So, like, you can add more and more people, but if we don't have systems and processes and like,   clear job descriptions, you're just gonna create more chaos and you think you're gonna fix it, but you just add more, then you're stressed because your cash flow is less. It doesn't fix. You got have structure before you have growth. So people don't fix systems, systems support people. So a couple of now like truths. Okay. So we had like lies. All right. Number one, like I said, you just need more new patients. Number two is work harder and produce more. And number three was hire more people. It'll fix it. Now like I said, hiring people might fix it. Producing more could fix it.   having more patients could fix it. But things that are really going to help are like set systems. Like I was in a practice and I'm like, okay, we just need to get a set schedule. Like I said, they're like, I'm exhausted. I was like, perfect. What is each provider's daily goal? What's their hourly goal? What's our hygiene goal? We need to make sure those are in place. So that way it's not just reliant on one doctor. Now we got to look at our case acceptance. Let's look at our patient flow and let's look at billing. Like to me, a lot of these things like if I just fix case acceptance, I don't actually need a ton more patients. If I just fix case acceptance, it's like why don't we actually   clothes the patients that are in our chair. Can we do same-day dentistry for them? Can we get referrals from them? So I'm having quality patients come through. We're diagnosing and we're accepting. Like, what if I just have those? Like those things in place will actually grow your practice. Having 30 new patients a month per doctor is going to grow your practice. Having reviews that tie to that, making sure our collections are at 98%. So many offices actually are profitable, but they're not collecting the money. So they feel broke.   But I'm like, that's actually a system that's going to grow you. So like let's just go after a few systems that are gonna truly grab scheduling, block scheduling. What are the provider goals? Let's hit that. Let's talk about that at Morning Huddle every single day. Let's look at our case acceptance. Our case acceptance, if you're at GP, like we're not doing huge cases, you should be at like a 70% acceptance. If we are at all on X, I'm usually at like 35 to 40. What's our case acceptance? What are we closing? Are we doing single dentistry? Like what are we diagnosing? Are we diagnosing three tens of what we're trying to produce? If not, I need to go fix my case acceptance.   That is my system to fix. That's going to actually grow my practice. That's gonna put money on my books. Billing,

    17 min

  3. 6d ago

    #1,172: The Mid-Year Practice Reset: What Needs to Change Before Q4

    Tiffanie and Nikki share what dental practices should be looking at it now that we're halfway through 2026. Such milestones or touchpoints can include the goals you set at the start of the year, production numbers, the metrics ranges for healthy practices, and so on. From there, Tiff and Nikki talk about how to turn your midpoint numbers into game plans for the remaining six months. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Tiffanie (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. We are back at you again. ⁓ we do four of these ish a month. We do one a week. myself, Tiffanie, and the consulting team. And I always pick from my consultant crew ⁓ whoever can be the best cohort on the topic and also their schedules, which is a fun.   little alignment of ⁓ situations here regarding our topic of choice today. So today I have Nikki. Nikki, thank you for making yourself available this morning for pivoting with me. I know I had some ⁓ travel stuff last week and had to move calls around so we had to move this call around and I just appreciate you so much Nikki and for pivoting and and Nikki I'm gonna I'm just gonna say it. It's funny.   And we all kind of podcast from wherever we can. We try to ta stay as centralized as we possibly can, but we all at some point or another are in a very different place than our norm. And Nikki has had so many fun spots. So if you are a an avid podcast listener, you've heard Nikki's and you've not watched, I want you to go back and like look through all of Nikki's and see all of her different backgrounds because it's just so fun.   Nikki Mack (00:55) Yeah.   Tiffanie (01:09) you're like our Carmen San Diego, Nikki. How are you doing today in ⁓ your new space today that is a very temporary and then you'll have a new new space, but how are you doing over there?   Nikki Mack (01:20) Yeah, doing great today. ⁓ this may just be my thing. I may have to find somewhere new to podcast from every time. We'll just yeah. Yes. ⁓ I did love Carmen San Diego, so absolutely I'll just wear a red hat. You'll see me out and about. That would be amazing. ⁓ yes, doing good. super happy to be back. I can't get enough of doing podcasts and   Tiffanie (01:27) I like it. Or pop something in there that people have to find, like what's different.   I don't know.   I love it   Nikki Mack (01:47) No matter where we are, absolutely we're here for our listeners and we're gonna get it done. So I'm ready.   Tiffanie (01:52) I love   it. I love it. thank you. And listeners, you guys know if you've listened to us at all that we truly do love what we do, that we are here to ensure that we give as much information out to the dental world and beyond. We have listeners who aren't even a part of the dental world because entrepreneurship is all the same. Business is business is how I describe it. So whether you're dental, whether you're outside of dental, I know we've worked with podiatrists and optimists.   And chiropractors and all kinds of different businesses. We've helped CPAs and financial advisors and all kinds of different organizations because at the bottom of everything, business is the foundation here and dentistry is what you do on top of that foundation. So we're excited for you guys to be here. We're excited to be ⁓ hosting this podcast to be delivered in July.   July is one of my favorite months of the year for multiple reasons. Brodie's birthday is in July. He's actually eighteen ⁓ this year. The the recording of this podcast, he will be eighteen in almost a month from now. So that's crazy and scary. And for those of you who have been listening for as long as we've been doing this, you probably remember when little Brodie, who's like nine or ten, maybe not even yet, eight, ⁓ came on and he talked about having a working mom. So really cool.   If you've been listening for a long time, you know who he is. But July is also one of my favorite months of the year because this is really kind of our reset month. This is where I just kind of slow down in life and in business and really take a look at what are the things I said I wanted to accomplish this year and where am I at in relation to those things? Do I need to pivot? Are did things change? Did I have things on my docket that I was like, gosh, that's kind of arbitrary or   Too much or you gosh, I'm really just not gonna get to that this year and that's okay too. So have we changed things that maybe we need to reevaluate and reset? for me personally, I said I'm gonna do a pull up this year, and you what, it's still on my docket, but six months, seven months into the year, not having made ⁓ a lot of progress on even attempting to do one, I think I'm a little behind the wheel on that. So needing to reevaluate, but that's really what we're talking about today. So whether it's personal goals, business goals   Family goals, whatever they are, this is a really great time of year to just take a step back and really, really, really push forward on what we want our life to look like. So we brought Nikki on today to help us with that as far as the dental industry and the and the dental business. And Nikki, from your perspective, consulting practices, I know this is the time of year as well that we're gonna take a look with our clients and we say, Hey, how was Q2?   So we've already done a how is Q1. We go through, we evaluate quarter one in comparison to last year at the same time. Well that now our consultants are all going through for their clients and really evaluating quarter two in comparison to quarter one and also in comparison to the projections that we made with them earlier this year. So as we're prepping for that and as we're getting ready to have those conversations with our clients, Nikki, what are some of the key indicators, the KPIs that you have always loved watching for your practices? ⁓   in consulting, in managing, in working within the DSL world, all of your different spaces, what are the ones that you really like to take a look at in July?   Nikki Mack (05:16) So for me, I mean, production's the obvious one, right? Like we never really take our eye off of production ever. Q one, two, three, four, always. ⁓ but I think deeper than just production, it's looking at those metrics that drive production, especially that we started the year with the intention of working on. So a lot of my offices this year, it's case acceptance. Like 2026 is all about case acceptance.   Tiffanie (05:23) Yeah.   Nikki Mack (05:42) And so for me at this halfway point, that's where I'm really like digging into that number. So what does the percentage look like? And there's metrics, right? And there's ranges and there's healthy offices and things like that. But like I tell my teens a lot when we first start, the biggest thing I'm looking at is just where are we? So like January, ⁓ if we've been together for a while, where our starting point is, your percentage now is what I care about. And then how are we going to increase it? So hopefully by July.   We've seen some movement in that number and production would reflect it. But if we don't understand how we're driving that production, how do we keep doing it or make those changes? Like we said, going into Q3 that we need. So ⁓ I would say case acceptance is a huge one. Are you tracking dollars? Are you tracking percentage? Whatever we've been looking at, let's really dive into it. And then honestly, another one that I've seen a lot lately is ⁓   New patient retention. So we a lot of doctors have expanded or brought in associates or we have a lot of new practice owners, right? And so new patients, we know it, they matter, they're super important. But if we're bringing a ton of women and they're all just leaving and not like staying with us, then like that's a lot of time invested. ⁓ so we've I've seen a lot of focus this year with what's our new patient numbers and then who came back.   So July is a perfect time to really be dialed in on that because we're going to start to see those six month recares come back, the ones from the end of last year. So that's a super good number, in my opinion, to really get an eye on the health of your practice and how some of our systems are working. Because I love a system.   Tiffanie (07:27) Right. All right. That's what we're here for, right?   Yeah, I I totally agree. And I love the new patient spot too, like in conjunction with the case acceptance that you said both of those, because oftentimes we will look at the case acceptance and we'll say, Gosh, I w our case acceptance is really high, but our we're still not meeting production, or our case acceptance is really low. We've got to   Gotta do more ⁓ case ex you know, case acceptance, whatever. But when you start to really dive into it, a lot of times our case acceptance will tell us every time our case acceptance will tell us what our diagnosis is as well, right? So if we're only looking at what is our percentage of case acceptance, whether it's dollar or yes or no, it doesn't really matter. But if we're only looking at that number and we're never looking at how much have we diagnosed, we kind of miss the boat there on the in between. So as you're taking that mid year.   Check-in here in July. I think that that is a great place to start. I totally agree, Mickey. Because at that point you can say, do we have the opportunity to meet the goals that we are projecting towards? So where are we at? We always say go look at what your full goal was or is, right? So what are we supposed to do by December 31st, 2026, or whatever year you're listening to this in? What are we supposed to do by the end of the year? And where are we at in relation to that? So six months.   Nikki Mack (08:39) Ha ha   Tiffanie (08:46) Seven months, you know, into

    27 min

  4. Jul 2

    #1,171: What To Do During CEO Time

    Kiera has talked to a ton of doctors to come up with tips for how to fill that CEO time that so often feels fathomless. The ideas include blocking out your schedule to understand your frequency, committing to "deep work" time, optimizing whatever you can, and more. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent- Dental A Team (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera. And today is a fun rift of a CEO, giving some CEO tips. And I was just on a birthday trip. You guys, had a birthday and it was so fun. And my husband and went off to Austria and Amsterdam. ⁓ We have traveled a lot. If you guys have been a podcast listener, you know I'm obsessed with traveling. so because we've traveled so much, we're kind of on to off the beaten path locations and.   This year I was like, Hey, I've never seen the Tulip festival in Amsterdam. Like let's head on over there for that. And so when we were there, some of these ideas came to me and I realized this would be, again, I love some white, white noise space guys. If you are an owner of a business and you have not booked yourself one trip that you are off the grid completely. when I talk my, so it was my birthday when I was gone and ⁓ luckily I have some like great friends in my life that texted me. My phone is off off.   Like I kid you not, is on airplane mode. I don't even put it on wifi. Like I don't text people. Jason has his phone and I will say it's the greatest gift I give myself. And one of my friends did not know this quite as well with me. And she was like, Hey, said my other friend, like I texted care like two days ago and I haven't heard from her. She's like, ⁓ when care travels, she is like dead off the grid. Like you will not get in touch with her. If something happens, even if her house is on fire, like she'll deal with it when she gets home, like genuinely she's off the grid. She needs to have that, like just shut off downtime.   And I will say for any of you, and I told an office to do this a while ago and they came back from their trip and they were like, Kiera, that was the best gift and we're going to do that now forever. And so for you, that would be my like birthday gift to all of you to do for yourselves is take a week, completely shut off. No Slack, no emails, no text messages, ⁓ completely turn your phone off if you can. Tell your family where you're at, like have it to where someone can be reachable if necessary. But I will tell you, I sleep better.   than I ever do. ⁓ I come back refreshed. My team all tells me like I am such a happier boss when I come back. I feel like my relationship with my husband is so much stronger because I feel like he gets his wife back. I feel like I come back. I was in the Tulip Festival. There's videos that I have not posted. They're just for Kiera. I feel like literally skipping like a little girl through these Tulip Festivals. I feel I go back to the true core of who Kiera is. I don't need to be a boss. I don't need to be a CEO. I don't need to be a consultant.   I am able to be like free bird Kiera out there. Jason even calls me bird when we travel and it's just a space. So there's a little tip for you that I hope you listen to and I hope you take and hey, if you do it, send me a message and let me know how it went for you. I will also fair warn that sometimes what I call it is it's the adrenaline. What would it be? It's like coming off of the adrenaline. So that drop.   Sometimes I get angry. So fair warning that that does is the dopamine drop if you will and I felt like I have had like three days where I'm just sheer angry and I'm like what is going on? I'm on vacation. I'm in this beautiful place and I'm just mad but it's because you go from being so high tilt throttle to nothing that your nervous system does kind of have this like whiplash. So I have found that some ways to ease into that is one knowing that two I tried to hit the gym like three or four times when I'm over there because that allows like   a lot of that energy to just get expelled rather than going from like high level to nothing. And then I've also found that like reading books, so something for my mind, I usually try to do fiction books. So it's not like obsessive learning, ⁓ but just taking my mind into a different space. Some of those can be a tip for you. again, hopefully some of those help. But ⁓ today I wanted to go through like, how do I actually block and use my CEO time? Because I think that this is a zone that a lot of people want to do as owner doctors and, but they're like, I just don't know what to do during CEO time. So I wanted to   just share with you what I personally do in the company, how I block it, what I have, and then also letting you guys know that we actually have a forum and I'm happy to share it with any of you. can reach out, email us, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com, but like what do I actually do during my admin time checklist? This has been built with lots of different doctors input and also what I personally do.   So for me, I do have a personal assistant and I have an executive assistant. So first step is if you don't have either of those, and I know I talked to a lot of dentists and they get weird about it they don't want to have an executive assistant or a personal assistant, but I will say hands down, this is something absolutely that's tactical that you should do. I have my personal assistant actually watch my schedule and then her job is to go through and to refine my schedule. And she does an amazing job. She's like, hey, Kiera, you're running back to back to back all these meetings. You need to move into some different places. Like these are some things that I think you need to do.   We actually have an Excel spreadsheet. just so you know, I do have an Excel spreadsheet. I'm looking at it right now as I'm podcasting for you. And I look in there and I put in and I have on my like on the right hand side, I have my scheduling needs, what my frequency is. Like we've got podcasting in there. I've got certain coaches that I need to get into. I've got my workout time in there. I've got like my C-suite meeting with the COO and the CRO and our lead consultant and ⁓ Britt and my EAPA meetings and the bookkeepers and our fractional CFO.   I have all those meetings that I need to be hitting. And so we look to see where are those at, where are the meetings that I need to have, but non-negotiable for me is my deep work time. So that's my CEO time. That's my deep work time. I have to have on busy weeks, non-negotiable, I need a two hour block. Like that is a non-negotiable for me, must, must. And it's during the day. I don't do it on my Fridays or my day off. I don't enjoy that for me. I get really actually annoyed to do it on those days. So mine gets blocked during my time.   For dentists, I recommend you do it during your time. ⁓ Working hours, I recommend that you block it in there because if you're producing, let's say $1,000 an hour, you've got to be doing at least $2,000 worth of value during that time. again, when you're giving that up, you tend to be a lot more productive. for me, my first week is very busy. I, first week in the company is something that is none of our favorites. Like we love it.   But it's hard, it's heavy. We have our doctor mastermind that we do. I usually do podcasting on the first week. I'm meeting with a lot of my direct reports. It's a heavy week for me, but we still have my non-negotiables. And so I just look at my timing and I know Monday's a full meeting day, Tuesday's a coaching call podcasting day, Wednesday I'm meeting with the COO, CRO, CFO. I have all those meetings to make sure that they can move on their items from Monday. That for me, it's a pretty heavy day.   And then I've just got a lighter afternoon on Wednesdays to just catch up on projects. Thursdays where I'm, and for me, I also have to know where is my ideal time. So when you're blocking your CEO time, you need to know where are you the most optimal? For me, I'm always the best in the morning. Like seven, 738, like right there is where I'm gonna start like cranking and I'm gonna just go solid for about two hours till 10. My worst time in the entire day is three o'clock. Like I am dead and usually around 11, I start to like.   zone out and I'm not as productive. So I've just had to try that. That's a trial and error. Test yourself. See, do you like the mornings? Do like the afternoons? Do like the end of day? Like where are you? Brittany's zone, she's a night owl. That girl, she starts to get her prime optimization on it like three, four, five o'clock at night. Like that is when that girl, she starts to churn and she puts out her best work and we both know that. I'm like, amazing. We work on very polar opposite different ones. So like she needs to put her deep works over your OMS, finding out as well for them. But for me,   Mine is Thursday mornings is where I put that deep work. Then what I prefer to do is on my weeks where I'm not as busy. So I do coaching calls every other week. On my non coaching call weeks, I have two hours on Tuesday, two hours on Thursday. So I'm blocking four hours for myself. So your personal assistant, your executive assistant, they should be blocking this. And to me, this is a like, you do not like, you know, like a stove is hot. Like we don't touch that. You never touch my deep work blocks like ever. Don't ask me to schedule there. Don't ask me to put a meeting there.   Do not ask me to disrupt that time. And I am so strict on my deep work time that people know like, we don't touch that with a 10 foot pole. And your team needs to know that. Doctors, also recommend a lot of times, especially if you do it in the morning or the afternoon, go to the library somewhere where people aren't going to find you. Go to a coffee shop where yo

    21 min

  5. Jul 1

    #1,170: The #1 Hiring Mistake

    Hiring is hard right now. Kiera talks about a critical mistake offices tend to make when filling new seats: Hiring not just for skill, not just for culture, but both. She walks listeners through aligning your hirees with your core values, requiring a full team assessment, and involving your full staff. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent- Dental A Team (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera. And today I wanted to talk about a big hiring mistake that I see offices make and how to fix it. I'm not just going to leave you on a cliffhanger, but like, let's talk about how to fix it because I know hiring's a beast right now. I'm in the suck of it, but don't forget, this is the success tax. We don't get the suck without the success. Like you have to have both. so hiring is a beast, but I think fixing some of these things, working through it and great news times are changing everybody. ⁓ it used to be that, ⁓   It used to be an employee market and I think it's now shifting. so for people feeling like there's not great team members out there, I will say that the market has shifted and we've actually made our most amount of hires in the last eight months as a Dental A Team company. And ⁓ I think I've learned a lot that I'm excited to share a lot of these hiring mistakes that I've made, that I've seen offices make and how you can fix them. So ⁓ I really think that there's a simple three steps around it that you can solve it. And who knows, I might go beyond the three.   But really helping you guys prevent that team turnover, protect your culture, um, and really, you know, doing it in a great way. Then only teams obsessed with making dentistry easier for you guys. Um, our experiences helped hundreds and thousands of team members build strong teams and to do it with fun and ease and to make it a place where you're obsessed with going. I actually just spoke with a doctor the other day and she said, Kiera, you need to use me as a testimonial and I need to get her on the podcast. Uh, but she said,   A year ago, I hated my practice and I didn't like going and I was ready to literally burn the whole thing down, burn my life down and walk away. And she said, Dental A Team changed my life and you saved me and you saved my practice. And now it's a place where I'm obsessed with going. I'm so happy going there. I love my team. I love my patients. I love what I'm doing. And I think if that's not a testimonial for you of what Dental A Team can do in a very short amount of time, having a doctor who absolutely hated their practice to being obsessed with their practice and being so happy every single day is amazing.   ⁓ I also think that ⁓ just really being here as a person who is hopefully a friend in the industry, we help practices, we fly to your office, we work with you virtually, but you don't have to do this alone. Everybody says dentistry is an isolated island and I would say only if you want it to be. We have a community, we bring our doctors in person together if you want so you can be around a community of like-minded dentists. We physically come to your office and we also work with your team virtually and being team members ourselves.   Every single consultant on our team has to be a team member, front office, back office experience to where we don't just understand you, we actually are you. So let's talk about hiring. So that was talk about like hire for culture and not just skill. And I think mistake number one is not getting both. I think there's certain roles that you absolutely 100 % can just do culture and train it up. I will also say that there's a lot like an office manager role. There's no way I'm going to recommend that you train them up.   Now you can pull someone from banking, you can pull other people and yes, you can train up, but depending upon the space of your practice, hiring for skill and culture is essential. And I think I used to just feel like, like we train, some great people on for culture. And I was like, do you know how much of an uptick learning hill I had for not having any skill there? So you can, but I want to say that if you just hire for culture and not for skill, you've got to have a longer bandwidth, lower expectations of them being able to immediately help you.   Like that person's gonna take a good six to 12 months. I have an office right now and they train up dental assistants. They go through 90 days worth of training in an office and it usually takes those dental assistants about six to nine months before that assistant actually feels comfortable and competent to where the doctors feel like they can trust them. So when we look at it, I know you're desperate to fill the seat, but I wanted to say like hiring mistake number one is being desperate and just filling the spot. And I have done this, Britt and I talk about it often.   And we always say like, is this a red flag that we're not paying attention to? So I feel like hiring mistake number one is you ignore the red flags. So it could be a culture red flag, it could be a skill red flag, it could be an expectation misalignment red flag, but getting better at hearing those red flags and not being desperate on your hires is a big mistake that I'm watching dentists make. And so like, make sure that the resume looks great, but how can I then like test them on it? What things can you do? And as you go through the hiring process, don't be afraid   to refine, tweak, change up and make better your process. I can't tell you how many times Britt and I were like, great, we missed that on that last hire. We're gonna add this to our hiring interview questions and we're gonna ask that next time. I just had a doctor and they brought on somebody and clinically they're not on the same page. And I was like, you guys, this is like a one in a million. I've never had this in years and years and years of hiring doctors. We're gonna add that to it. For hiring doctors, we started asking for actual production procedure reports.   I'm not just gonna take you telling me you're doing a $7,500 day. Show me the reports. I don't need to see patient names, but I do need to see what you were able to do that is diagnosed under you. I need to see a sample HIPAA schedule of what your normal day was. Like there's ways that you can ask for things and get better at sleuthing and sussing out information rather than just taking it at face value. Resumes are lied on all the time. I talk to recruiters and I'm not saying people are bad.   I'm just saying that like 90%, I think they told me, think it was 75 % of all resumes are lied on. And I was like, wow, okay. So then we need to trust and verify. So I would just say like, don't miss the red flags and have somebody like Britt, appreciate, she calls me out and I call her out and we say, is this a red flag that in three months we're going to regret? And sometimes that desperation can hit you hard. I would say have somebody on the other side of you that doesn't allow you to make desperate hires. So,   And then what I do is for us, we really do hire by our core values. So you guys can either have core values or have like the top three personality traits that thrive in our office and put that in our interview job ad, put that in our interview questions. So for us, like we hustle, like that is a big thing. Like Dental A Team runs hard. And if that's not your style and you're more like slow, steady, move on. Dental A Team will never be a happy place for you. Like I move quick, our team moves quick. You've got to be a fast paced individual. So for that,   look to see what are some of those characteristics and then really do a litmus test on those employees, future employees, and make sure that they're really going to fit you well. So I think that you can do filtering systems on culture fit surveys. You can have video intros where they can come, phone screen for core value alignment, but really truly having a filtering process where you're not missing those red flags. You're improving your interview questions consistently, adding one more filter step to the interview. It's like for us for consultants, they have to   apply, we do a mock, and then what they do is they have to do a video one. We have to do a mock scenario with them. Like have a pretty intensive consultant hiring process. For you, look to see how can I really know without hiring this person that they're going to be a great fit, not just a good fit for my practice. And I think raise your standard for hiring that we only hire great people, not just good people. ⁓ I think then other people, another mistake that I found in hiring.   is that you don't involve the team. just make these decisions and you don't use the team. And honestly, having team involvement helps protect the culture, but it also makes them bought into this hire. So have them come in for a working interview, have a team lead, ⁓ lead the second interview, ⁓ and then feedback after the candidate where it's kind of a 360 awareness. So like, what does a hygiene department see, dental assistant department, front office and doctors. So have everyone have kind of like a four view and you can randomly ask people and if you're like, I didn't even meet them.   Well, that's a red flag to me that that team member didn't even go say hello to each potential teammate. I know you might have a large office that might not be doable, but really trying to get that four different angle perspective on this person can give you a really good insight. know there's certain roles that I've had people help me with, assess me with others where it's like, that's just my decision to make. But the more I can get more teams involvement, more perspective on it, the better. And I will say, I just recently had a candidate and I had our leadership team give me assessm

    16 min

  6. Jun 30

    #1,169: The Win-Win Nature of Tech in the Office (If You Do It Right)

    Tiff and Nikki dive into all things tech + dentistry, including what practices can implement to make the day-to-day more efficient for staff and convenient for the patient — all while keeping that personal human touch. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Tiff (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. I am back here today with you, with one of my favorite Dental A Team consultants. We have a few consultants, and they're all my favorite, but I'm here today with Miss Nikki Mack, who many of you have met over the course of the last few months that she has been with Dental A Team, and all of you know she has a vast amount of experience in the dental industry, and she's right here in town with myself and Britt and   Gosh Pam, everybody's here. Dana's down south, but that's okay. Nikki's here and she's here with me today. And Nikki, welcome to the podcast. I am so excited to have you here today. We're gonna have so much fun together. You are a bundle of energy and a bundle of fun. And I'm just excited to be here. So how are you? How are you loving this like semi cloudy weather we've got and what's life in Nikki's world look like?   Nikki Mack (00:49) Gosh.   It's been fantastic. I'm super happy to be back. I had so much fun last time. ⁓ and actually I'm really excited about today's topic too. So that helps, obviously, but I can't wait to talk about it. ⁓ it's gorgeous. It's still over a hundred, but you know, we learned to live with what we can get. the gloomy skies, a little bit of humidity, maybe some sprinkles. Like that's I'm ready. That's a great way to kick off my weekend. So I'm here for it.   Tiff (01:00) Yeah. Yeah.   I know.   I agree.   I agree. This is like the one time, I don't know, in maybe my entire life of living in Arizona that I can't say, yeah, it's over a hundred, but it's a dry heat, 'cause it's over a hundred and humid. So I'm not really sure what to do with that. I'm like, it's cloudy, can I go outside? And I'm like, gosh, it's still really it's still a hundred and five. So I'm not sure w how to I'm not sure how to act.   Nikki Mack (01:31) Yeah.   Yeah.   Cloudy skies make me want a sweater, but then I walked outside and I was like, ⁓ no, that's not. That's not what's happening here. So we might have a real monsoon season this year. I can't wait.   Tiff (01:43) Yeah.   I know.   I know. We're supposed to. We're supposed to. So we will, listeners, we will keep you in the loop on the Arizona weather. I know everybody's always dying to know. I actually it's one of the most like most often asked questions that I get when I do travel. So I know you're all just dying to hear about it. We will keep you posted. ⁓ but I agree Yeah. Yeah. Always wanted to be a meteorologist, you know. Here we are. Here we are.   Nikki Mack (01:58) Yeah.   We're here for your weather updates and your dental ⁓ improvements. That's what we do.   Tiff (02:17) but I agree, today's topic is actually really fun and ⁓ it's it's tech techie and I think tech in dentistry can mean so many things. And so we'll narrow down kind of what we're chatting about today and and to to make it easy, I think tech has been so like virtually involved since COVID shutdowns and we've just really spun in dentistry on so many different platforms.   Be used. So tech in the dental industry no longer just means we have a mill, we have a 3D printing machine, we have scanners, and that is tech, but there's so much more that goes into it and that can be involved in that that term that I'm really excited to talk about it today. And Nikki, I'm excited. I know you love tech and the technical industry and AI and all that stuff, and   And you you love to geek out on it ⁓ in your personal life. And like I think we all use those tools. So I'm excited to talk about it today. And and something that I want to start this out with today is really the idea of how much we use technology in our everyday lives and how much ⁓ convenience the American citizen is after. We want efficiency.   Nikki Mack (03:16) Yeah.   Tiff (03:37) We want convenience. We do a lot. We jam as much into our days as we possibly can. And so being able to use technology severely impacts our worlds. And gosh, even this morning we do every Friday, we do like our f our Friday fun Friday. What's the most fun thing we did? And Diana, one of our consultants on our team, she's like, gosh, this week I ordered my groceries and they were delivered to my house. And she's like, that was life changing because she's a busy mom.   And I was like, that's so funny. And then today we're talking about this. I mean, gosh, technology. We're ordering, we're ordering our groceries, we're ordering Amazon. Like, how much stuff do you order on Amazon even when you want to support the other, the other companies and the other stores? But how much are we ordering on Amazon? Because it's easy, that ease of access. We're scheduling as many appointments online as we can. I just paid a bill to my healthcare office online and making sure that we can do all of these things from our phones.   in the most convenient ways as possible has become such an industry standard and a and a life standard for so many of us. I want to chat about that today within the dental industry. And Nikki, you said something before we got on, you're taking some notes, you're doing some things, and I I want to highlight that note because first we'll go through kind of like what is technology, Nikki, in your in your world and the practices you're working with, how do you see practices really using   Nikki Mack (04:47) Yeah.   Tiff (05:01) technology in that fashion, like for efficiencies, for conveniences, what are you seeing in the dental industry that people can implement within their practices?   Nikki Mack (05:11) So I think the key when we talk about it is we want to do things that make it easier for us and convenient for the patient, right? Like those should be kind of the two, I feel like key core pieces before we use anything. But   We also have to keep in mind that technology doesn't have to replace that personal touch. Like they're still coming to see us. I'm still gonna greet them at the front desk, right? We're gonna ask how their vacation was. They're a part of our practice. But people do want that convenience and you want to help the office. So I see it in ways that can help the team be more efficient. ⁓ with like virtual appointment assistance, right? Online appointments. my gosh. I mean, in 2026, I can book my oil change.   online right i don't even have to call the auto shop   for that. People want to be able to book it online. And then that's one less phone call that you have to take that you can be interacting with a patient, right? Face to face, engaging. So a lot of ⁓ online appointment scheduling, ⁓ bill portals, billing reminders, being able to send off statements, people can respond to the link in that text and pay for it. ⁓ all of those kind of pieces usually are the key. And then not quite our topic today, but   with diagnostics, right? There's a lot of technology available that can really help you get some valuable information to put in front of the patient too. But that leads us back to efficiency, right? And offering that convenience to patients. So I think it's really those touch points is where I see it the most.   Tiff (06:25) Yeah.   Yeah.   Yeah,   I agree. And I think you you touched on that like AI component for the back office for diagnostic tools. We have we talked about earlier, you know, the scanners. We have all of these digital ⁓ so we say tech, right? But really we're talking about like digital technology, right? Because tech can be so broad. So we have all of these digital resources that really do c ⁓ create conveniences for the patient.   And I think we undervalue even Nikki, what you just said, we ha we have them in the back office for diagnostic tools. I think we undervalue the convenience that that can create for our patients because the convenience of understanding, I'm not la I'm not logically sitting here thinking with my forefront brain, wow, being able to see this on the on the screen is so convenient and it's making my life so much easier. But me being   Nikki Mack (07:25) Mm-hmm. ⁓   Tiff (07:29) A person who can understand this, do it in an efficient and an effective way, move my day quickly, say yes to scheduling, say yes to being healthier because I can visually see it. That's convenient and it's making my experience better. And it's also to your point, Nikki, all of those conveniences, appointment ⁓ scheduling online, confirming our appointments online, paying our bills online, seeing the   Seeing the AI version of my mouth, seeing how my teeth have changed, all of those things are cutting down on the effort that the human is having to put out so that that bucket of time and energy and capacity that has been left because we were using it on something else. Now we filled this capacity bucket with extra time. I can now sit as a dental professional and spend more time connecting.   with the human across from me because I'm not spending the time on the phone calling to schedule the appointment or answering to schedule the appointment or doing all these pieces. So not only is it more convenient, effective, and efficient for the patient, but the team is getting some time back as well when they're used correctly. And I think that's huge. I think it makes a massive difference.   Nikki Mack (08:47) my gosh, it's   it's so massive. I think people outside of dental probably don't realize it, but all of us in it, we know it, right? We live it. The single most valuable thing in a practice, in my opinion, is time because it doesn't matter if you're a one

    28 min

  7. Jun 25

    #1,168: To Scale or Simplify, That is the Question.

    Ever feel like your office doesn't fit the standard benchmarks for growth? In this episode, Kiera and Dana riff on how to know whether going big or tightening the screws is the best way forward for your practice — including specific questions to ask yourself so you can get started on change today. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent- Dental A Team (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and today's a lucky day. I get Dana on the podcast with me. Dana, she is Donuts with Dana. She's been my ride or die for so freaking long. I love this woman so much. And fun fact, I didn't quite prep her 100 % for this podcast and yet she still shows up for a podcast with me. So Dana, how you doing today?   DAT-Dana (00:20) Doing pretty good. Listen, any podcast with you is a good time. So if I get time with Kiera, I'm showing up.   Kiera Dent- Dental A Team (00:25) Well, I appreciate   it because selfishly I needed to throw a few podcasts in the morning before a coaching call day. And I was like, ⁓ doing them solo. I'd rather have a consultant. So I just looked across the calendars and was like, which consultants are free and like threw them on people's calendars. And then Dana was like, I didn't even know that this was a podcast. So, but Dana, I equally feel the same. Like if I can snag you for a podcast, like let's roll girl. Let's have a good time. Dana.   You're Dainty to a point, but you're also Dynamite Dana. And we just had a client who's looking to work with you. And I told them like, Dana, you don't take on new clients. Like it is a very rare season. Like you happen to have a few clients that just like you've grown them enough. They're too new level that they're not staying with us. They've been with you for freaking ever. And I was like, Dana has a very rare opening. And I remember this client was like, well, we want to meet Dana. And I was like,   hold please, I'm just gonna send you a bunch of podcasts and if you need more than that, you just let me know. So, and when I was looking through them, it was like, Dynamite Dana on the podcast. And I was like, I think that one just got to stick for me Dana. Like it's the best one by far because you're a dynamic, you're dynamite and you just crush it for teams. So excited for today because today's topic is scale or simplify. Like what should growth look like in your practice? And this one I just felt was gonna be a fun rift with you and me because we have practices that.   DAT-Dana (01:23) you   Kiera Dent- Dental A Team (01:40) I think are on both sides of this coin and how do offices know? So I'm excited Dana to rift with the one and only dynamic dynamite, Dainty on the pod.   DAT-Dana (01:52) It's getting longer and longer, but I love it.   Kiera Dent- Dental A Team (01:56) But what's crazy is Dana like here's a fun fact about Dana that you guys might not know for those of you who've listened for a while great welcome if you haven't go back and listen to some of them Dana's been Don't is with Dana. I think still my favorite one, but ⁓ Dana has this wild memory you tell her one time like I can change alliterations on Dana multiple times which we've done with core values and Dana has the most current one always Dana I don't know how your memory does this cuz I'm like you'll remember that on   whatever May date we're doing this podcast on that on that date it was dynamic dynamite Dainey and you're like yeah Kiera that was the latest one and I'm like how like I have a good memory but you even skunk me like it's impressive has this always been the case for you like did you crush everybody on memory like that game memory   DAT-Dana (02:37) Yeah, it is. It's always been the   case. And it's weird. I was trying to explain it to Britt and Nikki one time. And it's like, my brain just automatically like does alliterations and associates things with like other pieces that then I can, I don't know. It's very strange, but I'll take it.   Kiera Dent- Dental A Team (02:51) I don't know. I love it.   So, every year for our company holiday party, if you guys don't do it, it's a good time. have, I hope Danny still love it. Like, but we, do fun. Kiera's games are just made up games guys. And I have a great time and it's always changing the rules. Tiffanie always loses. Even if I try to like slightly ethically cheat for her, like I give her 10 tickets on the beginning and I'm like, Tiff, if you can't freaking win with that much of a jump.   DAT-Dana (03:01) yeah.   Kiera Dent- Dental A Team (03:20) but it's always about team trivia and Dana whoops, she skunks every single year she wins it because she just has all the memory. So maybe Dana, that's why you and I both love the holiday party. Cause I just like, even tried to make it to where you won't win it. Not cause I don't want you to, but I'm like, my gosh, like you skunk them every time. So it's a fun time. We, but I'm never letting Shelbi do it again. She made me do, do you remember Jeopardy last year? I had like 200 tickets a person that I had to like peel off and raffle off.   DAT-Dana (03:32) We have... I know.   Yes.   Sift through, I know.   Kiera Dent- Dental A Team (03:50) That Shelbi is like, that one was worth 15 tickets. And so if you guys want ideas, we're gonna talk about how to simplify our scale. Like that's our topic. But if you want us to rift on holiday party ideas, Dana, that just might have to be a topic. So email in because the marketing team has to see that you want to know this for me to make podcasts anymore. So email Hello@TheDentalATeam.com and just say like, we want to hear about all your holiday party ideas. Dana and I might get back on a rift. So, but Dana, let's talk about.   scale or simplify, how do offices know? Like what are some of the defining pieces? Because I think this is something about Dental A Team I'm obsessed with is we don't have a set like model, like not every office has to have X, Y or Z, it's truly yours. like that also, I think for some offices, they just wanna be told. They wanna like, I want my mom to tell me what to do for college. Like mom, just tell me. And I think people are like, well, just tell me Dana, do I scale or do I simplify? Like how do people know? Like what's some, and again, this is a full blown, we had a few.   Excuse me, talking points, I'm not here to follow any of them. I'm just here to talk like real life, like how do we guide offices if they should simplify our scale? What's kind of some of the things you start with within office?   DAT-Dana (04:53) Yeah. So usually I'll honestly start with the owner and like, what do you truly love? Because if you don't love managing people, if you don't love doing the procedures that it takes to expand, if you don't love like   running the business and crunching the numbers and doing those pieces, if that doesn't inspire you, then let's talk about simplifying, right? Where if, if really and truly that's why you show up every day is for those pieces, then let's talk about scaling, right? And what growth looks like and you know,   what that looks like for you and it might be adding practices, might be expanding the space that you're in, it might be a variety of different things, but honestly and truly what do you love because I don't want to build something that at the end of the day just makes you dislike coming to the office more or exponentially harder.   Kiera Dent- Dental A Team (05:49) I agree with you, Dana. I think this is a spot where almost giving you as an owner, the green light to say it's okay to stay where you're at. ⁓ I have an office in Florida and every time we got on a call, everybody around them was telling them to expand. So they had six operatories. They're producing 3.5 million. Their overhead, kid you not is 35%. And people were like, right. Like it's just, ⁓ it was a great practice and they worked four days a week. It was a husband, wife duo.   And I remember we talked all the time and they're like, Kiera, everybody thinks that we should scale. Like we should get another practice. Like we've got this. And I was so annoyed because I'm like, everybody chirping in your ear doesn't realize what you want. What they wanted, their kids were a little, they're like, we want to be home with our kids. We have a very profitable practice. We're very happy with it. We have minimal debt on it and it's just fulfilling our life. And what we want to do is we want to have our summers. We want to go golfing with the boys. We want to.   get on a boat and go take, they take a month off and they go travel because they can't and they can still pay their team while they're gone. And I think for them, they actually hit this spot of growth. And what they were looking for is they didn't want to necessarily grow the practice. They practice like who would change that up? mean, they've got the, they dropped out of insurance. Like I'm talking, they have the sweetest of the suite. They work six to three. They're off every day at three o'clock. Like you want to make a dream life for people that to me was like their dream life. And so when I looked at it,   But what they did is they got stagnated and they just needed something to fulfill. So they actually then went into like church groups and community groups and she got into bodybuilding, which Dana and I can appreciate. Like she got very obsessive about like working out and putting in and spending her time in her physical health. And he spent his time in like Bible study and giving back in the community that way that I feel that if there's a spot, Dana, like you said,   know thyself and be free. And it might be that you want to scale, but you don't want to scale your practice. You just need to go find another avenue of fulfillment that can be in varying shades

    23 min

  8. Jun 24

    #1,167: The Life-Changing Magic of an In-Office Consultant Visit

    Kiera and Trish are on the podcast together (yay!) to dive into the art of a Dental A-Team visit to your office (double yay!). They go into how an eagle-eyed consultant was able to take a specific office that couldn't quite reach its goals and tip them into success. They also touch on relationship dynamics, the power of "mom eyes," being a cheerleader and a coach, and a ton more. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent- Dental A Team (00:01) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and I am so excited for today's podcast. I have the one and only Trish. She's known as TADA in our company. She's all the confetti, the glitter, the sparkles, the spice, and Trish honestly just reminds me how great life is. So Trish, welcome to the podcast today. How are you?   Tricia Lee Ackerman (00:17) I'm doing great, thank you Kiera. I always love getting this time in with you.   Kiera Dent- Dental A Team (00:21) ⁓ likewise, I, Trish, you are just my little like light on the Hill. just, whenever I need to remind myself how good life is, I just need a little Trishism in my life. So Trish, thank you for being that. And Trish, you just got back off the road. You were in offices and that was what we're going to podcast today of like, you have had some pretty freaking outstanding results after being with offices, being in person with them. And so we kind of wanted to office autopsy that, but like Trish.   Just walk us through like what is an office visit like and how does that magic happen? So kind of walk us through because you just Literally flew in I think last night and here we are. was like, hey, let's do a quick early morning podcast with you But yeah, let's let's talk about some of that magic Trish What what happens in an in-office visit and how does that magic happen?   Tricia Lee Ackerman (00:57) Yeah, that's good.   You know, it's like we do, we build strong relationships, you know, via the Google meetings and video meetings and such, but something truly does happen when you get to touch somebody, hug somebody, and then really just like look at them knee to knee, eye to eye. And I was, when I meet with teams, like it's typically, we kind of know each other already. You know, we've been working together a couple months, sometimes even up to like four or five, six months already. But when we get there and we see each other,   And we get to have a lot of fun together as a collaborative team, because the Dental A Team style is like, we are fun. That we definitely are. And we try to make the lives of people easier. And this collaboration that takes place, also is kind of like it's cousins with a trust that also forms at the same time. So it's like we collaborate, yeah, that's great. But then the relationship, it steps it up a notch and a trust starts to come.   Kiera Dent- Dental A Team (01:39) Yeah.   Tricia Lee Ackerman (02:00) And when you can see that happen, can all, well, you feel it and then you know it's there. And then the magic really starts to like, it speeds up the momentum. It like you hit the, you hit the pedal to the metal and like, it's go. And I've seen it more than once. And so it is truly the onsite visits that, that bring this kind of full circle and put the big red bow on what we're trying to accomplish for ourselves as consultants and for the teams.   Kiera Dent- Dental A Team (02:30) Yeah, I love that you say that because you're right. Like we do virtual and in-person consulting. We also have an in-person mastermind, which is so fun, but it's that I think it's the collaboration. It's the connection. It's the conversations that are had that you wouldn't normally have. ⁓ it's having, I almost got like the hallway whispers, teams open up a lot to you when we're in person. They, we find out things. And also when we go in person, you're able to see things. I remember, I think like one of the highlights of my career.   was walking into a practice that I had been consulting for almost a year. We were growing them and I walked in and I did like a, it was a head turn. Everybody says I have some good mom eyes without being a mom. And I was like, you guys have paper charts? I didn't know that this was a thing. And how has this never come up on a single call because paper charts should not be happening. And the dentist was like, but Kiera, I'm just so comfortable with them. And I said, well, great, we're gonna get really uncomfortable and it's time to change. I just think it's a...   Tricia Lee Ackerman (03:23) Yes   Kiera Dent- Dental A Team (03:27) things that offices don't even know that they should be bringing up to you of issues on virtual calls. We can't see the practice. can't see how like there's a practice. You and I both know them very well. The thing we did for them was we put in a different flow and that's all we did. And that increased our case acceptance, it increased team morale, but it was just something simple like that. So Krish, you have a practice though. You got an office, it's a unique office. ⁓ And I think what's magical is,   after the visit, it's crazy. People can always tell, I had somebody actually chart my visits and they were like, Kiera, without fail, every time you come in, we get a boost in production, a boost in revenue. And I'm like, well, yeah, cause the team's happier. You guys are all aligned. You're rowing in the same direction. But the goal is that that can also sustain. So I hope that it's a, and what I have seen is it's a boost and it's like, there's a spike, but then it's also the baseline goes up and it stays up.   Typically speaking, because people are like, well, if you're not here all the time, how are we supposed to get these boosts? And it's like, no, it is a boost, it's a spike, but then is the baseline hires and we live in that, that becomes our new norm. Then we come back in and we spike again and the baseline norms up again. So Trish, let's talk about, you got a couple office autopsies out there. What did you do for some practices and what were the results afterwards?   Tricia Lee Ackerman (04:42) Well, I have, I do have a client and there's two practices. We joined them together for the onsite visit and they were, because there's the two practices, they are real, they're very great with being collaborative, but we were all together. So everything was implemented at the same exact time. you know, Kiera, what are the other things I want to throw in about our approach is when we do implement and when we do go onsite, it isn't like the Dental A Team way.   You know, doesn't have to be this way. You know, we asked the teams, well, here is a way that we could do something a little bit easier. How do you think we could do this? So there are really big part of, and these teams that we work with, I mean, they're like, geniuses. They really are. We actually learn so much from them. But this particular team that really kind of sticks out to me, they were really struggling hitting their goals. They kind of just didn't know how to do it.   Kiera Dent- Dental A Team (05:26) Okay.   Tricia Lee Ackerman (05:36) But we set in metrics that they could, we broke them really, we broke them down almost like to the hour. So they didn't have to look at a big thing. And yes, that we can do virtually. However, being together and me being able to watch them collaborate and give them those like, almost like the standing ovation, like, wow, did you guys see what you just designed? And Kiera, when I left that practice, they have hit their goals the last two months now. We put in some, which,   Kiera Dent- Dental A Team (06:03) Yeah.   Tricia Lee Ackerman (06:04) is so neat because they have such a skip in their step. But this, in February, they were $600 away from their collection goal. It was the last day of the month. They ended up going over by $4,000 because they are competitive with each other now in a super fun way. And they ended up getting a patient that was in for a consult to schedule and pay in advance because they wanted that goal. And   Kiera Dent- Dental A Team (06:07) Ha ha ha!   dang.   That's incredible.   Tricia Lee Ackerman (06:32) And it's those things that they would not have done before. again, you know, it's almost like it's an invisible magic that does take place because they now know that they have somebody that's not there to change them, that's there to help them. And they want to make us proud. They want to make themselves proud. And it just kind of like the progress that they want to make steps up quite a big level.   Kiera Dent- Dental A Team (06:35) Mm-hmm.   Tricia Lee Ackerman (07:02) It just does. It just does.   Kiera Dent- Dental A Team (07:02) Yeah,   it does. And George, what I love, and I think you highlighted it so well, you're exactly right. I think all of our team, not I think all of our team members, all of our consultants have been team members before. And that was something as a team member and also as a business owner, I wanted to make sure when Dental A Team is consulting, we don't go in and we don't say, have to follow this script. Because people push so hard on that. They're like, listen, I'm not your robot. Like I don't want to do that versus   here's some tools and here's some resources. Like my job is to be your little fairy godmother, whatever I can do to help you. But at the end of the day, we're looking for outcomes and results. We're not looking for robots. And so if you guys are doing a great job and you're hitting the results, fantastic. And I think Trish, what you said is I think Denali team does a really great job of bringing teams together, helping them put together tangible, actionable plans that are like, this is what we're going to do in here is how we're going to set the goals, but we get the teams to do it. And yo

    23 min
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This podcast is here to give dentists and all dental office team members, in EVERY position, TACTICAL and PRACTICAL TIPS to: - Be more efficient - Have more fun - Improve doctor and team communications - Eliminate frustration - And make your life easier! Jump in! We are thrilled you have decided to LEVEL UP and be part of the DENTAL A TEAM! New episodes every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

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    Dental A Team
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    2019 - 2026
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