Dr James, 2s:

What is up everyone? Welcome to this live Q&A between myself and Mr Bobby Bhandal, returning face on the Dentists Who Invest platform. Of course, I have no idea how many people are going to turn up tonight, but you know what, the more the merrier, and even if we have a little focus select group as well, that's also completely fine. That's also completely cool because it's a wondrous opportunity to avail of Bobby's knowledge. Bobby, there'll be two categories of people ho are on this live Q&A today. There'll be people who've seen your content, both on Dentists who Invests and the content that you do before, and people who have yet to meet you. So I think it would be lovely if we had a little bio in just a moment, just a quick hello or a reintroduction or something along those lines. But before we do that, how are you?

Dr Bobby, 45s:

yeah, I'm very well. Thank you, yeah, very well, still in the practice, as you can tell still, it's still done.

Dr James, 51s:

On the scrubs, I see, yeah, Bobby actually blocked out some clinical time to be on this live q and a tonight. So that is dedication to the cause of content, right there, hats off. But listen, content is flipping important, man, and I know I bang on about that loads on the Dentists Who invest podcast, but I just wish a younger version of me, way back when, would have realized how truly important it is and how much it can accelerate your opportunities in life and also accelerate your ability to hit your objectives. But anyway, we're going to save that conversation for a little later on. Maybe we'll dabble in that talk about that a little later. Let's revert back to what I was saying a second ago. Bobby, if we could have a high level bio about yourself, I think that would be wonderful.

Dr Bobby, 1m 28s:

Yeah, no problem. So most of you know me. If not, my name is Bobby Bandell. I met James probably a couple of years ago now and we've been good friends ever since. And yeah, I graduated from University of Birmingham 2013, worked as an associate for around about seven or eight years and then ventured into setting up my own practice and over here in Leamington Spa in the Midlands. So I've got a successful private practice and off the back of that, I also help and teach trained dentists who are setting up their own practices. It's a real struggle when I set mine up.

Dr James, 2m 6s:

It's difficult, it's lonely, uh, and now I'm really proud to have a community of you know dentists who we help and support each other and it is not to not steal the limelight too much but if you can get a network of people who are positive-minded and collaborative, oh my god, what a life. Because they'll give you little things that you can use in your business or just in life in general. And listen, I know that Dentists Who Invest the name is on the cap right here we talk about investing and what most people associate that with is the finance side of things, as in ISOs, pensions, everything along those lines. But I actually think the part that people don't give enough attention to is invest in yourself and invest in your business, because that will increase your cash flow, like that. Yeah, and that's why I love these webinars, man, because people message me afterwards and they're like hey, I implemented that thing that you said, james or your guest said, and it worked a treat and cash flow went up by 10%, just because I heard this one random little thing. Of course, you have to go searching for a little bit, you have to put yourself on the webinars and put a little bit of effort in, but that's what we're here to do tonight.

Dr Bobby, 3m 9s:

That's the amazing thing about communities. Though you know that you know, nobody knows everything. I don't know everything. I learn just as much from the people in my community who I'm helping as much as they do. You know what I mean. It's crazy.

Dr James, 3m 25s:

That's the thing no matter what level you hit, you should never become arrogant or let it go to your head, right? Because, number one, there's always more things to learn in the vast ocean of knowledge that is available to us. You can never know it all. And also, number two, things change anyway. So, the second that you think that is the second that you shut off from the info. So, yeah, that's a real thing to watch out for in terms of mindset, right there. If you can just identify as the student rather than the master every single time, at least you've got the opportunity to improve. Okay, Bobby. So listen, we talked about your practice, or you talked about your practice just then and you kind of skirted over it. Tell us because I love this story, right, and we've talked about this on the dentist invest podcast before but tell us what sort of how you did. Whatever information you're comfortable with we can go into numbers whatever, I don't mind yeah, because your squat went from like starting out like zero to like really, really, really fast. Quick success, didn't it? And it was because of the things that you implemented into your practice. So I'm interested to share that story once more. Super high level. So the guests get a little bit of an idea. So the caliber of information on show tonight yeah, yeah, sure.

Dr Bobby, 4m 24s:

So you know, setting up practice from scratch, uh, like with anybody, the scariest thing is not knowing are you going to get patients through your door and are you going to make your money back after such a big investment. Um, so when we opened the practice, it was actually slow and steady. So for the first, you know, six, uh, nine months, um, things were ticking over. We were breaking even pretty quick. Cash flow was good, but we hadn't hit that buzz, buzz level. And then that's where I went through another process of learning how do we take this to another level and how do we really really give this a boost? So, just to put figures to it out of one surgery, we only started with one surgery and I'm still a strong believer that you don't need to put multiple surgeries in right from the get-go, because you can do a lot from one room interesting philosophy.

Dr James, 5m 18s:

Sorry to bite in, but yeah, so most people are like.

Dr Bobby, 5m 21s:

You know you have to start with two surgeries, have to start with three surgeries. What is the point if you don't have patience to put in those surgeries from day one? So you know, my ethos was always when I've got enough overflow from my first surgery, then I will start to fill my second surgery. It's simple as that. Why would you want to spend 40, 50,000 pounds getting out of the room when you could be using that 40 50 pounds to help with your cash flow and you could be investing that in your marketing and your team and whatever else it is to help grow the business, to then give you more cash to then put into your second surgery? Um, and you know, within a year we're pretty much um, consistently. You know doing uh between five, six hundred thousand pounds out of one room, um, and the second one went in. You know doing uh between five, six hundred thousand pounds out of one room, um, and the second one went in, you know, a couple of months ago, um, so you know that was that was basically into year two of opening the practice what were you doing in that surgery?

Dr James, 6m 19s:

what treatments were you providing? Was it implants? Was it something else?

Dr Bobby, 6m 22s:

yeah, yeah. So implants, full arch implants, general dentistry, small makeovers, clear aligners, uh pretty much everything except fixed orthodontics um specialist dentistry okay, big question that's in my mind how did you get the right patients through the door?

Dr James, 6m 40s:

and when I say right patients, what I mean is people who are interested in those specific treatments. How did you market yourself, because that's what everybody wants to know, right, we've all got patients, yeah, but how do we get more potential opportunities to serve the patient to a higher standard, as in patients with those treatment needs which, of course, by proxy, will hopefully, uh, manifest in our bottom line as well with time?

Dr Bobby, 7m 3s:

yeah, there's so many, um, different answers to that question and it's even something that I'm still learning about and exploring different avenues. Uh, as you know, some of that we're doing with john at the moment, but, um, yeah, so the first thing is, especially with a squat marketing, you have to market your practice and market yourself well in order to bring patients in. In order to do that, in the first place, you need to know what type of patients you want in your practice. So, yeah, one of the biggest problems that I see with a lot of dentists is they have a scattered approach when they're approaching marketing companies and it's like could we do this, do that? And they don't actually know who the avatar is. So what is the type of dentistry you want to be doing? Who are those people, what do they look like, where do they hang out, what do they respond to in terms of communication? And then, once you know all of that, then you market to them, and that can be various different ways. So, you know, when it comes to marketing, you know you've got paid marketing, low-cost marketing, digital marketing, non-digital marketing uh, you can explore all the different avenues depending on you know which type of patients you want. Uh, but one of the things for us that was massive and changed things hugely was what you just talked about a little bit while ago content, good quality, good quality content, video content, um, and you know, having that produced, speaking to those people, well, they say the three c's of success when it comes to marketing is content, content, content.

Dr James, 8m 37s:

So food for thought on that one, and as I say I mean, a big fear factor for me at the start was getting in front of the camera, and now I I love it. I could do these all day long. I really love it. It's like a skill set in and of itself. You become more articulate and you can articulate. You can speak more clearly, become more eloquent when it comes to manifesting your thoughts into words. I found that happened massively with time, and then that actually came through in my treatment conversations as well with patients. You just the as well with patients. You just the word seemed to flow a lot more when I was having those conversations too. So it's almost like you're practicing for the selling process, if you want to use that word, or the building value process, and just on that note, okay, so you've got the patients through the door. I'm just curious to know how did you turn those patients from prospects into converting customers who were willing to invest in you to a high level when it, when it came to treatment plans? How did you know which patient was which in terms of the treatment needs, or how did you attract those patients to the practice? I'm curious about that little part in between yeah, so that's a massive area again.

Dr Bobby, 9m 35s:

So that comes down to numerous different things. So you know you could break it down essentially into a patient journey. So you know everything that happens is you know from the patient booking into your practice that every step of that journey has to be curated, essentially to get these patients to trust you, like you and essentially buy treatment from you. So the first point of call is you know your team in your practice, because they are going to be the first port of call who actually talk to these patients and they'll actually communicate with these patients and also they're generally going to be the first people that see these patients when they come through your doors. So that is 100% crucial that you have to have the right team. They have to have the right type of character, they have to know how to speak to your patients and you don't even need to over complicate it. You know a lot of people talk about all these mad communication things, but you know, most of the time it is actually just common sense. You just have really nice, friendly team members who look after your patients really well and actually care about them and that's it. It's not, it's not rocket science, um, and those are the people you put at the front door and the ones who answer the phone. Yeah, don't get me wrong. There are techniques and things you know people talk about. Yeah, that might help that or boost that, but you know the nooks and crannies is. You know, people just want to be appreciated, people want to be heard, listened to, valued and they want to be spoken to nicely and politely. That is it.

Dr James, 11m 6s:

Seems reasonable, and even though that's intuitive, it's worth repeating right, Because that doesn't. We've all been in a service-based environment where that doesn't happen to us.

Dr Bobby, 11m 16s:

Yeah, so there are countless, probably thousands, of practices in the UK right now that don't have that. A customer service in the UK is probably one of the worst in the world. Um, you know, when they look at the research on this is so, you know, for dental practices to get that bit right, you already stand out, you know, in the top one percent because so many don't do it. Well, you could probably ring 20 practices right now. Well, probably not right now because they're probably closed, but but ones that are open and I can guarantee, you know, 15 out of those. You know you met with somebody who's a bit grumpy, doesn't really want to speak to you, not engaged. And I know that because we did a lot of research when we were opening the practice. We made spreadsheets and we contacted loads of practices and formulated loads of data about how these practices there we are a secret shopper, so to speak.

Dr James, 12m 12s:

How did you audit that in your own practice?

Dr Bobby, 12m 15s:

Yeah, so that's exactly what we did. So we took that data and it was just really clear to see that customer service in the area was poor. And you know that was one of the first things. It was just that. You know that bit we have to get right. You know dentistry is very, very quickly becoming. You know, service experience based rather than you know people caring as much about the dental side of things. So the dental side is good. You have to be great clinically. You don't want your work failing and you want your patients happy. But patients want a great experience and especially if they're going to be spending 15, 20, 30 thousand pounds with you going to be spending 15, 20, 30 000 pounds with you.

Dr James, 12m 57s:

Yeah, hell, yeah, man, 100. And I just had a quick question. You know, obviously, listen, this is a particularly pertinent and interesting question for you because you started with one surgery and when you have one surgery, yeah, you're doing implants. Your turnover was pretty good in your example, in your case, but there's always going to be a little bit of a limit whenever it comes to cash flow and there won't be as many patients, of course, because it's only one surgery, which is fine, right, because they're high value patients in your instance, which is cool. So I'm curious when did you get a TCO, or did you ever get? You know, when did you start thinking about that? Did you have a TCO from the get-go? Do you think that's essential, or was it just you and a nurse or something along those lines, me receptionist and an s? Oh, I see. So the tco came along later. Presumably you have one now. Yeah, no, we don't. Oh, intro, okay, curveball, yeah, no, no, we don't hey, so tco?

Dr Bobby, 13m 44s:

um, all right. So this is the thing that you have to look at really carefully as a dentist if you want to introduce the tco into your practice or not. And it all comes down to auditing your own conversion rates as a dentist. So some dentists are extremely gifted and can sell treatments to their patients that they need in an ethical way, and the patients will just pay. So if you're one of those dentists, you know there's no need for a TCO. If you are a dentist who struggles with that and finds it difficult to talk about money, finances and things like that with your patient and you struggle to sell high value treatments to your patients, then you need a TCO who does that for you. The hardest part is dentists actually being able to self-analysed themselves as to whether they which category they fall into. And then, from a practice owner's perspective, where the TCO then becomes more relevant is when you introduce associates into your business, Because once you have associates in your business, I know what I can get. I know what I can generate in terms of income and treatment plans. However, the associates I don't know Until they've actually worked in the practice. It's a game of guessing and watching what they do analysing, and then at that point if you want to take back control as a principle and take that out of the associates' hands, then you introduce a TCO and take that out of the associate's hands, then you introduce a TCO Interesting philosophy on TCOs, and that's why I am really glad that I asked that question, because so many people nowadays.

Dr James, 15m 23s:

It's like people fall into one or two camps. They don't have one, or they swear by them and you're kind of somewhere in between, aren't you? You're kind of wearing it up more on the merits of the practice everything's everything's got to have a business case for it.

Dr Bobby, 15m 35s:

So the thing you've got to think about if you're going to introduce a tco into your business, it's another cost to your business. So you've got to work, you've got to make the business analysis for it. So you've got to work out if I introduce this tco and I'm paying them or I'm paying them on commissions however that looks what is my return on that going to be? Um you know, compared to if I was doing it now. So if I know that I'm the only dentist in practice and I know that I can generate that anyway, then what's the need for me to justify another salary? However, that may possibly change and probably will change as the practice grows and there's more associates on board.

Dr James, 16m 12s:

Seems reasonable. There's another thing that you talked about just then that I'd like to hone in on, and that's measuring the data Cause. How many people out there measure their conversion, their treatment plan acceptance rate?

Dr Bobby, 16m 24s:

Yeah, very few, very few. You know you have to measure everything. You've got to measure your marketing, your return, your conversion rates. You know I recommend associates do that. You know, even if you're not a practice owner. Um, because if you don't know, you don't know. And then how do you know how to get better? Or how do you know how to then say to your practice principal okay, I'm an associate, my conversion rates have not been great. You know, maybe we could consider introducing the TCO into the practice and that might help boost things and this is my business case. For it, I make more money, you make more money in the long run. How many people think like that?

Dr James, 17m 4s:

very few, very few. I mean, it's logical, right, but it just takes time and effort, doesn't it? And I feel like that's a hurdle for a lot of us when it comes to measuring stuff and it's also pretty I feel like it's not the funnest process to go through in the world to measure the data and find out that your conversion rate is not that high, because what that? Is it's horrific you just have to confront it yeah, it's tough, it's boring, it's no more crunching.

Dr Bobby, 17m 31s:

You sometimes feel like it's a waste of time. Um, but it's not it. You know, it's the only way, and a lot of the time we probably do it because we don't want to know how bad we are.

Dr James, 17m 42s:

It's as simple as that it's a it's a tough place to go and communication, in my opinion, is one of the biggest things that everybody can enhance. That will manifest in their bottom line as well. It's huge right and this comes from the guy who used to work in an NHS practice and I was like yeah, my patients, they're just not into private work at all. And then the second I started switching up my communication. The treatment plan acceptance for private work went to 50% and I realized it was me the whole time and I was like right, wow, that was actually me that was causing that this whole time and I blamed all these other things. Of course, you can never say for sure, but that's what happened in my specific instance. And then now I became a little bit of a missionary for all that stuff, which is the sort of stuff that I talk about on the podcast. I've got a curveball question for you. This is a little fun. I'm putting you on the spotlight here a little bit, so feel free to tell me if this is a tough one. Uh, or maybe we just kind of need to rejig this question around a little bit. You know, when it comes to metrics, when it comes to metrics to measure in your dental practice as a principal, what would you say? Maybe like three of the biggest ones are I don't want to say top three, because it's hard to narrow them down on the spotlight but if you had to just pick three quick and fast ones that it's very important for every principle to measure. That would be really useful for the audience tonight. So I know that treatment plan acceptance is up there. What else it doesn't have to be three, it can be four or five yeah, treatment plan acceptance.

Dr Bobby, 19m 4s:

If you're spending money on marketing, that has to be a big one. You've got to know where that money's going. What's your return coming back off that money? Um, a third one would be. Um kpi is almost patient experience. So are you measuring what your patients think about your practice and how do you do that and how does that look? And also your team off the back of that? Um, not just your patients, but but your team in your practice? Do you actually understand how they feel, how engaged they are within your business? A lot of principals don't know. At the top of my head it falls into those key categories. I mean other things are going to come into that, like your financials, but you set separate KPIs for those turnover profit margins. You know overheads but, yeah, off the top of my head, you know those are the biggest.

Dr James, 20m 3s:

No, that's good, and I appreciate that was a curveball question, so to even have those to hand is really useful for the audience. Can we focus on that third one that you talked about just then, which is effectively the questionnaires of the patient's experience of the practice? Right, or at least that's in part. So we've said that it's important to measure it. What's your philosophy or doctrine on actually getting that data? How's it done? Is it questionnaire, speaking to people? How does that look?

Dr Bobby, 20m 26s:

yeah, it's a bit of everything. So, speaking to people um collecting reviews you know, google reviews, uh, trust pilot, however that looks for you um, and at the moment, we're just introducing, uh something called mps, so, uh, net promoter score surveys, so we'll be collecting a lot more feedback uh from all of our patients. Um, and yeah, how we're going to use that within the practice to grow the practice and grow practice referrals from our existing patients nice. What's that like an online form they fill in, or something along those lines yeah, essentially it's like an online form where they can share, um, you know, about their experience, um, and then there's some other stuff that we do off the back of that, based on on their experiences with us lovely jovley.

Dr James, 21m 14s:

Well, do you know what, Bobby? I know that you and I could probably freestyle on this stuff all evening, because it is fun to talk about and it really can make change for people as well, because, as you say, being a principal can be a really lonely experience, especially if you don't have a network of other principals around you. And there's a concept that I love called specific knowledge, and I've mentioned this a few times the podcast but it's worth mentioning again. There's certain things that you can only ever know through direct experience. You can't get like where are the youtube videos on running a dental practice, right? Where's the books? I imagine they're out there somewhere, right, but it's not always for dentistry.

Dr Bobby, 21m 49s:

it's one of these funny things you have all these different associations for different things, but I've never yet come across an association of principals, so a group of principal dentists who get together, who are in all sorts of different types of practices once a month, once a quarter, whatever it is, and share and learn and grow their businesses together.

Dr James, 22m 13s:

Could be valuable. We're throwing that one out to the universe tonight. Maybe someone can step up. Maybe it's time for you to step up, Bobby, for us to step up who knows who knows, because that would be really valuable. But what was I going to say? Yeah, on the specific knowledge thing. The definition of that concept is it's knowledge that you can only get through experience, so those things, that what you've learned. You can only really learn a lot of that stuff just by doing it. So if that takes somebody like two, three years to get that knowledge, versus someone who's maybe at the start of that journey or not as advanced in that one specific area, they might have been a practice owner for like flipping, 20 years but just never really had the opportunity to learn about this stuff. And even I know, like yourself, you've been doing it for two, three years but maybe learn more in those areas, or vice versa. Whatever right, my point is that you can either take two, three years to learn that stuff or you can just ask somebody and just flip and talk to them and maybe maybe the exact thing that they give you won't be the specific thing that will help in your situation, but it's still going to get you further than what you were before, and you can just tweak it and enhance it. Anyway, I love that concept. So, Bobby, you and I could probably talk about this stuff all evening, but what I'd really love to do because we've got a really good audience with us tonight is actually throw the mic out to the floor to see if anybody would like to ask any questions and avail of this wondrous opportunity to network and also ask those questions we talked about for specific knowledge that we said just a second ago. Now's everybody's time to step up. Should they so fancy throwing the mic out to the floor? Would anybody like to switch their microphone on and brave the camera? Feel free, anybody. The offers there. Everybody's being shy, not to worry, that's fine. Or feel free to send me a message in the chat as well, uh, because that is also totally cool and I can read them out. There might actually be some questions on the group here, because this video is on the group as well. Uh, okay, we got some comments on the group. Cory, dav, what's up James? What's up Corey? How are you? Good to see you, my man, hope you're keeping well. Piotr, you know Piotr, right, yeah, yeah, piotr says what's up? Bobby's giving you a shout-out right here and he says you don't know what you don't know, so chip it in on that one. Good to on that one. Good to see you, piatra. Hope you're enjoying the webinar tonight. Anybody got any questions? Or else Bobby and I can just freestyle. That's also cool. Oops, hello, is that a voice? Okay, not to worry. All right, cool with anybody. Oh, hello, we got a question in here. Let's have a little look at this. Uh, so this question has been sent to me directly, so I can only presume that this is a question that the sender wishes to anonymize. So let's operate on that basis. So we've got a question right here. Sorry, signal isn't great. Or else I jump on the camera Wondering what a good monthly marketing budget would be, how much that would be roughly, or can you give us any parameters on that, Bobby? I know that that's gonna vary a lot. Practice to practice, right.

Dr Bobby, 25m 12s:

Yeah, it is really, really difficult to put a number on that, because it depends on exactly what your goals are as a business. So it depends on what you're trying to achieve, what number you're trying to get to and what type of treatments um that you want to do, what platforms you're going to be marketing on um, and also what the competition is like in your local area. Um, and when you put all those factors together, it's impossible to give you a number, and I'm too scared to say a number for you thinking that this is what I should be spending, when that's not the right number gotcha fair enough I mean, I would say, on average, most practices that are spending money on on marketing are typically spending anything from two to twenty thousand pounds a month. I've heard some practices uh, which, which is a lot, um, but you know it can fall anywhere within that remit, um, but, like I said, it's it depends on so many factors and you know the best thing to do if you really want to get to grips with that number is speak to some uh marketing companies, um, and you know, find out what's going on in your local area, work out yourself in the first place, what do you want to achieve with your marketing? So, what have you got capacity for in your practice? What are you trying to build? What type of patients do you want? What type of treatments do you want to be doing? And put numbers to that and then discuss it with marketing companies that you know. This is a, this is what our goals are, this is how we want to grow our business, and then you've got data for them to see, and then they can give you, you know, a more accurate response rather than just saying you know, we'll just put this much into every single month, irrespective.

Dr James, 26m 59s:

Well, you know what I liked, what you said earlier, Bobby, that it all comes back to your patient avatar, so to speak, and just nail in that, because the reason why that helps with the patient avatar is it allows you to decide what means or medium of marketing you're going to use, like, say, say, like I'm gonna I'm just making this up and this could be true. This could not be true, I don't know. Right, say, you're marketing towards a younger generation, right? Well, they're more likely to hang out on, I don't know, tiktok or Instagram, something along those lines, right? So it's going to completely shift the platform that you're aiming for based on that avatar. Or say, somebody is not of that generation, maybe it's, they're of a different generation and they're more likely to read the newspaper or, I don't know, use other social media platforms. Well, at least you know where you need to go. And then that will, by by proxy, determine your ad spend as well, because they're, all you know, the ad spend, cost per click in each platform is completely different. So, really, feel it comes back to that, if you agree with me yeah, 100.

Dr Bobby, 27m 54s:

I agree with that completely, exactly like you said. You know the ad spend, you know cost per click on the different platforms is huge, um. So you know, it really depends on who you, who you, who you're trying to target. Uh, but it all comes down to your business, you know. You gotta know what you want to achieve with with that marketing.

Dr James, 28m 12s:

How about Google ads? Are they still alive and well? Yeah, Google ads are still alive and well, oh wow, they're kicking Cool. You use them for your practice. Yes, yeah, we do Nice All right. Yes, yeah, we do Nice All right. Okay, cool, so you can still get success with those, because I tend to think that they're from a completely different era, like, do you know? Because they were created so long ago, weren't they?

Dr Bobby, 28m 34s:

No, no, no. So I mean the biggest difference with Google and social media advertising generally. Google is for patients who are more interested in having treatment quicker. So the patients have to go on Google, they have to put the treatment in dental implant. You know Lemton spa and you know they will generally then go to whatever they see at the top of that page and just click on those and respond to those ads. Because they're actively looking for you, they're looking for a particular treatment type, so they're more engaged and they're more likely to end up buying treatment, whereas with social media ads it's actually the opposite. We're blasting ourselves out to a cold audience, so they're not expecting to see us, but we're putting ourselves in front of them and it might spark their interest. They might click on things, but it takes them longer for them to go through that journey because often they weren't looking for you.

Dr James, 29m 28s:

You went and found them that is a really good point. I never actually thought about it like that before. How do you feel about what's your philosophy on asking for google reviews, because I know some people have a little bit of a reservation or hang up on that one, but they can really help you practice right.

Dr Bobby, 29m 43s:

Google reviews are massive. It's one of the biggest ways we've grown our practice. We have about 135 five-star Google reviews at the moment, but it's not the Google reviews, the number, that's made the biggest difference. It's what patients have written in those reviews. So a lot of our reviews on our practice, patients have left really detailed comments. Some of them have written paragraphs um, you know about everything about us, the experience and how it was, um, and we actively ask for them. Um, why would you not want to ask for them if you've given a patient a good experience and it's going to grow your business? Um, you know you're doing yourself, you know, no good by not asking. And we ask in a variety of different ways, and you know the way we find works best is the dentist always asking the patient themselves first, and then the team reinforcing it outside, um, when they see your reception team or front house, however it looks. And then we have qr codes, um.

Dr James, 30m 45s:

So we have a little QR code that we give them and they can scan that and they can leave a review, uh, and then we will also text patients um, with a link on top of that wow, so that's your protocol, so to speak, and presumably you sat down with the team and you are in that light, so you could all be super slick, because, yeah, if you have multiple touch points, that can only be a good thing, right yeah yeah, 100, and you know what. Let's talk about the metrics on that one, just out of curiosity. So obviously that's the strategy. How many google reviews have you got? How many five-star google reviews? And I know that it, I know that that's very. How can we say you know it doesn't tell the full story. We just talk about the numbers. There's also lots of variables there. But just to give us an idea so that we can draw a line in the sand around roughly where you are yeah, we've got about 135 since we opened hey, that's pretty good and that's years so no, uh, that was around about 16 months.

Dr Bobby, 31m 44s:

Um, so yeah, they are. Yeah, it's decent. We can still do better. You know, as with any practice, when you go through busy periods, you know you have times where you lapse on certain processes and whatnot. But you know it picks back up and Google. It is difficult because you're taking time from people and you have to go out of their way, but the easiest way to do it is by giving them a five-star service. You know, just look after them really well. The other thing we started to find that was working well, which we're trying recently, is Trustpilot, because a lot of patients who don't have Gmail accounts and it can be a bit of a faff for them to get in and leave a Google review and we found that with trust pilot, they don't have that issue and they were leaving the reviews much quicker. Okay, so it doesn't have to be on one platform. You know, wherever you get the feedback, it's all good, it'll all add to your seo.

Dr James, 32m 38s:

You know people can find you trust pilot is very much a thing that people look at when it comes to their dental practice.

Dr Bobby, 32m 47s:

Well, they're starting to. Yeah, and it's not just that If a patient types in your practice on Google and if you're on Trustpilot it's just another source for them to find you Gotcha.

Dr James, 33m 0s:

Okay cool, got a question that's just come in here. I think we kind of 50% answered this question, but I'm going to say it out loud anyway, cause there might be some more stuff that we can talk about, and how can we say talk around, so to speak? Okay cool. So I'm just going to read this out verbatim, word for word Thank you so much for this, eve. So do you think Google feedback reviews are worthy or double-edged sword, as it'll always be that grumpy patient leaving a one star? We've all been there, we can relate yeah.

Dr Bobby, 33m 31s:

So, um, the research actually shows that people think that practices that have got hundreds and hundreds or thousands of five-star people reviews with no negative review are fake. So when you reach a certain proportion of reviews, having the odd negative review apparently will do you a favor because people will think that it's not fake, because there are people that will do that, unfortunately. But, yeah, you're always going to get a negative, nancy, somebody. We had one, not that that long ago, um, fortunately it didn't affect our rating, um, but I'm pretty certain it was another dentist that wrote that review, because it was actually from somebody who's had never had any contact with the practice and never actually been in the practice and actually wrote in the review that they haven't been in the practice. It was just a review about the phone conversation that they had with a team member, but they're not in any system or record, which was interesting, um, but you know that's the way of the world. There's nothing you can do, um, you know my advice on that would be is you know, if you know you have a patient in particular who might be like that, um, then don't ask them to leave a google review, but ask the ones who you know are going to leave you a great review.

Dr James, 34m 49s:

Um, that that's, you know, my common sense way of looking at it I guess the only real way to avoid that is to not have google my business right, because if you don't set up google my business, you can never have google reviews is my understanding but then you're missing out on all the seo benefits exactly and the other thing is, if you're doing that so say, for example, you've got a google business account you're not asking for reviews because you're scared you're going to get a negative review.

Dr Bobby, 35m 15s:

You know it actually looks worse than, say, for example, if you ended up getting four or five negative reviews but you got no positive reviews to counteract them because you're not asking people for them. So what will happen in that scenario is people will get really angry if they've had a bad service or whatever, and when people are angry, they're much more likely to leave you a negative review than somebody who's happy to leave you a positive review. So you'll end up with more bad reviews but no positive reviews to counteract it this is it like you have.

Dr James, 35m 42s:

They almost act as a buffer, and it's. It's actually more representative when you ask as well, because you will. You'll probably have 99 happy patients and one unhappy one, but they're the ones that'll write the review, so to speak. But anyway, listen. Um, thank you so much for talking about all of that, bob, because the marketing side is so important. We've got a question that's just come in and it's from Piotr Piotr. Hi, james, is it okay to jump in? It is absolutely okay to jump in, piotr. Feel free to jump on the camera and say hello hi guys, how you doing we're really good, thanks, how about you?

Guest, 36m 21s:

yeah, good, good uh busy day. I've been traveling quite a lot today, so so let me just uh uh get some lighting sorted. Yeah, good content there. I always fan of Bobby watching out what he's doing, so thanks for bringing that uh live. There's some interesting uh insight from the marketing point of view. I was going to ask Bobby kind from from your experience because I've watched your journey, helped you out some on some occasions when you started the practice as well uh, what's your number one mistake you would share with people that you you would avoid doing again?

Dr James, 36m 58s:

that's a brilliant question, mate. I'm actually slightly disappointed that I didn't think of that question, because it's really good. Okay, I'm looking forward to this, is that?

Guest, 37m 7s:

in regards to a specific area, or just well from the beginning, if you wind it back to right to the beginning, where you started thinking about practice and then process of building. And so you know the one mistake that if you think, if I could go back and remove that mistake and never make that mistake ever again, what would it be?

Dr Bobby, 37m 26s:

yeah, the biggest mistake for me, 100% was using the wrong builders, because that was my most expensive and yeah mistake 100%. Um, yeah, without a doubt, you know when you're building you you've got to be so, so careful who you use. Um, I mean, you know what you know better than me. You're more in the building trade than I am, so yeah, no, I do.

Guest, 37m 49s:

I ask that question because I kind of do go to many practices and see this sort of things playing out, and you know, I suspect that you're going to say that. So, going back, how, what would you change in terms of getting the right builders? How would you verify that?

Dr Bobby, 38m 4s:

yeah, so 100, I would go through people, that 100. I know who've used them, um, who've done good jobs, um, and I would do a lot, lot more homework, a lot more research, um, and I'd probably get you to speak to them for me. Make sure they know what they're talking about.

Guest, 38m 24s:

That's the good one as well going physically to their practice where they've done the project and physically having a walk around. Because I know when you're running your training courses as well, you you kind of bring people to your practice to show what you've done, and I think that's a great opportunity. So if you know any dentists that is kind of they already work for them go and physically have a look. Not just take the word, but actually physically go and have a look. If they were willing to take, you know, to invite you to the practice.

Dr Bobby, 38m 50s:

And also how long you know that place has been open for and when the building work was done. Yeah, To give an example, you know yesterday I spoke with somebody and you know yesterday spoke somebody. And you know practice, lovely practice. Uh, for all the building work was all okay. And you know, a year in um suction pipes have split compressors yeah yeah, how to use the correct piping for the chairs corrosive, chemical resistant. And you know it was now costing this dentist tens of thousands of pounds to now rectify all of this. And you know, when you walk into a practice, you know it's very easy to hide all that. You don't, you don't know, you don't see it because you weren't there when it was being built. Um, they're on where you find out. You know, um, you know about these issues but yeah, the building side is massive yeah, I appreciate that.

Guest, 39m 37s:

Thanks a lot, and I want to take over, so I'm gonna step back. But one one thing I would want to share with you guys, because you talked about the reviews. Uh, we in the trades industry we use some, you know we we want feedback as well from customers, so we use before we send the google review request. We always have a kind of layer in between which we ask people to submit kind of feedback directly to us and if it's bad, then we can always reach out and amend it. Yeah, so there's always platforms. We use a job, job well done or something like that. So there's different platforms. Obviously for dental industry. There might be something more specific for healthcare, but it's worth looking out for this that.

Dr Bobby, 40m 14s:

So you put some layer in between your google reviews and actual yeah, so interestingly, on that note, I had a friend at practice nearby in rugby who asked me to trial this forum, so it was exactly that like what pierce had just said. So that's how we were getting our trust pilot review. So, essentially, the patients get a link asking for feedback. If it's good feedback, then they get sent a google review link and a trust pilot link. Um, if they get, if they have a gmail account, they get a google review link. If they don't, they get a trust pilot link and if they left a negative response, it comes back to us then to approach them to, um, you know, ask them about what went wrong and get more feedback without them being able to leave a review yes, absolutely that's.

Guest, 40m 57s:

That's that's why I did. You know what we do. But you can actually preset on the platform and say any reviews less than four stars, don't publish them directly. Just let us speak to the customer first. And anything above four or three stars it's not always kind of five stars only accepted. It's all about balancing and catching out people who are unhappy and trying to turn them into five-star reviews.

Dr James, 41m 27s:

Listen, that's awesome, peter. Thanks for jumping in like that, actually, because that's really useful, because that's like a little niche. That's that specific knowledge I was talking about before. It's a thing, it's a concept, and if you look out for it, you can seek it out, and the more you seek it out is the more you gain, the more you benefit from it, the more you can implement it into your life. Bobby, I'm just super, duper conscious. You're coming up to the 45 minute mark since we started this webinar and I know that you're seeing more patients this evening. When is your next patient? uh in about 15 minutes. Okay, fair enough. Well, do you know what? 45 minutes is a really nice time. I've always found just to run things off for the most around, things off on the most engaging amount of time, because what it means is everybody can jump on, get some bite-sized info and then go about their evening and feel energized off the back of it. So, Bobby, thank you so much for your time, your wisdom, your knowledge, your expertise all of those things is even. Bobby, if anybody wants to reach out to you off the back of this webinar or off the back of this podcast, because you're going to be releasing in podcast form as well how are they best off on you? Because I understand that you help dennis with this stuff whenever it comes to their squats and also whenever it comes to general business coaching yeah, no problem.

Dr Bobby, 42m 31s:

Um, so you can find me on instagram. Uh, Dr Bobby Bhandal um, so you can send me a message on there either. On facebook, same thing, Dr Bobby Bhandal um, adam and james's group, so you'll find me in there. I'll be around top stuff.

Dr James, 42m 45s:

Well, listen, guys, thank you so much for coming along this evening and making a flipping awesome webinar, and for everybody who participated and for everybody who came as well. We aim to give value. We hope that we give value and let's hope that we have done this this evening as well. I'm really, really, really certain that we have given all that juicy knowledge that Bobby was dishing out just a minute ago. Like I say, specific knowledge, stuff that you can go and implement into your practice and use it to be able to enhance your remuneration. Not because it's about money it's really, really, really not but what it is about is getting your life back and actually, if we can enhance our remuneration, enhance our profit with that stated aim and goal and objective and achieve that, then that is a flipping cool thing and that's what we've done tonight on this webinar. Guys, thank you so much for coming along. Once again, hope everybody has a flipping amazing wednesday, what's left of it and we'll see each other super duper soon. Bye.