Dr James, 0s:

Most dentists out there want to understand how they can make their dentistry a little bit more profitable so that they can have a little bit more take-home remuneration at the end of the month. What that means is they can use that money to buy back their time, be able to invest a little bit more or also just maybe just go on holiday. This comes for both associates and principals. We also want to guarantee that the patient is having the best experience possible. Because of that on the Dentists Who Invest podcast today, I have a phenomenal clinician with me, Dr Chetan Mathias. He has four dental practices. He's managed to get three of them associate-led. Over the next 50 minutes, we are going to talk about how Chetan achieves that. That's what we're going to talk about today on the Dentists Who Invest podcast. The idea is that everybody out there, both associate and principal, can take this stuff and implement it into their own practice and obtain results and accelerate their own journey. Chetan, you've been able to do amazing things in your dental practice, and it's all related to what the title of this podcast is, which is with regards to systems and processes. This is the only true way to leverage, and we thought we'd make this podcast into a little bit of a story today so we can lead everybody by the hand and allow them to understand what the patient experiences from start to finish when they enter your dental practice, or even before they enter your dental practice, so the patient journey, so to speak. So a great place to kick off, I feel, would be the marketing side of things chatting. What do you do differently in your practice, James?

Dr Chetan, 1m 21s:

thank you, thank you. You know what this, this bit, is so important and often overlooked, and what I find that's happening quite often nowadays is obviously because of the number of squat practices that are being opened, the number of before they were this legacy NHS mixed practices. But if you look at the number of squat practices that have opened over the last one year or so, it's been the highest number of squat practices opened in a single year. That was last year. But what that means is what that means is your marketing has to be up there, because now the competition has increased. But one very important thing in marketing what people don't realize is you can't do the same thing what the other person is doing. If you do the same marketing as the 10 other dentists are doing the same ads, the same Facebook ads, the same Google ads what tends to happen is you are just like them. You need to have a differentiating factor. So, rather than just copying what I do, it's trying to understand what's your USP. Why should a patient come to you and not to the other dentist down the road, right? So patients are educated these days, right? Why should a patient come to you and not to the other dentist down the road, right. So patients are educated these days. Right, they already know about treatments, people know about aligners, people know about anivisaline, people know about implants, people know about dentures. But what you need to do is try and differentiate yourself from the next guy down the road, and that comes down to your USP, and understanding your USP is so important and crucial. And then designing your whole strategy behind it is very important. So with marketing, I broadly say there are mainly two types. Right, so obviously have a marketing agency and get advice from them. But obviously you've got to be the driver. You've got to tell them exactly what you want and who you are. Because James say, for example, you have a, a practice next to me, and if both of us go to the same marketing agency and you say you know what, what chet does do the same marketing for me, and if I say what James does, the same marketing for me, how confused the patient going to get. Why is the patient going to go to your or not to mine? You know. So you've got to be different. So you've got to ride the boat. So you've got to tell your marketing agency. Obviously you're a dentist, carry on with dentistry, but you're a business owner and a business leader as well. So this goes for both practice owners as well as for associates, and I'll touch up a little bit for associates as well. There's there's some really key, important points here. But for practice owners as such, because you're in the driving seat, you've got to tell your marketing team this is my USP, this is me, right, there's only one of me and this is what I stand for, right? Yes, you have the mission and the vision and all that, but this is what I stand for. Then your marketing gets divided into two parts Organic marketing and paid marketing. So these are the two main types of marketing, right, and then there's a whole lot behind it. But so these are the two main types of marketing, right, and then there's a whole lot behind it, but I don't want to confuse the listener on this but mainly organic and paid marketing. And organic marketing is kind of like free marketing Though there's nothing like free marketing, but you don't pay for it, right, and you're constantly there. And then you have paid marketing, which is targeted marketing, which is amazing, right? I remember the days when I used to spend hundreds and thousands of pounds on radio ads. What was my ROI? I didn't know, but it did help me with brand awareness. Nowadays it's so much simpler, cheaper and measurable with doing internet marketing. So, whether it's Google or whether it's facebook, so you do your paid marketing throughout. So I do both organic marketing and paid marketing and I try and make sure that my presence across all the available channels because you've got lots of channels, right, it's only facebook, you've got facebook, you've got instagram, you've got tiktok, you've got google, you've got twitter, you've got linkedin, all've got Google, you've got Twitter, you've got LinkedIn. All these channels. You need to make sure that you have a kind of presence across all these channels, again, depending on the type of audience you're targeting. And that all comes down to your USP, because if I was targeting mainly aligner patients, my target audience is going to be totally different, whereas if I was targeting implant patients, my target audience is going to be totally different, whereas if I was targeting implant patients, my target audience is going to be totally different, right? So I could go on for a couple of days on marketing itself, right, and what your strategy is and how you should look at it. But in a nutshell, that's the main thing Try and be different and try and understand marketing rather than just going to a marketing agency. Listen, I need more patients. It doesn't work like that.

Dr James, 5m 49s:

There's. I need more patience. It doesn't work like that. There's more to it than that. Nailing the usp is key, then, and I want to know how many businesses out there have actually done that, even though I suppose that's possibly day one of of of business school, isn't it? You really got to dial, you really got to dial that in, and it's almost like it's it's kind of a lot of this stuff is. It's really it's almost obvious and we kind of know it, but do we do? It is completely a different thing. Can you give me an example of any campaigns that you've run on the ad side, of things that were unique and did really well? Any stories on that front?

Dr Chetan, 6m 13s:

oh yeah, yeah. So I have an ad that I ran in 2022 and the lady's name is, uh, leslie, so she wouldn't mind me telling her name. So we came in and there was a good story behind it, right? So people love stories. I love a story, you love a story, and so does our patients. They love a story as well. So Leslie walked into my practice and most dentists have heard these stories. They walked into the practice low on self-confidence, low on self-esteem, really nervous. She had a full arch implant surgery done at the practice right now. She had someone with her to speak to me about her treatment so she could speak. She could understand she was more than capable, but she was so nervous she couldn't even speak. Right, she finished her treatment. She finished her treatment. She had full-arch implant dentistry, um, and we gave her for those implant dentists out there, we gave her an fb1 prosthesis, which is an implant. Retained restoration on zirconia finished. She came in for a review. Now this lady is totally different. Now she's coming on her own, she speaks, she waves at everyone on reception, she's talking. She's talking about what she did yesterday. So we wanted to capture that story and get it on social media. All right and can you believe it, James? Now this lady even for her consultation. She never came on her own. She went on to social media and we started shooting a video on her and we created the story. So, in the time when people have static Facebook ads, we had a video Facebook ad of her journey on Facebook Right and that itself I think over I don't know the last metrics, but though I did it in 2022, it's still running because it's constantly it's still giving me leads. It's still giving me leads. So you know, you don't have to change something if it's working fine and it's working fine. I've done lots of campaigns after that, but that's working fine and still giving me so many leads, so many full-arch patients from that ad campaign and you know what was a big reframe for me whenever I started running my own ads?

Dr James, 8m 28s:

it was to understand that whenever you get a real runner, these things are assets in and of themselves. People are so fixated on investing in property or having gold or having stocks or an iso or whatever the hell right. These are literally assets as well. It's just that people don't talk about them as much. Naturally, there's a little bit of digging you have to do to get a good one, but that process never starts on the last you begin is another way of looking at it.

Dr Chetan, 8m 53s:

I understand and you know what. It's not rocket science, and so what I spoke so far in the last 10 minutes it's not rocket science, it's knows about it, but you just got to do it. You've got to do it. You've got to take the first step, go back, step back a little bit again. One more thing a lot of people are so involved in their business they're not able to take these big decisions by stepping outside their business and taking these decisions. They almost have to step outside their practice and look at their practice from across the road and say what does my practice stand for? What do I stand for? What does my team stand for? Does my team know what I stand for? Right, it's not just a dental business and if you nail that at the start, then you got an evergreen dental business. Not a dental business that this runs post-covid or dental businesses runs on aligners and bonding. You got an evergreen dental practice because people buy from people, right?

Dr James, 9m 46s:

They do, and that's why testimonials yeah, hit, they hit home. Yeah yeah yeah. Let's talk about what happens next. So they saw the compelling ad. The prospective patient, yeah, they now want to reach. They presumably sent you a lead form from Facebook. They fill in or meta or something, or whichever ad platform we've used. You've got their details at this stage, or they've got your details. What? What happens at that stage, do you? So, let's say? Let's say they pick up the phone, right, wherever, however, it happens, either they call you or you call them, or, however, right, what do you do differently in your practice to really dial in that experience?

Dr Chetan, 10m 24s:

okay, so one of the rules in in marketing is from lead to from lead inquiry to contacting the patient. It should be done in under 30 minutes. It's okay to do it over two hours, but that's the gap right. So there's no point having a lead coming in on a monday and you're not calling the patient till the thursday. It's not going to work. It's pissing money down the drain because they're in.

Dr James, 10m 50s:

They're in proverbial pan right and emotional pan.

Dr Chetan, 10m 54s:

They want that problem solved now, right, right and if you don't respond then the next person on the road is going to respond. So quite early on I did something called as a pgc. I created a pgc position in my practice. So pgc is like my patient growth coordinator, because she is key, instrumental to the growth of our practice. So I wanted someone who can handle the leads. Obviously you have your receptionist, but, James, I don't know if you know the structure of my practice we're large practices, right. So i've't know if you know the structure of my practice, we're large practices, right. So I've got like six receptionists in one of my practices, got 14 dentists. But I wanted someone to exclusively, exclusively work with this lead and have the time for it. So I had to literally take it out of the practice, out of the hustle and bustle in the practice, and just concentrate only on this lead. That's all that I care about, right? So the lead comes in either through a call, through a message or a phone call, and my PGC, patient control. All she does is talk to these patients, develop a rapport with the patient first. She spends close to 30 minutes with each patient. Now, in a a busy mixed practice, you can't expect your reception to do that, right. So I felt that that was key and instrumental in the change. Also, it helped me to reduce my marketing cost. Why? Because my cost per lead went down, right, right, because every lead that came in was converted or I had a higher conversion, so I didn't need to spend tons more to get more leads. Right? So every lead that was coming in was looked after straight away. So my pgc looked after this, spoke to the patient, developed reports, and there are five, six things that I go through and I go through this on my DPM event. There are three things and there is a script that she goes through and on this script she mentions she speaks to the patient, gets a repo built in with this patient and once this is done. So I divide the patient journey in kind of like five parts right, so we've done the marketing side, then the bit where my PGC speaks to the patient, then the next bit is when the patient walks into the surgery, right? So now the patients you've developed repo, patient's happy, you've taken a deposit of the patient very important. You've taken a deposit of the patient and the patient walks into your practice.

Dr James, 13m 26s:

I see. So that's a non-negotiable for you that at that stage where your dedicated team member reaches out to them off the back of an ad, there's always some sort of transaction there there is a transaction and the way I put it down is a refundable deposit.

Dr Chetan, 13m 43s:

Right, it's a refundable deposit. Right, it's a refundable deposit. My consultations, or the consultations in our practice, are free, right, but you have to pay a deposit to secure your place, which is refundable once you do come in or you don't turn up. Once you don't turn up, you don't get it, the deposit's gone. But if you do turn up, it is refundable. Obviously, if you want to go ahead with treatments, then you can and cash it towards your treatment. But now you've developed. You've developed contact and willingness from the patient to go ahead with it and you know they're serious right and they're serious exactly, and they're serious about the treatment but yes, anyway, I didn't mean to interrupt you then.

Dr James, 14m 30s:

You were just talking about the patient whenever they first walk into the practice. Yeah, so now?

Dr Chetan, 14m 35s:

this is done right now. This is done. Now the patient walks into the practice. Okay, the patient walks into the practice and basically, whatever the patient saw on social media, on your video, the patient talked with your pgc and the patient walking on to the practice has to be all connected. They need to have a similar experience throughout. You cannot have different experience and that's why your usb, in the beginning, your mission, your visions, should be defined before you do this. So there is a continuation. Otherwise, the minute a patient walks in, they'll be like, oh my Lord, is this what I signed up for? Right, first impressions. Right First impressions are the key. So your patient walks in and meets your reception. Once your patient meets your receptionist, then they sit down and then they get booked in and they go in for their consultation. Right Now, when the patient comes in for your consultation. Now again, there are different stages to this right. So it's very rare I do any consultations. I don't do any consultations. The consultations are done by my team. Again, there's a method to it and there's a system to it, presumably by a TCO, a TCO, yeah. So we've got five TCOs in our practice and the consultations are done by the TCO. So you see, a lot of people think that, oh, the consultation has to be done by the dentist, because how will you know if the treatment's right if the treatment's not right? But before you understand if the treatment's right or not, you need to understand if the patient's right and if the patient actually understands everything about the treatment Right. So that's what happens. And then the TCO signs off saying that yes, you can have this treatment done as long as Dr Mathias looks at you and thinks it's suitable for you.

Dr James, 16m 25s:

I love that right.

Dr Chetan, 16m 32s:

So I've created another layer there. So the patient has seen my PGC. Now the patient has seen my TCO right, pretty much approved it. Then the patient sees a dentist in my team to confirm that that patient can have the treatment or not.

Dr James, 16m 48s:

And this is. They're on their way to meeting you at this point, or do they now?

Dr Chetan, 16m 56s:

Oh, they're still not met me yet, right? And the dentist looks at the patient and says yes, everything is good. We take your CT scan, we take your. If it's an implant case, we do your ct scans, check your habits, check your gum profile. They have a list of things that they need to go through and everything is confirmed.

Dr James, 17m 15s:

Once that is done, then the patient comes and sees me by the way, can I just jump on one tiny thing that got me excited then? Because this, this is the sort of stuff that how can I say it gets me excited these days, at the age of 33 checklists so important?

Dr Chetan, 17m 31s:

have to have right. You know why, James. The thing is you have two things right you have systems and you have your mindset right. Both are very, very, very important. But a lot of people think that I get up every morning saying, yeah, let's go and smash the day. Man, I'm human at the end of the day, right, and I'm reportable to such a large team. Right, we've got close to 150 staff members on my team. I need to be the best I can to this team. But mindset can go up. You could be motivated one day, not motivated, motivated one day, not motivated. But if you have systems in place, then your systems is what carries on and helps you with your growth. So it doesn't matter if you, if you, are not motivated a day or not motivated a day, but it's your systems that keeps carrying you on kind of reminds me of a saying, and I'm not sure who this saying is by.

Dr James, 18m 27s:

It's definitely not by me, so I can't take any credit but anyway the saying goes you don't rise to the level of your ability, you fall to the level of your systems so true.

Dr Chetan, 18m 37s:

So so you nailed it on the head. You, that saying is actually nailed it on the head. People need to understand it right and spend time developing systems in your practice right.

Dr James, 18m 47s:

Otherwise it's just going to be chaotic right, it's so important and I genuinely didn't think it was that. I didn't. I knew it was important but I didn't appreciate its importance until I'm going to even say like six to twelve months ago. And then I started doing it in my companies and you, you get your time back like that. There's a little bit of effort to set them up and make sure exactly, but it's worth it, but anyway but also sorry, James, sorry also.

Dr Chetan, 19m 12s:

What it does is it gives consistency, which is the key, right? When a patient walks in it, you need to be consistent in your approach, right? It's not just the first time you give them this wow experience. It has to be consistent, consistent and the only way you can them this wow experience, it has to be consistent, consistent and the only way you can stay consistent is by having systems in place. You don't have systems in place, there's no consistency at all, and the patients can see it. There's nothing like having amazing customer service. Imagine going to a five-star hotel and you've got this best experience like, wow, this place is amazing. Next year you go back and you're like, oh, the guy who served me isn't there anymore and the customer service is like boom, dropped. Right, you need to be consistent. And then that's where the fifth part comes into play. But let's go back to where were we.

Dr James, 20m 0s:

We were just at the stage. We were just at the stage before we went on. We're going on little tangents here, but I feel it's worthwhile because we want to jump on these things while it's fresh. Yeah, because I don't want to miss out on anything where where we were was you were just at the stage where you were explaining that they see the tco, then they see the associate, yeah, and then they go on to see yourself. But that's not every patient, right? I imagine the associate will see some themselves and some they'll refer to you, exactly, exactly right.

Dr Chetan, 20m 25s:

So it all depends. It depends on the type of patient, type of skill set and what. What happens if they're like. So because we do close to I do close to 700 implant surgeries a year, right, uh, and around 400, and last year we did on 462 clear aligner cases. So those are my main forte. Yeah, we do veneers and rehabs and everything, but we have a bigger team that handles it. But this is for majority of our workflows. Now the patient's walked into my surgery and the patient's got 10 minutes booked in. That's it. The patient's got 10 minutes booked in. In the 10 minutes I've already had a look at all the patient's records, all the conversations that's happened. All I do is see, confirm, confirm and the patient gets a chance to see me and then I just walk out and my team look after the patient and books their next appointment. At that stage, if the patients have any questions, they can ask me. So it's literally 10 minutes.

Dr James, 21m 22s:

Most of the time we finish it in like five, six minutes so those are, in effect, what those appointments are after they've been referred to you through those layers that you talked about a second ago. That's your assessment, your opportunity to meet them, and then you will then, at that stage, perform the treatment afterwards so effectively. Effectively, for all that work in terms of your time, effectively, all that work for the exam appointment is literally 10 minutes of your personal time. Yeah, literally 10 minutes. That's scaling right there, right?

Dr Chetan, 21m 54s:

Because I realized, James, a few years back, that I've reached my peak, right. I reached my peak and I can't grow anymore and I was like what's the point in doing anymore Like I can't grow anymore and I can't grow anymore. And I was like what's the point in doing anymore Like I can't grow anymore? And then I realized that the only way I can is if I empower my teams and take, help them to go to the next level right and delegate. So important, a key, a science on its own, again, something I go through for at least half a day on our DPM program. Delegations are so important, you know and we as dentists have got this OCD we want to be perfect, right, and everything you do we got. We are perfectionists and we always think that and this was me included right for many years that no one can do it better than me and I have to do every stage of it right. But the minute you delegate and do it properly, delegate properly then you will find exponential growth and, in turn, profitability in what you do.

Dr James, 22m 54s:

You know, the moment I let go of that belief as well, I realized that actually, instead of us trying to do 50 different things, if you have one person, whether or not they're naturally more capable at a specific task or not is actually irrelevant after a certain amount of time, because if they're literally just doing one of those 50 things all day long, they're gonna get so much better than you very fast exactly yeah, you nailed it on the head, right.

Dr Chetan, 23m 18s:

So that that's like, because all they do is like zone in on that one particular job and that's the reason we have teams for everything. So I have my own building team, we have our own nursing team, we have our own TCO team and all they do is go down that funnel to try and become perfect in what they do. Right, constantly, constantly improve, cut copy paste, improve, improve, improve. So that way you've got an expert at every different part, you've got an expert at the consultation stage, you've got an expert doing the scanning, you've got an expert taking the cts, rather than you doing everything and you just concentrate on doing the thing that you have to do.

Dr James, 23m 53s:

Right, just concentrate doing the things that you have to do, that's all, nothing else and I think what is really worth remembering as well that these patients are having a great experience at your practice too. You know they're coming back. You get referrals, word of mouth, and that leads me on to the next thing I wanted to ask. Obviously, part of the patient journey is ensuring that there's follow-up and reviews and that they're happy and everything's positive on that front. So how does that look for you?

Dr Chetan, 24m 21s:

good one right, so the patient journey doesn't end with the patient having the treatment in our surgery, right? So I spoke about so, like treatments again, different treatments. We have different workflows, we have aligner workflows, we have implant workflows, um, and we we've incorporated technology into a lot of technology, into all of this treatment's complete. We've delivered on what we said. We're going to deliver. We have a quality checklist to make sure that it's all done. Because you can have a large team, right, so they need, they need to have checklists and kpis and exactly, and we need to check. Right, we need to constantly audit our patients when we finish, what's the level of quality? And because delivering on your promise is the most important thing, right, especially in patient care, and giving them a high quality result is so, so, so important. You could do all this, but if your dentistry doesn't last, there's no point. Right, and that's where people underestimate the power of word of mouth, because you can do all your marketing, but if your word of mouth isn't great, then it's a problem and a key for for the word of mouth referrals to increase is doing good, high quality dentistry. But also to audit the quality of work that's being done right, audit the number of implants you're placed, audit your aligner cases anyway. Treatment's finished. Then the most important part of the patient journey happens, right, you want your patient to first thing leave you a review. You want your patient to be your raving fan and you want your patient to invite other patients to your practice. Imagine, say, for argument's sake, that lead costs you 10 pounds, 20 pounds, whatever the patients come through the whole cycle the patients paid about three grand, four grand for treatment. Patients left and got you two other patients. So what's the cost of your lead? Right, it's negligible, exactly. And the more that happens your lead goes down. So a lot of people try and fill the bucket. But you need to make sure that, before you fill your bucket, close all the holes in your bucket, because you can keep filling a bucket that has got holes in it and it is never going to get filled up right. So follow up after treatment's finished to make sure the patients leave great reviews, referrals and just kind of letting the patient know that, listen, you know your journey doesn't end here. If you have any issues or problems, we are here to help and you're going to have follow-up appointments and book their follow-up appointments before they even leave. Right?

Dr James, 27m 3s:

I? I believe the terminology is it's your cAC number, your CAC cost to acquire customer right? Yes, and if you're, what will happen with time is if you're constantly marketing but the product is no good, it's going to keep costing you more and more to get customers and then eventually the business will die because the cost to acquire customers more than they're actually making, Unless the product is good, in which case you get some of those customers referring their friends, which is free. So it keeps your average cost to acquire customer at a certain level.

Dr Chetan, 27m 31s:

Yeah yep, it's uh, you know, you nailed it on the head. So you've got to look at the whole picture, the whole picture in in whole right. So, from your marketing all the way till till the patient leaves the practice right, you've got to look at every step of your journey right, and this doesn't have to be only for principals. As an associate as well, you you need to understand this, because one thing that we speak on our associate mastery when we're in it exclusively for associates is how can you become an asset to your practice Right and help your practice principle and help your team build up in the practice? Because, at the end of the day, the practice is doing well. You as an associate are doing well, you as an associate are doing well, the team is doing well, the team is happy, there's good energy, your practice principles, everyone wins. It's a win-win. The minute you start thinking about it like a team approach, everybody wins right. So I think one of the biggest things is systemize. If you don't have any systems in place, don't panic, right, you have to start somewhere. But for this year, you know it's 2025, new year, new me, new practice. Put one system in place and I promise you, in three months time you look at that and you'll be like shit, can I have another system in place and can I have it? Don't go and put 10 systems all of a sudden. Just put one system in place and see how that works. Monitor that system and see how that works. Monitor that system and see how that works right before you introduce the next system.

Dr James, 29m 3s:

And a big part of what is essential to what you're talking about is getting the right team around you, as in people who believe in the common goal, overall vision and objective. How have you successfully achieved that? What wisdom can you offer on that front?

Dr Chetan, 29m 18s:

Yeah, so again, this is going back to what I said before, right? So a few years back, quite a few years back I used to be just to associate, me and my nurse, and we used to generate quite substantial sums. Right, we used to see a lot of patients and we used to generate quite substantial sums. But then what I realized is, if I want to have a bigger impact and treat a lot more patients, I need to have a bigger team around me and I need to concentrate on things that only I need to do, which is what I mentioned. So I need to develop this team and build this team around me. So now we have close to 150 people in our team. But there is a science to it, James. You won't believe it. Most of my time now is spent on looking at cvs and recruiting. I don't hire everybody, but look at cvs and recruiting because it's simple, right, if me, as a dentist, and I'm practicing and I'm I'm looking at a bigger team and I want this bigger team to grow. The better my team, the better I look, right? So where would you spend most of your energy and time? Obviously, looking at recruiting the best team, right, if I spend time now and energy now recruiting the best team, then I know in years to come I'll be fine. I'll recruit my own dentist. I'll recruit my own hygienist, therapist and senior management team. Yes, the new nurses that come in. I don't do much of a recruit. I used to do it but done 100 so far. So my practice managers go ahead and do it right. But then also understanding people, which is so important, right. If you have the wrong person in the in the wrong position, or you have the right person in the wrong position, it's not going to work right. And there's a lot of, there's a lot of um, a lot of books out there. There's a lot of science behind trying to recruit the right person. At least 70 to 80 percent you can accurately predict the type of person you want and try and fill that position up. So I had to do it one at a time, right. And then it comes down to trust and loyalty, right. So it's everything. Unfortunately, it's just not one thing. It's everything, unfortunately, it's just not one thing. It's everything right. So I go on about different personalities and colors with my delegates, with the clinicians I work with, and most of my team know this right that you have to be of a certain so say, for example, I'm recruiting for a TCO, so I need my TCO to be friendly. I need my TCO to be what's the right phrase, not over-analytical, right yeah?

Dr James, 32m 4s:

people-oriented maybe.

Dr Chetan, 32m 5s:

Yeah, people-oriented, nice jovial. So that comes under a yellow personality, right, I've divided them into red, yellow, blue and green, like the book Surrendered by Idiots.

Dr James, 32m 18s:

The DISC system right Disk system.

Dr Chetan, 32m 20s:

No, not a disk system. It is a system evolved from the disk system. It's a very good book. It's called Surrounded by Idiots oh.

Dr James, 32m 28s:

I see oh, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr Chetan, 32m 31s:

It's a really good book, right, and I've read it like two, three times and that's what we incorporate that into our, into our teams. So simple thing, like if you have someone who's a yellow personality. A yellow personality is, say, someone like you, you know, everyone should be a friend, you're a lovely guy, you're a nice guy. A red personality is like someone like donald trump.

Dr James, 32m 53s:

Oh, that's a good, that's a good red actually I would have struggled to think of one off the top of my head. But that is a good one. That's a good old red right, and not just because he's a Republican. We should mention that, because Republicans are red, right and by the way, no shade to Donald Trump, whether you like him or not. So much we're just commenting on his personality.

Dr Chetan, 33m 11s:

On the personality right, and every personality is good, whether you're red, whether you're yellow, whether you're blue or whether you're green. But the problem happens is if you put the wrong people, the right person, in the wrong place. That's when disaster strikes, that's when you have problems, that's when you have you know issues, that's when you end up in front of a tribunal and that's where you have. You're struggling to recruit stuff, right, Because a lot of people are struggling to recruit stuff, and as we go on in the next few months, it's going to be all the more important to understand your team, right? And one more thing I need to add that it's no good having everyone of the same color, right? Right, because it's just not going to happen.

Dr James, 34m 0s:

No work's going to be done. There's going to be done. There's gonna be a lot of clashes. Color like red, blue yellow green.

Dr Chetan, 34m 4s:

Yes, yes, yes, sorry, yeah, yeah, that's what I meant. Yeah, so red, blue, yellow, green. So you've got to have people with different colors, right, like a leader, there's got to be a different color. Someone who's on your back office analyzing your data, or um, you know, your data analyst has to be of a totally different color. Your receptionist have a different color. Your tco has to be of a different color. Your dentist has to be as much as possible for different color, right? So all these personality colors are very important and this is just one of the tools among so many other tools that are there to help you recruit and making sure you get the right person for the right job. Second thing sorry, James, but I just wanted to add this there are two more things that they need to have and it's very important as part of recruitment. One is kpis. Right now, you, your team, won't know what they have to, what they have to achieve, if you don't tell them what they have to achieve, right. So you need to set up key performance indicators for every team or for individuals I have it for teams rather than individuals, because we have a large team right. And the final bit is accountability. You have to be accountable for your actions. You have to be accountable. Yes, you hit your KPIs. That's great. You don't hit your KPIs. What happens? Right? And having communication constantly with all members of your team, even if it's for three minutes, even if it's for three minutes a week, that's more than enough. But try and make sure you constantly communicate with your team on a daily basis. Right, you can see, I'm really passionate about this because it's so important, because the minute you get this right, James, right your practice just changes. I know practice owners, so many practice owners, who've come to practices. They just go, sit in their room, work and they walk out. They just don't want to speak to the team, they don't want to mingle with the team, they don't want to interact with their team, and then they go out and say, oh, I want to increase the number of patients, I want to increase this. Oh, my TCO doesn't do this. It's not one thing, it's everything. And it's about stacking all this together, right? So having the right marketing, having the right system, having the right teams, having good follow-up systems, having the right people in the right place, all this adds up together to give you the best results. So not one thing, but it's everything.

Dr James, 36m 25s:

And just to add to what you were saying about the principal, who how can I say this? Yeah, they've got a very they want to grow their practice, but they want to do it on their terms and not really talk to the team or just get more patients, or I don't know, but they want to do it on their terms and not really talk to the team or just get more patients, or I don't know, have provide more high leverage treatment plans, as in more costly treatment plans, and what have you? The stuff that you're talking about it's not like it's kind of optional, like we do it this way or we do it this way or we do it this way. The stuff you're talking about is not a way to go to practice it's the way. So if you're not that person, it would really help to become that person who does exactly right.

Dr Chetan, 37m 1s:

Yeah, and and the thing is you've got to be aware, right, you're doing it, you've got to be aware of me. So what I've found is general. This is generally speaking and this is through coaching other dental businesses and clients. There are generally two ways practices are run in the country. This is specifically to the uk. One is the traditional approach and one is the modern approach. Right in the traditional approach you could get away with being super red or being like a really dominant personality. Like overbearing, Overbearing yeah, yeah, you could get away with that, right, and practice could still run. Because you've got to remember the type of workforce that's coming into our practices at the moment. In fact, this year, anyone born this year, they are the alpha generation, right? So if you've got the gen z's coming in, the question you've got to ask yourself is is your practice ready to accept these gen z's into your practice? Are your systems in your practice ready to accept them into the practice? How do you deal with them? You cannot deal with how you dealt with the baby boomers, with the gen z's. You don't want to have any staff and then you constantly can't mention that. You know what? I keep trying. I keep putting ads, but I don't get people in. That's the reason, right? So what's your staff retention rate? Like not only patient written. This is again coming into hiring and team building and everything. A lot of people concentrate on patient retention. Look at your staff retention, right, how long do your staff stay in your practice? And sometimes you've got to question yourself, right? I know that there were some figures that were thrown out there, like, okay, an average nurse lasts three years, an average, that's fine, fine, right. But you've got to question yourself, sometimes critically, and accept what comes out. And exactly why have they left? Right, maybe there is something you could. So we have exit interviews in our practice, right? An exit interview is this once someone has left, we sit down with them and say, okay, fine, thank you. You know, uh, for your time. Can you tell us what we can do in our practice to improve? You're leaving the practice, right. You can tell us exactly what you want, right, rather than telling them so. Previously, when someone sent their resignation across, I was like you know what? Yeah, thank you, bye-bye, that's fine, gone, just deal with it. You'll get your p65 whatever. But nowadays you know that's powerful, right? Imagine getting feedback and being critical about your practice. That's the best feedback. That's the best feedback because they have nothing to get, because they're leaving the job anyways it's it's it's it's a very powerful way of looking at things.

Dr James, 39m 56s:

it's seeing it as an opportunity to improve the business. That is which is really cool. I love that. I love that, and you're right, people from even millennials and Gen Z as well. They don't really respond to that direct, authoritative management approach that maybe worked. I don't know, I wasn't alive in the 80s and 70s.

Dr Chetan, 40m 16s:

James, you don't have to go that far. It was 10, 15 years back when I started practicing.

Dr James, 40m 20s:

Oh, it was geez, okay, wow.

Dr Chetan, 40m 21s:

I'm talking about 2004, 2005.

Dr James, 40m 23s:

Those times it was they like I've been in practice like that and it was just it was not I. At the time I was like what's with them, right. But now I look back on it and I kind of see things a little bit more high level and I was like, right, we just didn't click in terms of a that was, that was miscommunication, right there. They thought that that was how they communicated to somebody to get them to do something, where it was actually it's the opposite. You can't. People will just people from millennials and Gen Z, they'll just resent you, man, they'll just they'll not actually follow through, whereas if you have a little bit more of a emotional intelligence, receptive approach, uh, well then it's going to help. Let's yeah, it really works let's talk about the future. You're right, dentistry, because all the things we've talked about so far. We've been talking about human capital, but it's it's becoming that much harder to have a lot of human capital in your practice. With regards to what care stammer has brought in or will be bringing in, uh, over the next few months, and what have you? So, really, if there's anything that we can do to reduce our human capital from the point of view of making the numbers work, or certainly not have to overextend ourselves in that front, at the very least, well, that's going to be a valuable thing. So how is your business adapting to that? You know?

Dr Chetan, 41m 38s:

very good question. The thing is, not many people recognize what's going to happen. Right, if the rules change before april, then fine, but if they don't change and if they stand the way they are, then we have, as a business, we'll have to make some big changes in our, in our, in our practices. So one of the things is AI right, the big buzzword that's there everywhere. But understanding how to use AI in different parts of your business, right, and how can you incorporate that into your systems. So utilizing technology and putting amazing systems and improving efficiency in your current team is what's going to help you in the next stage. So these are like three broad words right, so you can use AI like you have AI these days in your PMA systems. You have AI in your phone systems. Right, monitoring everything right, I keep telling you've got to measure everything. You don't measure. You don't measure. You don't know if you're going up or you're going down. You've got to measure, measure everything on a daily basis. So one is having uh technology. Second thing is by empowering your team right, and making them a lot more sleeker. Right, in the sense that much more efficient. Multitasking, I know in the previous thing I did mention about, like. Currently in my team, I have one person just doing this right, but as we move forward, you need that person to do this, this, and a second role which will take 10 of their job right. So they do one job 100 and another job role that's probably 20, right? So you almost have to do that to reduce the amount of human capital that's there and that's the only way. That's the only way forward, right? I don't know if people still mix, mix alginates and mix impressions in their practices, right? Just think about the time when all we did was mix. Now, if your nurse doesn't know how to mix an alginate or doesn't know how to put putty in, or you know whatever, get one of those dispensers for impressions, it's fine because you've got scanners and whether James, whether you scan, whether I scan or whether my nine-year-old son scans, you're going to get the same result, right? So you see what technology has done. It's got a predictable same outcome, right, and an amazing outcome. In fact, it's got a lot more better. We know the difference. We don't have to keep going on about difference between alginate impressions and scanners. 12, 13 years back, when I used to speak, I used to talk about this a lot right. What's the difference between um going digital and having analog way of running dentistry? That's non-negotiable. Now you have to be all in on this, but also accept the new technology that's coming there, like you got ai these days for your note taking the lots of note taking apps. You got AI for your radiographic interpretation. You have digital x-rays. You have scanners that are like amazing. I mean you have on the implant world. You have extra oral scans that not necessarily have to be done by you. That can be done by your nurses. So incorporating technology in your practices is the key.