Dr James, 0s:

You know, what really helped me become more profitable as a clinician, and also in business as well, is just looking at every little decision through the framework or mindset of a business owner and someone who has a business perspective on life. And what do I mean by that? They're always thinking about how they can systemize everything, or make everything into a protocol or define it and quantify it by numbers, and it's more a mindset, more than anything else. What I realized with time and this applies to our dentistry as well, whether we are a principal or an associate, it applies to both instances. That's why I've got today with me on the podcast Mr Rida Alwan, who helps dentists when it comes to their practice, whenever it comes to their clinical skills and clinical ability, understand how they can be just a little bit more efficient and profitable, because that helps as well. Rida, how are you?

Rida, 1m 1s:

Not too bad, James. How are you?

Dr James, 1m 3s:

Always good and R? Really, we were talking off camera, weren't we? And there's a really cool lesson, if you ask me, on business and life whenever it comes to profitability, which frames this podcast extremely nicely, and that is if you wish to be more profitable in business whether you're a principal or an associate, you know, because if you're an associate, you're self-employed, you're're a business within a business there's only three ways on the face of this earth that you can be more profitable, and this applies whether you're a dentist, whether you're a car manufacturer, whether you own a corner shop, any business under the sun. There's only three ways, and those three ways are you can think about your turnover. Let's say your turnover is a hundred thousand pounds and your costs are thirty thousand pounds year. If you manage your costs, as in, reduce them, well then your costs all of a sudden go from 30K to 20K, let's say, and the gap between your turnover and your costs is going to be your profit, right? So you've just made more money. So that's the first way. All very simple stuff, but we don't have this clarity until people spell it out. The second way you can make more money is to serve more customers. So let's say you've got a website. Let's say that you have a thousand people purchase from your website on a Monday and a million people purchase from your website on a Tuesday. Well, you've served more customers. Therefore, you've made more money. Those customers, their average cart value, as in what they've purchased from the website, may be exactly the same as the, the day, the, the, the, the thought of the million customers might be exactly the same as the day before the, the thousand customers, or whatever, or ten thousand or whatever you want, but the point is more of them have purchased. So you haven't changed anything else other than the fact that you've served more customers. You've helped more people. That works a little better when you've got a website which is fully leveraged, as in, it's exactly the same amount of effort for you whether a thousand people visit your website or ten thousand or a hundred thousand, but not so well always when you're a dentist, because you've only got so many hours in the day. You've only got one pair of hands and one brain. So it's not, it can't be leveraged as, uh, you know as much. In that sense, at least, without creating, uh, more systems or processes, processes to fill that demand, uh, you know, and that can be hiring more associates or creating the infrastructure to facilitate that demand. So that's the second way. The second way is to serve more customers. The third way that you can increase the profitability of a business is to increase the value of each and every customer that comes through the door. So say, for example, you are doing full mouth rehabs all day versus single fillings. Well, obviously you might see exactly the same amount of people, but the value is that much more from a business perspective. Obviously you only want to undertake treatment on somebody whenever it's clinically justifiable. Of course, we're not saying that for a second, we're just purely looking at this from the perspective of numbers and finance and business. And that lesson was really powerful for me because that made me think to myself right, okay, if I do want to hit the next level, I do want to increase the profitability of whatever business that I'm working in or I'm helping somebody with this stuff. Well, really, anything that comes out of my mouth is going to help on that front is going to be one of those three methods. It's either going to be reducing costs, increasing the number of customers that we serve, potentially marketing something along those lines, or it's going to be increasing the value of each and every customer, and I just think that's so cool. It's such a cool little framework through which to make these decisions rid of. And, on that note, that's exactly what we're going to talk about today. How can we, as dentists, undertake those three methods to increase our profitability? And Rida's got some hot tips on that front as well. Rida, your area of expertise, I would say, is reducing costs. Would you agree with me?

Rida, 4m 34s:

Yeah, so yes and a little bit more, I classify myself as a brain for hire. Now, when I say a brain for hire, I come up. I don't see problems, I see solutions.

Dr James, 4m 46s:

you know, a filling takes how long, James, you're, you're the dentist here oh well, depends on the filling, depends on depends on the standard of the filling. It can take 15 minutes, it can take an hour and a half it really depends on where it is in the mouth.

Rida, 4m 59s:

At the same time, yeah, well. Well, this is it, and it depends on how deep it is, depends on whether there's pulpal involvement, whether you need rubber down patient factors, all sorts of things and then you can factor those in when you do your initial exercises of your x-rays, and so you know that this patient that's coming in is going to be coming in for a 20 minute filling, or he's coming in for an hour filling rather than rather than booking an hour and 15, an hour and a half just to be, uh, giving yourself too much extra time, what you're doing is that you're losing amounts of time, burning right. So for you to optimize this is going to be important. So how does that work? It's about you being able to tell your receptionist team, your nursing team, this patient, when he comes back in, he's going to need a 25-minute appointment, a 30-minute appointment, a half an hour, a 45-minute appointment, by you optimizing that diary and utilizing every minute, rather than doing hour blocks or half-hour blocks where you're losing time.

Dr James, 6m 4s:

Well, it's a good start. You definitely want to tailor it 100%.

Rida, 6m 8s:

The next is designing and automating tasks.

Dr James, 6m 15s:

Tell me more.

Rida, 6m 18s:

So, as a dentist, you do a lot of repetitive work with regards to filling in patients, yes, or writing up your notes. Yeah, yeah, is there a way of automating? Automating this? Can you have a set template of patient came in for a filling and not all? I'm not saying all of them are exactly the same, but it's where you can fill in the blanks rather than rewriting everything every single time.

Dr James, 6m 48s:

Yeah, well, that's possible, yeah.

Rida, 6m 50s:

Yeah. So people need to start thinking out of the box, to think how can they optimize everything that they do? I mean sitting down with the lab to negotiate. Yes, you're thinking it's the principal's responsibilities to sit down with the lab to negotiate. Yes, you're thinking it's the principal's responsibilities to sit down with the lab to negotiate. But you, as the associate, need to understand this. You need to sit down with the lab saying listen, if I'm going to send you X amount, I need you to give me a hand, sort me out a deal. Let's work together, because the more work you give a lab, the more they can discount you. It's not a set price.

Dr James, 7m 26s:

That's a bit outside the box for the associate to do that yeah, and then also track yourself.

Rida, 7m 32s:

Create your own kpis. You don't need the principle to create your own kpis. Why don't you track yourself? Track how long you're taking, what you're doing, what's your, what's your income? What you how are you earning? What type of patients are you seeing? What's your, what's your income? What you, how are?

Dr James, 7m 45s:

you earning? What type of patients are you seeing? That's a good one, because associates don't do that very much. I mean, I certainly didn't. Back in the day it was just happy-go-lucky. Whatever sat in the chair, sat in the chair. You know.

Rida, 7m 54s:

Whatever type of patient sat in the chair, yeah, and then the most important one and you know this, James, without even me saying it is upskilling how to invest in yourself, how to improve yourself, how to you know, going on these phenomenal courses where you might be doing, you know implants or you're doing all of this smile designs and all of these extra skills that you can learn. That's one of the biggest things that any associate can invest in himself.

Dr James, 8m 25s:

Well, it boosts cash flow, doesn't it? Yeah?

Rida, 8m 28s:

and then your side of James and what you do, which is phenomenal, which is, whatever capital they do have, how to invest, how to utilize it yeah, that's important as well you know these things. these are five or six little things that associates need to take into consideration of their days, not of their month, of their days and their weeks, because if you're looking at it on a monthly scale, it becomes overwhelming, but if you're looking at it on a daily and a weekly scale, you can manage and control that. You can start thinking if I'm working in this dental practice for this many days, this is how much I planted you can now. You can now by the way, I don't know if you know this, James, and I'm sure you do you can start getting mortgages on potential earnings because you, you've got this date, date, how much you can earn, and you can prove that to to a broker yeah, no, it's, it's, it's.

Dr James, 9m 27s:

Tracking kpis is a hugely important thing that dentists don't do enough of, you know, and it's. It sounds so tedious and like such a waste of time, or at least it would have done to a younger version of me, uh. But you really have you, really you master what you measure. You really have no idea in which areas you're performing well and not performing so well until you have it laid out in front of you. And I mean, what I would recommend to everybody is tracking the number of treatments that you do each day versus the number of patients that you've seen and the value of those treatments. I think that that's a really, really, really useful way to start getting a gauge just for how much time you're spending and where. And then you start to think to yourself okay, maybe I can delegate some of this stuff, maybe I'll keep the high value things, because they're really what's bringing home the bacon.

Rida, 10m 13s:

Data is key In this day and age where we are right now, today, with AI and everything, it needs data. So if you don't have the data on your working day, what are you doing? How can you predict? How can you think? How can you think you know what? I'm going to go away on holiday for a month. Does that make sense? You know you want to go out and sit on a beach for a month. What does that mean to me? What is the data? How much am I going to lose? What am I going to earn? What am I? How am I going to do? You know this there's peaks and troughs in the seasons. Come Christmas time, it gets to be quite January or Christmas. People want to see what are you selling when. What are you doing? So then that peaks and troughs, that data that you collate during that period, you can turn around and say, oh, my God, I can now start strategically advertising things at a certain time because you, you've got the data.

Dr James, 11m 13s:

Love it okay, so we've covered associates some of the simple things they can do. Let's move it up a notch. Let's talk about principles, because this is where it gets a little bit more in depth yeah, so again.

Rida, 11m 23s:

So with principles again, is data. Data is leverage as a principle. Again, you know that it's the's the same principle in the sense of the same idea, but then as a principle, as a practice owner, what you've got to look at is staff. Are they at the right standard to where you are? Are they working as a team to streamline your work? So, when a bill comes in, how's it going through the system? Who's doing the ordering? At what point are you doing the ordering? Are you over-ordering? Are you under-ordering? That team around you is the core part of the principle. Had in-depth conversations about this with regards to different types of suppliers. You know there are websites which me and you have discussed, James, about. You know finding the, the best price point for a product, and if you're not aware of these things, you know they should be contacting you, James. People should be reaching out to people that have got, especially as principals, because principals, unfortunately, they like their habits. I've got one supplier. I'm sticking with them. I know where I stand. But as a principal, you should be looking to increase your profit margin without doing too much work. By reducing your costs, you automatically increase your profit margin. Reducing your costs, you automatically increase your profit margin. So if you're buying things cheaper a pound cheaper per item you're increasing a pound per item. By the way, you can actually reduce your sales and still have the same amount of profit.

Dr James, 13m 5s:

It's all about managing costs. It's so important.

Rida, 13m 9s:

So important. So people think. People think, well, what is my cost? It's not only about things that you buy. It's about your gas, your electricity, your phone, the number of nurses of. You know the, the number of spare nurses you have available, the people that are doing the recalls, the people that are checking the data on the system to make sure that every patient is coming in for their six-monthly checkup. You know how are you analyzing the data that you've got available? How are you utilizing that? These are simple things that principals need to look at as well as investing in technology right Right now, with everything that's going on the new scanner systems, the AI that's available that's going on the new scanner systems, the ai that's available that's behind it you have to invest. Yes, initially the investments are high, but the return on investment because what it does, it streams like in your patient journey so that it goes through smoothly. That patient journey you've got to think of where is my patient going to be parking. You know that patient journey. The more smoothly that you make it, the easier it is for them. The easier it is for them to come into the practice, the more likely they are to come in and the bigger the treatments that they'll come in to do, because you've looked at the whole patient journey very true, yeah, absolutely yeah, creating your own in-house team. You know you might not need a laboratory outside. You might be able to do some of the work in-house yeah, potentially you know that's that could be a humongous cost saving because realistically it's about a third of the price once you bring it in-house. That's a big saving. And then always renegotiate on contracts. Do not let anything just auto-renew, because, like any business and any organization, like your car insurance, every year it goes up. It never goes down, does it? They don't call you up saying, oh, we're going to reduce your insurance this year by 10% because you've been a loyal customer. No, they're going to say we're going to increase it by 10, but when you call up and you renegotiate, they will reduce. If you want, I can give you examples of this right yeah, let's do that, that'd be interesting a basic example. Um, I'm not going to give you the client names or the supplier names because I think it's unfair sometimes, but so there's a practice I went into and their sales were about half a million for the year. The supplier that they've been with for over I think it was 15 years this is their main supplier and they've been working with them for 15 years and they say that they give them the best service ever and the best price is uncomparable. I turned around and said okay, let's, that's fantastic news, let's bring the rep in. The rep comes into a meeting and I'm joining them into the meeting and I was very open and transparent, sat there in this meeting saying guys, I'm here to moderate between you as the seller and you as the buyer and the salesperson's like I'm very confused. The rep. I said I'm here to defend you when you, when you give them their prices, but I'm also here to defend them for them to negotiate a better price. And I just turned around. I said I know that you can give them a 30 discount. You have the rights without even going to your manager. Is that correct? That the rep turn around is like, uh, well, yeah, we have a percentage that we can give. And I was like, okay, what's that percentage? Well, it depends on the item. These are sales people. They're always going to try and give you the highest price possible for them to increase their, because they've got targets to me, they've got commissions to get as well, but they also want to keep your trade. So you've got to think like them, what can I do? What are you going to do back for me? So you turn around, you tell them so this year we're increasing the practice by another chair, so we're potentially going to be earning from two chairs to three chairs another third. So that's going to be another third. So that's going to be another third of purchasing that's going to be coming in. So what are you going to do for me? By me increasing my purchasing with you, okay, so I left the practice with them taking a 30% discount on all items and then specific items 50% discount. Wow, right, that's only because we sat there for an hour 22 minutes negotiating on what we need regularly, so we wanted the highest percentage of discount on those. I think they gave us 12 items at 50 discount. Wow, and the and the other items which they were getting their standard. You get your standard 10 of everything. Because you are a loyal customer, we got that up to 30 so it's worth.

Dr James, 17m 56s:

It's worth negotiating right 100.

Rida, 18m 0s:

Get the company reps in spent. I know you're taking an hour out of your earning time right by you coming out of the practice to sit down and negotiate with a sales rep as a principal, which you might be working in as as the principal. Yes, you're making a loss for that one hour. You're not seeing a patient, but what you are doing is that you're utilizing that one hour once every six months to see the rep to find out what the deals are, to get discounts, and that's earning you more in the long run than spending that time with that one hour with a patient I mean that's gonna, I mean it's a no-brainer, isn't it really what you can save? but, James, you say it's a no-brainer, but the amount of practices that I've been in and they've never seen the sales rep is disgusting. Yeah, it's, it's. How can I say this? It's not something that everybody realizes how important it is Because, as in university and I've spoken to universities about this I sat down with two universities and the discussion they were having they were like we don't want people to leave the industry and open up a practice, we don't want them to be business people, we want them to work on the NHS, we want them just to churn out people. But that's not what you are. As a principal, even as an associate, you've got to think of the bigger picture. How can I increase my earnings? What can I do to develop myself? And you need to invest in yourself. Get yourself a business coach, get yourself people around you. Make it, make a make. A group of practice, principles working together well, there you go.

Dr James, 19m 48s:

That's a goodie. That's a really useful one right there, especially for the principals out there. Any more that you can think of I remember there was you you were telling me about there was loads of ways that you can save costs as a principal without, uh, realizing so anything along those lines yeah, that's where your your expertise.

Rida, 20m 4s:

Yeah, yeah, so so I've touched on a couple of them. So I mean, utility bills are humongous um 100. I mean I've saved people up to 30 40k on utility bills are humongous, 100%. I mean I've saved people up to 30, 40k on the utility bills alone. That's two salaries of two nurses. Right, that's the easiest one. Phone bills Do not sign five-year contracts. Oh my God, the amount of principals that sign a five-year contract because somebody promises them the world and then doesn't deliver and they're tied into a five-year contract. Do not waste your time signing these phone deals with these extortionate companies. It's disgusting how people take advantage of dentists and yes, it's called dental tax and it's disgusting how people abuse it within the industry itself. It really frustrates me and James, you know me when people take advantage of dentists, and just in business, because people are oblivious, they feel that they have the right to take advantage.

Dr James, 21m 6s:

It's disgusting. What's an alternative to a five-year contract for a phone bill for a dentist? What should they be looking for?

Rida, 21m 12s:

They should be looking for a maximum of two years. Yeah, maximum of two years, because within two years, whatever happens that you can renegotiate, there's going to be a better system. There's AI systems now out there that inputs the data directly into it. It voice tracks them, it transcripts the data. There's so many other systems out there and the thing is always speak to three suppliers, never speak to one. It's everything three suppliers. The reason is is that once you start comparing, you have a comparable between the three suppliers. Then you know if you're getting a fair deal or not. If you're speaking to only one supplier, they can tell you I'm giving you everything in the world, but it turns out you know what. They're giving you the worst deal possible because they've three times, three x'd it on the price well, there you go.

Dr James, 22m 0s:

If you don't know, you don't know. Okay, I'm loving these juicy tidbits of hot facts.

Rida, 22m 5s:

Is there any more along these lines, any more big ones see, the thing is, what you've got to understand is every business is unique, James, right, and until you go in you're not going to know. For um, I went into a dental practice where this dentist was mainly working on implants. Right, and implants, you know, they take a while to do, right. I turned around. I said I said let's do a simple thing, because you've only got two staff in your practice. He was working from a special system. I love the way that he works. He doesn't have a receptionist. You come in by appointment only. The door automatically opens because he sends you a code for you to enter into the building.

Dr James, 22m 46s:

No way.

Rida, 22m 47s:

You come upstairs so he's like really reduced cost to the next level, right. So then you like really reduced cost to the next level, right. So then you come in straight away. He welcomes you because he knows you've come in. Once you put your pin code into the bit as the alarm system released the doors, he welcomes you at the door, goes straight in. He used to have his lights on in the corridor, in the toilets and all of these other places where he was wasting money, because when he sat in the chair working on this patient, he normally takes two to three hours because he's doing several extractions and doing everything that he does and the stitching and the surgical and everything that goes along. I just turned around and I said a simple thing get yourself a motion detector a what, sorry? A motion detector for the lights, so the lights are not always on. Saved him another 10 on his utilities. You know, it's just those simple things that are very client-based, that you don't know, until you go and see the practice, what you can save them love that you know what stuff like that is.

Dr James, 23m 47s:

It's, it's not anything that's you know, uh, completely unheard of, but we just never really get the time to think about it, you know, or the opportunity, because, wow, we're just so caught up in the thick of it.

Rida, 23m 58s:

Run the businesses any more that you can think of in your experience one last thing in general business and James, you've done this and I know I've done this is book yourself some time off as the principal, right? You need some time off as the principal, right? You need some time off from the world, from the mobile phone, from the rigmarole of the practice. Go somewhere where you've got a couple of books and then sit down and contemplate what is going on in the practice. What can you do to grow? How can you grow the business? How can you grow the team? How can you grow yourself as a principal? Because business, once you, you grow the business. How can you grow the team? How can you grow yourself as a principal? Because business, once you're in the business, you're not thinking about how to do it, you're dealing with the day-to-day troubles. So you don't have time to contemplate, to think how can I grow the business? What can I do to elevate my staff? What can I do to motivate my staff when you step out of the business and I'm not telling you to go away for a month to think about things three, four days away from the business for you just to contemplate on how to improve the business you know the answers Most principals that have been running a practice for two years plus, know the answers, but they just don't have the time to think about it and come up with a strategy and a plan of action. And those three, four days two, three days of actioning, planning and then coming back and actioning those plans regardless of the resistance, is the biggest important thing for the business owners you know what I'm just going to say one thing on that.

Dr James, 25m 33s:

It actually, whenever I take some time out to do that, what I sometimes do you know that little framework at the very start that we talked about reducing costs, increasing the number of people we serve, increasing the value I sometimes draw that as a diagram on a piece of paper and then I just do a little spider web like all the ways that I can do these three things, and then the best ones, I take them back the next day and I use them, and that's why I love that little framework. And, as you say, until we take some time out, that we've ring fenced in order to ensure that we are actually working on the business rather than in the business, and thinking about strategy from a high level using that little framework or another framework that's out there, well, we're just not being as efficient as we possibly can be, and that's why it's so important to just take some time away from the doing.

Rida, 26m 20s:

You actually do make more money in the long run James, I mean, you've been, you were a dentist for quite a long time, right? What would you, in your personal opinion I'm to flip it around here, I know you normally do the interviewing I'm going to flip it around for you on this, on this occasion, right, sure, from from your personal experience, right, what made you change and become the most productive associate?

Dr James, 26m 43s:

I would say measuring my numbers, because it all starts from there. You, you have no idea in where you can improve, in which areas you can improve, unless you know what your current output is. So I would say actually that's the first step before anything happens is to know your numbers, and that doesn't mean you have to know them inside out, it just means you have to have some semblance of what's going on. The better you know them, the easier it is to identify opportunities. So I would say that is the very first step 100.

Rida, 27m 13s:

And the next one for you coaching and mentorship. How was that for you?

Dr James, 27m 17s:

amazing. I mean, that's, that's the path to all things good in life. You know there's a saying that I, like you, either pay with time or you pay with money. So paying with time to figure out these lessons can look like maybe five years of you just trial, trying things, trial and error, uh. Whereas if I can either pay someone formally or I can get to know someone, spend some time with them, that's going to speed that journey up. That's going to turn a five-year journey into a six-month journey. Well then that means I've got four and a half years to benefit from that knowledge that I would have had to wait for a lot of time for before otherwise. So if I can get the knowledge sooner, it means I can implement it sooner and benefit from it sooner, and then I can just go off and learn other things sooner as well. So you can cram 50 years of learning into five years instead of five years of learning, all because you listen and you have an open mind. So mentorship is massive no-transcript.