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VIDEO - DUwHF #796 - Angus Pryor
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AUDIO - DUwHF #796 - Angus Pryor
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Angus Pryor is a marketer, author and speaker. After more than a decade in sales and marketing working alongside dentists, doctors, and vets, Angus founded Dental Profit System in 2014.
Angus holds a Master’s Degree in Marketing from the University of Southern Queensland, and several management diplomas. He has undertaken extensive personal study into digital and direct marketing over the past five years, which lead to him being certified as a Google Partner.
At Dental Profit System, he surrounds himself with a hand-picked team of experts in related fields. This includes experts in copy writing, graphic design, pay per click advertising, SEO and website development. Angus is an author, having recently co-authored The Better Business Book, providing business owners with 100 lessons to live by.
Angus writes for ‘Australasian Dental Practice’, ‘Australasian Dentist’ and Australian Dental Association’s ‘News Bulletin’ magazine. He has a growing network of clients around Australia. He hosts ‘Marketing Monday’, a video series that provides dentists with quick, actionable tips to boost their dental marketing.
www.dentalprofitsystem.com
Howard: It is just a huge, huge honour for me today to be podcast interviewing Angus Pryor, all the way from Sydney Australia where my brother, Paul Farran lives.
Angus is a Marketer, Author and Speaker. After more than a decade in Sales and Marketing ,working alongside dentists, physicians and vets, Angus founded Dental Profit System in 2014. He holds a Masters degree in Marketing from the University of Southern Queensland and several management diplomas. He has undertaken extensive personal study into Digital and Direct Marketing over the past 5 years which led him to being certified as a Google partner.
At Dental Profit Systems, he surrounds himself with a handpicked team of experts in related fields. This includes experts in copywriting, graphic design, pay per click, advertising, SEO and website development. Angus is an author who has recently co-authored the Better Business Book, providing business owners with 100 lessons to live by, which has an amazing 55, five star reviews. Now that’s, in the dental space, that’s just incredible. Angus writes for Australian Dental Practice, Australian Dentists and Australian Dental Associations New Bulletin Magazine. He has a growing network of clients around Australia. He hosts Marketing Monday, a video series that
provides dentists with quick actionable tips to boost their dental marketing and I get to have lunch with you because I am lecturing in Melbourne Australia. So, I get to come down there and you are not going to believe this, you are not going to believe this. When I am in Sydney, my brother will be in London. How messed up is that? I mean, but he is coming to visit me Friday for the weekend. He is going to raft the Grand Canyon, the Colorado river down, the Grand Canyon. So, tell me this for all of our listeners around the world, what is the Australian dental market looking like these days?
Angus:Yah, it's a great question Howard. To be honest, it's pretty tough. I did a presentation at the ADA. I have to, when we say ADA we mean the Australian Dental Association not American. They had a congress and I did some numbers before that, look you know, the population of Australia, is I think around 25 million. So, it's like 150 to the US population or whatever it's. And we have had more than 2000 new dentists join the Australian workforce in the last 3 years and that is way faster growth than what the Australian population is growing at. So, to be honest, a lot of dentists here are doing it a bit tough because there is a lot of dentists [02:50 unclear] and a lot of competition. I think it's something like, they’ve had a 10% growth in the last 3 years and there is no way Australia’s population has grown by that amount.
Howard: So if you have got 25 million people and 20 000 dentists, that means there is a dentist for every 1250 people, whereas in the United States there is a dentist for about 1850. So, the question begs, how did 2000 new dentists show up in Australia in 3 years?
Angus: We have a lot of our Universities generating dentists and it's interesting that has happened in a number of areas for healthcare professionals, Howard it wouldn’t surprise you to know that there can be a bit of politics involved and let’s say you are the representative for a particular state and you say well, you know, in regional areas, in rural areas, there is not enough dentists. So, we need a dental school in my state. It has happened for doctors, for vets, for dentists. And so, they just end up producing all of these extras but on top of that I guess there has been fairly strong levels of migration for dentists into Australia. Although I believe the kind of leg up that they have got through the immigration system has been turned off. But nevertheless, it's, there is a lot of them being produced.
Howard: Now, Johnny Depp called me yesterday and told me that when I come to Australia I can bring my dog.
Angus: Yes, I’m also aware of that story. Yes, you have got to be careful. I mean look, the curious thing about Australia of course is we’re this whopping big island. So, that means we don’t have a lot of the diseases and stuff so we are tough in customs, we are tough in quarantine and we are tough on immigration.
Howard: And I also read that you have 7 of the 10 deadly snakes in the world are on Australia.
Angus: Yes, that’s true. There is a travel writer whose name is on the tip of my tongue. And it will come to me in a minute. And he was talking about you know, travelling around Australia and he was somewhere or other and the, I guess the ranger said look, if you see one of these deadly snakes, what you need to do is just stand still and it will slither over the top of your shoe and you know, that will be the end of that. And he described it as the piece, the least likely to be used piece of advice that he’d ever received in his life. So…
Howard: That sounds like the Australian Snake Association wrote that piece. They probably hired a copywriter, they probably said ‘if you see a snake, hold still and lay down on a plate and put a napkin in your hand.’ So, what you are basically saying is, due to the increased surge of competition of adding 2000 dentists in the last 3 years, Australian dentists who used to be booked in advance, are now finding that they have to start attracting new patients and start being more sophisticated on marketing because it's getting more competitive.
Angus: Absolutely, yeah. I mean, I am not saying that is true with absolutely every dentist in the country but you know in addition to the extra dentists coming on to the market, we have got probably like the US, the increased corporatization. So, there is more corporates popping up.
Howard: I heard that there was one, I think there was one in Australia that is actually publicly traded in Singapore, isn’t there?
Angus: Yeah, I guess what I hear about is from the dentists that I am dealing with, rather than the corporations themselves. I have a feeling there’s about 3 or 4 of them and they [unclear], I don’t think.. it’s not thousands of practices. It’s like hundreds, perhaps a couple hundred nationally. Yeah, it will come to me. I am sorry, I am drawing a blank there. The third element is insurers and I feel like virtually every second dentist I talk to, if you said to them you know, what is concerning about the industry? The insurers are actually opening their own dental practices as well and I guess squeezing the dentists in terms of what they can charge for certain procedures. So, it's a bit of an unholy trilogy as I like to call it, trinity, I guess in the sense of you know more dentists are in the market, increased corporatization and then the pressure from these insurers.
Howard: So, when you are advising your clients at Dental Profit Systems, what will dentists find if they go to your website, Dental Profit Systems. What are you doing for dentists in Australia?
Angus: Just to clarify Howard, Dental Profit System.
Howard: Oh, what did I say?
Angus: No extra s on the end. Not systems, system.
Howard: Okay, Dental Profit System. So, if the dentists go to Dental Profit System, or email you thrive@dentalprofitsystem, what are they going to find on your website, what are you doing for your clients?
Angus: Look, we’ve tended to take a bit of a back to basics program. To be quite honest with you, a couple of years ago, we would have been much more about the digital space and getting out there with Google Adwords and at that time, that seemed like it was kind of the bees knees and for some clients it still works pretty well. But, we do find the results with that, a bit patchy nationally and I think that is because, I mean the reality it’s just more competitive than it’s ever been.When you are paying five or ten cents a lead and if one in a hundred clients called you, well that was okay. But when you are paying ten bucks just for a click and then you are hoping to get [09:01 unclear] of people to click, it starts getting rather expensive. So, I guess the system that we are running at the moment, it’s a 6-month quick start program and it’s real back to basics stuff.
We will start with calculating average patient value. Most clients I speak to don’t know that, how much someone spends with you in a one-year period and now I guess you can escalate that out into subsequent years. We capture the call referral sources. We did some market research earlier this year, Howard and one of the biggest gripes from dentists and probably from business people universally, is they go ‘ well, we spend money on marketing but we don’t actually know what works and what doesn’t’ and so, we set up systems so that they’re capturing that at the time of the call, we’ll measure the call conversion you know. How many calls have been actually turned onto appointments. Most practices I’ve spoken to don’t seem to know that. Then we will look at building their online presence, their online reviews, getting their Google business profile and then really optimizing of setting up patient referral systems. Most dental practices I speak to have got a system in place but it’s not optimized. They’re not measuring that. I don't know what results they are getting. And then finally, we’re having some good success with setting up business referral systems where a local, other people in the healthcare space, whether that is a doctor or a physio or maybe even a gym or you know pilates or whatever else, so, setting up kind of reciprocal arrangements for those kinds of businesses.
Howard: What is a physio?
Angus: A physical therapist.
Howard: Oh, a physical therapist, okay.
Angus: Yeah, interestingly we call them physiotherapists. You call them physical therapists. it's just one of those things.
Howard: You know what, it really, it really needs to go back to basics because the bottom line is marketing, I have always felt has always been a very bad drug to get on because when you do the math, it takes in the United States, it takes three new patient opportunities to call your office before your receptionist can convert one to schedule to come in, and you need three people to come in, I am just talking to cavity, not fancy implants, veneers, bleaching, bonding and all that. It takes three people to come in with a cavity for you to treatment plan acceptance, to get one person to pay you money to drill. fill and bill.
So, they need 9 people to call the phone for every filling they do. And then after that filling is done and they forget, they schedule them for a cleaning but they forget to schedule the recall. Say they forget twenty.. to schedule 20% for a recall. So, now 20% are gone, someone cancels, or doesn’t show, they never call them back. Someone says ‘I have to go to work to check my schedule’ no one followed-up. So, by the time the average American gets to five thousand charts, only one thousand have been in the last 24 months. So, the back door is propped open 80% of people just flying out and the front door takes 9 people to call to get one filling. So, solving that complete disaster with just saying ‘oh, let’s just do a tonne of marketing and get a billboard and Google ads and do all of that stuff.’ So, you are absolutely right, you have got to get back to basics.
Angus:Yeah, and I think Howard, what I find is, this is understandable, but often if I have a new client call me, nine times out of ten what they want me to do, is to be Angus who produces the silver bullet. And yet my experience has been with the practice that we work with over a number of years, those that have done best, have been those that have worked across a number of layers consecutively. And that is why I mentioned those 6 steps that we do in the 6-month fast-track program. It’s those who are, you know, they have got their referral system optimized and they are boosting their reviews and they are checking their call conversions and they know what their numbers are etcetera. And it's really that compounding effect of all those things. Those are the ones that are actually getting the best returns. If the practice is just kind of ‘can you just you know, what is the latest bit social media, we need to be on that space and spend as much money as possible.’ In my experience, that is not really generating the results.
Howard: So, how much is that your program? This is Dentistry Uncensored, how much is your 6-month program?
Angus: So, that is 39,95 and.. it’s kind of a partnership program in the sense that we will work with the clients to take through their stuff. We end up doing a lot of stuff together. There is a monthly call, I get on the Zoom or Skype with people or face to face depending on where they are and we work through the stuff together. And you know, the early indications are very positive.
Howard: So, 39,95? what is that in US Dollars? what is the Australian Dollar and the US Dollar? what is the trade off now?
Angus: Excellent question, I have a feeling it's around 75 cents. So…
Howard: So 4 000 down under will be about 6 000 or about 5500?
Angus: No, the other way. In other words, it's even cheaper. In fact, Australia is a great place to come for a vacation at the moment, Howard if you’re in the US. You are getting I suppose an extra 20% on every dollar you spend.
Howard: Nice, nice, nice. I love Australia, I am so glad my brother moved down there. It’s Sydney Australia, is the only city that.. I’m actually there for every 5 years for 25 years, it's the only city every time we fly back here, I say why am I leaving? I mean, my brother went to Sydney and he was going to do this job, took a job for 3 years and 6 weeks after he was there, he applied for citizenship. I mean, we grew up in Kansas, you can't go from Kansas to Sydney and then you decide it’s a good idea to go back. Maybe if you are from San Francisco or Vancouver, British Columbia, maybe the San Diego. But you can go from Kansas to Sydney. I mean, he hasn’t even bought a car yet. I mean, the subway, I am so jealous. You walk out his front door and every block, restaurants, bars, shops, restaurants, bars, subway you know. If I went out my house and went and lay down on the middle of the street, no one will probably see me for 3 days. I mean it's so boring. I mean, it's. The suburbs of America are so boring.
Angus: It also depends what you want. I must admit I live in the suburbs. I have only been in Sydney about 5 years and it's funny, I did most of my schooling in Canberra which is about 2 and a half hours away and I probably grew up with a little bit of a... kind of a cringe, a cultural cringe over Sydney. But having lived here, I go ‘this is one of the world’s great cities’ and even now, we still behave like tourists you know. We’ll go in and see the harbour and so on. it's an amazing…
Howard: And the other world’s greatest city is like say London or Copenhagen or Stockholm. Hell, you think you’re in Antarctica half the year. I mean, my God, people get all excited they’re going to London and I’m like ‘dude you are going there in January, you are going to wish you were never born for your entire trip.’ But Sydney, I mean, its tropical. I mean on top of a perfect city, it has perfect weather.
Angus: The weather is really great. I lived in Northern Virginia for a while, which had very cold winters and then Canberra really cold winters. But like I’m talking to you in the morning here. So, this is the middle of winter and .. I need to do the conversion, it’s like 17 degrees Celsius which I think is maybe high 60s, low 70s, maybe even a little more. I have been for a run this morning and yeah, the winter here is amazing.
Howard: So, how do you calculate the average patient value? You said you calculate the value for 1 year?
Angus: Yeah.
Howard: So, how do you calculate that?
Angus: So, what we do is we get clients to run a report over the past 12 months expenditure per patient and sort that list from high to low and say for example if you’ve got a thousand patients who spent some money with you in the last 12 months, then you go and find out what’s the, what amount did patient number 500 on that list spend. So, look more accurately it’s medium patient value. But it’s just..it’s a proxy for saying, because I think a lot of clients, it’s quite an eye opener to them they have never done this before, it has never occurred to them. But maybe, it's okay to spend twenty or fifty bucks to get someone to come in because you know on average they are going to spend with you…for most of my clients they will be in the range between five hundred and a thousand dollars in the first year and then they can look at their own data and say, well on average they’re going to stick with us for 3, 4, 5 years. So, it's worth the investment.
Howard: Yeah, you know any business you talk to, I mean any business, it could be an air conditioner or whatever. They all know how much money it costs to acquire a new customer and they know what their average customer spends until you go into healthcare and government and I mean a hospital can't even tell you what their daily costs are. I mean, healthcare and government is the two most inefficient industries I have seen in my life. Like most free enterprise re-did their computer systems before Y2K, remember Y2K, the year 2000?
Angus: Yes, I do.
Howard: And everybody updated and used that time to go digital. And here it's 2017 and the government is still completely on paper. I mean, they didn’t even start the digitalization. I mean, hospitals if you pass out at a restaurant in Phoenix when the ambulance picks you up, they won't know your name, they won't know what prescriptions you are on, they won't know what doctors you are going to. I mean, there is something like 4000 different major physician practice management information systems. I mean, it's beyond completely insane. And they want to know why it costs so much when everybody with an MBA says that 30% of your entire healthcare cost is just paperwork. And they don’t get it. And so, the dentists, the dentists will say, well, I don’t want to spend $100 a week on Google Ads and it’s like , ‘well dude you know you get one patient that gets an implant and a crown for $3000. Tell me why don’t you want to spend 100?’ They don’t look at anything like a business. They won’t call a new patient a customer, they say they don’t sell dentistry. I mean it's a very cultural rift, government and healthcare.
Angus: Well, I think Howard, I have been thinking about this lately and I have coined the term entre-dentist.
Howard: I know, I like that, entre-dentists.
Angus: I think, I mean, those macro-economic factors that we talked about, the competition and the insurers and etcetera. I just think that the dentists now cannot afford to just go, ‘well, I’m just a dentist and I like drilling teeth and you know everything else is going to take care of itself.’ And that was true in years gone by. But in most places that’s just not the case now. So, you know forget the silver bullets, you’ve got to embrace your inner entrepreneur and probably get some help. Go back to basics just doing really well. It's definitely doable but thinking you can just hang up your shingle and everything will take care of itself is unfortunately not the case anymore in most places.
Howard: And another thing, when you say there’s approximately 25 million people with approximately 20 000 dentists, or, approximately 1250 patients per dentist, that really can be data mined forever because having been to Australia, most of all the people live in the big cities of Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth. I am sure an hour outside of any of those towns there is probably areas that have a shortage of dentists. I am sure all those dentists that want to practice in downtown Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. And then, when you go into the most crowded areas of Sydney and you start data mining the fact that there is 168 hours in a week, I bet almost all of those dentists work in a very short time period. You know, the average dentist in America is Monday to Friday, 8-5. Well, that is only 32 hours, that is only 19% of the week.
Like in Phoenix Arizona, you know if you’ve got a toothache on Sunday, you are out of luck and there is 3.8 million people here on the metro. On Sundays you need to break your leg because the hospitals are open on Sunday, an ambulance will pick you up and take you to the hospital. But if you break your tooth on a Sunday, you are more likely to be killed by a UFO and kidnapped by a Unicorn, than find a dentist open. So, when those young dentists are data mining the hours of consumer availability, of access to availability you can find some gaping holes in those metros.
Angus: Yeah, definitely. One of the other things we’ve started doing as part of this measuring process, is at the moment we are using it in excel and then we’re actually just taking it online currently. We are actually feeding back to the dentists ,what time of day they are receiving their calls, what day of the week they’re doing that and then we are aggregating it. We have got a bunch of dentists doing this at the same time and it's exactly as you say, most of them are, all the calls are between Monday and Friday in this fairly narrow window. I tell you one that I have wondered about and this is going a little bit out there but are you aware of anyone in the US who is doing let’s say an initial consult by Skype or by something like that? Would you …
Howard: I have not heard that but I do a lot of times when I am talking to a patient, especially a man. A third of the divorces are over money, a third are over substance abuse and a third are over sex, so when you start talking money I always tell my team, if it's a man and he’s got an iPhone, FaceTime his spouse. So, he doesn’t want to sign up for $1000 in dental work and get in trouble from his wife. And I am excited that Microsoft, they bought Skype and now they bought LinkedIn. So, I am hoping if you have an android, when you pull up someone’s page on LinkedIn hopefully within a year or so there will be a button and then there will be a VOIP call, voice over internet protocol, FaceTime call. But yeah, I think that it's crazy like that on 911, typical government. 911, you are at an emergency so, you call 911 on your phone, you can't take a picture and text it to them, you can't text 911, you can't on iPhone, just sit there and show the lady here is the car wreck. She’s like, ‘what is the colour of the car?’ Why are you asking me the colour of the car? If I called my mom, she’s 80. I could show my 80-year-old mom the car but I can't show 911 the car. Does that make any sense to you? So, yeah, I think any way that you can talk to an incoming caller, that is of course if you’re attractive.
My mom told me I have a face for radio and she told me never to go on TV or YouTube. But I think you get so much better at communication if you can see the person. That’s why I like to do Skype. I actually prefer the interviewer to come by my home. I feel like I have the most chemistry interview there, second is Skype. I don’t want to do it on the phone. I think when we started doing podcasts, most of the big views started off as iTunes play, but since there’s video, now some of those views on there, like we interviewed Carl Misch and there was 195 000 views on that thing just on Facebook because I think people wanted to see Carl. They really wanted to see Carl. They didn’t want to listen to him even though that was successful on iTunes. But yeah, I think incoming video call will be amazing.
Angus: Yeah, absolutely. Anyway, it's just one of the things I’m, you know, you’re trying to always think ahead of the curve, what is coming next..but anyway, for most of the dentists as I say, this idea of entre-dentists I think, is probably what I’d like to see them embracing a bit more. Of course, they’ve got to be excellent technicians and I really literally take my hat off to the dentists in terms of the amount of ongoing professional development they so in that technical space but I’d probably like to see them do a bit more in the kind of business and marketing space as well.
Howard: Yeah, so what type of software are you using to measure incoming calls. I mean, what are you actually doing on the front door?
Angus: So, we have got, do you have 1-300 numbers in the US? You have got 1-800 numbers?
Howard: We have got 1-800 numbers. Do we have 1-300 numbers? And we have 1-800 numbers are free and 1-88 are free and the 1-900 are the ones that cost. I think 1-900 numbers cost by the minute.
Angus: Yeah, so, a 1-800 number in Australia is free and the 1-300 number is for the cost of the local call. Frankly, I don't know why they bothered but anyway. And so, with one of the firms that we are using here, anything the comes through that, the call can be recorded and you can pull off any of the metrics that you want there.
Howard: And you don’t know the name of the software?
Angus: No, look there is a range of companies that provide this. We have got a business arrangement with one of them. But it's not difficult to set up in a sense. And you can have that 1-300 number routed to any number that you want including a cell phone if you wanted.
Howard: I also think that it's just human behaviour. I mean, there is a tonne of research that if you put a camera above the cash register, the stealing and the embezzlement and the internal control of (28:47 unclear) just plummets. Just the fact that when they know that you’re recording the phone call, they are on Broadway. I mean, if you your dentist is back there doing a root canal and has no idea what is going on, you can get lazy and you know.. ‘hello,’ but if you know you’re being recorded, it's, ‘thank you for calling Today’s Dental, this is Valerie, how may I help you?’ You know.
Angus: It’s interesting you say that Howard. I called 10 dentists in 10 minutes earlier this year. I was doing some work with a specialist and it was just something that we needed to do. And it was really shocking to me because after 10 minutes I went ‘wow.’ There are 3 distinct buckets in my mind, having spent not more than one minute on the phone with each of these dentists. There was one bucket where I went ‘these guys are awesome, I would be very happy to be a client of them.’ There was another bucket which is like you know kind of ticked the box but not much more. And then there was a third bucket and literally from a one-minute call I went my goodness, I never ever want to deal with them. I would never go as a patient. And that’s on the basis of a one-minute phone call. So, they could have world class marketing, you know with the world’s best website. You know they could have endorsements by Hugh Jackman or God knows whoever else and yet when they picked up the phone they were able to elevate or kill the thing in one minute.
Howard: Yeah, and that’s what I tell marketing companies. I mean, if a dentist spends as much money on marketing and he has a horrible incoming call centre, my God, he is going to blame the marketing, he is never going to blame his favourite little buddy upfront who brings him his Starbucks coffee and a donut every morning, she is perfect.
And if you don’t start measuring that stuff and say, ‘okay, I served you 90 incoming calls and you only converted 9 of them into an appointment.’ And then so, what do you want to do? You want to double your marketing expenditure. And that’s what’s [30:54 unclear] in dentistry because the dentist has 8, 10, 12 years of college, the hygienist has 4 years of college, the dental assistant went to school for a year but the receptionist has 0 training. And then when you go get a new job at McDonalds, you will have to do 8, 10, 12 online hours of education and then you go get a job at the dental office or a hospital, the receptionist… there’s no training. You just walk in there and start answering the phone.
Angus: Well, I wrote an article for one of the Australian magazines recently which was called Slightly Flippantly: The Fastest Way to kill your Dental Marketing. And it just talked about literally just picking up the phone. I was sitting in a practice waiting to talk to the principal and this was a really good practice and I think the girl was fairly new and I thought she was doing the right thing. She was ringing around saying, ‘Hi it's Mary calling from ABC Dental, just confirming your appointment for tomorrow or Tuesday’ or whatever and then she said, I think she said something like, ‘just confirming you don’t want to cancel’ and I was like, no!. I mean, I don't know literally 6 or 8 words that came out of her mouth but can you imagine the impact on the conversion rate or cancellation rate.
Howard: And then you’ll say to a dentist and you know they’re adorable. I mean, anyone who goes to college for 8 years to perform surgery with their hands on you in an operatori, trying to get you out of pain, they’re not, you know they’re not like their lawyers or you know, investment bankers who have no problem buying a factory and laying off all the workers and closing it down because the real estate is worth more than the factory and they can do that without even a thought. But when they sit there and you say, you know maybe you should charge a $25 cancellation fee if they cancel within 24 hours, ‘oh you know I don’t feel if that will be good’ and I say, ok well now I want you to tell me; what does an operatori cost you for an hour? So, that hygienist who had an appointment, they cancelled that morning, what does that operatori cost you? what is your rent, mortgage, equipment, computer, internet connection, [33:22 unclear ]professional dues and the hygienist labour, what is all that divided by one unit of operatori hour? And they say, ‘well,I have no idea.’ and I say isn’t it easy to be so nice with other people’s money because obviously your money comes from the tooth fairy because you don’t even know what you’re losing.
And then when you do the Math and you spend all that time and you say okay, your hygienist, her room costs $110 an hour and over the last 3 years, she has averaged $95 an hour of billing. So, you’ve lost US$15 every hour she has worked, for 3 years and you are the nice guy who doesn’t want to charge a patient a $25 cancellation fee. And then when you explain that to the hygienist, that I have lost $15 every hour you’ve ever worked for me, the next word out of her mouth is, ‘Well, the earth just went around the sun again and made a complete revolution. So, I need another dollar an hour because my raise is based on the Zodiac.’
Angus: Right, right..
Howard: I mean, the more you dig into dentistry, you don’t know whether to laugh or cry during the business of the dentistry.
Angus: Look, I guess Howard, you’re a dentist so you can probably get away with… are you familiar with the Australian term sledging?
Howard: Sledging? Is that how you apply Vegemite on a sandwich with a sledge?
Angus: No, I think you would say dissing in the US. It started in the sporting field, they talked about sledging and so you know, if you pardon a bit of Australianism, you’re a dentist so you can sledge dentists a little more freely than I can. I’m a ... that’s not my role. I take the view that you know, you don’t know what you don’t know and so I guess the dentists are trying to do their thing. I’m going to be a bit more diplomatic than you Howard.
Howard: You know, it's just the way I started, it was in 1990 I gave my first lecture and they all said, ‘dude you pissed off half the people and you can't do that.’ And I always said the same thing. I always said, this is how my dad and I talk to each other, this is how me and my boys talk to each other and for me.. my world, if I love you and respect you, I am totally going to tell you what I think. And if I’m afraid of you and fear and dysfunctional, I will hold back. So, I always go into relationships with open love, calling you on your own shit and just throw you under a bus if it's deservingly. And they come back and they say… when we go to lunch by the way, back to vegemite, I’ve never eaten kangaroo. I have been to… do you eat kangaroo?
Angus: Yeah, I mean you can get it in the supermarket quite easily.
Howard: Is it good?
Angus: I mean, it’s okay...it’s
Howard: Would it taste better with vegemite on it?
Angus: Possibly, possibly, I’m sure there’s a chef somewhere that’s come up with a vegemite marinade or crust or something. It’s a bit like beef to be honest.
Howard: The thing about you know, the funniest thing is when I went to China the first time, I was pretty deep into [36:48]. So, I was speaking at the World Modern.. Modern Dental World conference or something like that and you know, you can't find a single American to today, who can tell you the name of the Prime Minister or the leader of China. I know of no one and I never have. And then you go back over their, 5 000 year civilization and you know, so, the Americans don’t with the names of any of those guys.
I found the same true in China, I mean they’ve got a billion 300 million people. I didn’t meet any dentist who could tell me the name of the President of the United States, they didn’t know who George Washington was, any more than any dentist here could tell you who was in the Ming dynasty or the.. but I would ask them, I would say, when I say the United States of America, what do you think about? And they would only name things that you could eat. They would say Hershey’s, Coca Cola, Pepsi, Kentucky Fried Chicken. And it was funny because for Australia, I mean if you are an American and you say what do you think about when you are Australian, you think of the Bee Gees, you think of Men at Work, you think of all of these music. It seems like you guys have exported more major…only you and London have exported massive amounts of music to the United States.
Angus: And quite a few actors too. I think you know for better or worse…
Howard: Mel Gibson.
Angus: Sorry?
Howard: Mel Gibson, wasn’t he born in Australia?
Angus: I think so. He certainly grew up in Australia, you never know. I mean, Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, Chris Hemsworth, who was the guy who was the Incredible Hulk, Eric Bana.
Howard: Who was the guy in Gladiator?
Angus: Russell Crowe. We call him Australian..he is actually born in New Zealand you know.
Howard: Close enough, close enough, you’ve got to give him a partial on that one.
Angus: Exactly, yes.
Howard: But you will never guess what my favourite city in Australia is.
Angus: Okay, I won't.
Howard: Perth.
Angus: OK.
Howard: Oh my God. So, if you’re an American, so, Melbourne and Sydney would be like say Miami and New York City, something like that. Wouldn’t you say that?
Angus: Yeah, probably South Carolina, Miami.
Howard: So, Perth will be clear on the other side like by Seattle touching closest to the South Pole, Antarctica.
Angus: It will be more like where LA is.
Howard: Yeah. Because of the South Pole and it would be...what’s that?
Angus: It's so isolated. It must be the most isolated city in the world.
Howard: It's a 15-hour flight to Australia. I mean Australia is isolated to begin with but now you are flying all the way to the other side by Antarctica. So, every single thing is unique. The buildings, the tables, the culture, the accents, the food, the bars. I mean, it’s just it's like in a whole different world. it's like a parallel universe of coolness.
Angus: Yeah, I know, I mean it's a beautiful city. I quite like it. But even for Australia which I grant you , can seem a bit isolated itself. Even within Australia, we go Perth is fine but it's so flipping isolated. it's like you don’t…nobody drives to Perth. I think it will be, I think it's 3-4 days drive from Sydney to Perth. You’ve got to fly there. Howard, can I ask you the cancellation fee that you raised, I am just interested to know from your experience of dentists that have actually kind of taken the bull by the horns and done that and what the impact has been?
Howard: Well, the impact is very simple. So, when you go to McDonalds and by the way, the fastest way to be a multi-millionaire in Australia, you guys still don’t have Mexican food.
Angus: Actually, it's here now.
Howard: You don’t even have a Chipotle’s, you don’t have a Taco Bell.
Angus: No, but we have got 2 or 3 new ones that just popped up
Howard: Oh my God, the first guy that rolls out Chipotle franchises or a Taco Bell or you can even get a second rate one at a can stand, like Taco Tico. I mean, like my brother lives there and when he comes back, we only eat Mexican food, breakfast, lunch and dinner because he said you absolutely can't find it and I think Sydney and Melbourne could each hold at least 50 Mexican restaurants each. And those things would do 3 million a year and you’d net a million. I mean, my brother, I even tell him, why are you still working for the University, just quit and get a Chipotle franchise. And if you can't get a Chipotle, I wouldn’t even get a Chipotle franchise. I mean, I would just get a Mexican family from Phoenix and move down there.
But, back to you going to McDonalds, you order, you pay and then they give you the food. You go into a dental office, you order the food, they do the root canal and crown and then when you are leaving they try and collect the money. And with humans, most everybody is above board. Only 5% consistently try not to pay their bills. So, if you don’t collect 5% of your money and the average dentist in America has two thirds overhead. So, they have 65% overhead and they’re netting a 35% if you include the cost of the dentist and the profit dollars. So, 5%, if you don’t collect 5%, you still have to produce that dentistry which is 10%. So, virtually 15% of this doctor’s overhead is because he doesn’t collect 5% of the money.
It's the same thing with no shows and cancellations like I am old school. I mean, for me, I’m late if I am not at my appointment 5 minutes early. I mean, I would never consider going to a meeting at work, a doctor, I would never be late. I mean, for me it will be late if I walked in and everyone else was here. Same thing with humans, it's about 5% that make an appointment like, ‘yeah, I will make an appointment’ because in their undisciplined mind, they always know the last minute they just decide they don’t want to do it because they are just that way. So, weeding out the 5% that aren’t going to pay by saying no, you order a crown, you give me $1000 and then we do the crown. And then they say ‘well, I don’t get paid on Friday.’ Well, great let’s go upfront and find an appointment sometime on Friday after you get paid. And then we say well, we take credit cards, ‘well I don’t have a credit card,’ well that’s funny because America will give every 10-year-old a credit card on their tenth birthday and send them an application for a new one every month until he dies at a hundred. So, why would Chase and Bank of America , why would all the multi-national banks not give you a credit card? Probably because you are a complete financial idiot.
So, by weeding out 5% of the people that aren’t going to pay, you get rid of 15% of the overhead. The 5% that didn’t pay and the 10% of the overhead of the costs [43:08 unclear]. And by saying, by the way for that appointment, if you cancel within 24 hours, we will have to dig into your credit card for $25, and so I don’t have your credit card on file, so, why don’t you give me your credit card number? And if they are like ‘I don’t want to give you my credit card.’ I mean, if anybody asks that to me or you or my kids or anybody I hang out with, you would get it.
You would totally get it. But the person’s like ‘I don’t want to give you my credit card number’. Yeah, because probably you don’t even know if you will show up. So, we and that is the other thing that the young dentists do. When a crazy person comes in, I mean batshit crazy, they think they have to treat them. And then when a lawsuit comes on, you start reading the charts about this completely irrational nut job, it's like you know, you just have to realize that 5% of the people in any country are crazy and you’ve got to have policies to protect yourself from crazy. Pay to play. Pay me, we’ll play. No pay, no play. I’ve got to have a credit card. If you don’t have a credit card, you need to be in public health you know, or start brushing and flossing your teeth every morning and every night and quit drinking Pepsi for breakfast. So yeah, a lot of those policies are just aimed at weeding out that 5%.
Angus: Yeah, look, it's not, I mean you know as a marketer frankly we are focusing more on the front end. But it's something that I have heard talked about and I was just curious to see what your experience had been with that policy.
Howard: And then for the back door, I mean the back door at the end of the day.. I’ll say to the dentist ‘so how was your day? He says ‘good, I did 2 root canals and 12 fillings.’ And I’ll say ‘yeah, how many cleanings did your hygienist do?’ They go ‘we have 2 hygienists and they each cleaned 8, so they did 16’ and I’ll say ‘what percent of those were rescheduled for the next appointment?’... ‘No idea’. And I’ll say, ‘so, at the end of the day, why was your hygienist allowed to go home if she didn’t call and you know reschedule the appointments?’ When the hygienist says I don’t want to schedule my appointments, I will have the front desk lady do that. That is because she is not a closer. She knows that her service is so bad and she is just the type of personality that she doesn’t have the guts to say, ‘hey Angus after an hour of all this, do you want to do it again 3, 4, 6 months?’ Oh hell no, she wants to push that upfront. So, you are like no, hygienists, you are going to close. And if I have 2 hygienists in an 8-hour day, one can get 7 out of 8 to reschedule in 3, 4, 6 months and the other one will only get 4 out of 8. Then we have a measurement that we need to focus on.
Angus: Yeah, absolutely.
Howard: But the dentists just, they are just… what I find with dentists is that if their mom and dad owned their own business of any sort, it could have been a weed farm, a dairy farm, a restaurant, it could have been a tailor shop, a shoe shop, if their mom and dad owned their own, usually it's a dental office. It's about 25-30% of the Americans, they have got a family in dental. If their parents own their own business, they get it but by God if their mom and dad both worked for the post office you know, you should almost tell them, you should just go to corporate dentistry now and save yourself a lot of grief because this is going to be a long road. It will almost be like taking a Catholic and trying to turn him into Buddhist or something… or Confucius, it's just a religion of I am an entitled employee from cradle to grave, do I really got to work for this business. I mean, it's a complete cultural shock to them.
Angus: Yeah, look I mean that is definitely something that we have seen and unfortunately the head in the sand approach just doesn’t work. I mean, I think it's interesting, I get our clients tend to be either people who are relatively new in business or those where they go, ‘I am not in Kansas anymore Dorothy, you know. What was working well a few years ago, it's not working. I am not booked for weeks in advance anymore.’ So…
Howard: You know I was born in Kansas.
Angus: Well, there you go.
Howard: Yeah I was born in Wichita, Kansas. I love that place. The only thing that I didn’t like was the winters and the wind. I mean, it's in the plains. So, the wind is always blowing strong all day long from the North. In fact, my entire childhood, the wind only stopped blowing one time and everyone fell down.
Angus: I will say as an Australian. I lived in the US for 3 years we lived in Northern Virginia and the one thing that really surprised me when we were there is that when you go into the middle of the US, people actually live there because in Australia virtually nobody lives in the middle as you said before. I mean, I don't know what the figures are but it would be 80-90% of Australians would live within one hour of the coast.
Howard: Yeah, well another interesting fact is, did you know the United States, Australia and China are all exactly the same size of 3.6 million square miles?
Angus: I knew Australia and the US was around the same because I am not…
Howard: And China.
Angus: I didn’t know.
Howard: So, those 3 countries are all the same size and basically almost the same shape too. You’ve got 20 million, we have 3 hundred million and 20 million and China has a billion 300 million. So, China has a billion people plus an entire United States and the United States has 300 million plus an entire Antarctica. I mean, Australia. That is why your prospects for growth are just amazing. I mean, just think of all the resources yet to be found and discovered. I mean, you guys are on an easy 200, 300-year growth trajectory.
Angus: Yes. Look at times Australia has been pretty dependent on mining and shipping a lot of iron ore and stuff to China. So, what did they used to say.. if America coughs, the rest of the world gets a cold. I am starting to think Australia’s relationship with China is probably more like that these days.
Howard: Yeah, absolutely. So, back to the…you calculate the average patient value, you capture call referral services and the time of the calls. So, you were talking about physicians, physios, I have always had the most luck from the pharmacists and the emergency rooms. And in the United States the hospitals are bizarre. You can walk in there with a heart attack and they can do a heart transplant, you can walk in there with a tumour the size of a golf ball in your brain and they can go in there and remove it. But if you have a toothache and they look at you like you are from another planet, like you are a kangaroo. So, 8% of emergency room visits are toothache and they just give everybody Vicodin and 10BK. And the same thing with the pharmacists, I take referral pads to every emergency room regularly within a 10-15-minute drive. But the pharmacists are actually the best, you will not believe pharmacists are just nice and mellow and they are not trying to sell you anything. And people always walk up to them and say ‘what is the best for a toothache?’ And they think they are going to say like Anbesol or maybe Motrin is better Excedrin or some deal is better and my pharmacist, right in my same centre, Brad says ‘you know what you can do? Here is Howard’s card. Just call Howard, this is his cell phone, here is his email, Howard@todaysdental.com he is right around the corner. The reason he calls it Today’s Dental is because if you’re having an emergency, just go over there.
And the reason I like that is because every dentist that I know has got a problem with no shows and cancellations. So, the pharmacists actually for me have always been the best. And here is another thing that is different in business industries. If you go into a business industry, they network their value-chain. They go golfing on Saturday with their suppliers, they go out to dinner. I knew who sold my dad a million dollars of meat every year for nine Sonic drive in restaurants. I mean anybody would know in the family. And I think I have taken every pharmacist in my area of Ahwatukee to dinner at least 3 times in the last 30 years. I mean, they’re your value-chain. And dentists are entitled, they are just like the government. Like they will go in there and work 8-10 and the 11:00 will cancel and they will do nothing, and then someone will call at 11:30 and they will look at the afternoon and say we don’t have an opening. it's like dude, you have a lunch hour. Why does that not even register? The lunch hour and they also don’t even think of networking or why would, I a dentist who is all that and a bag of chips, why would I go be nice to the pharmacists?
They do that to their suppliers too, they treat... the people from Henry Schein, the reps that come in there, they will come and stand at the counter for 20-30 minutes. You treat those people like gold and then you find out your assistant moves and then you sit down with your supplier that you have treated like family your whole life and say ‘who is the best dental assistant in the world?’ and they give you 3 names. And they do that in sports. You know dentists say well.. they get on Dentaltown and say ‘Oh my God, I can't believe the dentist across the street tried to hire my receptionist.’ But then on another post, he is talking about how his favourite football team or his soccer team should be doubling the bad. So, they have got a whole different set of rules but I think the most important thing is the staff needs have their breakeven point for the day and what is your profit margin? And if your breakeven point, if you want a 50% overhead and you take all your bills divided by how many days a month you are open, you say okay, if we are going to do 50% overhead, we’ve got to come in here and do $2500 and then we can go to lunch and then come back and do it again but we are going to get to 5 000.
Then your staff starts thinking ‘gosh throw a broken tooth in at a lunch period’ because that lady at 14:00, she cancelled the last time. And then they start getting mad to saying ‘who scheduled her, that’s the second time in a row or the third time in a row, she didn’t show up and then we are not going to break even.’ But the entitled staff, they could be sitting there short of $1000 at 16:00 and someone will call at 16:00 and say ‘I broke my tooth and I can be there in an hour.’ And they go like ‘sorry the government closes at 5.’ And it’s like, I have spent 30 years, like I will take that at 5 and then, I would rather go take the pharmacist to dinner or a bar or whatever and talk with the value-chain than go home and be in isolation and watch sports alone at home.
Angus: Well, I think of all the healthcare professionals, probably the pharmacists are the most business minded. Maybe with the exception of a plastic surgeon or something like that. But, we have had really good success. And you know, it's interesting a lot of the dentists that I have talked about, ‘hey go and see local people who are sort of health related in your area’ they are kind of nervous and they are thinking these people will think I am crazy or whatever the case may be but our experience has been that by and large welcomed with open arms. I mean, can you imagine your business. If someone comes in and they are credible and say ‘hey, why don’t we work together and see if we can share clients and boost each other’s business,’ it's like ‘yeah, of course.’
So, I actually went and saw one of the pharmacists with one of the clients because she was a bit nervous about the conversation. And the pharmacist was like ‘right this is fantastic, so glad you came in, here are the top 4 things that I get asked about. Why don’t you produce a brochure and every time someone comes in and asks me about ,bleeding gums or jaw pain or whatever, I will just hand over your brochure and you can have your details at the bottom of it and let them know that we have appointments every day for emergencies.’
Howard: Yeah, you know I think your value-chain always, I think they love it when you are hungry, not entitled, I think there is a far bigger resistance to that guy.. he thinks.. he has an entitled mentality. They love humble but what percent of Sydney would say the average physician and dentist is humble? They’d probably describe them as arrogant. So, they like hungry, humble and curious. They don’t like entitled, arrogant and ‘oh I have to take this continued education course because I need 18 hours to renew my licence.’ I mean, look at Thomas Edison 10 000 attempts before he got the light bulb to work. Henry Ford’s first car company went under. I mean, most of those people dive in the swimming pool and learn how to swim while they’re drowning and they’re curious. I have always noticed the dentists who take… that is why I am doing this podcast. This is why I do this podcast- it’s free.
I noticed that the dentists who took about 100 hours of continued education a year, the last 30 years, all my friends that I have watched, they crushed it. They crushed it in happiness, rewarding, a career purpose, leaders in their community and made bank. And the ones who only took the minimum hours of continued education they didn’t learn any new techniques, they didn’t learn any new…invisalign, root canals, they didn’t learn anything. And so much of this stuff I learned and did a lot of it but realized that it wasn’t going to be a good fit or I didn’t like it. Like dentists will do invisalign but the orthodontist is flipping those patients in 15-minute increments. And then you’re doing an invisalign and you’re scheduling 30 minutes for the appointment. And then I say ‘hey dude, what do you think the orthodontist’s overhead is?’ Okay, it's 60% and you’re doing twice as long and your overhead is higher than him So, how are you making any money?’ Okay, the orthodontist charges $6500 and that is a 15-minute appointment and he has got a 60% overhead and you have got a 65% overhead and you’re scheduling 30-minute appointments, you can't do invisalign. And that is the other thing we found that if you don’t do a procedure every week, you never get faster, easier or high quality lower cost and make bank on it. If you only doing an invisalign check once a month or twice a month or whatever, you are losing money. Which is okay if it's your passion.
Angus: I do, I definitely and I assume that’s a phenomenon in the US because it certainly is in Australia. I see it among my clients that go.. oh, in fact, many of them, as I say, I take my hat off to them, they are so keen and constantly on courses but it will be like ‘I am doing such and such braces course this weekend and then help me market it Angus,’ which is I am very happy to do. But then I often find that 6 months down the track, they’ve just not done them. Whether they have not found the cases or whatever the case may be. But it's like, if there’s a problem with my business, let’s go and do a new technical course because that will solve everything. Whereas, as we have been talking about Howard, from my point of view, what excites me, is getting clients’ business to grow and for that, that means doing the basics and doing them well.
Howard: And what is your definition of a entre-dentist. I love that. Entrepreneur and dentist equals an entre-dentist. What is your definition of an entre-dentist?
Angus: So, my definition I guess it's just about recognizing the fact that they.. and I don't know what the percentage is but let’s say they have got to be half entrepreneur and half dentist. And most dentists in my experience are all over the dentistry side. They do lots of continuing education, they are great dentists. But that relationship between being a good technical dentist and having good business is the worst it’s ever been. You know, apart from the fact that most of your patients can't tell how strong your dental skills are. For me it's like kind of a mindset, it's a philosophy that says I need to be a half business guy and half dentist.
Howard: So, you have a, it's called Marketing Monday. Is that a podcast?
Angus: It’s a, I am doing it by video and it's on Facebook Live and then it goes out by email as well. I haven’t been doing it on podcast yet.
Howard: You haven’t put a… so you do it on Facebook Live?
Angus: Yeah.
Howard: And then what else do you do with it?
Angus: And then it gets to the website and I have got a mailing list, and it gets emailed out as well.
Howard: So, what do you email a link to your Facebook Live?
Angus: Yeah, so with the video when you finish the Facebook Live, there is a button that you can press on your phone and it captures the video and then that gets uploaded. I mean I have got a video editor so we put an intro and so on but that’s essentially what it's.
Howard: Ha! So, are you thinking about putting it on YouTube or iTunes?
Angus: It's on YouTube, it's not on iTunes. Yeah, look it’s definitely all part of the plan. I think one of the things that happened for our business Howard as I alluded to initially, we have kind of started especially as digital marketers and then we realized that it was kind of only kind of working. So, this 6-month fast track programme that I have mentioned has been a real focus in 2017. So, yes, it's definitely on the list to expand that stuff but we have been focusing mainly on the business model this year.
Howard: So, what would they, what will all the dentists listening, find if they ..have.. if they went to Marketing Monday? So they go to Marketing Monday?
Angus: They will find it on the Dental Profit System Facebook Page. Otherwise they can watch the videos afterwards on the dentalprofitsystem.com website. Look, it’s you know it's a 5, 6, 7-minutes on a particular topic. I don't know what the gap is between when you and I are recording this and when the show comes out. But at the time of recording, I’d just done a 4-part series looking at how to boost the marketing of your dental practice without spending an extra cent on your marketing and a lot of that just outlines the stuff we’ve been talking about. Know your numbers, know what the value of your people are, know what your conversion rates are. I mean, really it doesn’t cost a cent to find out what portion of your callers are being converted into appointments and yet, goodness me, the potential financial return there is massive.
Howard: One of the things that I love about your website Dental Profit Systems is what 95% of all the dentists in the United States and Australia, Canada and Britain ever do is, you put a YouTube video of you talking.
Angus: How about that hey.
Howard: So, here I am, I am in Sydney Australia,or Vancouver, British Columbia and I’m afraid of the dentist and I am sitting here thinking I am afraid it's going to be expensive, it’s going to hurt and the next thing I know, I am looking at these websites and it's all these weird names like Howard Farran and there’s like a mug shot picture of him. And after I’ve seen like 3 dental videos, then I see someone sophisticated like you and there’s a video. And the minute that I started listening to your video, I mean how could someone not like you if they listen to your video. I mean, you’re handsome, you’re nice, I mean you are. You don’t look like you’re going to hurt me and if, during the middle of a root canal I say you know ‘Angus I am feeling that,’ you know, this guy doesn’t look like he’ll say ‘shut up, take it like a man I’m going to be done in 5 minutes.’
And some of these, I just think it’s I have to trust you. When I go to McDonalds, I know what a Big Mac is, when I buy an iPhone I know what it is. When I go to the dental office and Angus tells me that I need 4 cavities, I don't know if that is true or not. I’m not a dentist. And then I’m afraid, even if I have my entire body sleeved with tattoos from one million pin pricks, I’m absolutely paranoid about getting a shot in my mouth even though I’m wearing a bone through my nose, 4 earrings and have a tattoo of a butterfly a foot and a half wide. So, I’ve got to trust you and I’m afraid of you and the best way to nail that like you said first ‘has anybody started doing with the incoming calls and video on Skype and you said, another one? Was it a loop?
Angus: Zoom.
Howard: Zoom, I’ve never even heard of Zoom. So, yeah you were talking about the incoming call should be on Skype or Zoom and I am saying when I go to….when a dentist emails me and I get about 300 emails a day at howard@dentaltown.com and I go back and I click that website to see who I am talking to, I mean the websites are lame. I would say, seeing a video of a dentist in my space is maybe, what would you say Ryan? Once, once a month? I see that once a month and that’s why I called you, you didn’t call me. You probably never even, I called you. And one of the things that made me say I want a podcast this guy is because number one, you’re in a different market, Australia and Americans love anyone with an Australian accent especially if they’re holding a Foster beer. Be the way, when you go to a bar in Australia and you order a Foster beer, 80% of the bars don’t even have one.
Angus No, I can't tell you the last time I saw a Foster…
Howard: If you live in America , we think you guys, all you do is drink Foster beer while eating kangaroo with a vegemite sandwich while listening to the Bee Gees. And you live up the street from Russell Crowe. Yeah, I used to love that one. But anyway, so yeah, I called you to be on my show because I felt like I met you on a YouTube video, on your website and every dentist should do that.
Angus: Well I do think we do, do a fair bit of video production and one interesting thing Howard in fact, like in the US this is you know, you can probably almost forget everything else that I told you. If you are a dentist in the US, I’m begging you, get some video testimonials. In Australia, you can't do it. It's against the law for dentists to have testimonials of any description. Does that mean none of them ever do it, yes, occasionally they do and I guess they get found out eventually, but in the US as far as I understand there is no restriction and I have coined the phrase- two in one week apparently ‘If you say it, it's debatable, if they say it, it's saleable’ and I just you know, for someone who doesn’t know your business at all, to have an outsider, as long as it's not too cheesy , say ‘Hey I came to Doctor Farran, he was really gentle and I had all of these problems and he fixed it.’ I mean, that stuff is gold and yet so many people I see, just don’t do it.
Howard: Yeah and you know and I’ve got to tell you something for being old, I’m 54. These iPhone cameras and videos are a hundred times better than the most expensive equipment in the world when I was in high school and college. I mean, when I grew up, family films were these, I think they were these reels,these tapes and they’d always break and splice and then you will take a picture with the camera and then you will go and develop the film, it will be a roll of 12 or 24. And at least 90% of the pictures didn’t come out right.
And you are sitting there with a patient and you are about to hand her a mirror to show her, her front tooth, what it's going to look like. Your assistant should already have her iPhone in the hand, should already have the video and can just say ‘can I shoot this when you see, I want to capture the impression on your face?’ That iPhone picture is so quality and that video is so quality and then you can upload that straight to Facebook. You can do.. straight to YouTube. I mean when you go to save that video, you can save it to YouTube, you can save it to a video, you can upload, you can do a Facebook Live. I mean, there is so many ways. And that is another thing these dentists have to realize that you come out of dental school, not only do you come out of a dental school and you don’t know the difference between a statement of cash flow, a balance sheet and a statement of income. Not only do you not know the difference between a return on asset and a return on equity, not only that but you don’t have camera skills and when you’re going into a website and you’re selling cosmetic stuff, tummy tucks, face lifts, boob jobs, veneers, implants and you don’t have any photo documentation of your own work- that is priceless. And if you don’t want to do it, you’ve got 2 assistants, you’ve got a hygienist, you have 2 girls upfront, somebody in that office needs to learn how to photo document for your social media and website and you need to do video and one of the dentist’s that I think that loves that the most, goes ‘by the way when you call our office, the first person you’re going to talk to is Valerie’ and then Valerie comes in, ‘hi, I hope you call me’ and then when you come in, I am actually not the one who is going to seat you and take your x-rays. That would be my girl Jan and Jan will be like ‘come on in, it will be fun and we’re going to take your picture and when we take each one it will show up on the screen and I will show it to you and tell you what is going on.By the time the Doc comes in you already know, you will probably know more than he does because he is drunk, he is senile, he has very different degrees of dementia’ and they feel like ‘ yeah, I like that office. I trust Valerie, I trust Jan, I trust that dentist.’ And you can do that with video and picture and you see these websites that say we are a cosmetic dentist. They don’t even have a before and after picture. But the cosmetic dentists and the cosmetic surgeons in Phoenix that are doing all the boob jobs, the face jobs, tummy tucks, eye lifts, you go to their website and they have a dozen before and after of each one and they have 4 or 5 YouTube videos of a lady sitting there and saying ‘well, yeah I came in here and I am very happy. I was very nervous about getting this done..’ and the doctor is only a small portion of how they made them feel. I mean, it's a whole team approach.
Angus: The one thing that, you know, because I am aware that some Australian dentists will be listening to this, we can't do testimonials directly in Australia. But what’s not a bad proxy is actually getting your staff to talk about the feedback that they get from clients. So, we did one of these recently where they had the hygienist and she said ‘oh my name is Mandy and I love working at ABCD Dental, I really love it when the patients come in and they’re a bit you know, self-conscious and then we send them out and everything great’ and then preceded to talk about 2 particular cases. The best of course, is a direct testimonial. But you can actually have somebody talking about it and talking about the implications. I think the other thing that I see quite often Howard is, where sometimes the dentists get the video out, they want to talk about the latest piece of technology you know, detail, detail, detail rather than what is the result of the patient. What’s...and this particular woman talked about a child who, she was at high school and there was something wrong with her teeth and she was really self-conscious and they got some veneers and she said we saw this girl later and it was like she was a new person. She was so much more confident. And that’s the result that you’ve got to focus on when you do that.
Howard: Yeah, the physicians never talk about that. The physicians are like ‘come to my office, I have got a brand new MRI. We have updated to the MRI plus, plus, super plus’ and the lawyer, ‘we have every lawsuit in the world filed on our super duper rubber dubber doper computer and we will figure out everything in your lawsuit in one minute with our new’, I mean, artificial intelligence. I mean, dentists are insane about that. Nobody gives a shit about your technology, they only care about how you made them feel. And I will tell you one last thing, most of the dentists I know that the office has one million in revenue and they take home 350, they’re rural, they are usually 2 hours from a major airport, they don’t do any fancy procedures, they don’t do implants, bone grafts, sleep apnoea, none of that stuff. They just got 2 or 3 hygienists, that see someone every hour and then, out of those 3 hygienists, they pull out so many units of fillings and crowns a month plus the toothaches and broken tooth and they don’t do anything fancy, they’re just supply and demand. They’re rural and not downtown urban. If they are downtown urban, they have some massive unique selling proposition and what that is, is usually a dentist who looks like you, with this massive chair side manner where they just put everybody at ease and they can convince someone living in Antarctica to buy a snow cone and a coat. I mean they just have the most amazing personality.
The big cosmetic legends in America like Bill Dorfman in Beverly Hills and the other guy, Larry Rosenthal in Manhattan. I mean these guys are just Mr. Personality, Mr. Smooth and then some introvert geek dentist who can't even make eye contact with you wants to go to Beverly Hills and he thinks that if he buys a laser and a computer and a cad cam and Search Engine Optimization, he’s going to be the next Bill Dorfman. it's like dude you know, ‘you have to have a personality and if you don’t have that personality, you’ve got to surround yourself with team members that have that personality.’ But most people if you are an introvert geek afraid of your own shadow, you hire 5 other people that are just like you and then they will even say to you, ‘well I can't stand my hygienist, I mean she is loud. I can hear her talking to her patient and I am 3 operatories down and then she doesn’t…whenever I say something she doesn’t say yes, doctor and then salute me. She starts telling me her opinion and if I taped her mouth down, she’d fart to death. What is wrong with that lady?’ And it's like ‘no dude, what is wrong with you?’ But hey, I can't wait to go to Australia and have lunch with you and that’s going to be so much fun. I hope you meet my brother someday. He is the most amazing man and he’s totally the opposite of me, he’s nice, he’s handsome, he’s charming, he’s pleasant, I don’t even think we’re related. I think my mom might have had an affair on my dad because I don't know how me and Paul… he is just too damn sweet.
Angus: A switch at the hospital.
Howard: So, thank you so much for coming on the show and telling all my homies down in Australia, by the way on Dentaltown I was looking at the numbers today, there is 4500 registered dentists on Dentaltown from Australia and then there is another several hundred from New Zealand. So, if you post any of your blogs or these Monday management meetings on Dentaltown, you will reach a lot of Australians. I think the dentists really love the international part of the community like Australia with Jeffrey Knight and [01:17:56 unclear] and New Zealand, they’re big into the glass ionomer like Japan is. And the Americans aren’t so much. They love seeing how people around the world approach the same patient with the same cavity. I mean we treat caries disease, cavity disease, gum disease, occlusal disease and some of that stuff is straight-forward but some of is completely voodoo religion like occlusion. I mean like there is almost every country has 3 or 4 different leaders who don’t agree on anything. So, there is a lot of Australians on Dentaltown. I can't wait to go there. I will see you in a couple of weeks buddy.
Angus: Thanks very much Howard.
Howard: And thank you Ryan, this is my Father’s Day present Ryan. He is working in a Sunday on Father’s Day. Thank you very much Ryan, you man, you hustle. No doubt about it. Have a great day!
Clip about Angus Pryor
Male Speaker: Founder of Dental Profit System, Angus Pryor has a decade Sales and Marketing experience with healthcare professionals. He is a marketer.
Angus: In a modern world, you cannot afford not to be online. Patients are looking for you online every day and you need to be there and you need to own that space in your local areas
Male Speaker: He holds a Masters’ degree in Marketing from the University of Southern Queensland. At Dental Profit System, he surrounds himself with a handpicked team of experts in related fields. He has a grown network of clients around Australia. His Marketing Monday video show provides dentists with quick actionable tips to boost their dental marketing.
Angus: So, action steps for this week, have a think what it is, that you can do that actually makes that measurable and something that patients actually value.
Testimonial 1: Anyone needing Digital Marketing advice, I strongly recommend Angus and his team from Dental Profit System.
Male Speaker: He is an author. He has columns in Australasian Dental Practice Magazine, Australasian Dentist and ADAs News Bulletin Magazine. In 2017, he co-authored a best selling book achieving 20 000 kindle downloads on the first day
Testimonial 2: Dental Profit System has been a real help to me in setting up my new business. Their online marketing is bringing in a steady flow of new patients.
Male Speaker: He is a Speaker.
Angus: So, the topic today is how to generate new patients on demand. So, today we are going to look at 3 ways to boost patient numbers.
Testimonial 3: As a dentist in Australia you really need to be ahead of your game. Otherwise you get left behind.
Angus: The challenge we face though, is the connection we have between having good business and being a good technical dentist, is the worst it’s ever been.
Testimonial 4: It has been a really, really good fruitful experience. I think it’s really helped my practice grow
Male Speaker: This football match that currently has been in a bit of a shamble, it's very lopsided and of course there can be parallels between this and business dare we say.
Male Speaker: The fact is, you are going to make me more confident, you are going to give me a brighter smile. And that’s the offering that this practice has made to the market place. The good news is for Stephanie, they know what their average patient value is. That’s actually what they are buying. But often what I see being sold is, we are friendly and we got good technical skills. Can you just turn to the person next to you and say you are Elite. And if they weren’t enthusiastic, they should be. The fact that you are here means you are Elite
What we are about is helping dentists grow their business as our name suggests we’re a Dental Profit System.