You have to know business and you’ve really got to study and understand it. There are a bazillion books on business in dentistry. There’s a billion books on dentistry in general. My suggestion, go to Amazon and buy every book on business and dentistry that you can get and then start branching out into other healthcare fields. It’d be amazing what you can learn, for example, from an optometrist. You’d be really amazed at what you can learn from a chiropractor because they see about 100 times the number of patients you do. There are some chiropractors that see 1,000 patients a week. That’s 4,000 patients a month. What do they know about busyness that you don’t? They know how to manage people and expectations. 1,000 patients a week. Our office sees maybe 16 on hygiene, so maybe 30 to 40 patients a day times four to five days a week, but 1,000 patients, that’s a lot. That’s moving a lot of bodies through your house.
The bad news about dentistry is when you’re a solo doc, there’s nobody to hold you accountable. There’s nobody that’s going, “What did you do today? How much money did you put in the bank? How much of that went to savings? How much of that is reserved and set aside for future equipment purchases?” So there’s no third party that’s holding you accountable. So here’s what I’d tell you about that, you need a coach. You need a coach that’s going to hold you accountable, hold your feet to the fire, and be honest with you. So when you call up to complain about how little PPOs are paying you, the coach is going, “Why are you complaining?” You’ve got somebody that’s given you a patient and you’ve got somebody that’s going to write you a check if you do treatment. Figure out how to do more faster. Figure out how to delegate more to your team. If you’re not fully utilizing your expanded functions, utilize them. Stop being a control freak. That’s what a coach is going to tell you. A crappy coach is going to go, “Oh yeah, I hate PPOs. They suck, man. You should probably get off of them.” Then you send the letter and your practice goes in the tank. How many stories have we heard about that? So a good coach is going to be honest with you and tell you things that are uncomfortable, that are going to upset you, piss you off, and that you don’t want to hear. That’s a good coach.
They’re stretching your belief set and they’re pushing you. So you’ve got to have that third party that’s going to hold you accountable. Spouses, my wife’s really good about holding me accountable. She does tell me to get back to work because I dawdle sometimes but even with her, I still have to have a third party to hold me accountable. So I have a life coach, I have a business coach that I continuously seek information from and get great information from. Obviously I don’t have a fitness coach. I could use one, so if you know one, send them. inconvenience, if there’s one thing I could get all of you to change on Monday, it would be to change your hours. Anybody in here open five days a week? One office. Sometimes four and a half, four and a quarter days a week? One office and how many doctors are in here, 15, 16? So if you want to make a massive shift Monday go, “Hey guess what guys, we’re now going to be open five days a week.” “Oh, we don’t have a doctor for that fifth day.” Go find a doctor. Go buy one. Chains are doing it all the time. Pay them 30% of adjusted gross, that’s a fair amount, and start them on Fridays or Mondays. You should be open five days a week. You should have hygiene five days a week.
Patient are clamoring for Friday appointments. It’s so rare for us to have an opening on Friday unless it’s like the first day of summer because it’s been rainy and dreary for seven months and when the sun comes out, everybody’s standing out in the parking lot like “…” It’s the first day of summer. That’s the only day that’s crappy on Fridays for us but you should be open Fridays. Hygiene, in our office, it’s rare we have a doctor there on Friday but we have a doctor there on Friday sometimes. When we don’t, we have a full hygiene schedule. One hygienist seeing 16 patients, she’s doing double hygiene. She has a dedicated assistant who’s expanded function by the way also. So she can be doing sealants while Holly’s going back over and starting the cleaning over here. The other one’s finishing up, cleaning the room, getting it ready, and another patient is seated. So like every half hour, so 16 patients, that’s good production money, guys. That’s massive profit for Fridays and what else is going on on Fridays in your office? Nothing, crickets, nobody’s answering the phones. That’s another killer. We won’t get into the phone side but you guys need to be more conveniently operated on a whole for your patients. Early morning appointments, late evening appointments at least once a week, but think about your hours. Think about what you can do to change your hours so you are more accessible to more people. When you create more space in your schedule, since nature abhors a vacuum, things will happen to fill it. Sometimes you have to kick start it but you will fill that.