WHO’S GUIDING YOUR LAPS – JULY 2023

By Mercedes LoRusso,

Volume 138 – – – – – July 2023

Many practices are reporting mid-year results ranging from slight growth to moderately decreased production and collections. With raging increases in the cost of supplies, team compensation and regulatory compliance, unless your practice is demonstrating significant growth, you may be offsetting your production and busyness. We are dedicated to helping you improve your standard of care, and helping patients appreciate the value of improved and more comprehensive care, to generate improved efficiency and profitability.

Recently we spent some time speaking to a prospective client. We engaged in several phone calls and an in-person meeting. The doctor reported modest improvements in the practice from the suggestions we made, yet the doctor was still overwhelmed with busyness and struggling to see any significant improvement in profitability. Their leaning was to “try to go it alone” in making changes that could increase success. The key factor is that a busy doctor is busy working “in the practice”, and does not have the time, energy, or sincere interest in working “on the practice”. Over and over, we have seen this scenario play out in resumed stagnation.

In 2008 Michael Phelps was the defending gold medal winner in the 100-meter butterfly. After having won the gold in 2004 in Athens, he accepted the challenge that there were numerous talented swimmers who would compete against him in the next Olympics.

Complacency is the enemy of a true champion.

It is also the reason that reasonably successful dental practices stagnate.

Though he was the best in the world, Phelps committed himself to new and improved training methods and strategies. Those in swimming circles said his continued training became more intense than ever. Leading up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Phelps was surpassed by an up-and-coming Serbian swimmer, Milorad Cavic, who even set a new world record in the Olympic semi-final. In the final, Cavic had set a blistering pace and was leading the race as they approached the finish. It seemed almost certain that Cavic would win, and Phelps’ dream of achieving eight gold medals in a single Olympic Games would be shattered. However, in a thrilling finish, Phelps managed to make a seemingly impossible comeback and advanced timing technology confirmed that he touched the wall .01 seconds ahead of Cavic, securing the gold medal.

His victory showcased how the attention to detail of every aspect of his performance contributed to his continued dominance. Numerous coaches contributed to improved nutrition, advanced training and therapy, greater efficiency in his practice sessions, attention to the psychology of a winning attitude and the understanding that “staying the course” is never a good strategy for success.

The same is true in your dental practices. Most practices enjoyed upticks after Covid, and many have benefitted from continued busyness. But recently, team retention has been challenging, and new hires have diluted previously efficient and profitable systems. The busyness and understaffing has made it impossible to truly train new hires on the systems of YOUR practice. Coaching can make a huge difference. Just as with Michael Phelps, prior success does not guarantee future success. The incorporation of coaches who understand the many intricacies of success for a practice can cumulatively make a big difference in GREATLY surpassing the trend-line for YOUR practice. Smile Potential’s multi-coach approach to holding the hands of every member of your team through the “tweaking” of systems and practices is guaranteed to guide your practice to its best year ever. See the chart below to see how Smile Potential has impacted on an assortment of practices in the NY metro area, and beyond. We welcome the opportunity to speak with you to discuss how Smile Potential can improve your swim in the pool of dentistry and help you achieve significantly improved personal and practice bests. We’ll even put a gold medal around your neck to celebrate your success when we’ve helped you get to the finish line.

If you would like to find out more about how Smile Potential Coaching can help you continue to grow your practice, and become more productive and profitable, send us an email at coaching@smilepotential.com or call us at 516-599-0214.

CLICK ON THE CAMERA PHOTO BELOW

TO HAVE A COMPLIMENTARY ANALYTICS REVIEW

OF YOUR PRACTICE AND A FOLLOWUP ZOOM MEETING.

This spring enabled us to return to some activities for the first time since COVID. We recently conducted several Mastermind Dinners and some live CE events. It has been wonderful to have spoken in succession at the Greater New York, Chicago Mid-winter and Connecticut State Dental Meetings with full-day presentations. If you have a dental study group, a dental organization, or a group of referring doctors that you would like to help with growing their practices and helping them increase treatment acceptance, let us know and we will include you and your group on our calendar for the Fall.

If you would like to find out more about how Smile Potential Coaching can help you improve your systems of scheduling,

value creation and treatment acceptance, send us an email at coaching@smilepotential.com or call us at 516-599-0214.

CLICK HERE TO FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT SMILE POTENTIAL COACHING

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FACTS NOT FEELINGS – JUNE 2023

By Mercedes LoRusso,

Smile Potential E-Newsletter
coaching@smilepotential.com
(516) 599-0214

Recently, I returned a phone call to a doctor who attended one of our full-day programs. When I asked how things were going in his office, he said, “I think we’re doing pretty good”. I asked him what made him think that and his response was, “I don’t know, it’s just a gut feeling.” Feelings are not facts and should not be the basis for how we manage our practices.

I am a passionate golfer. I used to be a good golfer, but time has decreased the distance of my drives, and multiple orthopedic surgeries have affected the repetitiveness of my swing. There is a part of me that continues to plan for that “next great round” when I will again break 80, or that I can carry the water and a deep bunker onto a tiny green with my second shot, but that is the teasing that goes on from occasionally giving in to my legend in my own mind.  The facts are that my scores are now usually 10 strokes higher, my driving distances are 15 yards shorter, and my multiple shoulder surgeries now cause me to pull most shots to the left.  These facts mean that I need to change my strategy and course management to regain success on the golf course.

There are some strong parallels to what goes on in our dental practices. “I think we have very good treatment acceptance” (but metrics show 32% treatment acceptance and over $1 million in unscheduled treatment). “It seems that we do a good job in reappointing our patients” (but analytics show that only 56% are reappointed in hygiene, and patient attrition is high). “I know my hygienists do a good job in caring for our patients” (but 96% of hygiene visits are prophies despite 75-80% of the patients having periodontal disease). We are accustomed to “going with our gut”, but numbers don’t lie. When we manage our practices based on assumptions, damaging trends can become deep-rooted problems with unwanted consequences.

Over the years, many of us learn to accept, enjoy, understand, and trust our feelings. It helps to understand that sometimes our emotions may not be telling us the truth. Upon occasion, every now and then, some people get a feeling that isn’t real. They may think that it is real, and they may truly believe that it is real, but it’s just a feeling. It is wise to remember that, as important as emotions are, feelings are not facts.

“What’s worth being done is worth being measured”. Smart metrics, actionable data, do not only measure our results, but more importantly, they measure the effectiveness of our systems. Using metrics to guide decisions helps us make the most of our systems. Baseball managers make late inning pitching decisions based on incredible predictive data of how pitchers and hitters will fare against one another. We should be making smarter decisions based on how improvements in systems will yield better results.

How does one determine which metrics are relevant to achieving goals? Your vision should determine your strategies. When I created the vision that my own practice would be a cosmetics-driven comprehensive-care practice, I chose a marketing strategy that would focus on direct patient referrals (the power of “raving fans”), physician referrals (more motivated, less concerned with money) and American Express card-holding women (greater discretionary funds and more luxury-focused). This led us to create an incredible patient-centric experience that our patients couldn’t wait to describe to their friends. We routinely took blood pressures and performed diabetes screening to emphasize the oral-systemic connection. We introduced pampering spa amenities, even shined our patients’ shoes, and featured an elaborate coffee and refreshment bar which made our reception room a friendly gathering place for morning commuters on their way to the Long Island railroad train station, a block away.  We featured incredibly beautiful poster-size photos of exquisite smile make-overs throughout our facility. We lived and breathed our vision until it became a self-prophesy.

It doesn’t happen all at once. I like to say that “I strive for perfection and accept excellence”. It is important to select interim focus points and celebrate incremental shifts. It is important to look at trends and patterns. Focusing our cosmetic dentistry treatment presentations on how it might change our patients’ lives raised our acceptance success. This led us to focus even more on emotional discussions of “life impact” of having treatment done, and our success rose even more. When a golf pro showed me that by “opening up” my front foot, I could lessen my tendency to draw my shots to the left, I opened it up even more and my shots became straighter.

Using Dental Intelligence, we track the actionable data for most of our coaching clients’ practices. We track new patient flow and patient attrition. One of the problems we commonly see is practices having full schedules and not being able to accommodate new patients in an appropriate time period. New patients must be onboarded within 3-7 days of their initial contact with the practice, but when schedules are full, it can often take weeks, or even months. We must get these patients in sooner. Knowing the average number of new patients gained per month gives a practice the ability to “block schedule” new patient appointments in the doctor’s schedule, holding them until two days before. Violating these blocks prevents us from accommodating new patients. We similarly need to block “new patient” appointments in the hygiene schedule so that there are spots to schedule these patients subsequent to their comprehensive exams with the doctor.

We see attrition in practices when there is too much emphasis on patient acquisition, and not enough on patient retention. Most offices FEEL their patients are being appropriately reappointed out of hygiene for their next appointments. Remember, numbers and FACTS don’t lie. Most practices are well below what they think. When reappointment is at 70% it creates the opportunity to lose as many as 30% of the patients within 6 months (without lots of administrative re-appointment phone time), and that number compounds to 50% attrition after a year. Systems must be put in place to guaranty that hygiene reappointment is no less than 93-95%.

When we use Dental Intelligence to track unscheduled patients, broken appointments, and cancellations it gives us a clear message that the doctors and team are not creating enough value in their services. We routinely see practices with hundreds of thousands of dollars, some even exceed $1-million, of unscheduled treatment. These situations are all signs that treatment is not being explained in a benefit-oriented way and we are not creating enough value for the patients to prioritize keeping appointments and having treatment rendered. The greatest expenses to a practice after team compensation are open appointment time and unscheduled treatment. The creation of value and gaining higher treatment acceptance are the two areas that Smile Potential can have the greatest impact on a practice. That’s not a FEELING. It is a FACT.

USE THE LINK BELOW TO HAVE A COMPLIMENTARY ANALYTICS REVIEW OF YOUR PRACTICE AND A FOLLOWUP ZOOM MEETING.

This spring enabled us to return to some activities for the first time since COVID. We recently conducted several Mastermind Dinners and some live CE events. It has been wonderful to have spoken in succession at the Greater New York, Chicago Mid-winter and Connecticut State Dental Meetings with full-day presentations. If you have a dental study group, a dental organization, or a group of referring doctors that you would like to help with growing their practices and helping them increase treatment acceptance, let us know and we will include you and your group on our calendar for the Fall.

If you would like to find out more about how Smile Potential Coaching can help you improve your systems of scheduling,

value creation and treatment acceptance, send us an email at coaching@smilepotential.com or call us at 516-599-0214.

CLICK HERE TO FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT SMILE POTENTIAL COACHING

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STOP DOING DENTISTRY…START CREATING EXPERIENCES & CHANGING – MAY 2023

By Mercedes LoRusso,

Recently, I was asked to speak at the “Leadership Symposium” of a regional DSO. I was thoroughly impressed by the concept of the meeting, and I did see a very well-planned initiative to educate and build teamwork. This group is head and shoulders above most of the other similar groups in our region. The four hours driving home from the event gave me abundant time to process what I had seen and heard.

The leadership of this group is strong, and I love the fact that it is led by a dentist who appreciates the importance of care. There were excellent presentations on clinical topics such as advanced endo diagnosis, virtual orthodontic care, and pediatric hygiene. My presentation was on improved treatment acceptance.

My take-away from the meeting was there was too much talk about doing dentistry to correct dental problems and generating production, and not nearly enough emphasis on delivering care (and caring) for the benefit of patients. During a workshop on teamwork, there was conversation about what motivated the members of the team to want to work hard. The responses were “The office is conveniently located”, “I have hours that work for me”, “I like the people I work with”, “I like that the company has good benefits”, “I like to work hard and I don’t like to be idle.” What was missing for me was that no one said they work hard because they feel appreciated or because they feel they make a difference in the lives of their patients. To me, that means they need to stop doing dentistry, and start to focus on creating memorable experiences for patients and themselves and, in turn, changing lives. They have to stop doing procedures, and begin to focus on why they are performing them…how will they create benefits.

Providing a memorable patient and team experience requires incredible attention to detail. It is constantly evaluating how every experience can be improved for every patient. One of the common problems with improvement initiatives is that the management team responsible focuses on actions and doing, but doesn’t give enough focus to the mindset of the rest of the organization. The focus tends to be about performance instead of culture. When change is made this way, it often breeds resentment. When attention is given to culture and personality, there is far greater engagement because the sense of purpose is internalized. When leadership tries to motivate the team, the team often sees it as being manipulative. When the team, instead, BECOMES motivated, they become more invested in success. Zig Ziglar says, “You get the best effort from others, not by lighting a fire beneath them, but by lighting a fire within.”

I saw the reaction to this in my presentation on treatment acceptance when I highlighted the team aspect of success in this area. When team is empowered and doctors lead by example, the team becomes willing to nurture the success through teamwork. When I spoke about the need for coordinated communication between doctors and hygienists, and doctors and treatment coordinators, there was a resounding joint sigh that the doctors should be a part of the conversation. If the doctors and management want better treatment acceptance, they would be best served by participating in the process TOGETHER. Organizations often think they are involving their employees in change initiatives but, actually, they are just telling them about the changes planned. A culture of continuous improvement requires your employees to be properly involved in the thought of the change.

This is the reason why our Smile Potential approach to practice growth works so well.  It is coordinated between all departments and all of the members of the team. It is dependent on the creation of total clarity of expectations and gaining commitment to systems prior to action.  It focuses on simultaneous development for a common purpose. It is fueled by positivity, opportunity and appreciation, instead of blaming and pointing fingers. It is about everyone on the team adopting the philosophy that “It is never not my job”.

Kaizen is the Japanese word for a strategy where team members in every role work together proactively to achieve regular, incremental improvements to delivery of care. In our offices it should be based on promotion of teamwork, trusting individuals’ personal discipline and work ethic, constantly trying to improve morale, and a willingness to accept suggestions for improvement. For the organization I met with recently, this would mean giving credibility to the teams’ suggestions that doctors participate in their “team approach” to improving treatment acceptance. It would include an emphasis on the doctors and management giving effusive praise for the effort to improve consistency and overall quality of care delivery. This comes from putting a stop to doing dentistry and, instead, focusing on becoming transformational by delivering patients the benefits of care and giving the team the fulfillment of helping to improve the lives of their patients. It’s about stopping the delivery of dentistry and the embrace of delivering experiences that benefit everyone.

If you would like to find out more about how Smile Potential Coaching can help you create better experiences for patients, team, and doctors,

send us an email at coaching@smilepotential.com or call us at 516-599-0214.

SAVE THE DATE – SPECIAL MARKETING WEBINAR

During COVID, Kelly and I conducted many webinars for your benefit. More recently we have limited our programs to when we feel we can really help you make a major impact on your practices. This is one of those times. We have scheduled an evening webinar on Wednesday, May 31st with Mr Abe Kasbo. Abe is a highly respected marketing expert who consults with many of the largest dental companies and hundreds of dentists around the country. His take on promoting your offices is very actionable. Successfully driving patients to your practices is not about self-centered spraying and praying, or saturating Social Media, but rather, it is about delivering a message that resonates with prospective patients to let them know that they should absolutely reach out to YOUR office because YOU provide THEM with something THEY WANT in a way THAT IS BETTER than what they could get elsewhere. It is about being innovative by thinking outside the box in creating a more compelling message. If you truly want your practices to grow by attracting more new patients, “It’s Time Get Real With Dental Marketing” and tune into this program on Wednesday, May 31st at 7:00 pm.

You may register below.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THE WEBINAR

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THE WEBINAR

CLICK HERE TO FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT SMILE POTENTIAL COACHING

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TIME TO GET REAL ABOUT DENTAL MARKETING – MAY 2023

By Mercedes LoRusso,

Smile Potential E-Newsletter
coaching@smilepotential.com
(516) 599-0214

During COVID, Kelly and I conducted many webinars for your benefit. More recently we have limited our programs to when we feel we can really help you make a major impact on your practices. This is one of those times. We have scheduled an evening webinar on Wednesday, May 31st with Mr Abe Kasbo. Abe is a highly respected marketing expert who consults with many of the largest dental companies and hundreds of dentists around the country. His take on promoting your offices is very actionable. Successfully driving patients to your practices is not about self-centered spraying and praying, or saturating Social Media, but rather, it is about delivering a message that resonates with prospective patients to let them know that they should absolutely reach out to YOUR office because YOU provide THEM with something THEY WANT in a way THAT IS BETTER than what they could get elsewhere. It is about being innovative by thinking outside the box in creating a more compelling message. If you truly want your practices to grow by attracting more new patients, “It’s Time Get Real With Dental Marketing” and tune into this program on Wednesday, May 31st at 7:00 pm.

You may register below.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THE WEBINAR

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THE WEBINAR

CLICK HERE TO FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT SMILE POTENTIAL COACHING

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STOP KISSING THE TOOTH – APRIL 2023

By Mercedes LoRusso,

Smile Potential E-Newsletter
coaching@smilepotential.com
(516) 599-0214

As spring begins and leads into summer, it is wonderful to see people walking with more bounce in their step. There is joy as outdoor pursuits can be resumed with the warming weather. And spring is also the season of love.   Many romances begin as the days begin to lengthen and the sun shines more brightly. Maybe this was my inspiration as I gave a young dentist the advice to “Stop kissing the tooth….Make love to it!”

STOP KISSING THE TOOTH…MAKE LOVE TO IT !!!

Maintaining a solid relationship with a spouse or loved one requires a great sense of commitment, and excellent time management to make each moment together count. Being a dentist requires the same sense of commitment and time management. The commitment is to expedient completion of the procedures to the highest level of competence, and to do it in a way that helps maintain time commitments and some degree of profitability.

One of the joys of being a Dental Practice Coach is seeing the new members of our professional community beginning their careers in the practices that we are working with. Most of them begin their first positions with confidence, and with high expectations. Some, take off and fly, while others, become humbled by the need to combine clinical performance with excellent people management and business management.

Recently, I was asked to observe the associate dentist in a practice. Members of the team had expressed some frustration over the doctor taking two and a half to three hours to complete a simple “crown prep, temp and impression.” Similar situations have occurred in practices with scanners and mills, but in those practices, it is usually more related to time management of the digital work flow.

In this practice I watched as the doctor touched the tooth with the diamond, then stopped and blew air on it to inspect what he had done, which was very little to that point. This routine was repeated time after time for quite a while. It reminded me of how, in Dental School, we would all drill a little, then repeatedly blow the dust off with our mouth. I will never forget how, on my first live patient, I almost went to blow off the tooth with my mouth, until I caught myself and switched to the air-water syringe.

Finally, I asked the doctor to have his patient rinse, and I took him into the hallway and said, “Stop kissing the tooth and make love to it”. Stunned, he asked what I meant. I told him that he must begin the procedure having visualized what the end result will be. For a crown preparation, it is seeing the tooth reduced sufficiently to allow the proper thickness of restorative material to restore the tooth to full contour with sufficient bulk to reduce the chance of fracture. In order to do that we must embrace the concept of depth cuts to determine the extent of reduction. We know what It should be circumferentially and occlusally. Just get in there and commit to doing it. As Nike advertises, “JUST DO IT!”. Once the depth cuts are completed, then connect them with a gross reduction diamond, and then add your finishing line, whether it be shoulder chamfer or bevel. The key to doing this is to get in there with commitment to the final outcome and embrace the confidence to get there with minimal hesitation and stoppages.

One of the tools that I recommend to help accomplish this is a stopwatch. There are four phases of the procedure that should be timed:

1.   From the time the patient is seated, to when the handpiece is picked up to begin the preparation.

2.   From the time the handpiece is picked up, to begin the preparation, to when the handpiece is put down with the preparation completed

3.   From the time the handpiece is put down to when the impression or scan is completed.

4.   A. For same day crowns – from the time the scan is complete to when the patient is asked to wait for the crown (this includes the design of the crown)

B. For patients returning – from the time the impression or scan is complete to when the patient is dismissed (this includes the fabrication of a temporary crown)

We recommend that each of these phases should take no more than 15 to 20 minutes. The act of timing your procedures seems to create a greater awareness of completing it expeditiously. Tasks expand to meet the time available. Time awareness creates greater urgency. After a while, the routine becomes more comfortable to complete in the lesser amount of time, and this will allow the doctor to schedule two similar procedures in the same amount of time that it previously took to do one. Remembering that one additional crown per day for a doctor generates $200,000 additional revenue for a practice, it puts an exclamation point to “Stop kissing the tooth… make love to it!”

If you would like to find out more about how Smile Potential Coaching can help you grow your practice and become more productive,

send us an email at coaching@smilepotential.com or call us at 516-599-0214.

CLICK HERE TO FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT SMILE POTENTIAL COACHING

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PATIENCE AND APPRECIATION FOR PATIENTS…..AND TEAM – NOVEMBER 2022

By Mercedes LoRusso,

 

November is the time of year that it is most appropriate to express gratitude and appreciation. We appreciate that all of you have let us into your practices and we are grateful for the opportunity we have been afforded to help you achieve greater success. We are thankful for the wonderful connection that we have been privileged to make with all of you. We strive to help all of you work smarter and not harder.

Thank you to all who have placed your confidence and trust in Smile Potential in 2022. From all of you, we derive our optimism and hope for great things to come in 2023 for all of you and your practices. Have a very Happy Thanksgiving to all of you, your families and your teams.

Be sure to mark your calendars to attend the Greater NY Dental Meeting at the Jacob Javitz Center in NYC the end of this month. Dr Katz and Kelly will be featured presenters on Tuesday. (see below).

PATIENCE & APPRECIATION FOR PATIENTS…AND TEAM

Has anyone else noticed how people seem to be more on edge than ever before? This is not just in politics, where it has become worse than ever before, but in everyday life as well. Frustration with circumstances out of our control, and the need to find others to blame, seem to wind the springs of our reactive selves to the point that otherwise benign situations illicit out of proportion responses and, often times, regret over our actions.

Dr Howie Gurr, a clinical psychologist who has worked with Smile Potential for many years, frequently tells the following story. Imagine that you are the last to board an elevator to the top of the Empire State Building. Being the last to enter, you turn to face the closing door and you are barely able to move because the elevator is packed so full. As the elevator begins to ascend and the numbers of the floors are rising you feel the most annoying sensation of being repeatedly hit on the back of your leg with a hard object. It is not painful, but it is uncomfortable and the repetition is torturous. You cannot wait for the elevator to reach the observation deck so that the doors will open and you can turn and give the person who has been hitting you a piece of your mind. The door opens, you quickly turn and find, to your likely disappointment, that the person behind you was a frail, old, blind woman with her cane held out in front of her. You experience both frustration over not being able to vent, and disappointment in yourself that you might have taken an action that you surely would have regretted.

What is the reason that we are so quick to come to conclusions? One reason is that we may not be actively listening, but rather thinking of our response before we hear an explanation. When we jump to conclusions and react so quickly, it usually lacks consideration. Patience enables us to make the initial assumption that others intentions are good. When we assume that others are well intended it gives us the perspective to not feel compelled to shoot the messenger, but to consider and discuss the message constructively. Assuming good intentions demonstrates a level of trust, which is the foundation of a great team.

How does this apply to our dental practices. Each and every day we are faced with patients who exhibit some form of belligerence in our offices. It may be impatience or nastiness in the reception room. It may be passive aggressiveness when they are seated, or refusal to follow recommendations. We may unfortunately tend to dismiss these patients as being mean, unfriendly, or unappreciative. The truth is that these patients are anxious or fearful, and their fear has taken hold of their ability to act in a kind or welcoming manner. If we can break down the barriers that illicit the anxiety, we can create a far better experience for these patients and we will, in turn, receive a far better response from them, and, likely, more appreciation. We must develop the mindfulness to show more compassion for the challenges of others. Be more empathic.

Similarly, we frequently become frustrated with members of our dental teams. Dentistry tends to be a stressful field for EVERYONE in the practice. As dentists, we often take for granted that team members should be able to read our minds and anticipate our needs innately. The truth of the matter is that every one of us are different. We think differently, we act differently, we speak differently and we interact differently. The expectation that anyone can know how we got to this point in our professional lives through extra-sensory perception is totally unreasonable. In order to create work relationships that are as perfect as possible, we must provide more training than we ever plan for, give more clarity in expectations than we have ever considered, and show as much compassion and understanding as we have ever shown before. Since it is unlikely that we will consistently accomplish all three of these concepts, then we must show patience in questioning whether there is an understanding of expectations. We must show a willingness to constantly supplement training and offer support, and assume that our team’s intentions are good, then  show effusive and constant appreciation for effort and even incremental improvement. Frequent positive reinforcement and appreciation create greater receptiveness to occasional constructive commentary.

 I recently asked numerous dental team members to consider the adjectives that they would use to describe the best boss or teacher that they ever had. The adjectives that were mentioned most often were appreciative, encouraging, inspiring, kind, positive, calm, supportive, fair, decisive, smart and visionary. Isn’t it interesting that few of those qualities have anything to do with intellect? More than two-thirds are emotional qualities. None of those who I questioned listed negative emotions such as anger or impatience. Negative emotions may prompt instant action but they don’t inspire people in the long run. Negative energy takes a considerable toll on people in a dental practice.

Regular expression of positive energy can transform a practice in a very short time. Who is the CEO (Chief Energy Officer) of your practice? Who is constantly giving encouragement to the team and pumping them up? Who is heaping praise and appreciation on the members of the team and raising their perception of worth to the practice? Who is giving the team a sense of optimism and a sense of fulfilled purpose day in and day out? No one ever said that it has to be the doctor, but it is essential for a practice to have a strong CEO if it is going to be successful.

November is a perfect time to embark on a culture of appreciation and positive energy in your practices. Use the spirit of this Thanksgiving month to thank your patients, your vendors, and anyone else that you do business with. But most importantly, direct and focus the most sincere and heartfelt appreciation to the members of your team who directly control the success that you achieve in your practices.

If you would like to find out more about the process of appreciating your team and creating the most positive culture, please contact us. Send us an email at coaching@smilepotential.com or call us at 516-599-0214.

CLICK HERE IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE PROCESS OF APPRECIATING YOUR TEAM AND CREATING A MORE POSITIVE CULTURE

CLICK HERE FOR THE LINK TO REGISTER FOR THE GNYDM

Dr. Katz was privileged to recently record a webinar for Dental Intelligence on Calibrating Diagnostic Criteria and Increasing Treatment Acceptance. This topic is the “Blueprint for Practice Growth”. We are happy to provide the link so that you can view a recording of that webinar.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE RECORDING OF “CALIBRATING DIAGNOSTIC AND INCREASING TREATMENT ACCEPTANCE: A BLUEPRINT FOR PRACTICE GROWTH” CRITERIA

CLICK HERE TO FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT SMILE POTENTIAL COACHING

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WHY COACHING? – OCTOBER 2022

By Mercedes LoRusso,

October is the time of year when practices are making the final push for a great year before holidays and time with family rightfully become our end of year priority. It is a time when we begin to think about how we, and our practices, have performed, and what we might have done differently to have achieved a better outcome. It then becomes the time of year to give initial thought to what we can do differently in the coming year to achieve any unrealized potential. That is why this tends to be the time of year when most of our coaching clients come onboard, and achieve great things in the coming year.

 WHY COACHING?  

If you are reading this, you are a dentist, a dental professional, or a team member in a dental practice. You have achieved a relative degree of success, but undoubtedly, you want more.

How do dentists get better at what they do? How do they become more productive? How do they make more money? How do they lower their level of stress? How do they become more fulfilled?

There is a traditional pedagogical view that we go to school, we study, we practice, we learn and then we go out into the dental world and make our way on our own. Many believe that as professionals, we are capable of managing our own improvement. It sounds great in theory.

It turns out that there are numerous problems with navigating this path. There are numerous challenges to achieving greater success on your own. Often times you don’t recognize the issues that are standing in your way of increased production and greater success, and if you do, you lack the experience to develop strategies and systems to overcome them. The result is that somewhere along the way, you stop improving and you settle for what you have, conceding that “this is the best it will be”. We see it all the time and it breeds complacency. Coaching breaks this cycle.

Henry Ford said, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” But the world continues to change at warp speed. Dentistry is constantly changing. The patients we care for, and how they respond, are changing more and more with each passing day. Thus, to change your success, you must meet the challenge of change and similarly change the way you practice.

When it comes to change, the small things matter. When we coach dental practices, we do not make drastic changes in the way dentistry is performed. We do recommend numerous small changes in methods that improve the standard of care and the ways that the dentists and teams communicate the value of care to their patients. That ultimately leads to increased patient acceptance of care, ease of providing this increased care, less stress and greater fulfillment. The practices that we coach experience tremendous growth that exceeds what non-coached practices are seeing during these challenging times.

Many practices that were strong prior to COVID, have not been able to sustain steep growth following the initial surge from reopening a year ago.  One of the major reasons for this has been team turnover and failure to attract, or retain, strong team members. When the doctors and remaining team are working beyond capacity, they are faced with inadequate time to train new team members and pre-existent systems are diluted, which erodes efficiency and increases stress. This leads to burnout and further attrition of team.

Our coaching program provides support and guidance to help you and your practice get through tough times. We help you create clarity on what is important and then prioritize tasks and skills geared towards reaching your practice potential. When you go it alone, you often have to learn from mistakes. Because we have now worked with over 130 practices, we have encountered most common, and uncommon, challenges in practices and we have helped practices overcome them without experiencing “trial and error”.

In the course of your typical days it is difficult to objectively evaluate what is working, and steering you to be successful, and what is derailing your progress. One of the greatest things that we do in working with a practice is identifying what is being done well, cheerlead for the team for their successes, and then identify opportunities for improvement. Coaching gives you and your team a fresh perspective and leads to growth.

A major emphasis of our program has been derived from an almost unanimous response of doctors and team members for wanting improved communication. The departmentalization in offices leads to barriers in communication. Learning to overcome these barriers and improving communication among the team, and with patients, enables far greater harmony and success with far less stress and conflict. Practices with better communication tend to attract the best team members and do not lose them. Patients seem to respond to practices with a stable team by accepting more treatment due to increased confidence and trust.

We subscribe to the principle that whatever you do is worth measuring and we embrace the use of analytics to help practices make minor adjustments in systems to help them achieve more with less effort. This enables working smarter and not having to work harder. If you speak to the doctors who we work with, you will find that they cannot believe their increases in production seem to occur with less effort and stress than they envisioned. This helps them develop a better work-life balance and they become less resentful of working in their practices. When we feel stressed and overwhelmed it is impossible to focus and we tend to waste more time with no productive outcome. Coaching definitely helps to reduce the level of stress in your practice.

Much of the reduced stress comes from building accountability among your team. It starts with the doctor in helping to develop improved leadership skills and team empowerment. We find that our coaching program gives team members more intrinsic motivation to take on new challenges. This prevents the tremendous amount of disengagement we are seeing in so many practices that we observe. A disengaged team cannot be productive and more responsibility falls on the doctor. Our program shifts much of this responsibility off the doctor’s shoulders as the practice becomes team-driven.

The results of coaching are improved patient care, increased production, increased income, lowered stress, and more enjoyment. Ultimate success in dentistry is not easy to achieve without support. It demands perseverance and patience. Coaching helps provide guidance and support for the steps that need to be taken to reach your potential.

For any doctor desiring greater success, coaching is an important engagement to consider. It should be an important part of your professional life, because it can provide support, encouragement and motivation, as well as tools, skills and strategies for growth. Just like highly successful athletes, everyone needs a coach who can help guide them and provide more focused direction on their journey. Consider having Smile Potential as your coach to help you smile more and reach your potential. That’s your Smile Potential.

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CLICK HERE IF YOU WOULD LIKE SMILE POTENTIAL TO HELP YOU REACH YOUR PRACTICE POTENTIAL IN 2023

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PENNY-WISE, CROWN FOOLISH – SEPTEMBER 2022

By Mercedes LoRusso,

 Welcome back from the summer.  Each year I take off the summer from writing these newsletters to follow my own advice for creating a proper life/work balance.  The summer months allow me to “recharge my batteries” and also discover ideas that may be helpful to all of you.  The first of these ideas is related to a problem that I have seen developing over the recent months.

PENNY-WISE, CROWN-FOOLISH

Dental practices are not the only entities suffering from a lack of abundance of suitable potential employees.  The dental lab industry has also been hit by an exodus of trained technicians and a shortage of workers to take their places.  Increased busyness in the labs from dental practices picking up their productivity has also meant that many technicians new to the field have been inadequately trained on the need for the absolute perfection needed for fit and function of the crowns and prosthetics they are creating.  The result is that dentists are increasingly finding that their lab cases are delayed or not meeting their standards for fit.  This, then, requires longer delivery appointments, and it results in frequent remakes, reappointments and eroded patient confidence.

Time is money.  The biggest expense to any practice, other than team compensation is lost production time.  We normally think of this in terms of cancellations and broken appointments.  We ask offices to track open appointment time each month and calculate the impact on the practice.  If we assume that a doctor is producing $600 per hour and a hygienist is producing $150 per hour, then just eight one-hour open appointments for each of them during a month could cost the practice as much as $6,000 in lost production, the equivalent of an entire wasted day of office time.

What often goes unnoticed is the lost production time, and increased work, that can be attributed to compensating for delayed deliveries, or less than adequate crown fit.  During a recent practice observation I saw that crown deliveries were being scheduled for as much as an hour.  The scheduling coordinator said this was made necessary by the increased time it had been taking to adjust crowns to make them fit.  Delivery of a crown should never take more than a half hour.  If a crown is taking more than 10 minutes to adjust to make it fit, it probably should have been remade.  With digital impressioning and workflow, there is no reason that a properly fitting crown cannot be seated in a minimum amount of time.  When we are taking an hour to cement a crown on a daily basis, the doctor described above has lost as much as $5,000 production in a month.  Even worse, is having to reschedule patients because a crown does not fit.  The doctor mentioned above recalled that seven crowns had needed to be re-impressioned, and deliveries rescheduled, in recent weeks.  This amounts to an additional $4,000-5,000 in lost production.

I find it disturbing when I hear that a doctor is seeking a new lab and is deciding primarily based on price.  The difference in cost of digitally produced crowns (even actual impressions are converted to digital flow by the labs when they scan the impressions) is minimal, generally ranging from $99-129, The difference is far less than the cost of lost production time caused by poor fit.  The decision on which lab to use should be exclusively based on the quality of the work and the fit of the crowns.  My suggestion is to contact the doctors in your community who have the best reputation, or local prosthodontists, to find out which labs they use successfully, and begin your search with those recommendations.  The additional cost will be more than off-set by the savings in experiencing less lost productive time.  Don’t be “Penny wise and Crown foolish.

CLICK HERE IF YOU WOULD LIKE SMILE POTENTIAL TO SERVE AS A SOUNDING BOARD AND RESOURCE FOR YOUR PRACTICE DECISION-MAKING

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LESSONS I LEARNED FROM MY DAD…ABOUT MANAGING A DENTAL PRACTICE…AND LIFE – JUNE 2022

By Mercedes LoRusso,

In early April I lost my Dad. He had lived a long productive life and impacted many people, In honor of Father’s Day on June 19th, this month I want to tell you about the “Lessons I Learned From My Dad…About Managing a Dental Practice…and Life”.

LESSONS I LEARNED FROM MY DAD…

ABOUT MANAGING A DENTAL PRACTICE…AND LIFE

My Dad was an incredibly humble and quiet gentleman, who possessed a strong voice when it came to his lifelong passions. He was a very proud veteran of the Korean War and channeled his experiences into a long career of political writing, speech writing for local and national candidates, and campaign management, even into his 90’s. His other lifelong passions were golf, baseball, model aviation, and caring for his loved ones. For 18 years, from 2002 until 2020, my dad woke up every hour, on the hour, every single night, to care for my mom who had a severe medical condition that required around-the-clock care.

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My dad, humbly, was a great teacher. As one of the founders of Toastmasters, he had me learn the art of public speaking while in high school. Little did I know then, that 40 years later, it would become a major part of my career. The ability to communicate in front of others is one of the greatest determinants of success in almost any field of endeavor. As dentists, a most important role we have is inspiring our patents to make the best decisions for themselves regarding their oral health. Our ability to communicate clearly is greatly impacted by our ability to speak.

 

One of the most profound experiences of my life was delivering my Dad’s eulogy. Because so many people have a fear of public speaking, it is said that many people have a greater fear of delivering a eulogy than being in the casket. For me, the opportunity was an absolute privilege, and I found great comfort in the experience. In closing my Dad’s eulogy I summarized the three most important lessons that I learned from him throughout my life.

 

The first was something he taught me when I was learning to play golf, “Keep your head down”. This is one of the greatest challenges when learning the golf swing, but it was far more profound for the rest of my life. It was also my Dad’s way of telling me to always work hard. It inspired me through my years in school and during my entire career. When you keep your head down, and to the grind, you achieve far more than picking your head up to watch others do the work. In my dental practice it meant spending time working “on my practice”, and not just working in it.

 

The second lesson was about hitting a baseball. When I had trouble hitting curve balls in my early years playing ball, my Dad repeatedly told me “Don’t step in the bucket”. When you “step in the bucket” you have given up on maintaining the position necessary to hit a pitch that tails away from you. This lesson when applied to my life was to never give up and maintain a posture that enables you to consistently succeed. For me that meant attending as much continuing education as I could to become as masterful as possible in performing oral surgery, endodontics and implantology. Never stop attending continuing education and always seek knowledge to advance your career…and never give up.

 

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The third lesson was to “Earn my playtime”. When I was young it meant that I would have to do two to three hours of chores around the house before I went to play ball with my friends.   When I went to school it meant working hard enough to earn an academic scholarship so I could afford to go to college and playing a sport so that I could receive a grant to live on campus at the college of my choice. I worked nights driving an ambulance for NY City EMS so that I would be able to afford Dental School without taking crippling student loans. Applying myself in these ways enabled me to “earn the playtime” that a successful career in dentistry later affords you.

 

The bonus lesson from my Dad came from delivering his eulogy. It was an incredible experience to speak lovingly and with pride about the great impact my Dad had on me and so many others who he touched throughout his lifetime. It was easy to speak eloquently about such a wonderful man. It was so easy that’ll afterwards, it made me think about why I had not told him those things enough while he was alive. So the last lesson is that you should not wait until it’s too late to tell someone how much you love them, or how much you appreciate them. Because when they’re gone, no matter how much you cry or shout, they won’t hear you anymore. Tell your family you love them everyday. Everyday, tell the members of your dental team that you appreciate them.

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Dad, thank you for teaching me so much about managing my practice…and life. Come Father’s Day, I will miss you, but I will honor all that you taught me. I continue to “keep my head down”, “avoid stepping in the bucket” and “earning my playtime”.

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