Dental Practice Heroes
Where dentists learn how to cut clinical days while increasing profits - without sacrificing patient care, cutting corners, or cranking volume. We teach you how to grow a scalable practice through communication, leadership, and effective management.
Hosted by Dr. Paul Etchison, author of two books on dental practice management, dental coach, and owner of a $6M collections group practice in the south suburbs of Chicago, we provide actionable advice for practice owners who want to intentionally create more time to enjoy their families, wealth, and deep personal fulfillment.
If you want to build a scalable practice framework that no longer stresses, drains, or relies on you for every little thing, we will teach you how and share stories of other dentists who have done it!
Dental Practice Heroes
What to Do on Owner Non-Clinical Days
Unlock the secrets to transforming those seemingly mundane non-clinical days into powerful opportunities for growth with insights from Dr. Paul Etchison. Ever feel like you're endlessly busy but not making real progress in your dental practice? Dr. Etchison shares his journey and highlights the top three non-clinical activities that can propel your practice forward, starting with the critical examination of key performance indicators like accounts receivable and case acceptance rates.
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Take Control of Your Practice and Your Life
I help dentists create thriving practices that make more money, require less of their time, and empower their teams to run the office seamlessly—so they can focus on what matters most.
Join the DPH Hero Collective and get the tools, training, and support you need to transform your practice:
- Comprehensive Training: Boost profit, efficiency, and team engagement.
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- Supportive Community: Connect with practice owners on the same journey.
- Editable Systems & Protocols: Standardize your operations effortlessly.
Ready to build a practice that works for you? Visit www.DPHPod.com to learn more.
We all know that running a dental practice is more than just seeing patients, but what are we supposed to be doing on our non-clinical or our admin days? Have you ever found yourself sitting at your desk wondering what to do, maybe stacking your papers and organizing your pens? Well, today we are going to teach you the top three activities to do on your non-clinical days so that, each and every single week, your practice grows and takes a few steps closer to being the practice you've always dreamed of. You are listening to Dental Practice Heroes, where we help you create and scale your dental practice so that you are no longer tied to the chair. Hi, I'm Dr Paul Etcheson, author of two books on dental practice management, dental coach and owner of a $6 million group practice in the suburbs of Chicago. I want to teach you how to grow and systematize your dental practice so you can spend less time practicing and more time enjoying a life that you love.
Speaker 1:Let's get started, all right, but let's pretend for a second that you have a goal of running a marathon. Say it's always been something that you want to do, it's on your bucket list. You're like dude, this is the year I'm going to do it. You finally pick a race and you decide that it's time to start training. So you start out by getting out there and running. You run a mile and then maybe you run two miles, but eventually, day after day, this starts to get a little bit boring. And then one day you notice that, hey, like you could really use some new running clothes. I mean, you've been running in these like old things that you've got from years ago. It may be cool to have some new running clothes. So instead of running, you decide that you're going to shop online and you're going to get some new clothes. And then the next day you realize that your shoelaces are starting to fray. So instead of running that day, you go to the store, you buy some new shoelaces, you get them all relaced up, you're all ready to go, and then the next day well, those running clothes you bought because you two day aired them, they just came in. So you know, when you shop online, you got because you two-day aired them, they just came in. So when you shop online you gotta buy like 10 different sizes because you gotta try on all this stuff. So that's gonna take some time. So you spend the whole day trying on your new running clothes. And then the next day you're listening to a podcast that's talking about training for marathons and you realize you're doing it all wrong and that you need to do some more research. So you spend the whole day researching new training methods and day after day, you just keep trying to find things that you quote, need to do instead of running. Does this sound familiar?
Speaker 1:This is what so many of us owners do on our non-clinical days. You know, we spend the day we do payroll, we pay the bills, we're scanning invoices, we spend the day we do payroll, we pay the bills, we're scanning invoices, we're reconciling accounts, and there's no doubt that we are putting an effort into our businesses, but we're not doing anything to move us closer to our goals. So, just like that runner, they're active in the sense that they're doing things related to the goal, but the activities provide very little value in getting them closer to completing the goal. Now, I truly believe that a big thing that separates super successful dental owners from the average is the amount of non-clinical time that they can carve out and put in, but only if it's used effectively. As I was growing my practice, this is what I noticed when I cut down my clinical days that when I started putting in the non-clinical time, everything started propelling forward so much faster. So what should you be doing on your non-clinical days?
Speaker 1:So here are the top three most powerful non-clinical tasks that you can do to start propelling your practice forward. First of all, before you get to these, you got to free yourself up. This means that you need to spend every non-clinical day you have delegating all of your low value tasks to other members on your team. Now I'm saying these are low value, not because they're unimportant. They are important, okay, but they just don't move the practice forward. So these are things like your payroll ordering, things talking to vendors, setting up new software, troubleshooting computers and equipment issues, office work, like doing the 401k stuff, reconciling credit card statements, scanning invoices, writing your clinical notes, opening and sorting mail. These are just the things that you need to get off your plate so you can spend time doing the top three that I'm about to share. So if you need more non-clinical time, you've got to work on that stuff first. So do it today. Just get it done, all right.
Speaker 1:The third most powerful thing that you can do on your non-clinical day is look at the numbers, check your KPIs. Check your AR, check your case acceptance. Check your reappoint rate. Check your cancellation rate. Check your AR. Check your case acceptance. Check your reappoint rate. Check your cancellation rate. Check if you're meeting your daily goals. So checking and looking at these numbers on a regular basis is going to let you know that if you need to address something else in the practice, maybe address certain areas, maybe address some trends that you're seeing Now, if you've been listening to this podcast, you know that I am not super huge on numbers.
Speaker 1:I think there's so much information out there, there's so many metrics. We could go so deep on this stuff. That's not the way I like to run my practice. Now, I'm not poo-pooing anybody who does it that way. There are people that are really into the numbers. I'm just not that person. But there are basic KPIs that you need to have a pulse on. So I really do believe it is important to check on these and make sure that they're in the range that you want. All right.
Speaker 1:The second most powerful thing to do on your non-clinical day is look around for training opportunities. This means walking around your practice. This means listening to your team interact, sitting at the front desk and just listening, hear how your team is communicating with the patients, as well as anything that you hear that can be improved on from a patient experience perspective. Listen to some phone calls, listen to treatment plan presentations at the front, listen to your RDHs discussing treatment with their patients and offer training tips as you hear them. Now, if you don't know what they should even be saying, it might be hard for you to provide any sort of coaching to your team in that regard. But if you need help with that, I strongly, strongly suggest signing up for the DPH Hero Collective. You can learn all there is to learn about how to train your team and communicate effectively, as well as systematize every element of your practice. If you're interested in that, dentalpracticeheroescom. But just walk around and look for training opportunities. This is also a great place for you to notice the things that are happening in your practice, that you like, that are right to give compliments, to fill other people's buckets, to let your team know that you appreciate them and that you notice them. So get out there and just get into the practice, move around and just observe, and now the most powerful thing that you can do on your non-clinical day is to talk with your team.
Speaker 1:We need to be communicating with our teams. You got to find out what is going on in their lives. You got to find out what they're seeing on the front lines of working within your business. So many owners just they don't realize what a treasure trove of information there is about the practice. That is just ripe for the asking. They just need to ask. So, communicating with your team, it's going to also give you that opportunity to build better relationships. You know that's part of coaching. When we're coaching our team, we need to have a solid relationship. It gives us the chance to verbalize, to talk about our culture and talk about our brand more, and when it comes to culture, you can really never over-communicate it Like you just got to keep beating that drum. This is what we're about. These are our values. This is how we do things, you know. I mean you want to ask your team members what's going on. You want to find out what the issues are. You want to collaborate on the issues that they're experiencing and come up with solutions together that are in line with that brand that you keep talking about and those core values that you keep talking about.
Speaker 1:Don't shy away from repeating your mantras. Our main one in our practice is grace over guilt, which means that if anything goes wrong, we want to know about it and we're not going to make anyone feel guilty about sharing it. If anyone needs help, we're not going to make you feel guilty. We're not going to make you feel stupid. Pretty much it just means this is a safe place that we need to admit our failures if we're going to get better.
Speaker 1:Now we also have a culture of coachability, which means we don't get defensive when people are coaching us. I actually personally got coached last week by my lead assistant and I got hollered at because I posted a three-page document for everyone to read on Sunday morning last weekend and I guess that rubbed people the wrong way. So when she told me about it, I actually did get defensive. But then she said hey, are you getting defensive? I said, yes, I am. I'm sorry, I apologize, because that's the idea. Culture of coachability means you do not get defensive and we have to remind each other a lot that, hey, we're trying to get better. I'm glad you shared this with me. Thank you for sharing it. I should not get defensive because what you have given me is a gift by letting me know about this.
Speaker 1:So talking with your team can sometimes feel like a complete waste of time. It doesn sometimes feel like a complete waste of time. It doesn't feel like you're doing anything. It doesn't feel like you're moving anything forward, but I assure you it's not Doing office work. That is a waste of time. Nobody on your team has more verbal impact than the owner, and anybody can do the office stuff. So, instead of just seeing patients every day, start carving out your non-clinical days so that you can grow, and if you need help doing this work with one of our coaches at DPH, we'll get you down to three days or less clinical. We have done it over and over again. I assure you it's more than possible, it is probable.
Speaker 1:So, to summarize, look at your numbers, walk around your practice and look for training opportunities with your team, as well as opportunities to appreciate and thank them and, lastly, sit down and communicate with them about what's going on in their worlds and the respective parts of the practice that they work in. So take 10 minutes a day. I want you to sit in a quiet room. I want you to write some things that you need to get done in order to use your non-clinical time more effectively, or if you don't have a lot of non-clinical time, what you need to do to create some non-clinical time. I assure you that once you start putting in this time to do these things, your practice is going to run way better, it's going to feel way better and it's going to be way more profitable. Take care everybody. Thank you so much and we will talk to you next time.
