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
The 5-Step Guide to an All-Star Dental Practice with Alex Nottingham
The solution to an all-star dental practice comes down to five proven steps! In this episode, Alex Nottingham of All-Star Dental Academy explains how to craft a vision that guides key decisions, build and train a high-performing team, and leverage the power of coaching and masterminds. You'll learn strategies for leading a team that drives results, growing your practice, and more. Tune in now to start transforming your business into an all-star dental practice!
Topics discussed in this episode:
- Step one: setting a vision
- Step two: building a team
- Step three: effective training
- Step four: the power of coaching
- Step five: mastermind groups
Learn more about All-Star Dental Academy!
https://allstardentalacademy.com/
Check out the Dental All-Stars Podcast!
https://allstardentalacademy.com/dental-podcast/
Listen to our episode on phone call conversion here:
https://dentalpracticeheroes.libsyn.com/interview-the-3-silents-killers-in-your-practice-with-alex-nottingham
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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.
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- Comprehensive Training: Boost profit, efficiency, and team engagement.
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Ready to build a practice that works for you? Visit www.DPHPod.com to learn more.
From time to time, the dentist in us wants to zoom in and focus only on the details, but sometimes we become so myopic that we miss the big picture. If you've ever felt overwhelmed by the amount of details needed to create an amazing dental practice, you're going to love this episode, because today we zoom out and teach you how, in just five steps, you can transform your business into an amazing practice. We are going to lay out a clear roadmap to success that any single doctor can do on a macro level, so that you can enjoy all the micro level details that come from practice ownership. 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. 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. Hey, what's up everybody? Welcome back to Dental Practice Heroes, very excited about my guest today, a repeat guest, somebody I've had the pleasure of working with on a few collaborations. We've got the founder of All-Star Dental Academy, also an author. He's got a dental book. He's got another business book. I don't know if that one's out yet, but please welcome back to the podcast Alex Nottingham. What's happening, alex? How are you doing today? Thanks for having me, paul. Today we're talking about the five steps to an all-star dental practice and this is kind of what you teach in your consulting program and what you believe. And let's just jump right into it. What are the five steps? And let's get rocking. Type into it. What are the five?
Speaker 2:steps and let's get rocking Type into it. Yeah, these five steps, I'll tell you they can work in any business, because I pride myself in terms of I didn't come from dentistry with my father, right, and we do dentistry but my job at Allstar, as the CEO and the visionary, is to be focusing on what can I bring outside of dentistry to dentistry. How can we think about being great as a business and a person? If you focus on that, the rest takes care of itself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's great to look at from that perspective because I think a lot of dentists are looking at their business and we've got this tunnel vision. It's the dentistry, it's the product and we think the product is how good it looks on an x-ray when we show our dental friends. But it's the experience of the product. We are in the service industry and we're providing experience and I remember working with my first associateship, this guy, everybody loved this guy and he would crown every tooth and it didn't matter if there was no tooth to be crowned, he would crown it. And we were always after he left, we were always fixing all his bad dentistry.
Speaker 1:But man, did those patients love him? I remember she said, oh man, Dr G, he was the best man. He did my root canal, this molar. It took him so long I had to come back three times. It was like three hour appointments each. I'm like you spent nine hours on a molar root canal and you love this guy. She's like, oh, he just worked so hard on it. I'd be like, what is he doing? But that's the thing, the experience was there. So their evaluation of that product had nothing to do with the amount of time that went into it. It was the way that he made them feel that's right, so I think that's worth saying.
Speaker 2:And I'll say this as well I think we should have both. I think it's wonderful to be great at what you do. I don't deny that. I mean all the dentists that you and I work with Paul. You and I work with Paul. They're top notch, they're fellows. My father was a fellow of the AG. I mean, he still is.
Speaker 2:The five steps to an all-star practice are as follows. So first we start with the vision. This is the most important step, and I do a 30-hour MBA program and I spend a lot of time in your mission, your vision, your values. But even throw all that aside, what I mean by vision for context of this, is what do you want? What do you want in life? What do you personally want? I know part of it is what your practice, because you say let me make this great mission and vision statement that everybody's happy with. I get it. Ultimately, you'll do that. That's a part of your messaging, your marketing and your ways of rallying your team.
Speaker 2:But if you're not happy as the founder, as the entrepreneur, as the founder, as the entrepreneur, it's not going to work. It's not. And so I joke, I say most dentists love this and they agree. I wish for you to have a boring life? I do. You come to work, you love what you do, your patients love you, your team is happy, you and your team are well-paid, you have a great work-life balance no drama in in your life. I think most dentists would take that and I said you're making good money and you're happy, you're doing what you love and you love your people. Boring who wants a drama, unnecessary drama? So I joke, but I think there's seriousness to this.
Speaker 2:I think most people not even dentists people they want to have it all. And what is it all? Great patients, great team, happy life, good money, retirement, all those things. And we don't have to swindle people. We're about service, not sales. You can do it the right way and you can be proud of what you do. So that has to be, and you'll put in your own words of what you stand for, what your personal and professional vision is, because you want a business that serves your life, not a business that you become an employee to. You just bought yourself a job, right, and we're just having to put out fires all the time. That's not how it's supposed to be.
Speaker 1:And when you feel trapped. I mean, if you don't create this vision, the vision gets created for you, more or less you know, or your results get created for you that don't come from that vision. And I think we feel trapped as dental practice owners sometimes because we didn't give the proper thought of about what do we want? Want to do this personal feat and you want to do it. Or running a marathon because somebody's got a gun to your head. You know what? Your experience of running that marathon are going to be completely different if somebody's forcing you to do it or if you're doing it under your own volition in an agency, because you want to.
Speaker 2:I think that's powerful because it's your choice and it's something that you want to do. It isn't put upon you. You've chosen it. I know you and so many others. You have a work-life balance. It's not just the podcast, it's not just coaching and consulting, it's not just dentistry. There's other things to do. So set your vision, have your business work for you. Okay, that's vision. The second step is your team. You need a team that supports your vision and that's a big reason that we so, kind of in our genesis of All Star, we launched our online training system. But what we found over the years this was like over five years ago is that people Dennis was saying to me we can't train because we don't have a team, we don't have proper staffing. So that's why we launched our hiring service.
Speaker 1:I get that question a lot, that objection from possible coaching clients, and I always tell them hey, if you don't have your full staff team trust, this is still going to help you. This is going to help you retain your team members. This is going to help you when you bring on more people to your team. There is no reason why you have to wait until you have everything perfect to start working on your business. The time to start is now.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely. And there's this line. A friend of the family would call Uncle Jay, who is a medical consultant, would say why should I train my team if I'm going to train them and they're going to leave? Well, you can respond and say what if I don't train them and they stay? Good question. So the point is, we're always training and so that's why, yes, I do agree with you. I think we should always be coaching We'll talk about that Always be training.
Speaker 2:So your team has to represent you and your values and your vision. They do. You can only go so far. I mean, a great team, great dentist that's success. I see so many. You may have a great dentist and a terrible team and they're not going to get to you. Because we talked about this in one of our prior podcasts about the business growth formula, phone call conversion. If that does not happen properly, then it's never getting to you, dr Paul, and you can be your sweetheart, you're a great dentist, but you ain't going to see the patient. So your team is the guard gate. They're the ones, and that includes your marketing team as well. Whatever it is, they have to be able to get through, and if your team isn't correct, they're not getting to you. So you have to have a team that supports your vision.
Speaker 2:I mean for me, I look for my own team. I want people that are all in it's not just a job, they love what they do, they want to make a difference and they have that autonomy and productivity. And I know a lot of you have kept people too long and you go back and you realize, gosh, it was so great when I let that person go or I found the right person. And I know it's hard now and during this recording that job market's kind of scarce and we have to be proactive with Depends where you are and you're welcome to reach out to us and we can see in your area how it's doing. But certain areas hygiene's been difficult, but certain areas it's fine.
Speaker 2:Depends on the area of the country where there are staffing, so you have to be careful with it. But you have less of an excuse if you're hiring. Pool is more broad and you can especially when it comes to their front office, by the way, paul more broad and you can, especially when it comes to their front office, by the way, paul, that they don't need dental experience, so you can pull from anywhere. Who would love a cozy, well-paying job with benefits that y'all provide. And your team has got to be your soldiers to go to war with the people that you get to serve other people with. So it's critical Vision. Your team's got to support your vision. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:Yeah, our last two front desk hires have been outside of dentistry and our team is just committed to hey, we need people. We're going to put a little bit more into the training, can we do it? And they said, hell yeah. And our last two?
Speaker 2:hires have been great. We covered vision. We talked about team. Now let's talk about training, because you got your vision, your team is on board. Now we got to make sure that your team is trained. So at All-Star Dental Academy, our philosophy is 20 minutes a week training, and what I mean by that is this is the brushing and flossing analogy that we're going to just do a little bit every week of phone skills, of broken appointments, of case presentation. That's the philosophy that we do. And I'm going to ask you, dr Paul, if I brush for two hours once a month, will that be equal to me brushing once or twice a day for a month?
Speaker 2:No, but a lot of patients seem to think that they come in for six months and they're all beat up and you can see they flossed. It doesn't work that way. Or I see you once for a really long appointment. I don't have to come back in. It doesn't work that way, nope.
Speaker 2:So we want to do training and there's different types of training. So one is online training. That's the 20 minutes a week that we recommend. It's very easy to do. And then another area are like events, and we'll talk about that later. To me, another area are like events, and we'll talk about that later. That, to me, events doesn't really fall in the five steps because you can't always go to an event. So events, I believe, support these five steps and they're great to do. They kind of turbocharge a lot of them, but they cannot be done in a vacuum. If you're not doing these five steps and you're going to events like, you're not going to get a lot of out of it. Typically, when you go to an event with your team and you come back to apply it, how much is applied?
Speaker 1:Yeah, not much. Not much I'd say it's worth going. It's worth going. It's not as much as you think it's going to be.
Speaker 2:You made a great point in one of another podcast. We did a lot of podcasts, but we did a podcast promoting the event. It's the camaraderie with your team. See, that event is supporting your vision, your team and your training and so on. So it's something special that I believe is measurable and I think it's important to do. It's the engagement and improvement. That's right. And you're also around other people. You're around other people, that energy. So training you have the 20 minutes a week is our recommendation. Online training we have a great online training program. It's been around for a long time. There are others as well. Find one, do it, okay. So the point is it's little by little is the key to growth. I think you lift weights. I've been getting gym. I want to look like you, paul, and so it. You didn't build those big shoulders overnight. It was little by little, doing it over and over again. So that's the idea of training. It's simple, but I challenge an office to do a year or two consistently every week.
Speaker 1:It sets the tone of the culture that we're always improving. And the one thing that I always stress to my team and I think you can never over-communicate your culture, just constantly talking about it as I say, hey, we are never at the finish line, we are never perfect. We will never reach a point where we can't improve. It does not exist. We are always improving and the only way we can improve is talking about our mistakes and what happens and working on our craft, mastering our craft. So that's something I say very often to my team. So I think even it just falls in line with that culture, with the vision, is for the office, as you mentioned.
Speaker 2:Yes, and what I find is, when we get to this third step of training, if people are not willing to be due 20 minutes a week, they start to tell you who they are. Is this somebody I want on my team? Goes back to step two Is this somebody who supports my team? It goes to step one how strong am I in my vision? And that's why it seems like simple to write down my vision. But you will be challenged and so what I say is, like you just said, this is part of our culture. We're going to do it. It's part of their job description, their evaluations, everything you got to bake that in. That's how important it is. Does that make sense? Absolutely All right. What's step four? Step four you're going to love step four, paul. This is what you do, I love it. It's coaching, baby. Okay, yeah. So now we're building on these steps, your vision, your team. You're doing some sort of training, preferably online, 20 minutes a week. Now it's coaching, and coaching, I would say, is from my personally as well as our company is the fastest way to grow your business, and I do recommend that you do them with these steps as, like kind of you're building onto them.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I'm no stranger to coaching. I was a Tony Robbins coach. I see how powerful it is and a philosophy of coaching that I have that we have at All-Star Dental Academy. We talk about a lot, and I believe that, paul, you and other great coaches do this. Just baked in and you might like this verbiage but what we call our coaching is self-funding coaching, and so what I mean by that is coaching should pay for itself within 90 days, meaning it should start to see a result. I like to see results within 90 days and then build on it. Okay, that's gonna be some sort of KPI. So if you're working with a coach, have them do some KPI key performance indicators, look at your numbers. Have them work with your team when appropriate, when the numbers support it.
Speaker 2:One thing that Tony Robbins always taught us is model the best. So what are the best doing? So the best business people this isn't just coaching. The best business people are doing these exact same steps. I Okay. So it's important. Like I said, the fastest way to grow your business is to work with a coach, and if you can afford and you have a time for two coaches, do two coaches. A coach like Paul's great, because it's not just DDS stuff, dull dental stuff, it's mindset, it's business. You've built, paul, a successful dental practice, and so you're modeling. And how did you do it? Yes, you are brilliant, paul, but you've learned from other people.
Speaker 1:You listen, you interview, you model what they did Lots of courses, lots of coaching, lots of books.
Speaker 2:You're also. What was that? I'm not just the hair club president, I'm also a client. You don't want to take my hair club president thing, but maybe yours Anyhow. So coaching is phenomenal. Get in the habit of having a business coach, because you're always going to be. You'll be pulled into dentistry. You always want to challenge yourself, you want to know how other dental practices are comparing and all that. So coaching is key. Personal business coaching is key.
Speaker 1:What's interesting is that I've always been a big fan of coaching life coach, therapist, just whatever you're doing and I recently just redid my website and I'm like, okay, well, I'll hire a copywriter. So I got some copy my website and I'm like, okay, well, I'll hire a copywriter. So I got some copy written for me and I was like I don't love it. So I'm like I could do this better. So I started doing it and I said you know what? I wonder if there's a copywriting coach out there. Oh, wow, and I found one and I've learned so much about writing copy. That's wonderful. I almost want to go back and rewrite my first two books because I'm like, ah, I wish I would have learned more about the craft to do it. It doesn't matter Whatever element of your life you were looking to improve on. There is room for improvement in skipping the line if you work with a coach.
Speaker 2:And I think what resonates with me is, I think, for the listeners to your podcast and my podcast they don't want to be ordinary, they want to be extraordinary. And to do that you've got to have a goal, your vision, what you want, and you have a coach and you have these mechanisms to get you there. You mentioned earlier about a marathon. If you want to train for a marathon, you want to be serious about it. You have a coach. Every great athlete has a coach, and even the ones that they're so brilliant they can coach themselves LeBron and others they still want to coach because they know that there's still a limitation, because it's their perception and you're going to be limited because you have a certain perception and you're not seeing it all. Another thing, too Fortune 500. Fortune 500 CEOs state coaching as one of their top three factors of their success. Oh, wow, yes.
Speaker 2:So again, I'm not going just by dentistry. I have dental. I know dentistry because I've done it for 10 years. But I have to say the secret is I base it off a very naive assumption saying hey, if it worked for other businesses, it should work for dentistry. And saying hey, if it worked for other businesses, it should work for dentistry and it's been working for 10 plus years. So my point is you want to be great at what you do do coaching Absolutely.
Speaker 1:So take us home. What's the fifth and final step? The box we can check off and everything's perfect. What is it?
Speaker 2:I get to tease you through this whole thing. So the fifth step is the mastermind, the power of the mastermind. Yes, so the mastermind comes from the book Think and Grow Rich, napoleon Hill, and he defines the mastermind. And the mastermind is whereby I mean you have power within more than one people. You create this third invisible mind. Okay, that's something greater and it's pretty simple in concept. But this step is more nebulous than the other steps and potentially can take you off in too many directions.
Speaker 2:I'll tell you what's not a mastermind. A mastermind is not a study club. A mastermind is not where you're going to see your buddies and they're all going to brag about what they do or they don't do, and they're not going to share anything with you. You're competition with them. That's not a mastermind. A mastermind isn't some big shot okay, that runs the company and they're just telling you all day long what they know and how great they are. This is how you do this. You know, you just listen to that. That's not a mastermind.
Speaker 2:A mastermind is everybody in the mastermind is getting something and sharing something. They're not go-getters, they're go-givers. And if you have a group that you can put together that is facilitated by proper experts and in this case, dentists that are all working towards a similar vision and goal and they're doing these subsequent steps, then you have created something pretty magical. So it all started with our mastermind. For me, I facilitated it. My goal is to get people talking and it's recruiting, getting the right people in the right room. But isn't how great I am, it's not about me, right? And it gives the opportunity. Because now and see how we're building steps here, because vision, team training, coaching and now mastermind everybody's doing these prior steps. They all are on the same vision and they're all collaborating and sharing.
Speaker 2:I think that's probably one of the bigger takeaways from those that are listening is to understand first what it is not and what it is. But I just want to caution those because it sounds very fancy in mastermind, but I don't think you get a lot out of it if you're not doing the prior steps, if you're not all in it. Just, I've tried it before. I've had people in the mastermind that are very impressive, great people, and they're not doing the prior steps. It doesn't work. Just a level of commitment and they got to be humble. They got to be humble. People like you are humble and brilliant and listen and share and care. Those are the right people. So you got to get the right group and it's got to feel right. To you, feeling is important too, paul Feeling.
Speaker 1:Yes, I love feelings.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think it's a level of just commitment to your practice, and commitment to your goals is what this all comes down to. It's like how in it are you wanting to be and how bad do you want the results? You know like this is how you get the results. I mean starting with the vision and building the team and then going through the I think, training and training, coaching, mastermind.
Speaker 2:You got vision, team training, coaching, and then I would recommend gosh, almost every dentist. If you are coachable, you should be doing coaching. You should be doing one through four. I think, mastermind, you have to be humble, you have to be willing to share, you got to be right to headspace, you got to be all in. As you talk about, I think it's wonderful and super powerful, but it won't work on its own. Okay, but if you add it, that's the secret sauce. So that's the five steps to an all-star practice essentially yeah, very cool man.
Speaker 1:So tell the listeners if they're interested in finding more about All-Star Dental Academy, where can they go and what do you offer? Well read.
Speaker 2:Paul's book. Read your book Dental Heroes and the new version coming out with his new copywriting. Please keep us in there, but people rave about that book. It's a great book. So if you want to learn more about All-Star Dental Academy, it's allstradentalacademycom, and we have online team training, we have a hiring service, we have coaching and we have the mastermind Plus. We do events. So we've had great superstars like you at our events. That's what we do All-Star Dental All-Stars. But we get to have Paul on a few times a year as well and I love that. If you're watching this, I commented last time I love the red of the practice heroes and the blue of the All-Star Dental Academy and we have a little bromance going here, but I love being in your program. You're a great guy, paul. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:So it's been a lot of fun, Dude. Thanks. So much knowledge and so many things to share. All the listeners will go check out what Alex is providing. Go check out his podcast as well. He's got a great podcast. So thanks so much, Alex, and thank you listeners. We'll talk to you next time.
