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 Million-Dollar Associate: How to Help Associates Succeed from Day One w/ Dr. Taher Dhoon
We all know how game-changing it is to have the right associate on board — and how costly it can be when you hire the wrong one. Too many owners hire quickly, don’t provide enough guidance, and end up paying the price. In this episode, Dr. Taher Dhoon shares how to avoid these mistakes and mentor million-dollar associates in your practice.
From structuring a strong onboarding process to improving case acceptance, this conversation is packed with advice to help owners and associates thrive together. Plus, find out how to hire associates ready to hit the ground running. If you’ve ever hired an associate only to watch them struggle — or worse, walk away — don’t miss this one!
Topics discussed in this episode:
- What owners get wrong about bringing on associates
- Dr. Taher Dhoon’s Advanced Associates program
- How to integrate associates into your practice
- Key aspects of associate training and mentorship
- Building confidence and improving case acceptance
Text or call 970-420-6148 to learn more about the Advanced Associates program!
Get more information on the Colorado Surgical Institute:
https://www.coloradosurgicalinstitute.com/
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Take Control of Your Practice and Your Life
I help dentists take more time off while making more money through systematization, team empowerment, and creating leadership teams.
Join the DPH Hero Collective and get the tools, training, and support you need to transform your practice:
- Team and Doctor Training for every aspect of Practice Management
- Comprehensive Training: Boost profit, efficiency, and team engagement.
- Live Q&A Sessions: Get personalized help when you need it most.
- 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.DentalPracticeHeroes.com to learn more.
Associates can be your biggest asset, but they can also be a big expense. You think you've hired a great one and you can finally take a step back, but then you're losing money. Patients are leaving and it's not working out like you hoped it would. Or maybe you're thinking about bringing on an associate and the idea of having another doctor in your practice just scares the hell out of you. Well, what could go wrong? Today, dr Tahir Dune is here to break it all down. You're going to learn what mistakes could cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars and how to mentor million-dollar associates in your practice so that you can take a step back, make more money and enjoy a better life.
Paul Etchison: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 wanna 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. Let's get started. Time practicing and more time enjoying a life that you love let's get started. Hey, what's up? Welcome back to the Dental Practice Heroes podcast. I'm so happy that you are taking time out of your day to join it with me and my good friend, dr Tahir Dune. We got on today. He is the chief guy at Colorado Surgical Institute. Hell of a clinician, hell of a doctor, business owner, I mean. This is a guy who's grown a big practice and been able to take himself out of the general production and just work on surgeries. So welcome back to the podcast, tahir. How are you doing today?
Taher Dhoon:Doing really good man. I appreciate it.
Paul Etchison:Nice. So we're going to talk about something that a lot of associate-driven practices have some struggle with is finding that rockstar million-dollar associate. What has your experience been with that, Tahir? I mean, how have you been with associates?
Taher Dhoon:I think I'm 50-50. So I'll say when I was an early practice owner, I did a lot of things wrong, as many early owners have, and like the first guy I hired, he lived in the neighborhood, he's a good old boy, went to the church in the area and he just had massive, massive hands. So people in the community would be like, oh, this guy manhandled me and he's just like pulled on my mouth. It was super rough. But I just thought like, hey, I have a dentist who literally is right by the practice. That's all I need. He has a license, he's going to be good.
Taher Dhoon:That was my first associate I ever hired and it was such a nightmare. I think I lost like $100,000 over the time he was there with the new patients we brought in and the new patients he treated and the patients who left and the cases that he under treatment planned, because then I was too busy to treatment plan cases with him and really coach him and be a mentor. Because truly that's what it is is, if you're ready for an associate, you got to be ready to be a mentor. You can't be so busy that you can't help nurture this relationship.
Taher Dhoon:And I think for my first couple of associates. I wasn't ready for that and that's why I lost a lot of money. If I'm taking ownership on it and then later down the road I get a little bit more mature in terms of my practice ownership, I have the ability to spend more time with them and then I was able to really coach you know good million dollar associates I'd say every associate since that has easily produced a million plus like significantly higher if they were doing surgery. Also, I've really honed in in terms of like what really helps associates produce at a high level.
Paul Etchison:We had a group meetup, roundtable discussion on the DPH Hero Collective last week about associates and a lot of the theme that a lot of people shared was you know, you've got to be involved, you've got to be doing things. And people are like, well, do you have checklists on this? And yeah, we do have checklists and stuff, but more or less you don't need a checklist, you just got to be present. So you're going to open up some kind of you're starting a new venture and I love this and I love if you tell the listeners about it. So if they're wondering what to do with their associates.
Taher Dhoon:They have a good idea, so tell us about that. Yeah, so I have a new company I'm starting. It's called Advanced Associates, and so this is going to be a model that's beneficial to the associate but also to the owner. I have a lot of places I can place the associate. I have a lot of owner docs who are looking for good productive associates, and I also have an educational company. I have a surgical educational company. So it just kind of made sense that, if I can, you know, pair the two things together.
Taher Dhoon:I can bring in associates, whether they're brand new out of school or they have several years of experience, who are looking to add surgical experience to the mix. And granted, it doesn't have to be surgery, because I can teach crown and bridge and BDO changes and veneer cases and I've done all those things orthodontics and sleep apnea. So whatever avenue this doctor is trying to learn, I'm going to help foster it. But I have surgical educational training programs that they're going to be invited to as well. So we've created a year-long program for the associate where they're going to get monthly Zoom calls, or two calls a month.
Taher Dhoon:We'll do Zoom calls with the owners as well in terms of how to integrate the associate into the practice and what struggles maybe the office manager is having or the dental assistant is having, or the disconnect maybe is, and so I'm going to train the associate and be present for them so to some degree taking some of the ownership responsibility away from that owner who's hiring the doc. I'm going to go over their treatment plans, I'm going to help them treatment plan cases to be very high production cases. I'm going to talk them through how to execute on those cases and then also they're going to be able to come to the Colorado Surgical Institute observational courses and they're going to watch wisdom teeth, single implants, full arch, multiple times in that first year. So they're going to get a lot of exposure to a lot of like high producing procedures from day one.
Paul Etchison:Yeah, I love that man. So like what have you seen in your experience of just like owners integrating associates and where sometimes that goes wrong?
Taher Dhoon:Yeah, I think and this is again my own experience, right? So a lot of things I did wrong was I brought an associate in when I was ready, but I didn't do any pre-work. I didn't do any of the prep work, I didn't automatically start scheduling out their schedule. So what I would do is I'd say, okay, that associate needs to come in and for two weeks, like Starbucks, you can't touch coffee beans for two weeks, you just observe. So, like some degree, like that, like hey, I have paying a per diem, this doctor is going to come in and just observe for two weeks and we have to eat. That cost, like it's a lot of money.
Taher Dhoon:Maybe I'll throw them a case in the morning and a case in the afternoon. But guess what? I want to have them do it like me, we're going to just make sure they understand the systems. They're going to spend time with the office managers. They're going to spend time with the dental assistants. They're going to know their team. Because, paul, I'm sure you know this you bring in a doctor with an ego Not all of them have egos, but some of them do you throw into a fine-tuned machine of a team If the team doesn't accept them. It's a freaking nightmare. It's a nightmare. It's so hard to get the team to change their mind about someone. Part two is we're going to look at the schedule ahead of time with the owner's practice and say okay, how many chairs do you have? Your most experienced assistant needs to go with your least experienced doctor.
Paul Etchison:Yeah, it's so true. We're always and I've been guilty of this in the past as well is giving the newest associate, the newest assistant, and essentially you've got two people that are wondering hey, do we have this, do we have this, do we do this, how do we have this? Do we have this, do we do this, how do we do this? And they're like I don't know. They look at each other, they don't know, like I'd love to have an associate come out of the box and just be integrated into my practice. Like that it doesn't happen. And the fact of the matter is I can't think of many employees in any position in my office that have came out of the box. I don't care if they got 20 years experience. It's like you get what you pour into them. And I think a lot of people they want to have an associate and they just want to abdicate and just check out, and that's not the way to do it.
Taher Dhoon:Yeah, and you can check out like a year later. Right, you get someone like humming, someone, freaking, cranking out production. That's when you take your vacations and you just know cash is coming in the bank. But at the same time it's not on the first three to six months that doc is coming on board. It's just, it's not the reality. I'd say my first two weeks at any new job I ever had, I did my worst work. I did my worst work. I'm not used to the hand pieces. I'm not used to electrics in the very beginning, I'm not used to the feel of the composite. So we're just really going to be intentional with how we bring the associates on. But a part of it is scheduling and making sure that they have an A squad in the very beginning that builds up their confidence and that makes the team accept them more. And then after that, how do we gauge, like how much they're sinking into the system, like where do they need to improve?
Paul Etchison:What do you think that's a major principle that you find you have to express to an associate, or something you have to change in their mindset or in their belief patterns to make them a successful associate? Doctor?
Taher Dhoon:Depending on their personality. A lot of the high producing associates who have a lot of skill coming in, I need to slow them down. I need to slow them down in the beginning because they want too much too fast and then they're not looking at the cases comprehensively enough and then they're bouncing from room to room way too fast like they're from a DSO. And no knock on DSOs, because at the end of the day there's so many DSOs that do such a great thing. So I'm just using it as a general like hey, you're needed in five operatories at the same time. So at the same time they just go from room to room to room so quick that they lose a little bit of that intimacy with the patients. And they lose a little bit of that intimacy with the patients and they lose the ability to actually lock down $50,000 cases. They're doing a lot of $5,000 cases, but they have the skills to do these really big, comprehensive cases. They just got to slow it down and they got to understand their timing because they run way too long, they overcommit to too much and they run long all the time and they piss off the team. And then I have docs who have a lot of talent, but then they're a little bit introverted and they don't know how to sell. But they have a lot of potential. So then those docs you have to really foster like, hey, you can do this, let's set up the case, here's everything you need.
Taher Dhoon:Go, say these things, figure out what's authentic, record your consultation and send it to me. And we talk like a lot of them use minimizing words, so they'll minimize their skill set, they'll minimize the treatment, they'll minimize the disease, but they're a great, great dentist, they're great. So we just take those things and we say, hey, get that out of there, get that out of there, get that out of there. Stop saying these three things and actually try these five things. And then their consultations go better, their treatment presentations go better and then they got the skills to deliver.
Taher Dhoon:I would say the vast majority of dentists want to be productive, they want to put up good numbers, but what they don't want is they don't want to be imbalanced in their lives. And I'm here to show them that two things can be true at the same time you can be a freaking mega producer and you can have absolute balance. And I think we just have to dispel the thought process that everything has to be hard at work. Yeah, so hopefully that's going to be the scenario, that what we can help create Well it's interesting when you do things the correct way or use the best practices.
Paul Etchison:It doesn't have to be hard. I think what makes it hard is trying to figure it out on your own and just not talking to people that have already done this and made mistakes and, like everything that I've done, that's been hard. Well, yeah, I mean it's been hard because it's because of me and you know the fact that I'm just like I know how to do this, I can do this, and then finally you have enough pain that you reach out to somebody and they give you some insight and you're just like my God, that's amazing.
Taher Dhoon:If you're younger, it's hard to ask for the right thing. How do you actually talk to your doctors? How do you approach your owner doctor, like what's a reasonable request and what's a not reasonable request? So there's a lot of this owners speak one language, associates speak one language, and even though we're both doctors and we're both equals or we're both colleagues, we just look at the world in very different ways, and so part of my job in this whole relationship is being the translator.
Paul Etchison:I want to circle back to one thing that you just said is you talked about doctors minimizing the disease, which I'm interpreting that as like they're not making it sound as bad as they should. They're not. You're not motivating the patient enough to say yes, but minimizing skills Can you give an example.
Taher Dhoon:So I think this happens in younger docs specifically. Patients will ask questions about you, know, like confidence, or they'll say, have you done this a lot? Or even just like the confidence in how we hold ourselves and a one-liner I've used a lot. That helps dispel like, okay, cocky dentist, versus confident is if I'm going to say something that's super egotistical and patients want to hear that, by the way, they want to know you're the shit. And here's the thing if you're good at something, even if you're moderate at something, you're still the shit. You're still better than a lot of other people at it. And guess what? You don't have to be better than a lot of people at it, you just have to be really good for that person in that situation. So what I say to the patient is like if you trust me and you trust the diagnosis that we have here, I know I can get you there. It's going to take six months to get you there. It's going to do this, this and this, this. How many times you're probably going to see me? And at the end we probably are going to have one or two obstacles, but if you communicate really well with me, those are the patients I get the best result with.
Taher Dhoon:So if anything is going on, even if it feels like it itches, you know I want to know about it. I don't want you to try to tough anything out. This is not the time to like try to see if it's going to be okay. Here's my personal cell phone number. You call me, we're going to talk about it. I'm going to get you to the finish line and I'm not going to surprise you in a good way. But I always like preface it with like hopefully this comes off with a little bit of humility and then boom, I can just drop in and say some egotistical shit and the patients are more receptive of it because they want to know that you know what you're talking about. And here's the thing even if you have it and you don't feel confident with it, still say it. Still say it. They want to hear it and they're going to do more cases with you. And then, when you get more cases to do, then you're going to get more confident.
Paul Etchison:Yeah, I love it, man, I mean that's great. You know, I was thinking about like when I was a young dentist. People would always say and I noticed this like if I put on weight I wouldn't get this question as much. But if I was like in good shape they'd say how long have you been doing this, how long have you to be? And I have to have integrity and I don't want to lie about things. But if they ask me how long I've been doing this, I'm going to tell them I started when I went to dental school, so my first year out of school. I've been doing this for five years. But if they ask me how long have you been a licensed dentist in Illinois, I'm going to tell them one year.
Taher Dhoon:You know, yeah, and no one's going to ask you how long have you been a licensed dentist? So at the end of the day, yeah, say five years if you've been one year out. And then if they ask for like specificity, then yeah, direct question, give them a direct answer. Don't lie. But at the same time, like you know, paint yourself in the light of you know what they're asking you. It's like, hey, have you done this enough? And if the answer is like no, I haven't done this a lot, then you can be honest and say you know what.
Taher Dhoon:I'm doing a lot of these cases now, but you are going to be one of the first ones and I have mentors that are helping me with it and I'd love to get some reviews afterwards because I know I'm going to do a phenomenal job for you. However, you feel that's authentic to you to deliver the information. I think if it's delivered genuinely, authentically and with confidence, you could tell them you're brand new and you're probably not going to do as many cases if you're one year out, if you're five years out, but at the same time, it's whatever resonates best for you and what makes you feel better about yourself.
Paul Etchison:Well, the other thing is, too, is I'm thinking about when I've referred people to specialists and they're like, can't you do it? And I'm like, no, I can't. And you do it. And I'm like, no, I can't. And they're like, well, you want to try? I'm like I'm not, I'm not, I don't have the skills to do this. And they're like, well, try on me, I trust you. You know it's like they don't care that I can't do it, like they just like the provider. So if you can establish that relationship of being authentic and being honest and you know, I think patients will accept treatment from somebody that they trust, that they know is going to do their best job, even if they know they haven't had the reps yet to do it.
Taher Dhoon:There's a feeling you have in a business. When you walk in you're like, okay, they got their shit together. Or hey, this place, it's a freaking mess.
Paul Etchison:So if you can walk into the operatory and be like, hey, this person has everything put together, they're going to do the case with you, unless you give them some red flags in terms of why not to? Yeah, I love it, man. So if the listeners are maybe an associate dentist who would love to get into this program and get the training, or somebody that's looking for an advanced associate, where can they find out more information?
Taher Dhoon:Yeah, so anyone who's called us for Colorado Surgical Institute knows Chris Richards because he pretty much is the operations liaison and manager of the whole thing. He's actually one of the partners in this program. So Chris Richards' number is going to be 970-420-6148. You can text him, you can call him. We're Mountain Standard Time, just throwing that out there for anyone who's on the East Coast doing early morning stuff and just tell him hey, owner, doc here interested in the program, or associate here interested in the program, and we'll direct you appropriately and we'll definitely have the website and other information in the show notes.
Paul Etchison:Awesome. Thanks so much, tahir. Appreciate you always coming on the podcast. I think we come on with some kind of prep, but we always go a million different directions and I think it's always just great information for the listeners. So thank you so much, as always Appreciate you coming on. Yeah, thank you, brother.
