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 If Your Entire Team Quit Tomorrow?
What would happen if your entire dental team quit tomorrow? Rather than just a nightmare scenario, this thought experiment reveals critical insights about your practice's foundation. I share the story of a dentist who actually experienced this situation—when he laid out his vision for the practice and gave his team of seven the option to leave if they didn't align with it, five walked out. Surprisingly, this became one of the best things that ever happened to his practice.
Ready to transform your practice with proven systems and leadership strategies? Visit dentalpracticheroes.com to explore our one-on-one coaching opportunities and work with someone who's been exactly where you are.
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Take Control of Your Practice and Your Life
We help dentists take more time off while making more money through systematization, team empowerment, and creating leadership teams.
Ready to build a practice that works for you? Visit www.DentalPracticeHeroes.com to learn more.
Now let me ask you something. If your whole team quit tomorrow everybody gone, nobody on your team shows up for work what would you do Now? I know this is a terrifying thought, and I actually know a dentist that this happened, to believe it or not, but this is an idea that every one of us should wrestle with in our mind, Because the truth is, if your systems aren't solid and your leadership is unclear, then rebuilding from scratch would be very scary, and this is something that I used to worry about because I, like a lot of practice owners, love catastrophic thinking. I just like to go off the deep end and go into a dark space mentally, because who doesn't want to be more miserable than you already are? Obviously, I'm joking, but let's talk about this. What if this did happen? How could you predictably build back your team so that it's stronger this time around? You are listening to the Dental Practice Heroes podcast. This is where we help dentists create practices that grow without grinding themselves into the ground. We are all about team-driven and system-driven practices that allow you, as the owner, to work three, two, one, even zero days clinically, if you should choose.
Speaker 1:Before I get into this, let me share the story about somebody. I knew that, had this happen to them, they had their entire team quit. And what this was? This was a very frustrated practice owner. He was standing in front of his team. He was tired of the team. This was an acquisition that he just purchased, maybe four or five months prior, and he walked into a meeting and he said things are gonna change, this is what I want, this is my mission and vision. And he laid it out there and he said I'm going to go in my office for five minutes. If you don't believe in that and you don't feel like doing that, I'm asking you to get out of the practice. But if you're still here, when I come back from my office in five minutes, let's start talking about how we're going to make this happen. Now, he had a team of seven. Five people left, two people stayed. So that was probably a pretty scary time for him, but I can tell you from what he said it was one of the best things he ever did.
Speaker 1:Now am I recommending you do this with your team? No, I think there's better ways to do it, but the fact of the matter is, we've got to be clear on where we're going and we got to get the right people on the bus right. So if I had to start over with a new team, the first thing I would do is set expectations for them. I would tell them this is my vision for the practice, this is what I want, this is the mission, this is the vision, these are our core values and these are our brand promises. This is what it means to be part of this office. This is the way we treat patients and this is how we treat each other and work with each other. Now, we all want that great culture, right? But a lot of us that want this great culture. We don't really talk about what that great culture looks like. Invite a great culture into your practice by explicitly saying this is what I want for the culture, this is what I want to be about. I feel like this is a often skipped part of practice ownership that just doesn't seem that important and doesn't seem like that much fun. This ownership that just doesn't seem that important and doesn't seem like that much fun, but it's super critical, foundationally for creating a great office.
Speaker 1:All right, the next thing I would do is I would establish communication rhythms with my team. Every practice needs to have a rhythm of communication. You've got to have a cadence of regular meetings. You can't do it without it. So I'm talking about daily huddles. Now you've heard me say I don't do huddles in my practice. Now the reason I don't do huddles in my practice is because of split shifting. If I wasn't split shifted, I would still do huddles. Daily huddles, talking about the day what are our goals for the day? Daily huddles, talking about the day what are our goals for the day? We would have monthly meetings, if not two meetings a month. I think we would actually have two meetings a month because we would be changing so many things since we're starting over. But monthly meetings so that we can communicate with each other and we can train, we can role play, we can do things like that. We would have quarterly all day meetings that would be specifically for training and role playing, working all day meetings that would be specifically for training and role-playing, working on specific skills and specific training things for certain systems, and then we would have a regular cadence of one-on-ones. Now I recommend you do these once every quarter, but if you've never done them, it doesn't hurt to do them more often. You're not going to hurt anybody by doing it more often and these communication things. This is what's going to help create your culture. It's going to help make it solid.
Speaker 1:Now I had a client once that was having a ton of turnover at his practice and luckily he was able to hire people so that he could fill the spots. The problem was he just couldn't keep anybody long term and so one day I decided I asked hey, can I talk to your team? And I set up a bunch of calls, like 10 minute calls, with his team members. So essentially I was doing the one-on-one. And what, and what do you think? I found out there was no regular meetings and the one-on-ones never happened. What do we expect to happen? We expect to have turnovers.
Speaker 1:If you're looking at turnover at your office, it's because people don't want to work there. They're frustrated working there and you can find out what they're frustrated about when you do the one-on. And then they stay happy at your practice. So you don't have that turnover. And for anyone to have a successful dental practice you've got to have a stable team, because, damn, it's hard enough to grow and add team members to your team. And if you've got to replace the team members that are leaving at the same time. I mean, you're going to be in this never ending cycle, and that's where he was stuck. He wanted to go to an associate, but the step that was preventing him was just getting a stable team so that he could grow his team. Eventually, I held him accountable to have the meetings, to do the one-on-ones, on a regular schedule, and, wouldn't you know, the turnover decreased significantly and the team felt better. The culture was better.
Speaker 1:All right, the next thing I would do is bring leaders into my team, and I'm talking about team leads. Now, you might not have a team that's big enough to have team leads, and what I mean by that is if you only have, like, two hygienists and you make one the lead, then the other hygienist just becomes not the lead. So I'm not saying that you have to make leads for each position, but you should have a leader other than yourself at your practice, no matter what size. So I would look at my new team and I would say who are the leaders here? Who is somebody that everybody respects? That could help me grow this practice, and you don't have to wait until someone's an awesome leader already to empower them. They will grow into this leadership opportunity. They will learn how to lead, just like you learned how to lead.
Speaker 1:I remember when I lost my first hygiene lead. I loved her. Her name was Calla. She was so great and I didn't think anybody could fill the shoes of her. And then we had the new lead come on. I was hoping it was going to be okay, but Calla had set such a high bar for me it was really hard for her to step into that. But you know what she did. She exceeded my expectations, she blew me away and she turned out to be one of the best leads I've ever had. So why I'm telling you this is that they don't have to have it figured out before you give them more responsibilities. As long as you're willing to be patient and you're willing to guide and train, your team will step into those leadership positions and they will get better at it over time.
Speaker 1:All right, the next thing I would do is start to deploy systems. I would start looking at like, hey, the basic stuff. How do we answer the phone? What information do we get? What are our routines for verifying insurance, taking and putting in payments, taking deposits, just all that routine stuff. I would zoom out and say how do we do it, when do we do it and who is responsible for getting it done? I would start with scheduling right away. I would go to block scheduling something that's efficient and high production. I would not just hand my team like a hundred page SOP manual and be like this is how we do it. Now, you know I'm a big fan of documenting your systems, but I think it's fallacious to think if we could create a giant manual that we could just hire new people and hand them the manual and everything would be good.
Speaker 1:You have to be the person leading the change. Remember, you're the leader at the practice. You have to lead the change. You've got to lead the team where you're going. And then the last thing I would do is just monitor, just pay attention. What's not working well? Did we drop the ball on a patient? How did we do it not working well? Did we drop the ball on a patient? How did we do it? How can we fix it so it doesn't happen again? And I would make sure that I'm offering my team forgiveness. I'm not leading with intimidation, I'm not leading with my title. I am equal with everybody and I'm treating everybody with respect and grace, because we're all learning together and I would stress that as part of my culture. We need to learn from our mistakes. That's normal. We're not going to get upset with anyone when they make a mistake, so that's what I would do if I lost my entire team overnight.
Speaker 1:Now you're thinking well, you didn't say how you were going to find all these people to replace those people. I don't think that was the point of the exercise. I agree with you it would be very hard to find all those people at once, especially in this labor market, but that was not the point. So if you were thinking that, stop it, all right, a few things that I wouldn't do this time around, just with my experience. I wouldn't hang so much of my personal worth on everybody being 100% happy all the time at the practice. I've got enough experience where I can say, hey, that's unrealistic. I would make sure that when there was a difficult conversation to be had, that I didn't put it off, that I had it right away. I can't think of a single situation where putting off a difficult conversation ever worked out. It always got worse. And I would also avoid waiting too long to delegate, because you can grow so much faster if you've got people to help you and you're not doing everything, and that's a very challenging thing for a lot of my clients to do.
Speaker 1:So you do not need to wait for your entire team to reboot your culture and reboot your practice. Most of us are not starting from scratch like this, but we're often starting from stuck. We are stuck and don't know what to do. So if you're sitting there today and you're like gosh, I don't know where to start, start by declaring to your team what you want it to be like at your practice and then make a problem list what are the largest problems at the practice and just start figuring out solutions for each of them. And I think you'll find just doing the exercise of thinking about what are the problems at the practice and just looking at one at a time makes it a lot easier to fix them one at a time.
Speaker 1:Don't get overwhelmed If you're starting from stuck. Just declare your culture and start with the problem list. And if you're looking for help, you want someone to walk you through this process of systemization, somebody who's been there, who can be a mentor for you. Please look at our one-on-one coaching opportunities that we have at dentalpracticeheroescom. Thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate your.
