Dental Practice Heroes

Easy Systems That Help You Cut Down Clinical Days

• Dr. Paul Etchison, Dr. Chris Green • Episode 613

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Tired of putting out fires all day? It’s time to start thinking like a CEO, not just a clinician. In this episode, Dr. Chris Green shares the systems that helped him cut down clinical days and lead like a CEO instead of just a manager.

You'll learn how he trains strong leaders, strategies you can use to address team resistance when you step back from the chair, and the first step every owner should take to start acting like the CEO of their practice. Hear what it takes to lead with less stress and more structure!

Topics discussed:

  • The new challenges that come with practice growth
  • Dr. Green’s biggest leadership mistake as a new owner
  • Developing systems to lead instead of manage
  • The structure that helped him reduce clinical days
  • Core lessons in his 12-week leadership program
  • Mindset shifts for cutting clinical days without guilt
  • Strategies to keep associates happy and accountable
  • Key metrics that show you’re ready for another associate
  • How to easily cut down to three clinical days

Grab Dr. Chris Green’s book, The Plan, The Project, The Practice: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0D37YZBKN/allbooks/

Learn more about Dynamic Dental Ascension:
https://dynamicdentalascension.com/

This episode was produced by Podcast Boutique https://www.podcastboutique.com

GRAB THE FREE PLAYBOOK HERE - Discover 30 proven strategies top-performing dentists use to increase profits, cut clinical days, and finally enjoy the freedom they originally built their practices for.

https://www.dentalpracticeheroes.com/playbook

Join Etch, Steve, Henry, and 14 other growth minded practice owners at this exclusive beachfront masterminding opportunity November 7 and 8 in Destin Florida.  Apply by setting up a strategy call HERE

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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.

Paul Etchison:

We can only juggle so much as dental practice owners. And when your practice grows, your team gets bigger and your problems do too. And if at the same time you're trying to cut down on your chair time, man, does the job get tougher if you don't have the right people and systems in place. Today, Dr. Chris Green is back on the podcast and he's going to share how he made that transition from clinician to CEO of his two practices. And it was more than just mindset shifts. We're talking about the leadership changes, the employee training, the accountability systems that helped him grow multiple practices while he cut back his clinical days to practically zero. This episode is going to give you the plan to start stepping back from the chair and build a stronger team that lets you have more freedom. Stay tuned. You are listening to the Dental Practice Heroes podcast, where we teach dentists how to step back from the chair, empower their team, and build a practice that gives them their life back. I'm your host, Dr. Paul Etchison, dental coach, author of two books on dental practice management, and owner of a large four-doctor practice that runs with ease while I work just one clinical day a week. If you're ready for a practice that supports your life instead of consuming it, you're in the right place. My team of legendary dental coaches and I are here to guide you on your path from overwhelmed owner to dental practice hero. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back to the Dental Practice Heroes Podcast. I am your host, Dr. Paul Edgton. Very excited for my guest today, good friend of mine, somebody I've hung out with many, many times, just have a great time every time I see this guy. Great person, you know, multi-practice owner, the co-founder of Practice Launchpad, where they're teaching dentists how to do their startup, how to start your own practice. Also a coach and founder of Dynamic Dental Ascension, where they're coaching dentists on how to scale and grow your practices and make that transition from clinician to CEO. So please welcome to the podcast, Dr. Chris Green. What's happening, Chris? How you doing, man?

Chris Green:

Hey, Paul. Great to see you. Thanks for uh having me again. Always uh nice to spend time with you. We always go down some fun rabbit holes. So excited to be here.

Paul Etchison:

Yeah, Chris is one of those guys, like so I've been podcasting for like eight years. You're like one of those people that I have on again and again. Like you're just in like the rotation. And sometimes people want to get back in the rotation. And I say, okay, I'll let you know. You can't get back in the rotation. But you, I always let you back in the rotation because I like having you on here. But yeah, you're a good guest.

Chris Green:

Oh man, it's an honor. I appreciate it. And uh yeah, thanks for bringing me on with your audience. Eight years.

Paul Etchison:

Yeah, crazy.

Chris Green:

Jeez, yeah. I mean, love your podcast. Always good content. It's real, it's honest. I mean, I think there's something about the South Side Chicago guys that uh you know, there's no there's no BS, it's just to the point. I appreciate it. Maybe that's why I love your podcast.

Paul Etchison:

You know, Chris is from the Southside Chicago as well. So like I think we grew up about 45 minutes away from each other. Yeah, man. So, dude, today we're gonna talk about transitioning from clinician to CEO. And before we get into it, I think it's important that the listeners, if they haven't heard of you, that they they don't know where you're coming from, talk about your journey before that. Like, before, like, you know, you come out of dental school, you decide to open a practice. Give us some background on you and your two practices before you finally had to make this switch, this big switch from moving into a CEO role, because I think that's that's a big part of this podcast. That's a lot of what we talk about. And I think it's you and I have shared so many similar struggles. But what is it like for you going into practice ownership and your two practices that you own?

Chris Green:

Yeah. So in graduated dental school in 2013, and I was in Philly for dental school at Temple, and I moved back to Chicago, where my dad's a dentist, and he's like, Yeah, just the plan was just come practice with me and uh we'll figure it out. It's gonna be gonna be great. And so kind of was my focus was just get through dental school, get back, and work work with dad. So that essentially is what happened, and I kind of get there and there was no real plan. Like he had never had an associate before. Essentially, I'm an associate, but with an ownership mindset because it's a family practice, right? And so several months went by. I said, you know, I think I need to find some more work. So I started associating with another guy and learned some good things from him. And we tried to grow my dad's practice, but everything I brought to him was like, ah, well, that won't work here. You know, the I mean, love the guy to death, but the vision was different. And eventually, my my now wife at the time, girlfriend, thinking back that long ago, was living in Colorado, and I started falling in love with Colorado. So I said, you know what? I just, gosh, I don't want me and my dad's relationship to be strained over dentistry. I'm gonna move to Colorado, get an associate job there, live that life for a little bit, see what happens, and just fell in love with it and never moved back. So while there, uh similar story to a lot of people, you know, a lot of us are looking for a little bit more, looking for ownership, and that's what I was seeking. And went to a course on startups. First of all, I thought startup was the craziest idea ever. And I heard stories like yours. You know, I saw you on the screen. I was like, I don't know this guy, but he's from somewhere around Chicago. Seems like a cool guy. He's kicking butt. Like maybe I could do a fraction of that. That'd be really cool, right? And so went on the journey towards a startup, right? And six ops, which ended up not being enough, but got in there, was able to have some quick success. You know, we were getting like 125 new patients a month. Overhead's always been in the low 40s. And a year in, I was like, I need an associate. I can't handle the volume, which was a great problem to have, but had to learn leadership and scaling on the fly in short order. I mean, by year three, we had our second associate and so on and so forth. And then all the leadership challenges that come with that, the challenges you think you have when you have five team members are way different when you have like 10 to 15. Yeah. And I feel like that 10 to 18 team member area is where things really get crazy. So finding solutions for becoming a better leader while things not falling apart, not losing your mind, that was really the motivation behind this whole like, how do I get from clinician to CEO or manager to CEO, if you will? Because really a lot of us are just managers in our practice. We're just working alongside our office manager.

Paul Etchison:

Yeah, totally.

Chris Green:

Caught up in all the stuff. And uh so just there's a mindset shift, and it required getting out of the chair a little bit and actually spending time with the people that are in the trenches leading the other team members.

Paul Etchison:

It's interesting and it's funny because like I went through the same thing. It's like I had a ton of issues with my team when they were small. But then I look back at them, I'm like, man, those weren't anything. Those were fine. Because if you've got like seven people, it's like you can get them all in the room and be like, is everybody happy? And they're like, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy. And then like you get to ten, it's like, oh, happy, happy, happy, happy. And the last three are like, I'm pissed, I'm frustrated, that's this place, I'm leaving. And you're like, whoa, whoa. And then those three people are the ones that are the loudest, and they're tanking your whole culture. And so it's like you're constantly battling, you know, you're working as a clinician, but you're also having to balance all this management stuff. So it's like, I feel you, as a team gets bigger, you have bigger problems, you have more issues, and there's more to get through, but it takes a level up in your leadership. And I think that's what we all go through as we get bigger. What would you say was like that turning point when you decided that you need to step back a little bit from clinical dentistry and step up as maybe that manager or that leader or the CEO?

Chris Green:

It's probably a moment almost. It was two years into practice ownership. You know, or I made the mistake that almost every doctor has made, where you take your great treatment coordinator, oh, they're gonna let's elevate them to office manager, right? But had no leadership skills, right? Didn't realize it, but I was like, she's she's my best employee right now. Like she's making the treatment happen. She's knows all this stuff that that even I don't know about open dental and this and that. I'm like, this is a logical move. And so, so this person's the office manager for a little while, you know, taking her to see events, all the things that we do to invest in people. And somebody pulled me aside and was like, dude, like this person, I want to work for you, but I cannot work for this person. I'm like, I don't see it. Like, was very good about doing these things in the corners of the office where I would never see it. Basically, multiple people came and said, She's bullying me. And so tried to navigate it for a minute. And then I was just like, nah, like this has got to be a clean break, and I got to start from scratch with whatever leadership's gonna look like in this practice. So I remember it like it was yesterday, it was like like a Tuesday morning. I usually started it clinically at noon, would get there, you know, nine or something, and the associate would get there at 7 a.m. Office manager would help open with him. And uh, I came there early. It's like, what is he doing here? I'm like, gonna need your keys. Here's your final paycheck. Thanks for everything. But, you know, we need to move in a different direction. And so that was kind of the moment where it's like, okay, I have to be a better leader first of all, and I have to identify better leaders alongside me. And I have to spend time and come up with a leadership philosophy and invest in them so that they're empowered to, you know, get this clinic in the right direction. And it's really hard to do if you're four days a week clinical, even with possibly a fifth day where you're like, yeah, just throw them in somewhere. And then you're putting out fires as you in between patients. You know, when you go back to your desk, you sit and look, you're clicking on open dynamic looking at some reports, and then somebody pops in and is like, hey, doc, you got a second? I need to run something by you. And hey, listen, we're there to support the team, but we do not need to address it's not urgent. Can it wait till tomorrow? Can it wait till tonight? Can it wait till next week? It usually can. But what I found myself doing when I was earlier in my leadership journey was trying to solve the problem on the spot because I'm like, I just need this off my list at to-dos.

Paul Etchison:

Yeah, cool.

Chris Green:

Here's a solution right now. How often do you think I actually came up with the right solution?

Paul Etchison:

Right.

Chris Green:

Maybe it was a short-term fix that led to a bigger long-term problem. Whereas I had to start being like, hey, totally hear you. Let me think about this, let's circle back, you know, all the jargon. But it works, you know, and so it could give me some time. Let's meet next week, let's make a time schedule it. And now you're on my schedule and on my terms, not coming in with me on my heels, not knowing what's going to get thrown at me.

Paul Etchison:

So you've made some mistakes and you've learned from them, but can you think of like any like particular mistake you've made with leadership that, you know, ended up being a major learning point from you that you think the listeners could benefit from knowing about?

Chris Green:

Yeah, I think some of it had to do with maybe uh scarcity mindset with associates. So I think there's kind of a coming of age as a practice owner where early days it's like, wow, I just took this big risk to take on this practice loan already, you know, trying to work through these student loans, you know, trying to take home a little more income that that has been earned through ownership. And before you know it, you got associates that that are asking you for partnership, for more this and that, more patience. And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what about me? Like I got not in a selfish way, but just in a got to kind of take care of myself first, pay down some of this debt and get the foundation here in place. Because a lot of that happened. We experienced such quick growth that a lot of that happened fast before you could even enjoy the fruits of your labor, so to speak, as a practice owner. So not being, I wouldn't say, I guess the word might be uh not having that abundance mindset, having a little bit of a scarcity mindset and being like, hey, you're gonna make what you make based on production, and flipping it to, okay, how do I make this a great environment for docs and just support them with a great team around them with great patient flow, with the tools and training and mentorship that will help them earn more money in the practice?

Paul Etchison:

Yeah, it's like a total mindset shift. When did you add the second practice? Where did that come along after the first practice?

Chris Green:

2022. So that was about we opened in 2018 for the startup. So four years later.

Paul Etchison:

What were you doing clinically when you opened that second practice? Like how many days were you clinical? I'm curious. Like to what did your I'm like, what did your week look like when you were like, I can open a second practice?

Chris Green:

Yeah, I was like one to two days clinical and like two days CEO management, you know, leadership meetings, one-on-ones, things like that.

Paul Etchison:

So what's the first step as you stepped into the CEO role that you were like, okay, this has some legs. I feel like this could work. Let's lean into this.

Chris Green:

Yeah. So it started with just developing other leaders in the practice. And I had a conversation with a friend and mentor. I'm like, you know, you're like the leadership master. It seems like you have this figured out. How do I train other leaders? I'm hardly the leader I want to be yet. And he said, it's Dave Maloli. I think a lot of us know him, just a phenomenal guy. He goes, you know, you're you're a better leader than you think, but you need to define this. And so we came up kind of with this idea. Can you meet with those people that you've identified once a week and train on some sort of leadership topic or listen to a book together and start to go through what leadership looks like in the office? So I came up with like this 12-week leadership program. So that way it was kind of built out. If I lost somebody, hey, great, we need to fill that seat, but first they got to go through this program. And the 12 weeks became just the jump-off point and gave us a lot of momentum where we've never suffered from like lack of leadership in the office since that. I'm not saying it was perfect, right? But it was structured and we needed to do something rather than just talk about, oh, we need to be a better leader. Like, what does that even mean?

Paul Etchison:

Yeah.

Chris Green:

So it was defined and uh there was a philosophy there. And the structure came from just regular meeting schedule. I talk about all the time. It sounds really boring. You're looking at your schedule, you're like, we need to produce here. Where am I gonna have a team meeting? I'm not gonna block the schedule. No, you have to block the schedule. You gotta put that time in so you work smarter and with less chaos during the hours you are doing the clinical.

Paul Etchison:

Yeah, I think it's one of those things is it's it's easy to see the opportunity cost of not doing that production, but it's hard to see the cost of not having these meetings because it's hard to quantify. But I would say, I mean, you're setting yourself up for so much more work by not having this stuff because when you can get a good leader in your practice, I mean, that was all the change in my life, you know, was me putting leaders in there that could run the practice without me. I mean, I would there was a point where I was like, I'm not the right type of person for leading a practice of this size. I can't do it. There's something personally wrong with me. And looking back on it, it was like, no, it was the way I was doing it. I was trying to be the only leader I needed to pour into those leaders. So, like, what kind of things like in this 12-week program? What are some, if you can think of a few that are some big like foundational things that you teach your leaders that you thought was important for them to use in your practice?

Chris Green:

Yeah, the first thing we did was just kind of define our core values, right? We wanted to establish like how we want to show up to the practice and how we want others to show up to the practice. From there, we went into things like extreme ownership, you know, just taking ownership of mistakes that we make, speaking to our mistakes when we go to correct somebody, like a prior version of myself. I remember back when I was first learning how to make a temporary crown. And I would just off the contacts, thinking the cement would hold it on, and then the patient's coming in with the temp off, and it's wasting more time. So I saw that you, you know, dental assistant made the same mistake, just learn from my mistakes, you know, leading with our own errors, right? And then there was another good program, it's on Audible with by um James Hunter, the servant leadership training course. And we listened to like one chapter of that a week. It's like 10 minutes or whatever a chapter, you know, eight to 10 minutes. We'd listen to that, we'd have an open discussion, and then we'd kind of go through that. So those were some of the core things that that I recall. Love that. And then, you know, we got into other things like how do we have hard conversations, how do we reprimand people, how do we handle people that have requests for time away or raises or the things that frustrate us, right? That are just normal requests, but we have to have a plan because they're gonna happen all the time.

Paul Etchison:

Yeah, and it's I love that you bring this up because now you're at two days clinical right now, and you're talking about were you at two days clinical when you were employing this leadership course, or was this still when you were a little bit more busy with patients?

Chris Green:

I think I was two to three days clinical when I started this. You know, now I'm almost not clinical at all. But yeah, back at that stage, that's where we were at. So yeah, the meeting cadence then became like a Monday check-in with the office manager, a weekly leadership meeting that's an hour, and then once a month we meet with the whole team. And then every other week the departments are meeting to go over, you know, departmental things. We do calibrations with the associates as well, but that's more like on a quarterly basis. They're a little harder to pin down.

Paul Etchison:

What I want to draw attention to for the listeners is there's all these things that Chris is doing. I know Chris, he's not sitting at home. He's not golfing every day. Like he's still very invested in his business, but he's not seeing patients much at all anymore. And same thing with my story, you know, I'm busy. A lot of people want to say that I'm taking time off, but I'm really not. But this is why it's so important for dentists to really realize that there's two hats that they got to wear. One is the clinician, and one's like the everything else hat, the entrepreneur, the manager, the leader. And it's hard to do when you're seeing patients four days a week. And it's hard to do on that fifth day when people are like, Well, I take off Friday, I do it on Friday. No, you don't. I know you. I know you're gonna tell me this. And you don't go every Friday. You just don't do it.

Chris Green:

Right.

Paul Etchison:

So when you started, talk about when you started cutting down your days. I mean, was there any kind of like resistance that you got from your team from working less clinically, or that you had to like personally battle any kind of like guilt or perception issues about not being a clinician so much?

Chris Green:

Yeah, I think guilt is the number one thing that a lot of us do struggle with when we start to back off, putting the team in a bad spot when they get a call and they're like, oh, I only want to see Dr. Etchison, you know, I only want to see Dr. Green. And giving them the tools to say, well, you and I actually have, I think on your podcast in the past had talked about some strategies. It's like, well, for Dr. Green, it's gonna be eight weeks out for this procedure, but you know, Dr. Jones has one next week. Why don't we get you in with him? Or Dr. Green's not available. He doesn't do that, he doesn't see patients for these procedures anymore. We're going to get you with Dr. Jones, who's phenomenal, and you're gonna have a good experience, I promise you. So, Bill, you know, you actually have to train on that though. You can't just say, hey, don't schedule them with me. That's the kind of jerk way to do it and leave it in their hands. You got to give them tools because they are team members are people pleasers and they want to accommodate the patient, right? Just like us. But if they have a way of saying it with empathy and a little directness at times with the right tone of voice, patients are gonna be okay with the answer.

Paul Etchison:

Yeah, I love that you say you've got to empower them with the the skills to have these conversations. I mean, there's been a number of times I've said to my team, I said, I'm so sorry that my boundaries are making this your problem. But this is what I would do. You're right. It's like your boundaries and your decision to be less clinical is making a big problem for the front desk now that has to tell the patients. And if you don't empower them with the skills to do that gracefully, politely, and confidently, it's a big problem. I mean, one of the biggest things I trained my front desk on about a year and a half ago was how to handle upset patients. And it was just like we kept going with like, well, how can we make so they're not upset? How can we make sure they're not upset? How can we fix this so it doesn't happen again? And we're attacking that too. But the fact of the matter is, patients are gonna get upset. We're going to drop the ball, it's gonna happen. So, what if we trained on how to diffuse these situations better? And they said it was, man, it made all that difference. And that's where I really realized that, yeah, we can't just, like you mentioned, don't just tell them, don't schedule with me. Don't schedule it with me. No. You know, there's a lot of, there's people I have associates in my practice. So I don't want to see that patient again. Okay, well, who's gonna tell that to the patient? I don't know. Front desk, tell them I don't want to see him. Like you want them to literally say, doctor does not want to see you. No, they can't do that. That's a crappy position to put anyone in.

Chris Green:

Well, it sends me down a little, a little bit of another thought thread here. You know, people could be listening to you and me and be like, okay, easy for Chris and Paul to say, how do I cut my clinical days? You know, things like that. And, you know, you have to have your overhead in line so that you could make it worthwhile to have associates and and have a little bit of profit on top of the associate production. You need to have a leadership team supporting the rest of the team so that you're not caught up in the whirlwind of the day-to-day of the practice. You need to do trainings like that so they know how to diffuse patient situations. I mean, it's patient and team situations that cause us the most frustration typically during the week, right? And so we need to have the tools and training to do that. So empowering associates. I think that's the biggest key, one of the biggest keys to escaping the chair, right? Or cutting down chair time. And if if we provide a great environment for them, what does that look like? Have we defined that? So I started looking at that and I said, well, what did I like when I was an associate? Well, I had uh great assistants that could, you know, in Colorado, we could play, they could place fillings, they could make temporary crowns, they could cement grounds, cool. I had uh supportive front office that was getting new patients through the door, scheduling properly, all those things, keeping my schedule full, all those things. So I need to do that for the associates. Well, sometimes you make it so good for them, then they're asking for more, and you have to remind them, hey, you got a pretty good here, right? So a couple things that we track, and they have to own the situation too. They can't just see 50 new patients a month and produce $50,000. Like that's that's not gonna work in any practice. So we started tracking the total amount that they treatment plan. So if in September Dr. Etcherson treatment plans $300,000, hopefully in October he's gonna produce $100,000. It's usually a one-third, is what I've noticed. At least the trends in my office and talking to a lot of other dentists.

Paul Etchison:

Yeah, mine too.

Chris Green:

And then the other KPI that I want them to be aware of is the um number of, I just call it opportunities. It's all exams. So it's new patient exams, limited exams, and recall periodic exams. And so it's like at the end of the day, if they come to me and they're like, I'm not busy enough, or oh wow, you're gonna add another associate that's gonna cut into my production. I don't know if you ever heard that one.

Paul Etchison:

I have.

Chris Green:

And it's like, well, let's look. Okay, so on this many opportunities, you treatment planned this much dentistry and you produced this much. Okay. So maybe if you want to do more treatment plan, more dentistry, or learn other skills that can, you know, allow you to offer more services.

Paul Etchison:

I love the idea of the accountability because it's like we just had an all-day meeting, and it was just an idea that I learned from somebody recently, a coach that I'm using, and it was for a completely separate, you know, subject matter. It was completely different. But I said this to my team at the all-day meeting, and I said, you know, I know there's some issues here. I know we're not perfect. We've got some things that frustrate us, but this is your practice. This is not my practice, and you guys are just like, here, you know, this is your practice. I need everybody here to take radical accountability of their practice life here, their work, their job, their occupation, their career. If you've got a problem, you've got to say something. You have the power. I have never gotten in the way of anyone from trying to make this place better. So, like giving them that accountability, and that's what I'm hearing you're saying with your associates. I wonder if like you mentioned the visits or what is your metric for like what's a proper amount? If anyone's looking at their numbers and saying, like, can I have an associate? What do I was, how many more exams do I need? Like, what are your baseline metrics for that?

Chris Green:

Yeah, our docs are able to produce the top couple, 100,000 on 100 to 130 total exams a month. And that's all exams, not just D0120. Some doctors need a little more, some can do it on a little less. It just kind of depends on on their schedule. I mean, at some point I just said, all right, you guys want more new patients? I'll stop doing new patient exams. And then, you know, my schedule still seemed to stay pretty busy, but it ended up getting lighter over time as I kind of worked through all the existing patient base that that I had built-up treatment plans on. That's typically the number, but it can vary if they don't offer, you know, implants or endo or thirds. Maybe they need more exams to hit their metrics. And it depends on their goals, right? So I think uh associates doing 100 to 120 is really good.

Paul Etchison:

Yeah.

Chris Green:

80 would probably be like kind of the bare minimum baseline, right? And that's a good associate as long as they're happy and you're providing opportunity. But it kind of, yeah, the point I was making is putting the ownership. If we truly are providing a great environment and providing the opportunity, then they need to be held accountable, as you said, to go out and and make their own opportunity as well.

Paul Etchison:

Right. Totally. Yeah, it's like they can't just be waiting for crumbs or number three mesial buckle cusp snapped off. So the patient's like, I need to fix this. Right. That's you're not gonna fill your schedule with that. You've got to talk about other stuff as well. And that takes some skill and it takes some diagnosis. Now, we talked about cutting down our clinical days, moving from the clinician to the CEO role. Would you say that one happens before the other? Like, do you cut your days and then move into it? Or do you have to move into that CEO role with your existing days? And that's what allows you to cut your days?

Chris Green:

I think going from four days to three days is not that hard. And when you get from four to three, usually a lot of owners won't drop their own production because you know, the owner production is often supporting the practice a lot in that phase. So, I mean, to answer your question, I think it's we have to start it somewhere, but really the when you can really start to feel the momentum is when you get down to the three-day clinical. Because I mean, that industry is exhausting. We are having to be empathetic all day long, give our emotional bandwidth to people, team, and patients, and then go home and you have nothing left for your family. So it's like, where are you gonna find that time to then think about where are we taking this practice or what does this practice need for the next growth phase?

Paul Etchison:

Let's talk about you said something right there. You said going from four to three days, it's easy to do without cutting the owner production. And I think a lot of people listening to said, wait, hold on a second, pause. Explain what you mean by that, why it's so easy to go from four days to three days so that you have that extra day to use for the CEO time.

Chris Green:

Yeah, at least for me, I think there was probably some inefficiencies in scheduling. So when I'm at four days, we could condense it down to three days, and I'm probably seeing the same volume of procedures or getting in the mindset of I'm gonna do more dentistry per visit. That's definitely part of it. So the schedule was more slammed when I was three days rather than four days, you know, there would be some more openings and holes. And uh there's a little bit of every time we've coached somebody on going from four to three, we just are like kind of trust the process. There's a little bit of trust the process there, but you have to have other docs to pick up the slack. Sometimes we have to get out of their way too. If I'm bringing on my first associate and I continue to work four days, which is fine, and they have to build up their own schedule. If I go from four to three, I've given them one day that's relatively filled already. So now they come in, they're happy, they're making at least some baseline money, getting past the daily minimum, and then they start filling those other days clinically.

Paul Etchison:

Yeah, exactly. I was gonna say the same thing is that you can easily condense that schedule down with mostly scheduling protocols and just some things with efficiencies with the way that you run your practice and the way you run through your day. It's one of those things when I do consult calls with coaching clients, they're like, Can you get me to three? I said, Yeah, guarantee. Guarantee it. Every time, every single time. Can you get me to two? That's gonna take a little bit more because that's gonna take some scaling principles, but four to three piece of cake. And then you get the one guy that say, Well, if I can do in three days what I can do in four days, why wouldn't I just do that four days? Just add more. And I'm like, no, that's not the idea. You need to run your practice. Like, you need this time. You know?

Chris Green:

Correct. Correct.

Paul Etchison:

So if you got a dentist that's saying, I'm four days, I want to be three days, I want to have this time to work on my practice, to talk to with my team, to train my team. What's the first step?

Chris Green:

Well, I would say the first step is having a plan. Okay. And I think we already talked about a couple of those pieces of the puzzle. Put together, identify who you want to be leaders in the practice, identify how you're gonna grow them and define the schedule. What does this exactly look like? And how are we gonna accomplish that? So, I mean, I'm being a little bit vague, but the vision is yours. Like when I'm coaching the doc on it, I'll give them like the framework, but the vision, it's not just build what Chris built or build what Paul built. It's like, oh, well, you enjoy this procedure more. This is your vision for the practice, or you love to golf and you want to golf two days a week. Like maybe the plan's a little different. So I think starting starting with a plan, starting with who else is going to help me do this in the practice because you can't do it alone.

Paul Etchison:

Now, tell us about your new book that came out that you just finished.

Chris Green:

Yeah. So as you mentioned, I have a startup coaching program. So we coach a lot of docs on how to get to opening day and beyond and get lots of butts in the seats from day one. The marketing is like a big, big piece of any startup. And uh we have a lot of for private coaching clients, we have like a 700-page startup manual that goes into great detail on all this stuff. But I condensed it. And so I said there's a lot of stuff that people would benefit from. And I just want to want to help people demystify kind of the startup process because it's not that it's it's hard, but the steps are very similar for a startup, whether you're in New York or Colorado or you're doing fee for service or PPO driven. They're very similar. So I got this new book called The Plan, the Project, The Practice. And it is basically a field manual where it's like, okay, we're in lease negotiation phase, or I'm about to start lease negotiations. What do I need to know? You flip to that chapter on lease negotiations, and you get like the nuts and bolts, the 80-20 of what you need to be talking to your lawyer about, and you know, having them communicate to the landlord's uh lawyers. So it goes through kind of the recipe to get to opening day. The plan, that's kind of the vision, business plan, budgeting, demographics, the first phase of the startup journey. The project is the like the construction, architecture, buying the equipment, buying, you know, the IT stuff. What do I need for supplies and instruments? So I have checklists and stuff in there. And then the practice is where everything comes together. I mean, that's that's the reason we're doing the whole thing. That's leadership, managing overhead, KPIs, marketing, systemization, et cetera, et cetera. So it goes through like all the logical steps that I could think about for uh a startup.

Paul Etchison:

So where can we get the book?

Chris Green:

Yes, you could get the book on Amazon. Again, it's called The Plan, the Project, the Practice, written just by me, Christopher Green, Dr. Green.

Paul Etchison:

Awesome. Yeah, I'll share on my social media as well when it's when it goes live. That's awesome, man. And talk about like dynamic dental ascension. Like, what's that all about?

Chris Green:

Yeah, so doing a lot of startup coaching and people were asking, well, well, what now? Like, I'm now past opening day. And with some of the success that we had scaling, growing the practice, I was I was asked questions like, how'd you how are you able to do that so quickly? How do I add associates? How do I, you know, build like kind of a lifestyle practice where I don't, I'm not just caught up spinning the hand a piece 24-7. So I didn't want to leave people at opening day wondering, what do I do next? So myself and Dr. Tom Reed, we started a group called Dynamic Dental Ascension, basically helping docs scale their practices, cut down their clinical time, improve their leadership, and help grow leaders around them so that, you know, we can enjoy more about why we got into practice ownership, making more money while having free time to do the things that we enjoy and not just constantly focused on the practice 24-7.

Paul Etchison:

Yeah. And I think anyone who's listening can really benefit from this right now. Everyone I've worked with, and I think the same thing with you as well, is people say, Man, I should have done this earlier. It's what I said. I mean, gosh, what I figured out the hard way after, man, almost a decade is how much different my life would have been, like how much more time I would have had to spend with my girls and do everything when they were younger. Now, I spend a lot of time with them now, but I had to go through this process, and I didn't really have all that much help. You know, there wasn't that much out there, and there's so many resources available now, and it's so awesome that you're doing this because like you and I always talk about, we have so much to offer. And I know what you have to offer. And I've I've worked with you in mastermind settings before.

Chris Green:

Right.

Paul Etchison:

And just so much knowledge to share from people and such like power in the group when you join these coaching programs. So love that, man. If anyone wants to find out about dynamic dental ascension, where do they find that information?

Chris Green:

Yeah, dynamicdentalascension.com. And to your point, like the playbook wasn't always there. It's there now. Like guys like yourself and me have been able through a lot of trial and tribulation distill this and help people cover ground faster and uh build kind of that lifestyle practice sooner and instead of waiting till our kids are older and we've stressed out about it. So why not learn from people that have done it and full time for you?

Paul Etchison:

I love it, man. Well, dude, thanks for coming on the podcast. Thanks for all you do. Congratulations on your new book, man. I can't wait to read it. Just love having you on here, man. Chris is a great wealth of information, great person, lots of integrity, lots of authenticity, genuine, good person who wants to help people that he works with. So thanks so much for coming on, Chris. Appreciate it.

Chris Green:

Right back at you. Thanks for having me, as always. I really appreciate it, Paul.

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Dr. Paul Etchison

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