Episode : #924: 2025: Getting Creative For Your Practice

Podcast Description

Kiera lays out a ton of ideas on how practices should be looking ahead to 2025, including the right percentage growth to aim for, why you actually can take time off for vacation, and more.

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Transcript:

Kiera Dent (00:00.994)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and welcome to the Dental A Team podcast. I hope today is such a magical day for you. I hope that you are having such a fun time and I hope that you are wrapping up 2024, getting ready for 2025. I am so excited for you guys as you’re wrapping up the year. And I just wanted to take a minute of let’s not forget how to maximize and optimize our schedules for 2025. I know it can sound funny, but really if we take the time now,

to project out, prepare for our year. You are gonna have such a better year in 2025. So welcome to projections with the Dental A Team podcast. As always, if this podcast has changed your way, your life in any way, if it’s shaped you, if it’s molded you, if it’s helped you, please leave us a review. Please share this podcast with someone because my goal is to have this podcast in the hands of every single dental practice to be able to positively impact and influence giving tactical practical skills and solutions for free.

So that way we can rise and elevate the world of dentistry. And that’s my mission and my goal. And I can only do it with your help and your support. So leave those reviews, share it with somebody and let’s make the world of dentistry realize how incredible it is that we’re a part of it and give you practical tactical skills to take your practice to the new, to the next level. All right. So as you guys are preparing for production, the big thing you guys need to be doing right now, and I’m hoping that you do this before end of year, that would be optimal.

is let’s start building out our schedule for next year. And that means we’re looking at the number of providers we have, the number of providers we might be adding in, number of hygienists. And then also let’s look at our vacation time we want off. So often I hear, Kiera, I just can’t take time off of my practice. And I just say, that’s actually not true. You totally can. We just need to plan and prepare for it. And then we need to set our goals accordingly. So you need to be looking at your practice now and it needs to be a minimum of a 10 % growth.

So we did a million this year, we should be doing 1.1 next year. So once we know that, we then go through our schedule, we figure out, all right, how many providers, how many hygienists, how many days off, how many holidays, let’s look at all of that. Also, I would strongly recommend that you are actually looking at trends. And doctors and office managers, this is a phenomenal exercise to do together. So what we wanna do is you wanna look at trends. Historically, is our February always low?

Kiera Dent (02:19.648)

And I usually look two or three years back, you can make spreadsheets about that. That’s how we do it. So we can historically look, all right, how was our December? How was our September? Was it slam dunk timber or was it suck timber? What about our February? Was that low? Was it high? What about our December’s? Historically, how are those doing? And once you can get the trends, we can also make our goals and our, like everything way more realistic for us. So then you’re gonna wanna look through, and we actually have spreadsheets for this for our clients where you go through and it’s going to be, all right, in January, how many?

days do we have available? How many days are we going to be off? What is our doctor out hourly? How many hours are they working? How many columns do they have? What about for our hygienist? And then it actually spits out a monthly goal for you based on the number of providers you have, doctor and hygienist based on what their hourly trends have been, which you can look back three to six months to see what have their, what are they historically doing? Then we can increase that. So maybe if our doctors are producing 500 an hour, maybe we bump them to 525 or to 550.

But really figuring this out so that way we can make sure all of them are hitting the levels that they need to be hitting that then projects you your monthly goal because based on the number of days providers that hourly we’re able to do that. Hygienist as you know should be doing at least three times their hourly. Hygienist that’s the standard across the board. I know insurances can be tricky and that’s where we also look to see, okay, what do we need to add to our appointments? Are we doing our fluoride? Are we doing our laser? What about our FMXs? Are there things that we could be doing because guess what?

So many practices are able to hit this. And so I know that you’re able to do it as well. It also means we’ve got to work on keeping the schedule full so we’re not having as many cancellations. So we look at that. And then we also figure out we’re going to take vacations in September because historically that’s a really junk month for us. So let’s do it there. We’re also going to take them in February. Let’s maximize the time where it’s already slow. And if we can do that, we’re actually going to do a lot better. And once you get all this data, it’s going to spit out a number for you. And it’s going to tell you, OK.

based on everything you put in, based on the hourly, based on the providers, based on the days off that we’re having between holidays and vacations, you are gonna produce, let’s say, one million. Well, we know we need to be at 1.1 because that’s our growth. So then we look back and we say, okay, what could we do? Do we need to increase our hourly? Do we maybe need to bring in another provider? Do we need to look at how many days we’re closed? Do we need to open up a few others? Do we need to increase our daily goal so that way we’re hitting it? What does that equate to?

Kiera Dent (04:43.554)

Oftentimes I’ll look in offices like we need to produce 20,000 more. Well, a lot of offices are actually working 16 days a month. So if we need 20,000 and we’ve got 16 days a month, that’s 1250 per day that we would need to add in. And then I love to take it to teams and I like to ask, all right, what is 1250 worth of dentistry? That’s like literally one crown. That’s a couple of fluorides, it’s quad of fillings. Like it’s a few night guards, a few like whitening.

And we start to get really creative. If we know that I love to break it down and then that becomes your new daily goal for your team. And this is how we’re able to take vacations, we’re able to hit our goals with ease and we’re able to maximize and actually set effective goals for every single month rather than just arbitrary. Cause most people would say, Kiera, that’s way too hard. And I used to be this person where I would take, if we need to do 10 % growth, I’ll just take 1.1 divided by 12, bada bing, bada boom. We need to do 92,000 per month. Well,

That’s great, but what about our low months? What about the months we’re taking vacations? Like, are we just expected to produce a lot more? What happens if we have a hygienist that goes out on maternity leave? What happens if we have a doctor that goes out on vacations? Like, that becomes very hard. So if in the month of December, we’re only open two weeks, well, I don’t think that that month should be equally weighted as maybe August, where we’ve got five weeks in that month. So what this does is it really helps you actually maximize, optimize, take vacations, and make sure that we’re able to hit our goals with ease.

I love this model. I geek out about it. I work with my clients on this. We work in our consulting with this because I think this is something that sometimes can feel daunting. And it’s just stuff that we just don’t want to do. I’m building out my projections. And then what I look at next is, okay, if that’s what we’re producing as a practice, what are our costs for next year? And are there costs that we’re going to need to bring in of maybe hiring new people or doing different things? And do we actually like is 1.1 or that 10 % growth?

actually going to support and sustain the practice like we need it to do? Or do we need to get more creative? Being more creative, like could we add in other services? Could we do ortho? Could we do sleep? Could we do implants? Like what do we need to do in our practice? What things do we already have that maybe we’re not doing? Like I have offices right now that are doing a whitening competition. That’s easy ways to add in production on our schedule that we’re already doing that we’re just not maximizing. What if we’ve got a 3D printer? Could we look for night guards and could we do that?

Kiera Dent (07:06.332)

What about sports teams in the area? Could we do those? Like this is where we start to get into our creative world to really truly grow our practices with ease. And so this is where I wanted to come and just kind of give you guys a quick snippet of how you can actually build these out. And the reason why we do this is like I said, so we’re actually able to maximize and optimize and be able to hit our goals with ease. Now things that might come up as a tricky piece is like, well, should I be doing CE? And the answer is,

Like I’m all for CE, I’m all for doctors doing CE, I’m all for all of that. But I also wanna make sure that we’re not being CE overload to where we’re actually not implementing. So what I say is if you’re gonna go to CE, there needs to be a complete action plan for you when you do come back of we’re gonna do X number of cases. So if we go to sleep within the next quarter, our team’s gonna set some goals around it and we’re gonna try and actually accomplish doing, I don’t know, 20 cases, okay? So what do we need to do for 20 cases? How do we track this? How do we monitor this?

So whenever we go to CE, the CE is actually being implemented into our practice and it becomes a habit as opposed to a fleeting thought. This is what happens with ortho doing, I heard an office and they do a sip and scan and they bring all their patients in and they have like a fun wine night and they just scan and then they present ortho cases. There’s software out there that can show patients their smile transforming right before their eyes to be able to do it. So there’s so many opportunities for you.

to get creative when you know what the goals need to be to sustain the practice as a business. So we go through, we figure out our provider amounts, we figure out what our goals should be, we figure out what we should be estimated for our production based on years prior, and we set our goals accordingly. And then we make sure what we’re going to spend actually is in align with what we’re producing. And then if it’s not, we get creative and we figure out, should we do CE? Should we not do CE? What things could we do? What can we do to boost our months? If we know September is always low,

What could we be doing in June, July and August to make sure that it’s higher? Like, could we go back and for implant cases, look at all of our patients that are denture patients and send them a special letter. Like, there’s so many opportunities and this is why I love to consult practices is because we help you think outside the box. We help you figure out how are we gonna be able to get to the goals we want, but do it with maximum ease and efficiency. How do we look and use our numbers as levers and dial that in?

Kiera Dent (09:29.058)

rather than just assuming like, well, it is what it is. Let’s hope and a wish. No goals and numbers and projections don’t need to be a hope and a wish. They can actually be built upon mathematical things. Looking back at trends of where we should be and then increasing based on where it should be. Also your 5 % increase on fee schedule should be in place too. So like that’s where it’s very easy to be hitting this growth with minimal effort. We just need to make sure that we’re all doing it.

And so I just really would encourage you to be looking at this, to be looking ahead, to figure out where we can take our vacations, to be able to take our vacations with ease, to be able to maximize our doctor’s schedules and our hygienist schedules, to be able to set realistic goals that are truly achievable, to make our bonuses based on that, knowing what we’re spending on the practice of all the numbers, and then being able to roll that out to our team. If this feels daunting, high five. Welcome, welcome to the world of business ownership.

where these things might feel daunting, but just know it doesn’t have to be hard. I have a practice where we started working on this and they were so nervous because they were like, Kiera, we’re doing an expansion. We don’t know how we’re going to be able to do this. And so what I did was I took it with them and we did a very conservative projections and we did a high-end projections. And what’s crazy is they actually hit the high ends. But by knowing what we needed to produce, they were then able to go set the goals and the KPIs with their team.

They were able to easily track their metrics all the way along. And you put it in the spreadsheet. Where were we at based on where we projected? Why was it this way? We looked back at the trends. What were the low months? And what’s crazy about doing this is it gives you confidence. Confidence you can pay the bills. Confidence that you’re going to be able to pay for your team. Confidence that you know what to set your goals at and they’re not just arbitrary. Confident that you can take vacations and not let the practice plummet.

So many doctors tell me, Kiera, I had a terrible December. And I’m like, well, that’s because you didn’t plan. You didn’t plan out to take two weeks of vacation. And then we were trying to cram in $100,000, $200,000 worth of production into two weeks. Well, that can be tricky. Also, if you know this, we can strategically start planning in October, November, December, making block schedules where we know what production we’re going to be bringing in when people’s benefits are coming due and we’re trying to get a bunch of treatment in. Like, let’s not be chaotic. Let’s be strategic of what we’re doing and putting into our schedule so it’s easy.

Kiera Dent (11:45.442)

We’re able to help the most amount of patients and we’re able to just get to our goals with ease. This is the type of stuff that lights me up. This is the type of stuff where I’m like, we can do this together. And that office this year, they’re celebrating hitting their highest growth and they took off the most amount of time that they’ve ever taken off. And they were able to help more patients and bring on more team members. And all those decisions were very confident because they knew exactly what they needed to do. So I…

think everyone needs to do this. And if you need help, reach out [email protected] We have so many options available for you for consulting where it’s online, where it’s kind of like a systems and you go through all the 12 systems and you have a group that we every single week. And sometimes you’re even getting one-on-one help to where you can add one-on-one calls and you can get individualized help, or you are in our full level platinum with us where you’re actually coming to masterminds and leadership retreats. And we’re working with your team one-on-one, whatever it is, there’s, there’s options for you. So

Reach out, but do this. I make all my offices do this. I work on it with them because I know if they’ve got the numbers, they’re going to make much smarter decisions, better projections. And if you’re like, Kiera, that’s so hard. Phenomenal reach out because you’re not meant to know how to run a business. You’re meant to know how to do dentistry. And my job is to teach you how to do the business and to teach your team to do the business and teach you how to look at those numbers with confidence. So you’re able to make decisions that you’re confident about making.

That’s why I have the job I do. I literally am obsessed and passionate about helping business owners learn their numbers, to be able to make smarter decisions, to be able to feel confident in their business, that it’s not just a question of will I be profitable? Will I make money? Will I not make money? That’s terrifying. You are an amazing clinician. Let’s now make you an amazing business owner. Reach out [email protected] Get your projections there. Know what you need to do for next year. And as always, thanks for listening and I’ll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.