Any dentist who owns a business can benefit from taking the steps to create a profitable, exitable dental practice. Whether you would like to sell your practice within the next year, next 10 years, or pass it down to your children, creating an exitable business pushes a dental practice into a valuable asset with intrinsic worth.   Taking these steps can also create freedom for the business owner as it pushes the business further down the path to ‘true’ business ownership. I often talk about the difference between what I call self-employment where the business hangs on the shoulders of one key person and true business ownership that revolves around a team and a set of systems.   And what is the key?   Creating a business that anyone can run by using the systems put in place to manage it.   It’s hard to see the frame when you’re standing in the picture.   Sometimes the easiest way to illustrate a point about dental practices is to compare it to another business. For this example, we will be discussing a roofing business.   Most people get into roofing because they know how to install shingles. After a while, they have enough business that they decide to hire additional help. The business owner is still heavily involved the day-to-day operations of the company.   Now, this could mean that you have a successful company with a crew of labourers that brings in good revenue. However, it might not be a sellable, exitable business. Most business owners are not roofers and unless you put a turnkey system in place that anyone can pick up and run, you are limiting your pool of potential buyers to roofers with a similar skill set to you. The key is to recognise that whether you know it or not, this roofing company does have systems in place. They’re just not documented and reproducible. Yet.   These systems live in the knowledge and experience of the business owner. From how to quote a new roofing job to how to hire the right employees, there are ‘best practices’ the business owner has developed over time, even if they have not been put into so many words. Once they can be translated to systems that a new business owner could take over, the business becomes much more sellable.

Turnkey systems are the solution.

Turnkey systems make it possible for potential buyers to purchase your business and hire a manager to run it without requiring the insight of unique industry knowledge. This is great for strategic buyers interested in purchasing businesses they can run with a professional manager at the helm. This is also a great way to assuage any doubts or objections a potential buyer might have.   For example, if a buyer looking a roofing business is worried because they don’t know anything about installing shingles, the business owner can say, “Well, you won’t need to because my employees know how to do it.”   If the buyer sayings, “Well, I don’t know how to quote a roofing job. How do I know how to keep the profit margins intact?”   The business owner can say, “I’ve developed this spreadsheet programme. You input a few measurements and information to generate the cost and an appropriate quote so you can protect your margins and never underbid on a job.”   With a comprehensive business structure in place like this, it becomes easier to see how anyone interested in purchasing a business might be able to step in and take over the reins even if their background is in a very different industry. It’s possible for them to see how they can run the systems behind the business, even if they wouldn’t know how to price a roof job by looking at it.

The right systems remove doubts and ensure success.

  Imagine if you wanted to sell your dental practice, but the buyer leaned across the table to you and said, “What if your dental assistants leave? I need them more than you do because I don’t know how to do dental work.” What would you tell them?   It’s situations like these that can ease the pressure on buyers investing in a new business. The ability to show them how to hire good dentists, dental hygienists, and front desk staff, what competencies to focus on, and how to attract top talent, you can show that this is a sustainable business for them into the future.

The 3 keys to an exitable dental practice.

This example of a roofing business also applies to every dental practice. Until an external set of ‘best practices’ and systems has been set into place, the only other person able to purchase and run your dental practice is another dentist with a similar skill set.  
  1. Understand that you do have systems. Ensure that you take the time to put down your thoughts and processes on paper so there’s captured documentation of your acquired knowledge running this business.
  2. Ensure your team knows their roles. A true business requires a team to work together to succeed. If your team knows their roles, the expectations for their roles, and how each position contributes to the larger picture.
  3. Create space between you and the business. You do not want to be the source of all knowledge for your business. If you cannot step away for a few days or weeks at a time without the business beginning to fall apart, it is important to start thinking about taking steps to make the necessary changes.

Final Words…

  Working toward an exitable dental practice is a great idea for any dentist that owns his or her own business. Doing this creates spaces for you to take time away – whether it’s for a holiday or medical leave. What do you want your life to look like in five years? Ten years? Thinking about how you would like your practice to look in the future can help you design the right systems and structure to get there.   Creating these external systems that will help guide anyone to pick up the reins means that your business will have intrinsic value. It doesn’t need to be purchased by another dentist with your specific specialties. It can be purchased by a strategic buyer interested in running the business through a manager.   P.S. Whenever you’re ready …. here are 4 ways I can help you grow your dental practice:
  1. Grab a free chapter from my book "Retention - How to Plug the #1 Profit Leak in Your Dental Practice"
The book is the definitive guide to patient retention and how to use internal marketing to grow your practice - Click Here
  1. Join the Savvy Dentist community and connect with dentists who are scaling their practice too
It’s our Facebook group where clever dentists learn to become commercially smart so that they have more patients, more profit and less stress. - Click Here
  1. Attend a Practice Max Intensive live event
Our 2 day immersive events provide access to the latest entrepreneurial thinking and actionable strategies to drive your practice forward. You’ll leave with a game plan to take your results to the next level. If you’d like to join us, just send me a message with the word "Event and I’ll get you all the details!  – Click here
  1. Work with me and my team privately
If you’d like to work directly with me and my team to take your profit from 6 figures to 7 figures …. just send me a message with the word "Private"... tell me a little about your practice and what you would like to work on together, and I’ll get you all the details! – Click here
    

In this episode, I chat to David Barnett who works with entrepreneurs around the world helping them to buy, sell and organise their small and medium sized businesses.

Whether you’re thinking about selling soon, down the track or just want to make your practice more valuable, this episode is for you.

From 1998 to 2005, Mr. Barnett was a major account representative with the Yellow Pages.  This opportunity gave him an insight into the particular challenges of small & medium businesses as he dealt daily with the owners of these companies.  In 2005, Mr. Barnett left the publishing industry to start a small business with a partner.  Their venture was an immediate success.  After opening, operating and building the business, an opportunity to sell presented itself in late 2006.

In 2006, Mr. Barnett began building his professional consulting practice by starting Advantage Liquidity Partners Ltd. ALP Ltd. was a broker of commercial debt solutions for small and medium sized enterprises including commercial mortgages, business loans, factoring facilities, and capital leases.  Barnett has arranged such financing for hundreds of small and medium sized companies.  Working with entrepreneurs to build their companies and/or acquire other firms naturally led to the field of business brokerage.

Barnett is an Amazon best-selling author with Invest Local: A guide to superior investment returns in your own community.  Recent new titles include Credit Card Advantage: Understand the Costs and Benefits to your Business and Franchise Warnings: What you really need to know before you buy.  All titles are available from Amazon or this website.

Barnett’s April 2016 book; How To Sell My Own Business, became a best seller under Amazon’s Entrepreneurship category in its release month.

In this episode, we discuss:

  • 12:54: Choosing business models and building an asset that will sell
  • 14:18: The importance of documenting systems and procedures to make a saleable business
  • 20:51: Key tips for documenting your procedures and systems
  • 28:07: Common mistakes people make when selling a business
  • 33:33: Why you need to price your business correctly (you can’t just change it later)
  • 34:53: Keeping business sales confidential to ensure the best outcomes for all
  • 36:16: Mitigating cashflow risk in a small business for sale
  • 28:29: What to look for when buying a business
  • 38:59: When seller financing benefits the buyer
  • 41:33: Why you should always seek out professional advice before buying or selling a business

Find out more about David Barnett

On his website

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Android | RSS

 

Success in business comes from one thing: clarity.

In today’s world, there is this pressure to do it all, have it all, see it all, be it all. Sometimes the only thing that defines us from our competitors is to what and when we say the word No. But often it can be a challenge to know when to draw the line. When everything seems like a great opportunity for exposure, new patients, or new services, it can be hard to narrow it down to opportunities that most speak to your business’s core purpose.

That’s where clarity comes in. I go back to a quote from Alice in Wonderland when I’m thinking about this. “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.” Likewise, if you don’t know your unique purpose and value you offer to your patients, any opportunity will seem like a good fit.

How do we achieve clarity?

Clarity can come in all forms, but first off it’s about knowing what we are trying to achieve.

If you look at other dental practices within your area or within Australia, you will find some that are sustainably achieving more than our industry peers. There are some dentists with robust practices even as the economy changes and other dental practices open and close.

There are some things that are consistent within these strong dental practices. One is that they each have clarity on the value they create. They know what their purpose is. They know what their goals are to serve that purpose. They know where to play and how to win. From their business model to how they do business, what they focus on, and their top challenges and priorities are informed by the clarity around their purpose.

And even though they are all dental practices, their purposes might be wildly different. For one practice, it might be offering quality dental services at affordable rates to a low-income area. For another, it might be offering luxe cosmetic services to a high-income clientele.

That’s because clarity enables decision making. And then by definition, clarity offers you the space to say ‘no’. For example, if you know that your top challenge is patient retention when a marketing seminar offers a free class for patient acquisition, you can safely say ‘no’. Even if the class is free, it still costs time and doesn’t speak to your business’s specific needs.

Clarity also needs alignment.

Clarity alone isn’t enough, however. Just because you know what your final goal is or your ultimate purpose, you need alignment on the strategies for how to get there.

Let’s use a rowing metaphor to explain this more clearly. If you are going to a row a boat across the Atlantic Ocean you either start from Africa to America or from the Canary Islands to Barbados.

Even if you know that your ultimate destination is Barbados, there are a few decisions to make on how to get there. You have a couple of choices. First, you could choose to row straight west. It’s a straight line and therefore the shortest distance. The second option is to row south from the Canary Islands following the currents. You row further, but you row faster.

If you and your team do not discuss how to get to Barbados, you might find that you are frantically rowing south while others are rowing west. This is the exact same kind of alignment issues that businesses can see.

While the goal might be the same, there are usually multiple ways to get there. It is important for every team member to be rowing the same way to the same destination.

Employee alignment with company goals is everything.

Unless you are a one-man show, you will have a team supporting you. Once more people come into the picture, the ideas of clarity and alignment becomes much more important. Other people aren’t mind readers so it’s important for everyone to ensure that they are on the same page.

A lot of organisations fail at this because the individual team members don’t understand their purpose within the larger picture. What is each individual team member working to achieve to impact the greater whole? Do your team members even know what your ultimate purpose is? Do they know how their contribution matters?

Be a leader, not a manager.

Leadership is about inspiration. True leaders can inspire people to work toward a shared goal. Management, on the other hand, is the ability to manipulate our resources (meaning people, time, and money) to achieve a desired result. In many ways, management is a practical skill. With what we have, how do we make a certain result happen?

Leadership is more amorphous. It might mean creating change, even if it’s uncomfortable. It might be saying no to things. It might be motivating people or learning how to push and pull to building the right office culture.

But for a leader to truly succeed, they need to be backed by a willing group of participants. Even the best leaders can’t inspire those who refuse to share the same vision of the practice.

Final Words…

When you can achieve clarity around your ultimate purpose and your business goals, making choices, even if they are scary, becomes a lot easier. When you know the final destination, you can begin to pick apart the best way to get there. Choosing the right path to your destination instead of any path to any destination is going to offer your unparalleled control over the success of your practice.

Do you feel that you have clarity within your practice?

P.S. Whenever you’re ready …. here are 4 ways I can help you grow your dental practice:

  1. Grab a free chapter from my book “Retention – How to Plug the #1 Profit Leak in Your Dental Practice”

The book is the definitive guide to patient retention and how to use internal marketing to grow your practice – Click Here

  1. Join the Savvy Dentist community and connect with dentists who are scaling their practice too

It’s our Facebook group where clever dentists learn to become commercially smart so that they have more patients, more profit and less stress. – Click Here

  1. Attend a Practice Max Intensive live event

Our 2 day immersive events provide access to the latest entrepreneurial thinking and actionable strategies to drive your practice forward. You’ll leave with a game plan to take your results to the next level. If you’d like to join us, just send me a message with the word “Event and I’ll get you all the details!  – Click here

  1. Work with me and my team privately

If you’d like to work directly with me and my team to take your profit from 6 figures to 7 figures …. just send me a message with the word “Private”… tell me a little about your practice and what you would like to work on together, and I’ll get you all the details! – Click here

    

In this episode, I chat to Jamie Fitzgerald from Inspiring Performance all about how to run a high performance business, adventures he’s been on and the lessons he’s learned.

After a professional career in New Zealand, Australia and Asia with a management consultancy firm, Jamie led the culture and training of 6000 Rugby World Cup volunteers in 2011. Outside his business career, Jamie has walked unaided to the South Pole, captained rowing crews against Cambridge and Oxford Universities during his management degrees, and holds the world record for rowing 5000km across the Atlantic Ocean.

Jamie has also walked the length of New Zealand with hundreds of at-risk teenagers and hosts the TV documentary series First Crossings and Intrepid New Zealand.

Having completed degrees in Management and Marketing and growing Inspiring Performance from the ground up, Jamie delivers a range of strategic, leadership and performance-based initiatives with organisations, government agencies and individuals around the world.

When he isn’t in the corporate jungle or up a mountain, Jamie with his wife Kate and their two kids enjoy time at a family farm in the Wairarapa.

In this episode, we discuss:

  • 2:40: Striving for to be the best through clarity
  • 4:15: The power of choice and why the things you say no to can define your success.
  • 4:36: Why teams and businesses need clarity
  • 7:11: What alignment means in organisations and why it’s so powerful
  • 14:47: The power of preparation and risk management
  • 18:54: How to create harmony, flow and alignment
  • 22:40: Why focusing on value driven business and lean thinking improves business performance
  • 26:41: How removing unnecessary detail and complexity improves the running of a business
  • 28:38: Common traits among the best organisational leaders
  • And more.

Find out more about Jamie Fitzgerald

Inspiring Performance website

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If you find that you generally create good results for yourself but you struggle to hit ‘great’ territory, it might be procrastination holding you back. Often the differentiator between people that can consistently hit great results is that they have the ability to do what needs to be done, whether they feel like it or not.

If you feel like you are constantly busy, constantly spinning your wheels, but not getting to where you want to be, it might be procrastination. Even if you are constantly working and producing and striving for your goals, if you aren’t putting your efforts behind the right tasks, you will struggle to reach that next step.

We are constantly fielding demands. Whether it’s an inbox flooded with emails, pings from social media, phone calls to return, or patients in the waiting room, there is always something to do. And it’s not that responding to emails isn’t necessary – it is. But it can also be a case that just because something is the most urgent, it still isn’t the most important.

Making time to prioritise and not put off important work that needs to be done is the ticket to reaching ‘great’ status consistently.

How do we do this?

 

Nail down your driving force.

Often for people that can cut through the noise and focus on what’s most important, they have a motivating event that offers them clarity of purpose. For example, a professional athlete might have one singular goal: go to the Olympics. This is their driving force that compels them out of bed early in the morning even on days when they want to hit snooze.

Your driving force might be a future you want for yourself like a stable practice you can sell and finance an early retirement. You might also find that your driving force is a situation you want to get out of or never fall into again.

Whatever it is, it can help lend clarity to your daily actions. What motivates you? Does this task draw you closer to your goals?

Understand the two kinds of happiness.

There is short-term happiness and satisfaction of enjoying your current situation. This might be enjoying a cocktail on a beach in Tahiti, but the desire to be happy in the moment might also drive you to put off tasks you aren’t in the mood to handle.

Then there is also long-term happiness. This can be either a future goal that will bring you happiness or a past accomplishment that you feel pride in.

Unfortunately, as humans, we are incredibly prone to leaning into the desire for momentary happiness at the cost of long-term happiness. We want immediate satisfaction, even when that’s at the expense of an important goal.

When you find yourself avoiding a task, ask yourself whether your momentary happiness is more important than your long-term goal.

The First Three Steps to Take to Combat Procrastination

  • Change your internal dialogue.

This is really the foundational step toward changing your habits with procrastination. We tend to fulfil our own expectations of ourselves for better or worse. Monitor how you speak to yourself and notice if you say things to yourself like, “I’m always late. I always procrastinate. I’m such a procrastinator.” If you notice you are doing this, you are likely self-fulfilling your own prophecy. So pay attention to the labels you assign yourself and don’t identify with labels you don’t want to own.

 

This also goes for talk of you should do something. We tend to resist the things we should do. Instead of telling yourself you should do something, remind yourself that you want to do it because it’ll help you reach your goal.

  • Practice awareness of your most productive times.

Each of us has a circadian rhythm and informs our energy levels throughout the day. For some of us, that means we pop out of bed ready to take on the day. For others, that means we get a rush of energy at night like electricity that compels us to tackle projects. Whatever it is, it is important to note that about yourself and prioritise your most important tasks to coincide with when you’re in the zone.

  • Take care of your body as well as your mind.

Movement has everything to do with your energy levels and therefore your motivation to finish projects. Ensuring that you get the right amount of exercise can make a huge difference in overcoming procrastination. Getting moving will help your body stay healthy and get blood flowing to your brain. Also getting out of the house and focused on something else for a bit can help lend inspiration for when you return to your work.

 

Final Words…

Often learning how to overcome procrastination is having an honest talk with yourself about your priorities and commitment to reaching your goals. The great news is that while your inner dialogue might be the problem, it can also be the solution.

A great example of this is a business that is struggling with sales. You might find yourself saying, “Oh, it’s the economy,” while your competitor next door is raking in sales. They’re in the same business in the same area. What’s the difference?

When you find external reasons for why you aren’t meeting your goals, you won’t take action to make a change. At the same time, it is important to recognise that there will be failures, but they’re part of the journey to success. Don’t let a setback set you completely off course. Each small step you take towards your goals is still forward movement.

If you recognise that you have power over your own life to make these changes, you can beat procrastination at its root source.

    

As dental practice owners, our time is valuable. So how do we ensure that we are using it optimally?

In this episode, I chat to Eric M Twiggs who is an expert in time management and procrastination. He shares quick and easy tips that you can implement now to boost your productivity and kick procrastination to the curb.

Eric M Twiggs works with business owners across America and Canada as The Accountability Coach. In this role, he drives profits and dreams home for his clients through radical honesty, and the relentless pursuit of excellence.

He is a Certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach, Certified Life Coach, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy(CBT) Practitioner, and a Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) Practitioner, who has conducted over 28,000 coaching sessions that have resulted in his average client experiencing a nine to one return on their investment.

He is also the author of two books The Discipline of Now and One Moment in Time.

In this episode, we discuss:

  • 02:13: The difference getting good results and getting great results
  • 03:15: Can you learn to not procrastinate?
  • 04:24: Why clarity of purpose is the first key to overcoming procrastination (and how to get it)
  • 07:08: Why perfectionism is the handmaiden of procrastination
  • 08:20: How fear causes procrastination (and what you can do about it)
  • 11:47: Knowing when you work best will boost your productivity
  • 13:32: Why you should be looking after your energy levels
  • 16:44: Why you should build failure into your success plan
  • 18:44: How to build resilience to overcome setbacks
  • 23:15: The strategic art of prioritising
  • 26:06: The power of saying no
  • 27:51: Top tips for overcoming procrastination
    31:12: The power of time blocking
  • And more

Find out more about Eric M Twiggs

Eric M. Twiggs website

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Subscribe: Android | RSS

 

I often find myself talking about the dentist that holds onto his or her dental practice with a white-knuckle grip. Everything needs to go through the business owner and it creates a bottleneck. It also makes it impossible for the business owner to step away from the business for holidays or personal reasons.

Often the reason this happens is because we dentists are Type-A personalities. We like things to be perfect. After all, the best way to ensure things are done the way we would do them is to do them ourselves.

But a business is a team endeavour. Even as a business owner and sole dentist of a practice, you need a team behind you to be successful. Your practice should have a life of its own where you can step away and it will continue to function without you.

If you decide to take on another dentist or already have a small team and decide to open another location, you might also find that you need to be able to scale your resources. The key to this growth is to ensure that you are maintaining the same high standards your patients have come to expect from you.

Along this journey, it’s important to know that there will be hurdles that come along, but you can’t give up in business. Sometimes it’s really tough. You need to push through anyway.

Here are a few ideas for those worried about heading in a new direction. It is impossible to take on new business and accept new responsibility without budging on your standards of quality.

1.  Scale thoughtfully and mitigate risk along the way.

When you are considering a new opportunity, it is important to do a risk analysis. You want to be able to answer, “What could go right? What could go wrong? How do we mitigate the risks?”

This goes for big moves like opening a new practice location and relatively small moves like hiring a new dental hygienist. Before you take on a new opportunity or make a change, be sure to know what risk you are accepting and decide whether it’s acceptable or unacceptable for you.

2. Zero in on what you need from your team.

Everyone needs to be pulling in the same direction. The best way to ensure you receive excellence from each of your team members is to ensure they are working toward the same goals as you.

Creating a training process and training materials for each position can help take some of the guesswork out of the technical skills, but honestly, the true key is hiring the right individual. For example, dentistry is at its core about solving problems. You’re looking for faults. You’re looking for things that aren’t right and then you’re interpreting the data through the lens of your training to come up with a treatment plan. Team members that know how to identify core problems and solve them will help you maintain a high level of service even as you continue to scale.

3. Good business is good relationships.

In dentistry, we rely on others. We rely on our front desk staff to book appointments and greet patients. We rely on our dental technicians to make things for us. We rely on our suppliers to offer high-quality products we can stand behind.

Each of these relationships is crucial to a thriving business. I’m a big believer in this. In fact, after I wrote the manuscript to my book, RETENTION! How to Plug the #1 Profit Leak in Your Dental Practice, I gave it to a friend to read. He goes, “Ah, so it’s a book about relationships.”

“Yeah, pretty much, mate.”

The focus on relationships between teams members and between team members and patients cannot be lost as a dental practice scales because it’s at the core of what we do. We’re in the service industry, after all.

4. Maintain your relevance.

It’s so important to stay relevant to your market. You need to understand the area you’re serving and what those patients are expecting. You can’t offer high-end luxury cosmetic dental services in a low-income area. Of course, you should also stay up to date on the latest and greatest when it comes to techniques. Learning better ways to treat patients is always a strong investment into the future of the dental practice, both for you and your team supporting you as well.

Staying relevant is easy if you lean into your relationships with your patients. Everything you need to know is there. What are your patients thinking about? What are they worried about? What do they need to reach or maintain their oral health?

5. Be open to trying new things.

Finally, excellence and especially scaling excellence comes down to innovation. You need to be willing to try new things. Change is scary in life and also in business so often we can become comfortable with the status quo and find we are resistant to change. But growing with your business in new directions can often help uncover better ways of doing things or more opportunities.

Final Words…

Building and scaling something that’s high quality takes precision and takes time. It can be difficult and even scary. While a dental practice is a complex entity with many moving parts, it is important to let go of the reins a little and let your team take on some of the responsibilities.

With a strong team, an open mind, and a focus on maintaining relationships, a dental practice can be profitable, stable, and thriving long into the future. Even if you can’t drill every cavity and speak with every patient as your practice expands, you can be confident that each patient is receiving the same excellent care because you’ve built a strong foundation.

    

 

In this episode, I chat to Grant Menzies about how to scale a business when you are committed to a high-end quality product or service.

Grant Menzies is the General Manager of Adina, and son of company founder, Bob Menzies. Grant is extensively involved in the design of every new Adina watch and works closely with international manufacturers to ensure all Adina watch components meet strict quality standards. Grant also manages the wholesale distribution of Adina watches to independent Australian jewellery stores, as well as providing training and support to these retail partners.

In this episode, we discuss:

  • 10:44: Getting into the family business
  • 13:07: Tips for taking over a family business (with as little friction as possible)
  • 17:21: The power of internal collaboration and growing the business
  • 18:16: The challenges of scaling excellence
  • 23:00: Bringing on new team members and maintaining your quality standards
  • 26:33: Tips for finding good talent for the business
  • 27:52: Why being a watchmaker is like being a dentist
  • 28:44: Challenges around dealing with suppliers and how to overcome them
  • 31:54: Creating a brand that survives global and national financial ups and downs
  • 35:06: The importance of staying relevant to the market
  • And more

Find out more about Grant Menzies and Adina

Adina Watches

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If you are a dentist that owns your own practice, you wouldn’t be alone if you had considered adding some cosmetic dental services to your roster. Even if you are running a traditional, general practice, the idea of those high-value cosmetic patients is tempting.

However, it is important to know that opening a cosmetic dental practice or expanding your existing services isn’t the same as adding a new service to your general dentistry roster. Patients seeking out cosmetic dentistry are a different breed. The procedures they’re interested in are elective, often quite pricey, and aspirational in nature.

While cosmetic dentistry can be quite lucrative, it is important to understand the differences from general practice. These are 3 differences to the inner workings of cosmetic dentistry.

1) It starts with the right patients.

Possibly the hardest part to get right about cosmetic dentistry isn’t the technical side, but the patient you’re treating. People come to cosmetic dentists with expectations which can often be unrealistic – whether the treatment they want is completely fictional or the outcome they desire is unrealistic.

One of the major pitfalls that cosmetic dentists can stumble into is starting treatment with a patient and then realising that no matter what they do, the patient is going to be unhappy. Just as with other cosmetic procedures, some patients are hoping to fix more than just their teeth, but their perception of themselves.

It is important to have a good relationship and mutual respect with each patient before starting treatment. Throughout the whole journey, communication is critical. During your initial consultation, it is important to talk about what they want, and why they want it.

2) Setting and managing expectations throughout the journey is crucial.

A lot of general treatments are often relatively short appointments whereas cosmetic patients will likely take a much longer journey with you. Therefore, pre-framing expectations ahead of time is even more important with cosmetic patients than general dentistry patients.

For example, with veneers, the first time they see the mock-up of the design, it’s very exciting. Preparing the teeth is not as exciting for the patient. Then what might be surprising to most people is that when you fit the teeth that are also not as exciting. They’re numb. The mouth feels strange. They don’t look like the mock-up because their lips aren’t moving.

Remember that cosmetic patients come with expectations and sometimes immediately after a procedure, if a patient doesn’t look the way they’ve imagined, they will begin to feel remorse. Managing these feelings is key to ensuring a satisfied patient outcome, but this can be very difficult.

The best way to do this is to prep them prior to the appointment. You can let them know how they’re going to feel both physically and emotionally. You can say, “Hey, you will likely feel these emotions after the procedure, but they will wear off as you settle into your new teeth.”

This lets them prepare themselves so they know what they’re feeling is normal so they won’t feel as much shock. Then at the three-week check-up, you will find that all of these feelings have subsided and they’re satisfied with their veneers.

3) Presenting your case and overcoming objections.

In general dentistry, selling a service can often be an uphill battle. Most patients don’t stroll into a dental office hoping to be told they need a root canal or that it’s time to extract their wisdom teeth. Most general dentistry patients want to be told they don’t need any further treatment than their regular cleaning.

Cosmetic dentistry patients are seeking you out specifically for elective treatment, which means you will be handling different objections. Usually, their biggest questions are, “Is it going to look like what I hope it will?” and, “Can I afford this?”

Digitisation of cosmetic procedures can really help us tackle these questions. By using a digital workflow, we can begin to guarantee a specific outcome. Patients can see mock-ups of photos of what their smile will look like after the treatment and we can consistently deliver on those promises.

The Three C’s To Becoming a Good Cosmetic Dentist

If you are thinking about integrating a cosmetic aspect into your practice or launching an entire cosmetic dental practice, you’ll want to make sure you know these three secrets:

1) Confidence
2) Case selection
3) Competency

The confidence comes from mastering the digital workflow so you can be confident in achieving a specific endpoint before you start.

For case selection, it’s important to know that there’s no need to jump into the deep end. You don’t need to take the hardest case if you don’t feel confident in delivering a good outcome.

Competency comes with practice. The more we do it, the better we become. No one’s first set of veneers is going to be as good as their 100th set. That’s just the way things work. But by choosing the right cases and having a little bit of confidence assisted with a digital workflow, you can begin to practice and improve your outcomes so that you can offer consistent service to each patient.

Final Words…

Cosmetic dentistry offers a variety of new skills to tackle from the technical skills to the patient experience. You need to ensure that you have really good communication skills and know how to support a patient throughout the entire process. You also need to know the processes inside and out. With digitisation, it is now possible to have repeatable and predictable outcomes.

Cosmetic dentistry is a growing market. If this is a market where you wish to succeed, there is definitely an opportunity.

    

 

Dr Luke Cronin runs an exclusive cosmetic dentistry clinic in Sydney. In this episode, we discuss building a niche dental clinic that focuses exclusively on cosmetic dentistry and attracts high-end clients. If you’re thinking about incorporating high-end cosmetic services into your practice, Luke shares his tips and techniques, such and digital workflows, communication standards and more.

Dr Cronin has a specific interest in cosmetic smile design, digital workflows, porcelain veneers and clear aligner therapy. Luke’s passion for balanced, natural looking smiles has attracted models, actors, fitness personalities worldwide.

As an early adopter of the latest technology and dental techniques, Dr Cronin plans, designs and delivers ideal outcomes coupled with a more efficient, predictable and comfortable patient experience.

Dr Cronin is regularly featured as the leading cosmetic dentists in his regular segments on television and publications such as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, GQ, Cosmopolitan, and Marie-Claire. Luke has a significant following on social media that allows him to regularly connect with his international client base.

In this episode, we discuss:

  • 04:48: Lessons in building a cosmetic practice
  • 06:14: Mastering digital workflows for better and predictable patient outcomes
  • 09:49: Using publicity and the power of editorial pieces to market a new practice
  • 12:51: Things to consider when adding cosmetic services to a traditional practice
  • 15:30: Common pitfalls to avoid when starting out in cosmetic dentistry services
  • 19:21: Keys to selecting the best patients for cosmetic services
  • 20:35: Tips for better communication and managing patient expectations
  • 25:20: Case presentation and case acceptance tips in cosmetic dentistry
  • 27:54: The things you need to succeed in cosmetic dentistry
  • And more

Find out more about Dr Luke Cronin

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