Blog - Page 29 of 55 - Dr Jesse Green

If you own a dental practice, you probably have a similar dream to me. You want your dental practice to be successful – to the point where it can function without your constant input so you can go on vacation, spend some time with the family, and maybe even retire early one day.

However, often I find that the dentists that I talk to struggle to step away from the practice. When you are a business owner, it can be easy to feel like something constantly needs your attention. But the good news is that it doesn’t have to be like this.

There are three keys that can help you create a stable business. One you can take time away from and even turn around and sell for a tidy profit.

The three keys to creating an independent, stable dental practice are:

1) Financial clarity

2) Investing in a team of rock stars

3) Marketing with an eye toward retention

Let’s talk about each of these keys in a little more detail.

Financial clarity is about cash flow.

‘Profits’ is often the big buzzword dental practice owners will hear or think about when it comes to the financial success of their practice. But often, financial clarity can be summed up a little more simply.

Cash.

What’s it like in the bank? How did we get it? Can I take it out? Can I put it away? Should I invest it?

There are all sorts of questions around cash that can give you fast, helpful insight into the financial picture of your practice. Tracking cash and your awareness of how much you have, what’s coming in, and what’s coming out is going to offer so much insight. The business needs to make money and profitability is important, but cash is the oxygen of the business.

Buying another business, making an investment, hiring a new associate — all of these things might equal profits in the long run, but they can also result in a situation where you have tied up a lot of your cash, but there isn’t money flowing back to you yet. Businesses don’t die because there isn’t profit. Businesses die because there isn’t cash flow and the oxygen has stopped running to the heart, the lungs, and the brain of the business.

Setting yourself up with an expert in this are can really help you understand where your cash is coming from and where it is going. Creating the space to pay your bills, pay your taxes, and pay yourself without overdrawing your cash flow is imperative to creating a stable business.

Making an investment in a superstar team.

Figuring out the right staffing with a rock star team at the right compensation can be come a huge headache. There are so many variables to consider. How should I pay them? What should overtime be? Who’s a key person at the firm? Who do I really need?

One great way to start to get a handle on this is to go back to basics. Get yourself a piece of paper or open an Excel spreadsheet and write everyone’s name down their corresponding salaries. And then go through the list. Who is good? Who struggles? What is the value for the expense?

You will likely find that your staff begins to fall into different categories. You will likely have a few invaluable superstars, a few solid employees, and then maybe even one employee that struggle to match the rest in technical skills or fitting in with the office culture.

Managing different people on the team can take on different forms. When there is an employee that isn’t providing value, you might invest in additional training, decide to led the employee go, or the employee might quit. Often what happens is that the value provided by a superstar employee that’s very qualified justifies the added expense. Instead of attempting to train a struggling employee that makes $20 an hour, often with the right vision, hiring a future superstar employee at $27 an hour can work out better. When you break down the cost, it might only mean doing one more implant a month to cover the additional cost, but the value you see will pay off in spades.

Rather than seeing new superstar hires as an expense, we can learn to see them as an investment in culture, productivity, technical skills, and so forth.

Create a space for marketing with an eye toward retention.

The Internet and social media have changed the game. It’s no longer about taking out a few referring doctors for lunch. It’s about creating a holistic marketing plan that is more than just hiring a marketer and setting them loose.

My favourite question to ask people when I talk about marketing is, “How big would your practice be if you had kept every single patient that every walked through the door?” It usually raises an eyebrow.

The point I’m trying to make is that marketing without a retention strategy is like trying to fill up a cup when there’s a hole at the bottom. Creating an allocation within your budget for marketing and retention are keys to ensure that the business you create is one with high-earning lifetime patients that return to you again and again (and refer their friends and family).

When you know the value of a patient, the cost of winning a new patient, and your investment in your marketing, you can begin to ensure you are allocating your marketing budget effectively.

Final Words…

Now we’ve got our cash flow sorted. We’ve got a team that’s working harmoniously and productively. We’ve got marketing that’s going well that focuses on recruitment of new patients and retention of existing patients.

Once you get this right, you’ll find financial peace of mind. You’ll likely have more money in the bank. This is a great way to step away from hectic space where you are constantly investing your own time and labour without seeing any concrete return.

A dental practice that hits these three keys suddenly becomes more valuable to investors, but it’s important to view this as a journey. It won’t be something you can nail overnight, but if you become intentional with it, your practice could be valued much more.

In this episode, I’m joined by money strategist Justin Krane to share his insights around cash flow, ROI metrics and more.

Justin Krane’s mission is to help business owners understand the money side of their business. He teaches entrepreneurs how to be strategic with their business money so that they can grow.

Justin isn’t about cutting back and living a frugal life. Justin is all about getting the shoes, doing sushi, and living the best life today – while saving for the future.

He has been featured in CBS, Fox Business News, and MSNBC.

In this episode, we discuss:

5:30: Why you need to have financial clarity and what that looks like
6:40: Why cash and cash flow are more important than profit
8:48: Where time is best spent when managing cash flow
11:36: Managing strategic investments in your practice
14:15: Looking at your marketing as an investment (and tracking ROIs)
20:34: Understanding the numbers in relation to your team
26:34: The effect on the practice when you manage your cash flow well
28:54: How prosperity thinking can help you achieve financial freedom
31:06: Preparing your exit strategy
38:44: Tips for advancing your financial security
And more

Find out more about Justin Krane

http://www.cashflowgift.com/

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Identifying and managing risk is something every business should do at least once every six months. Identifying risks is a moving goalpost that changes as the marketplace changes, patient health demographics change, new regulations pass, and new competition moves in down the street.

Carving out some time twice a year to sit down and target the top five or six risks your business might be facing down the road not only puts the control back into your hands, but makes your business more stable and valuable. When it comes to risk, I like to think about creating value in terms of earnings and multiples. If you want to create value in your business, you will either want to increase the earnings or increase the multiple. One of the best ways to increase the multiple of any business is to ‘de-risk’ it – ultimately making it more valuable.

There is a structure you can use to help you anticipate and mitigate risks. In addition to this, learning how to handle the inevitable events that will come out of left field from time to time is key to ensuring your business can survive virtually anything.

Identify Risk With These Two Questions

Often, the events that will catch us unawares are those we don’t see coming. When I want to identify risk with my dental practice, the first question I ask myself is, “What don’t I see?”

Our vulnerabilities are found in spots where we’ve made assumptions whether that’s from values we hold close, unchallenged thought processes, habits, unconscious biases, or anything else that might unconsciously guide the way we do business. You can stop here and make a list of the top five or six risks you think might be in this area.

The next question to ask yourself if you want to identify risk is, “If I was my competitor, what would I do to trip myself up?” In other words, if I was going to launch a dental practice across the street tomorrow, what would I do to beat the competition? How would I approach that? How would I compete?

I find that when I ask myself this, very quickly I start to see a picture that draws out the ugly bits, the unattractive parts of the business – and that’s where risk is.

These two questions – ‘what don’t I see?’ and ‘how would I compete with myself?’ – are designed to identify risks. You will likely find you have potential risks in a number of categories like personal risk, debt or leverage risks, legal risks, risks around competition and loss of business, risk of fraudulent activity, regulatory risks, and more.

Quantify Risks With A Risk Matrix

Now once we’ve established what our risks might be, it’s important to quantify them so we know which ones to target immediately and which ones are less urgent.

To do this, I use a risk matrix to plot the risks. The most important thing to determine is, “What’s the likelihood of that particular outcome? Is it likely or unlikely?”

You can also determine the cost associated with each risk. Should this happen, how much will it cost me? And when thinking of costs, you don’t just want to consider monetary risk, but other kinds of costs as well. It might be a time risk, a reputation or brand risk, or something else.

Finally, I will determine the degree of control I have over each risk. Is this something I can control or manage?

When I have the answers to these questions for each risk, I plot them on a risk matrix. Here you can determine the severity of each risk from severe to insignificant.

Once you’ve done all this work, congratulate yourself. You now have the clues you need to focus your energy and use risk mitigation strategies to reduce the cost of risk, reduce the likelihood of risk, and overall make your business a more stable, profitable enterprise.

Of course, it is important to keep in mind your tolerance for risk. If there is something that is going to keep you up at night with worry, it needs to be addressed. Everyone will have different thresholds for determining what is an acceptable risk versus what is an unacceptable risk. You need to figure out, “Can I live with the downside?”

“It’s really easy for you to feel knocked off your course. It doesn’t mean that you’re weak in any way. It just means that you’re human.” – Dr Jesse Green

Not All Risks Can Be Predicted

Sometimes, no matter what risk mitigation you have in place, something will knock you off course. Even the best laid plains of mice and men will go astray. Unfortunately, unless you have a glass ball, no one can predict the future or everything that might come your way.

However, being hit with an unexpected situation isn’t what matters. What matters is how you handle it. If this happens to you, don’t react from a place of emotion, seek outside counsel, and then make a decisive choice. Being thoughtful about your reaction to a negative situation can make all the difference.

When something happens to your business, it can be quite stressful. Make sure you are taking the time you need for self-care, whether that’s eating well, going to the gym, or making time to unwind with the family.

Final Words…

This is a very brief overview of risk identification and mitigation. Identifying potential risks, plotting them on a risk matrix, and then taking steps to reduce their impact is to safeguarding your business for the future. Good risk analysis and the right mitigation strategies are important for every business.

Today I’m having a conversation with you about a topic that I think is really overlooked in running a dental practice: identifying and managing risk.

So in today’s conversation, we’re going to be giving you some structure for identifying and managing risks in your own practice.

In addition to that, we’ll be talking about how to manage those unexpected events that come out of left field – the things you haven’t prepared for. I share with you my tips and strategies for how how to handle things when they do go wrong.

In this episode, we discuss:

2:13: The two key questions you need to ask yourself to identify risk in your practice
3:33: A structured way to quantify and then reduce your risks using a risk matrix
6:11: Tips for evaluating opportunities that come your way
7:24: My suggestions for managing unforeseen events
And more.

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A personal brand can do amazing things for a dentist. It can help attract and retain patients and it can bring amazing new opportunities to your door. It helps establish you as an authority in your field in your community.

Here are five questions and answers regarding personal branding for dentists.

Question 1: What is a personal brand?

Tom Peters was the first person to nail down the term ‘personal branding’. He defined it as a promise of the value you’ll receive. Since then, many people have weighed in on the topic. Jeff Bezos famously said, “Your brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room.”

But what both definitions come down to is a personal brand. It is simply when you are known for knowing or doing something.

It’s not about fame. You won’t walk through an airport and be asked for your autograph. It’s not about follower count on social media. It comes down to being well known, respected, and trusted for the expertise you already have, the expertise you share. People will listen to what you have to say. You can more easily create change in your community. And you can do that because your personal brand shows that you’re likeable, trusted, and respected.

Question 2: Why do dentists need a personal brand?

If you have a dental practice, you might be thinking, “I don’t need a personal brand. My practice has a brand. It’s not about me. I’m just doing my thing as a dentist.”

But it is important for each dentist to have a personal brand so that customers not only create a connection with your dental practice, but a personal connection with you.

Social media has changed the business landscape. People won’t just go to Google and search for “Dentist + location” anymore. They will go to Facebook and crowdsource the answer. “Hey, I’m looking for a new dentist. Does anyone know a good one?” You’ve likely done this as well when considering other services or products.

When this happens it creates a shift. No longer are we just consumers choosing which business to patronise. Now we are buying from people – whether that’s people we know and trust or people our friends and family know and trust.

As a business owner with a personal brand, you can start getting the name of your business in front of people through these kinds of situations. It’s not just about marketing (although that’s important), but making connections.

Question 3: What is the difference between your personal brand and a business brand?

We’ve established what a personal brand is – being known for knowing or doing something. A business brand is like the umbrella that shelters all of the personal brands for your dental business.

This might mean finding commonalities between your personal brand and the personal brands of the other dentists in the practice. That might be innovation, cosmetic work, technical excellence, or maybe your practice caters to the unique needs of children.

Even if your dental practice only has one dentist, you can still market the personal brands of those around you. Tapping into the knowledge bank of your support staff is a great way to make your entire practice familiar to your patients before they ever step in the front door.

We are constantly bombarded with messages, new information, and choices at every moment. In a world where the best new service or product might just be one Amazon review away, consumers are less loyal than ever. And dental practices sometimes feel like coffee shops with one on every block.

Question 4: How can one dentist or one dental practice stand out in the cacophony?

Trust.

Trust is so supremely important in every facet of a dental practice.

As dentists we often forget the leap of trust we ask from our patients within moments of meeting them. We ask them to trust us with their private health information. We ask them to trust us to touch their mouths and to consult on the best treatments to reach or maintain oral health. We ask them to trust us with their personal and financial information.

When you can find those moments to connect with your patients on a human level, you’re far more likely to retain them.

Creating a personal brand built on trust and authenticity is a great way to help ease this transition for new patients. Then once you’ve brought in a new patient, trust is also the glue that will hold them to your practice.

Question 5: How do I build trust?

There are three secrets to building trust and a trustworthy personal brand: authenticity, empathy, and credibility.

The first one is authenticity. You’ve got to be real. This is your chance to be your best self and present a strong sense of identity. You don’t have to be afraid to bring your personality into the mix. After all, a personal brand is about connecting with you.

You can let patients take a peek behind the curtains. Where are you from? What is your background? What’s your story? Are you involved in the community? Tell us about your family. What is your favourite music?

The second key is empathy. Empathy is really offering understanding and compassion to your patients. When you can show that you understand their fear of how much a procedure is going to cost or is going to hurt, you are creating trust. We all like to feel understood. You understand my pain, my frustration, the roadblocks holding me back, why I never floss, my embarrassment. In that empathy, we create a powerful connection.

Finally, the last key is credibility. All of this needs to be backed up by your expertise. You have the knowledge. You’ve done the study. You offer the best care.

When you have authenticity, empathy, and credibility lined up, you’ve set up a strong personal brand that engenders trust.

Final Words…

Personal branding for dentists, even those with their own dental practices, is incredibly important today. Personal brands create opportunities and improve patient retention. Whether your expertise is sought for a class or a seminar or you find that people begin recommending you on social media, people will find you because of your personal brand.

Today, I’m speaking with personal branding expert Jane Anderson.

The ability to market and sell yourself as a dentist has never been more important than now. The rise of experts in their field and access to industry leaders on social platforms has leveled the playing field. For those dentists who wish to stay ahead of the game, they need to be positioned effectively to sustain their practice for the long haul.

With over 20 years experience, Jane Anderson has helped over 20,000 people to build their personal brand. She has worked for personally branded businesses since she was 14 years old and has been featured on Sky Business, The Today Show, The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, BBC & Management Today.

Jane holds one of the top 1% viewed LinkedIn profiles & is the host of the “Jane Anderson Show” Podcast. She was nominated for Telstra Business Women Awards in 2014, 2016 & 2018. She has been voted in the top 30 branding gurus globally and her blog is in the top 25 branding blogs in the world.

The author of 5 books, Jane is also the creator of the Lead Generation Indicator, the world’s first diagnostic for experts to identify marketing gaps in their practice. Her signature program “Expert to Influencer” is renowned amongst industry experts earning over $500k+ and mentors her clients to double their practice within 12 months.

She also trains Business Managers, Business Coaches & Personal Branding Consultants to become Certified ‘Expert to Influencer’ Practitioners.

In this episode, we discuss:

05:43: Why is personal branding important even for dentists
08:48: How to leverage your personal brand
11:29: The relationship between trust, patient retention and personal branding
14:43: 3 key factors to help you build trust
17:53: How many touch points it currently takes to build trust and what that might look like in the future
19:37: The power of small and how you can use it to your advantage
22:13: The practical elements of creating a personal brand
26:40: Common personal branding mistakes and how to fix them
29:23: The potential ROI on becoming an influencer
31:10: Reputation management
And more

Find out more about Jane Anderson

Jane Anderson’s website

Take the influencer indicator quiz

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In dentistry, it’s all about the relationship.

A dental practice needs to sit on a strong bedrock of trust between each patient and the dentist. I’ve talked about this before, but dentistry is a very intimate experience. Your patients are letting your put your fingers in their mouth, sometimes just minutes after meeting you for the first time. It is perhaps more important for dental practices than other businesses to ensure a top-notch customer experience.

But people today are realising that we’ve lost something: a personal touch. For many companies, customer service doesn’t even begin to happen until someone has made it through 7 voice menus to finally get on to someone who can’t help.

The thing that I really love about customer service in a small business like a dental practice is that to astound a patient with good customer service isn’t actually that hard. We’re so used to the faceless telecom companies of the world that when you feel like a person instead of a number, it’s suddenly not that big a bar to leap.

When a customer doesn’t expect it warm, personal customer service, it becomes a ‘wow!’ moment because customer service is inherently broken. An easy way to win early on in a relationship with a patient is to offer exceptional customer service. It increases the lifetime value – meaning that your patient becomes more than just an appointment. It’s about the next 15 years, their kids and their friends, and in the long run, a huge amount of money.

But how do you offer customer service with that personal, human touch?

Key #1: Customer service stems from office culture.

Where does the way your front-facing employees interact with patients come from? What is at the heart of your customer service? What drives the interactions your patients have with your practice?

It’s your front house culture.

There are two main factors that affect this: your culture should be designed top-down and you have to hire for culture.

First off: you need to drive this. You can’t expect the right culture to just happen. It stems from the values that you communicate to your team, what you believe, and what drives your practice. And this will be different for each practice. You might be committed to offering affordable dental care to your area or you might be committed to offering specialised products and services and the knowledge that comes with it.

Culture is something you live and breathe. It will inform the way you respond to patients, handle problems, and even schedule appointments.

We discussed the performance/culture matrix in last week’s blog post, but hiring for culture is also extremely important. Some of the hardest employees to deal with are the ones with bulletproof technical abilities but that aren’t quite the right culture fit for one reason or another.

If the choice is between someone well experience but likely a poor culture fit and someone a little more junior but has the right cultural attitude, the second candidate will likely be much more successful in the long run. Hiring for the right cultural fit and investing the time into training ensures that your employees will have the hard and soft skills required to delight customers again and again.

Key #2: Turn patients into brand advocates by finding opportunity in disappointments.

Many companies have ‘brand ambassadors’ – that is, employees that are enthusiastic about the company and its products. Even a step further is when your patients begin advocating for your business as well.

Now everyone knows the power of word of mouth, but when you have super fans that take any chance to sing your praises, you’re setting yourself up well for the future. But when you think about advocacy, while people will talk about the services, they actually talk about the customer service and relationships a lot more. It can be hard to measure, but when you have patients that, when they are asked about dentists, immediately say, “Use this person,” you are in a good spot.

Of course, no one wants a patient to have a poor experience at your dental practice. But instead of dreading the occasion, embrace it. These are often the best opportunities to turn patients into super fans.

Look at it like this: if you don’t have an issue, your contact with a dental practice or any company is fairly generic. It’s when you have a challenge and someone solves it to your liking, that is when magic happens. It’s the Law of Reciprocation. This dental practice helped you out of a bad situation, you feel indebted, and now you talk about the company and spread the good word.

It comes down to this: solving a real problem often requires a human touch. You might have to get creative to offer the right solution, but this personalisation, this being attentive, being present is key to excellent customer service.

So, if something goes wrong, embrace the situation instead of avoiding it.

Final Words…

For dental practices that want to adopt a customer service culture that will dominate the experience that customers have at most other companies, it is important to do it thoughtfully. When you are hiring for the right culture and embracing the opportunity to turn unhappy experiences into amazing ones, you are setting yourself up for excellent customer service.

Creating a culture that really loves your patients and looks out for their best interests creates a reciprocal relationship. Your patients will want to see you succeed because they trust you and enjoy their experiences with you.

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

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

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

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

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’m speaking to Matthew Barnett, the founder of Bonjoro. In dentistry, we’re always looking for ways to scale our personal communications. We want to ensure a better patient experience and higher retention rate. But even with automated systems, sometimes the personal touch can get lost.

That’s why I’ve invited Matthew Barnett on the show to discuss ways that dentists can scale their communications without losing that personal touch.

In this episode, we discuss:

3:40: How Bonjoro came to be
5:49: How customers crave genuine personalisation, not automation
8:25: Why small to medium businesses should be focusing on excelling at customer service
9:55: Why you’ll make more revenue and gain more avid fans through better customer service
11:55: How to create a business culture that values exceptional customer service
16:30: The art of scaling communications
19:32: Opportunities to personalise communications in your business
23:24: The future of the communication space

Find out more about Matthew Barnett and Bonjoro

https://bonjoro.com

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To transition from dentist to business owner, we need to be backed by a team. But with teams comes complexity. There are different personalities, desires, and preferences that all need to come together toward a singular goal: the success of the dental practice.

Creating the perfect team is often a trial and error situation. For many business owners, it can take years to create a business culture that nurtures success. However, today on the blog we have a few tips that can help accelerate the process.

The Performance and Culture Matrix

This is a 2×2 matrix that measures performance on the vertical axis and culture on the horizontal axis. The employees in the top right quadrant are the office superstars – they’re the perfect performance and culture fits. They’re great at their job and their personalities fit well into the office culture. These employees are your A-team.

On the bottom right are the B-players. They are already a great culture fit, but they might need a little work on their technical skills. A C-player is on the top left of the matrix making them very technically competent but not a strong culture fit. Finally, D-players are on the bottom left of the matrix and they are neither a good culture nor performance fit.

Often, C-players can be the hardest to handle on a team. They are clearly amazing at what they do, but even though we thought they might also be a great culture fit, it doesn’t quite work out that way.

Recognising which quadrant each of your employees falls into can help you understand where there may be future tension or conflict. For example, B players might have a lot of potential within your business if you can offer continued education, seminars, additional training, mentorships, or whatever it might be that they need to polish their skill set.

You have positions. Not people.

Creating an organisation chart will play a massive role in your hiring strategies. With the right organisation chart, you can create positions and expectations. Then using your chart as a guide, you can fill those positions with the best people. This often works better than trying to change the organisational chart to suit the people within your business already. Using a chart like this serves the business and the greater purpose of your business, which in turn serves your team.

You can think about it this way: on a soccer team you’ve got a goalkeeper, you’ve got a striker, and you’ve got defence players. While the striker is flashy and gets all the credit because he or she scores the goals, without a goalkeeper, you won’t win many games. Each person on a soccer team has their specific role for a reason. When they come together as a whole, it creates a successful team. Putting each player in a position that suits their strengths means each player can contribute to the success of the team and therefore their own success.

Creating an organisational chart can help you define positions so that everyone knows their expectations and can meet them effectively.

Have a deep bench.

Once you have your organisational chart set up and your team in the positions best suited to their strengths, you can start to create a contingency plan. In short, you can create benchwarmers within second charts. These are people that are up and coming through the ranks. They are trained in new positions and can help fill in gaps for other people. When employees go on holiday, go on leave, or transition out of the company, their roles and duties still need to be accomplished. This is when benchwarmers are wonderful.

Sometimes employees will be out of the office unexpectedly so it’s a good idea to have contingency plans in place for who can move into those roles as needed.

Live your core values. They become your business culture.

Going back to the performance and culture matrix for a moment… Culture is one of the keys to building a successful, world-class team. One of the mistakes I often see is that while most dental practices will have a mission statement or a set of core values, they become simply marketing on their business website.

Your core values should be what drive your company culture. It shouldn’t just be a plaque on a wall or a mission statement gathering dust. It can be a living, breathing document that grows and changes as your business and team do. You can get your team involved. What do we do? How do we do it? Why do we do it? What is important to us?

Keep your integrity and lead from the front.

Hold yourself accountable. When you and your team know your direction and your core values, it will help keep your ship afloat during a storm. Everyone knows right from wrong. Everyone knows integrity. As a result, when you know something’s right, you can easily keep going and if there’s something wrong, you can make a change.

This is easiest to do when you lead from the front. As a business owner, it can often become all-too-easy to end up locked away in an office doing paperwork and appear unavailable. However, it is important to stay present in the business. If the garbage bags need to be taken down, you can take them down. (On the flipside, if there’s something only you can do, someone else can fill that role).

Final Words…

Creating a world-class team is perhaps the most important step to creating a world-class business. Dental practices will live and die by the people that work within them. If you aren’t being thoughtful about the people you hire, the culture you cultivate, or the roles you lead, then these decisions will happen without your guidance.

Creating a great team is a little bit science, a little bit art, and completely worth taking the time to master.

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

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

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

Attend a Practice Max Intensive live event

Work with me and my team privately

In this episode, I’m joined by Dr Les Jabbour, owner of Define Dental on the Gold Coast. We discuss his lessons transitioning into dental practice ownership, his tips for building a world class team and more.

Les had his heart set on being a dentist as a child. Les visited Surfers Paradise Dental Centre (as it was known then) as a kid, and was a long term patient of both the original practice owners, Dr Foster and Dr Cowie. He was so inspired by the ethos of the practice, he became a dentist himself.

After graduating with Honours from the University of Queensland in 1995, and gaining valuable experience around South East Queensland, Dr Les Jabbour made his way back to the practice that set him on the road to where he is now. Starting as an associate dentist, and then buying into the practice, Les took over full ownership in 2011. With changes in location and a new vision for the future prompting a re-brand to Define Dental in 2017, Les is on a mission to recreate people’s experience of their dental care so they feel good about seeing the dentist.

He is the proud dad of five beautiful kids, happy husband to Heidi, and inspired advocate for giving back to the Gold Coast community.

In this episode, we discuss:

7:10: How to manage relationships at different levels in the practice
9:13: Having faith in yourself to back yourself during transition to practice ownership
10:56: Unexpected happenings when taking over the practice
14:50: Current organisational structure for his practice
18:24: Tips for managing staff leave through organisational structures
20:19: How to be resilient even when the best laid plans fall through
22:20: How to create a living staff culture
25:25: Tips for hiring staff based on culture fit
27:38: Tips for building a world class team
30:19: How to have a life and a business
37:07: Which metrics to measure and how to understand that data
And more.

Find out more about Dr Les Jabbour

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