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Welcome to the Shared Practices Podcast

NAVIGATING THE PATH TO SUCCESSFUL PRACTICE OWNERSHIP

Apr 26, 2019

How did George become the #1 rated dentist in his corner of the valley?  Swell CX.  That's how.  They have perfected the art of asking for patient reviews so your team doesn't have to.  Swell CX is a third the price of competitors that rhyme with Rhodium but still gets all the reviews you need to attract YouTubers who trust Google Reviews from across Phoenix Valley.  Don't know what I'm talking about?  Listen to this episode and then just go to Swell$99 startup fee?  Nope.  Not for Shared Practices Listeners.  And we got you a lower monthly fee too.  You're welcome.  Now go sign up: https://demo.swellcx.com/sharedpractices/


Show Summary

Scheduling, production, metrics, growth trajectory and the multiplier effect. In only 8 months of practice Dr. George Hariri has learned both what to do and what not to do.  Ownership is messy, but when you run your own practice, how can you predict your production next month based on this month's numbers? George shares how he uses Practice by Numbers to see what's coming and adjust his strategy months before a dip in collections. We then talk about how to pick up new patients, how to hand off and outsource marketing and the service we use which provided George’s practice with the most Google reviews in a 50 mile radius of his office in Phoenix.

 

Show Guest | Dr. George Hariri

Dr. George Hariri is the long missed co-host of the Shared Practices Podcast and we loved having him back after some podcasting paternity leave.  Dr. Hariri graduated in 2018 from Midwestern University-AZ and immediately jumped feet first into practice ownership.  He likes big practices and acquisitions and a good round of March Madness. He has been helping other doctors evaluate practices for purchase since D2 year of dental school and loves to contribute.  But whatever you do, don't go do a startup after he gives you acquisition advice.  He might take it personally... just sayin.

Biggest Takeaways

  • George and how he uses scheduling and metrics to grow his practice
  • Using your metrics to predict your business on a monthly basis
  • Comparing metrics based on scheduling from month to month for growth trajectory
  • The bold moves George did to get new patients in his practice
  • Income and expenses equals your taxable income
  • Using income to further your dental practice has a better ROI than paying down student loans
  • Phase I and phase II of George’s dental practice and his beliefs in having associates and growth with associates

Show Questions

  1. How are ways a practice can achieve new client growth?
  2. What types of goals should I make for my practice?
  3. How can I evaluate my dental practice in a meaningful way?
  4. Where should I reinvest the profit I make from my practice?
  5. Which services should you keep in-house and which services should you outsource in your practice?
  6. What changes can you make to have a bigger ROI on your marketing expenditures?
  7. What tools can I use to accurately measure growth in my practice?

 

Links Mentioned in the Show

Blue Sky Bio -  Download the revolutionary free implant planning software

Find out more about discount on pair Q-Optics loupes Email: SP16 to sales@q-optics.com

Dan Johnson - Lucent Spot

Jayme Amos - Ideal Practices

Tiger Safarov - Zen Supplies 

Vivek Kinra - Unlock the PPO

Show Quotes

“At first it was kind of like this fairy tale, all of my recall exams were super productive, my seller's productive, we're riding this whole wave.  Now you just have to think about Okay, well, how am I going to build sustainability to it so that we're built to last?”

George

 

“For me confidence is kind of a theme in all these episodes, for me it is super important. I need to feel confident and without it, I'm kinda a wreck. I mean, I hate to say it, but I really rely on my confidence a lot. So for me, the way I get confidence is understanding what's going on with metrics, numbers, and just a thorough understanding of why things are happening and what's going to happen in the future.”

George

 

Richard: “I don't think everyone has a strong sense of what is going to happen in their practice next month.”

George: “I'm so used to knowing what's going to happen next month, that's why I'm not nervous; because I've seen the trends.”

 

“I know about how much [work] we do same-day, so we can just throw that on top...and then I know about how much we scheduled for the rest of the month during the month. At the beginning of the month, I'm pretty much certain [of what we're going to produce] within five to ten percent, I know what we're going to do.”

George

 

“Based on how many exams do, how much are you like, look at all those metrics. And then you can start seeing trends.

“Picking up your new patient flow is something that takes quite a while, I'm going to get 80 new patients next month. I'm going to create a plan and follow through with it over the next six months, where in six months, we'll see 80 new patients. So I think for me, I thought it was a little bit more automatic, the new patient flow.”

George

 

“I always feel like there's this artificial period ‘new ownership honeymoon’, where you're diagnosing all these things differently than the seller. Your numbers should reflect that if you're having the ability and the confidence to convert it. Then, during that time, you need to be working on how are you going to make it built to last with a marketing plan, to get in a sustainable level of new patient flow that's going to sustain you.”

George

 

“Marketing and growing [your practice] is an inevitable thing that you can't just rely on the existing patient base.”

Richard

 

“You have revenue from two different areas, patient flow and your hygiene revenue. Your production and diagnosis very much fuels that two thirds to 75% of your production.”

George

 

“February was actually a really good new patient month for us, but that just hasn't rolled into [the current metrics] so I had a couple months of a head start on fixing the problem because I saw a very early [trend] and that is directly due to my ability to understand the metrics.”

George

 

“I wanted Google reviews to be automated, I don't want to worry about them. I want to get a great reputation. I don't want to go over the top to treat people well in our office to get reviews and create that fee for service experience.”

George

 

“I think our team our culture is very fun and sometimes an uptight customer service attitude doesn't allow for fun. In our office, we're always laughing, we're always having fun and that's really big. That's super important for us.”

George

 

“It's all of those things are extra thing that everybody has to do, right? I don't want to buy all these towels and give them to all these patients and do this whole thing that everyone talks about. I just want to be a dentist.”

George

 

“With Swell, we've been able to get the online reviews and reputation, have an office that does all of those things without doing any of those things nice. For me, that was the big thing. I want to have the reputation that we’re the best. We have the most Google reviews in our area.”

George

 

“She came all the way to our office, because she said we had the most written reviews. That's not just five stars with our name, it’s about 75 to 80 percent of our reviews have a little paragraph about us and that just makes you feel nice as a dentist.”

George

 

“I draw a line somewhere [with self-marketing] and what I'm willing to do, and right now we don't need to do that -  I just don't want to, I just want to give somebody money and get patients”

George

 

“[Marketing is] a whole process which needs to be synergistic. And I think that's where you really get the results when five or six different things you're doing in marketing all work together, and you do it for a sustainable period of time. It takes a while, you need to build momentum.”

George

 

“I'm not losing money, that's for sure. I'm not maximizing profits right now, I feel like you maximize profits when you're done growing and we're not done growing.”

George

 

“The multiplier is a very impactful thing, that when you have a group practice, you have the ability to make small changes and see large effects.”

George

 

“You’ve got to have multiple providers come in and associate, maybe one day get another specialist or somebody come in and do other procedures. You kind of have to, that's what I want.”

George

 

“I genuinely feel like we're building something that is sustainable and [the practice] will be successful, because of the way it's built, not because of me; that's just our style. That's just going to take a little bit more fixed costs up front and growing past that.”

George

 

“I think you need to think of things in your career, especially early on when there's a lot of change here in residency, you have an associateship, you're an owner, it's a lot of change for a three year span. Maybe your dental student, immediate owner, that’s a big change. As a new owner, you're not going to make as much because there's just all kinds of things happening to you.”

George

 

“That's what I feel like metrics really provide me is the ability to objectively look at it and figure out what are the maybe six most important things that we need to be doing, and rank them in order. I feel like that is a very valuable thing that most dentists don't have.”

George

 

“You always feel things two to three months later, is when you start feeling the positives and negatives.”

George

 

“You have to be willing to do what it takes to build what you want and for us, it's the trial and error. Like, yeah, I know that other people do things and some things work for other people.”

George

 

“And you just have to try stuff and if it works, it works; and if it doesn't, that's fine. You're going to make mistakes. I've made so many mistakes and I'm talking about them.”

George

 

“I feel like my biggest advice to people is to really take a hard look at your practice and realize what are my five biggest problems and prioritize them one through five and tackle them in that order and that'll get you so far.”

George

 

“Everybody is on their own journey and if you're doing a startup and you're not seeing the level of new patients that you want your journey is just a little bit slower than somebody else's, that doesn't mean you're doing poorly.”

George

 

“Have confidence that you're doing a good job and put your head down, focus on your own stuff and figure out what you need to do next and do it.”

George

 

“We are about half of a hygienist overstaffed right now because of our openings. We can add a half hygienist without hiring any more hygienists: it’s a multifactorial thing. You don't get the production from the hygiene appointment, you get the added expense. You also don't get the doctor production. Let's just say 20% of our hygiene capacity is not being used and that's 20% of restorative capacity that we're not getting. It's a very proportional relationship.”

George

 

“What is a sustainable? I think we're looking for sustainability now. What is something that can be repeated? Our seller was  not sustainable.”

George

 

“I think the fastest way to grow is to get yourself in a super uncomfortable situation. Discomfort leads to growth and so I think a great thing to do is look at yourself, what makes me uncomfortable and do that thing, and then you'll grow.”

George