When you tell people that you are a dentist, they think "drill and fill." When you think about being a dentist, you not only think about procedures and patients but also staff training, overhead, equipment, schedule, production, and on and on. The list never seems to end.
Curtis Marshall is the vice president of marketing at Dental Intel.That list is what is keeping so many dentists up at night. I have published several e-books for dentists, and I find it interesting that the peak download time for my dental e-books is 1:00 a.m. You are all living the night-owl life. Staying up late worrying, planning, and thinking about your practice.
This is the Naked Dentist. No, I am not a dentist, I am not always naked, nor do my clients practice dentistry naked. I have a powerful analytic tool that strips a dental office of all its clothes, makeup, and accessories to reveal the true problem areas. Once the problem areas are identified, we then tone or (occasionally) perform surgery to achieve lifestyle and financial success that the doctor wants. Here is a story that brings to light how many of you are night owls.
Night-owl effect
Dr. Nebraska is a friend of mine who is growing his practice. In four short years, he has taken his practice from producing $300,000 per year, to more than $1.3 million. All of his peers and family members are telling him how good he is doing, saying, "Dr. Nebraska, you are the top dentist. We wish that we were in your shoes."
There is one problem: His lifestyle and bank account did not reflect all the praise. He is truly excited about what he has done, but he stays up late at night worrying about the future of his practice. Just like you, Dr. Nebraska's "workday" is filled doing dentistry. At night after he has had a bit of family time and kissed his kids goodnight, his "other work" begins.
Dr. Nebraska told me, "I stay up night after night looking at my numbers and wondering what else needs to change to get me turned around. Can I ever start to bring home more money?"
It was finally Dr. Nebraska's wife who called me. She confided that these late nights were starting to take a toll on Dr. Nebraska's health and well-being, and she was starting to get concerned.
Reverse
As we sat down and looked at his numbers together (Dr. Nebraska knew them very well from all of those late nights), he explained how he just couldn't figure out why he couldn't bring home more money. He showed me his production, collections, and new patients. This whole time he had been looking at fixing those three numbers.
So we reversed the process, we started to analyze the practice starting with net profits and worked all the way to production. With more than 400 numbers to put into consideration, we used our proprietary tool to decipher all the factors. This tool showed us a bottleneck happening in accounts receivable and a ton of cash tied up in supplies. Once we discovered this, we came up with a better action plan for ordering supplies and inventory.
Solution
We found that the office manager was ordering too many supplies because of her fear of running out of a specific supply. Instead of tracking what supplies needed to be ordered sooner, she was listening to her account rep and ordering all the supplies.
Having supplies sit on your shelf unused is a waste of your money. Dr. Nebraska started to track inventory, and we also set up a specific shelf in inventory called the "oh s*** shelf." It always has one or two of each supply used in the office. This has several functions:
- When you run out of a supply, you can go to the box.
- You now have an automatic pulse on when to order.
- If a certain product is being used from this shelf consistently, it helps the office manager know the volume of this product needs to be increased and when it is ordered.
Lifestyle
With the analytic tool, Dr. Nebraska is able to quickly uncover all the strengths and flaws within a practice. He now spends only 10 minutes each day to achieve the better results than he was getting by staying up all night trying to crunch his own numbers.
His wife also reported to me that he is now sleeping better than he ever has since dental school. And the best part is, Dr. Nebraska is taking home more money, without having to work any more hours in his office. To see what Dr. Nebraska is now doing with his perfect lifestyle, click here.
Remember
As a dentist, you can live the life you always wanted. No matter your location, debt, staff, or other factors, you don't need to live the night-owl life. First, you must strip down all the fluff and see what areas you need to focus on. You will be amazed at what happens when you make slight changes to areas that truly need to be focused on, rather than what you think or what others tell you needs changing.
Let's get naked together.
Curtis Marshall serves as the vice president of marketing at Dental Intel. If you would like your practice to be in the next Naked Dentist column and have your practice undressed, contact him at [email protected] or 801-380-7070.
The comments and observations expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the opinions of DrBicuspid.com, nor should they be construed as an endorsement or admonishment of any particular idea, vendor, or organization.
