Episode 171 – Snow Day! Do You Have a Plan When the Weather Shuts You Down?

“The team can be productive. There are things they can catch up on.” ~Dr. Chad Johnson

What do you do when you have an unexpected closure of your dental practice? 

Well that happened for Dr. Chad this week when a snowstorm shut down his office. 

There are a lot of things happening at once: schools are closed, kids are home for the day, patients can’t make it into the office, staff can’t make it into the office…but wait, some staff can make it in. Whatever the situation, the domino effect of a snow day is real. 

So what do you do? What does your team do? Do you write the day off as a loss? Do your patients know what the plan is? What do you do with the day you unexpectedly have on your hands?

We love to make your lives easier! So join Dr. Chad today for a live, real-time Everyday Practices Dental Podcast conversation on what to ask yourself as a business owner and some practical thoughts on how to make the most of a “snow day” in your dental practice, including:

• Do you have a plan for your team? Do they know if they’re working, making calls, staying at home, or…..?
• Communicating with patients – do you have a plan?
• You have a whole day on your hands. How do you make the most of it?

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Chad Johnson 1:56
Hello, everyday practices, dental podcast listeners, it’s a good morning in February in Iowa, and today is a snow day. So it’s Thursday, it’s 6am. And I’m recording a monologue podcast, Regan, my co host is having fun with her family somewhere warm in an undisclosed location. I’ll save that for her. But I wanted to record an idea about snow day. So this is just some thoughts. It’s kind of a northern thing. You know, states down like Texas and stuff like that Florida. There. They don’t often have things like this. But it’s kind of a northern thing to have a snow day where at five or six in the morning, your school district sends off a message and says that it’s it’s a snow day, meaning that they’re closed for the day due to weather related issues. Sometimes it’s busing issues with schools. It’s ice snow, ice can be even worse. So Missouri kind of gets hit with ice, for example, Kansas and stuff like that, where it’s not necessarily snow, but it’s freezing rain and stuff like that. And with the hills in Missouri, they just can’t even run the buses. On the country roads especially so yeah, I kind of wanted to talk about a few different spheres of a snow day. So first thing I was finishing my swim workout on this morning. And I noticed when I got to the locker room that my phone was full of text messages. And the first thing is kudos to my team, because my office manager, the hygienists and assistants were already in reality of, you know, in a lot of them. I mean, they’re moms and they’re just like, Okay, how do we do this? Within our office, we we go by the school district. And so one of the things one of my suggestions, not that you have to do this is if the school district in your area closes, then just let that be your announcement. The cool thing about that is having been a school board member, I know that they’re up at midnight, or at 3am, or 6am, or all three, and they’re discussing the closure or not or a delayed opening, an early closure, stuff like that. And so the superintendent, the school board members, everything like that they’re being very judicious about their resources. And my second thought is if the school district is closing, that means that mums are going to have kids at home. So this is just a practical level. If moms are going to have kids at home, then they’re not going to be able to come in to their dental appointment sometimes now. That can be mean a dads you know are at home as well. And so you know any kind of parent thing and also people working from home post COVID That can be an issue, you know, with kids working at home, okay, well, you know, I’ve got to go pick up lunch or I’ve got to take kids to this And that, which is weird that life goes on, in spite of the fact that that the office might be closed or the school district might be closed, but they might have had a doctor’s appointment and their doctor’s office is staying open, just stuff like that, who knows, they need to go pick up socks from Walmart. So there’s a lot of pride practical things going on. But if my employees that are parents are not going to be able to make it into work, and the patients aren’t going to be able to make it into work, then it’s just a natural day to you know, close. Now that said, I also let my employees go in and make phone calls. So they can be productive, they can go in and clean. There are things to do that they can catch up on, if it’s 3d printing, if it’s sending stuff off for a surgical guide for a dental implant, stuff like that. But keep in mind that you’ve got employees wanting to, to figure out what they’re going to do with their kids. And my suggestion is, you know, close with the school district, and then offer them you know, if they want to work cool, a lot of dental offices are closed on Friday. So today’s a Thursday, we’re closed. Today due to weather, we’re trying to see an offer to patients, if they’re interested that we could, you know, open tomorrow because everything should be cleared off for us tomorrow. worst weather is when there’s you know, a couple or, or three days, God forbid, of snow closure and stuff like that. So, just a few things to think about. And so I wanted to talk about a few different spheres. Number one personal, I thought it was really cool that my office already had something in motion, they’re posting stuff on Facebook, for our private group of employees, they’re posting it on our public forum for Facebook for, for patients to see in the community to see. And then also, we’re making phone calls and trying to offer at least if they’re interested in moving their appointment to tomorrow. If not, we can schedule it for next week, stuff like that. So one of the things then is, you know, like the employees will write and say, Well, what should we do, you know, like, if if they needed hours, you know, there’s some employees that are more dependent on those hours than others. And so you know, being able to have some odds and ends, things that they can get done. And catching up. I mean, how many people when you look at your stats, whether it’s from dental, Intel, or practice by the numbers, those kinds of things are looking and figuring out, okay, we’ve, we’ve got 300, unscheduled active patients, meaning in the last 18 months, they’ve come in, but they don’t have an appointment right now, let’s call those people unscheduled treatment. Those are the kinds of things that man they could call all day, you know, during a busy normal day, there’s no time to do that, well, now’s the time to do that. So they can do those kinds of things, what else, what else is kind of cool is they’re going to have better odds at getting a hold of those people. Personally, what I liked, and I’ll get back to this, that this was a different sphere, of the matter of a snow day, is that I was finishing my workout and I already got in my workout. This can be difficult in mid day with three kids home today, for example, for me, and but now that I’ve got my workout out of the way, and I’m able just to come home, I saw that we were closed, and that my office had naturally taken care of that because they know the protocol. So that’s cool. But that I can spend time with my family. So there’s the home related issue and personal related issue or spheres of looking at this. And you know, the personal is kind of like egocentric, you know, getting my workout and you know, going back to bed, you know, or something like that. And then the other issue is home related, which is more of a sociological, interpersonal kind of thing, where, you know, now I get to focus more on spending time with my family, it’s again, it’s six in the morning. So they are the alarms are shut off, they get asleep in and I get to record this for your benefit. Hopefully this can matter to you for stuff that you’re thinking through. And then we also also talked about this sphere of the work related matters, you know, like, what about people getting scheduled? I hope these are great thoughts for you, is just some off the cuff thoughts about the different ways that you have to think about it. I’m also like, in an even a spiritual sense, going to spend a little bit more quiet time this morning. And that could be meditative, praying, reading kind of stuff. So you know, whatever, journaling, whatever works well for you. Do you have any questions? Any comments if this is on the Facebook forum, by all means post questions below and let’s discuss it. Reagan. I hope you had a great time with the family this last week doing your thing and Due to the listeners that are ever enjoying a snow day, because your work is closed, remember, this is going to be a great day to work on Excel files and weird, boring accounting things that normally you put off that you could catch up on any presentations in the community, making connections with people, maybe even if it’s possible to, you know, go to lunch, for example, last week, we had another day, that was an unanticipated free day free lunch for me. And I actually my dad is kind of Walker slash wheelchair bound. So I went and picked him up and took him to a local fish truck that occasionally goes by and I saw they posted that, you know, they’re having a fish truck day across town. So we went and did that. And he could sit in the car and just eat with me. And so that got him out of the house. My mom was happy about that, too. So make some connections. Hope you have a great day. And if this is a snow day for you, and you happen to listen to this because it was pertinent, even if it was a couple years down the road. I hope that was beneficial to you. Do you have any thoughts? Any questions? post it below. Have a good rest of day, snow day.

Regan 11:14
Thank you for listening to another episode of Everyday Practices Podcast. Chad and I are here every week. Thanks to our community of listeners just like you and we’d love your help. It would mean the world if you can help spread the word by sharing this episode with a fellow dentist and leave us a review on iTunes or Spotify. Do you have an extraordinary story you’d like to share? Or feedback on how we can make this podcast even more awesome. Drop us an email at podcast@productivedentist.com And don’t forget to check out our other podcasts from Productive Dentist Academy at productivedentist.com/podcasts See you next week.