Episode 176 – Tuning Your Dental Team

“Every piano needs tuning. You can have an awesome piano that’s in tune, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to stay in tune. It’s the same with your dental team.” -Dr. Chad Johnson

You’ve worked hard to get your team on the same page. They’re working great together…a well-oiled machine. So how do you make sure that team you spent so much time building and training stays at peak performance?

When asked why he continues to invest in taking his team to education they’ve heard before, our own co-host, Dr. Chad Johnson, said “every piano needs tuning.”

Think about your team for a minute.

Just because they’re good, doesn’t mean they’re done.  Just because you’ve arrived, doesn’t mean you’re finished.

Like any musical instrument, dental teams need care, updating, and calibration so they maintain their excellence.

So what does that look like on a practical level?

Join us today as we unpack the concepts and rationale behind repeated exposure to exceptional training including:

• How industry leaders adapt and evolve
• What happens when you repeat your exposure to education and materials you’ve already walked through
• What you can expect your numbers to do after recalibrating

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Regan 0:00
Hi, Dr. Regan Robertson, CCO of Productive Dentist Academy here and I have a question for you. Are you finding it hard to get your team aligned to your vision, but you know, you deserve growth just like everybody else? That’s why we’ve created the PDA productivity workshop. For nearly 20 years PDA workshops have helped dentists just like you align their teams, get control of scheduling, and create productive practices that they love walking into every day. Just imagine how you will feel when you know your schedule is productive, your systems are humming, and your team is aligned to your vision. It’s simple, but it’s not necessarily easy. We can help visit productivedentist.com/workshop that’s productivedentist.com/workshop to secure your seats now.

Dr. Chad Johnson 0:46
You know, there’s a lot of people that are here, that are trying to, you know, get their team better, but they already have a good team, but it might not be where they wish it were and I said, “Well, it reminds me, I mean, every piano needs a tuning and you can have an awesome piano that’s in tune but just because it’s in tune doesn’t mean that it’s going to stay in tune indefinitely.

Regan 1:12
Welcome to the Everyday Practices Podcast. I’m Regan Robertson, and my co-host Dr. Chad Johnson and I are on a mission to share the stories of everyday dentists who generate extraordinary results using practical proven methods you can take right into your own dental practice. If you’re ready to elevate patient care and produce results that are anything but ordinary, buckle up and listen in.

Regan 1:42
Welcome to another episode of Everyday Practices. I am your host, Regan Robertson, and I’m here today with my co-host, Dr. Chad Johnson, who’s at practice today, how’s it going Chad?

Dr. Chad Johnson 1:53
Great, done for the day, but you know, it was one of those days where it’s just taken a big sigh and a deep breath because we just got off of our workshop a couple of weekends ago with Productive Dentist Academy and the whole team came and so we are fired up and so we’re closing deals. We’ve got a, you know, stuff going. I’m I’m loving it but yeah, there’s a lot of loose ends and stuff like that to be taken care of to make sure that we’re firing on all cylinders.

Regan 2:31
You said to me right before we started this podcast, we’ve only been off the workshop for two weeks now and you’ve already seen an increase in your productivity and scheduling?

Dr. Chad Johnson 2:41
Yes. I’m, I’m not positive. Like, I’d have to look. I mean, I’d hate to stop right now but to know quantitatively what that is, but qualitatively, I feel like we’re about 30% up. Yeah. I mean, like, we’re just hitting the goals that we should be hitting that we weren’t before on some of the stats, you know, and it’s just, it just feels good to be closing the deal and, and having the associates talk stuff over with patients and be thinking, you know, like, “Okay, if I were Dr. Bruce and I were telling this person, how can we be the best you know, how can this mouth be the best that that that it can be?” Here’s what I would do if you were family, you know, that kind of stuff and they might not even be using that diction you know of verbiage, but as you know, the cool thing about Productive Dentist Academy it’s not about scripting so that way we’re robots it’s getting the general idea across.

Regan 3:46
Yeah, absolutely. Good. We got excited together I know at the workshop and we always get fired up the team the PDA team gets fired up, the doctors, the team gets fired up and we wanted to record a couple of podcasts for listeners based on, you know, what we took away and one of those controlling ideas was every piano needs tuning and that’s based on something that you had said at the workshop.

Dr. Chad Johnson 4:12
Well yeah, it just came to mind because so we promote a morning huddle and a secondary issue is if you can’t do it in the morning, fine then do it that the night before or something like that, you know like make it intentional that you’re reviewing the schedule as a mini team or as a full team however you want to keep it quick look stuff over and be intentional about it and Productive Dentist Academy team also has a morning huddle before the workshop. So they’re a morning huddle I was participating in and one of the things that was brought up was you know, there’s a lot of people that are here that are trying to,you know, get their team better, but they already have a good team, but it might not be where they wish it were and I said, “Well, it reminds me, I mean, every piano needs a tuning and you can have an awesome piano that’s in tune but just because it’s in tune doesn’t mean that it’s going to stay in tune indefinitely, you know, the rest of your life. So you have to have someone come out and you know, tune your piano. I don’t even care if it’s every 20 years, or every year, or if you do it four times a year or something like that but you have to have the piano tuned for it to be at its best sound.” So it just, it just reminded me of that it also kind of reminds me of gardening, you know that just because you plant something doesn’t mean you go, “Okay, so I’m good the next 10 years or the 20 years.” It’s like, it doesn’t quite work that way, you have to cultivate your garden, you have to attend to it, you have to, you know, in the same thing with the piano just because it’s tuned, it’s not like, ‘Okay, we have arrived, we’re done learning.” It’s like, well, kinda maybe for a while, but you play that piano and it’s going to get worn out. So at your office, when you’re going at 100% capacity after a while, just like your computer, just like any machine, or anything like that, it starts to kind of needs oil change, and it kind of needs, you know, some new brake fluid and all that stuff like that. So it needs updating, but that doesn’t mean that the vehicle or your garden or the piano is bad, or that you need to trash it. It’s just like, no, it just needs some tending to, so that was my point. I don’t know, it just kind of creatively came to mind that, you know, it’s like a piano being tuned in and it’s okay.

Regan 6:36
Well, it made me go pretty introspective, thinking about what that means because there’s two ways you can take it, I think any so I personally have never met any industry leader that does not have a personal development plan, ways to adapt and continue to educate themselves and then the top performers carry that, that torch of learning, that learning mindset over to the team, but when I thought about being, the piano needs tuning, let’s hop back to my own development and how many times do I go back on my own education. So getting all of the Donald Miller certifications that I have over the last year and a half, I have gone back and back and back and I reread the curriculum that I learned, that I got tested on and certified, but I just keep going back and each time I do what’s really fascinating, is I’ll see something in a new way, or I’m reminded of something that maybe I’ve gone slack on, maybe, you know, maybe I’m skipping a step and framework as I’m working through problems or, you know, maybe there’s something new that I, that wasn’t as important to me then but it’s really relevant now. So just like a piano, it’s still the same thing, but it needs to you need to go back and tighten yourself up again and I like your garden, your garden metaphor, because you can’t just leave it. It’s not like suddenly, in any profession, I don’t think there’s no profession that doesn’t adapt and evolve over time. So you always have to have your eye on continuous improvement and what are you doing to feed your continuous improvement and then what are you doing like that’s the selfish place every person is mostly concerned about themselves in their own development. As leaders, what are we doing to empower our team to tune their own piano? How are we, how is that showing up in our core values? How is that showing up and how we show up as leaders to encourage that behavior in our team?

Dr. Chad Johnson 8:26
You know, I don’t, I don’t know if other people know this, in different parts of the country, it would be more prominent than others, but you know, being an Iowa, a lot of times there’s, there’s crop rotation, where one year you don’t plant the same. So in other words, just because you’re, you have bought 40 acres, or 160 acres or 1600 acres, whatever, you’re not going to just plant the same corn seed every year the rest of your life and so, you know, sometimes you might switch in soybean, and sometimes, you know, depending on the soil, you might add nitrogen and as opposed to, you know, and so you’re trying out, you’re kind of a chemist scientist, you know, that you’re trying to figure out what, what is going to work best for the plants and or what, which plants should we switch to? Is this expected to be a drier year? Is this expected, you know, so, you, you switch that kind of stuff up and so you can’t just assume that, you know, one year you’re going to always be planting the same seed. So buy a million of those seeds, plant it over the next 20 years and you’re, it’s just not going to work that way. Each year the farmer is trying to decide, “Okay, should we switch,” and you, if you drive down a country road that’s got corn seed on it, or any different seeds, and again, I’m not an expert per se, but I think I realized that this is, I think a second nature for us. You’ll see little signs that have different numbers that show like these few rows are with this seed, these few roads or with this these few rows or with this seed and they’re testing out which seed in this soil works best and which one gives them the best yield and, and so you know they’re working on and then the next year if they go, you know, “I’m predicting that this is going to be a drier year or this one, this year is going to be a late start in the season, so I need to plant a quicker seed.” So we have to do the same thing as dentists and as business owners, we have to adapt to what’s our situation right now because it doesn’t work from five years ago. If it does. I mean, good for you or something, it just doesn’t for me.

Regan 10:29
Wow. Well, I mean, yeah, there’s so you took me down quite a bunny trail, because there’s soil protection, it’s really kind of nerdy excitement, really, because we, I live in a farming community also. So we have, you know, tulips are huge here, in addition to the actual, you know, food that we produce in our county, but I know that they rotate, it’s easy to see the tulip rotation. So there may be a field that’s just getting a rest for that particular time or in workout muscle confusion, right, your muscles get used to certain things, you have to switch it up a little bit. Sarah Hansen, one of our marketing consultants, she talks about marketing being like a marathon training for a marathon, because she learned that you don’t just hit the ground and run 10 miles every day, one day, you might do intervals. So you might you know, one day you might do sprints, one day you might do a longer run. It just depends, and it’s all to prepare, all layers together, to prepare you for the big race and I would say that learning is the same way. So do you approach that Chad, like when you think about 2022, do you already have CEE queued up in your head, like, you know, where you’re gonna focus?

Dr. Chad Johnson 11:32
I do, you know, people, see, so people want to sell you stuff, and they want to train you on that stuff and I feel like there are two kinds of people. One type is the most common and they’re reluctant and resistant to wanting to adapt to the new technology or the new protocol, a new system altogether, right? So when a salesman comes and says, “Hey, I can train you on this,” the person says, “No,” and if the salesman said, “Why?” “I just don’t want to use that I’d rather use what I’m using.” I get that, don’t get me wrong, when I tell the salesman, “No, I don’t know if now’s a good time.” They’re like, “Oh, well, you know, we can help hold your hand,” and I’m like, “I’m already implementing for things right now over the next three months and I can only give my team so much at any given time.” So I have things in the queue in the docket that I’m waiting to implement, and, for example, the sleep apnea course that we went to, that I use, I just don’t think it’s going to be a good time for us until January and if I purchased it right now, I also feel like next week, they say, “Let’s schedule training time for you,’ and I’d be like, “Yeah, it’s not going to happen until January at the earliest,” and they’d be like, “Well, but you just, you just bought it,” and it’s like, “Well, right, that’s why I’m not gonna buy it right now is because I’m holding off on that,” or it might be sending the hygenist to a course or laser training or stuff like that, but yes, on my calendar, that I have right off screen, but the audio people won’t obviously be able to hear but one of the things on the PDA one tribe 2022 calendar is of on the left side, it says, “Visualize your celebrations and, you know, what do you have upcoming that you would like to do? And what CEE would you like to attend?’ Like, basically, what’s your wish list and let’s find a way to make that happen and it’s, it, for example, it took me forever to get to kois and then after 15 years, I finally, you know, pulled the trigger on that, and I’m so glad, yeah.

Regan 13:38
Is that for you, or is that for you and your team? That calendar that you put?

Dr. Chad Johnson 13:43
Um, I have to say, it’s mostly for me, because of our management style, the management system that we’re using, I also have the leadership team helping me, you know, figure out what do you think we can tackle at any given time, but I have a pretty good pulse on it and it’s self-serving, I don’t want to give them so much that we fail, and we’re frustrated with growth.

Regan 14:09
Well, one thing that you do that I’ve noticed consistently is as you get new team, or even if you don’t have new team, I know that you are pretty passionate about getting your entire team to PDA workshops. Yeah. So what is it about, what type of recurrent, what do you look for in recurring? I would call that repeatable, see, because some elements are the same and some elements are different at each PDA workshop, but the bulk of it, you know, kind of remained steady the foundational elements. Why do you reinvest in that?

Dr. Chad Johnson 14:37
Sure. I think it also harkens to the idea of the AEGD or the ADA or any of these organizations where you go to an annual meeting, and they recap on you know, like you can go to a course that you’ve taken before by the same guy, but he’s giving his latest feel. So I was trained originally. For example, on implants in 2005, 10 years later, 2015 ish, I took Dr. Guards’ implant course and I had some doctors at lunchtime and dinnertime they’re like, “But you already placed implants, why are you like spending so much money coming to learn implants from him, like you’re taking a basic course? Why aren’t you taking the master course?” and I’ll be taking that next but the way I look at it, there’s got to be something new. Well, sure enough, there was and so they’re taking notes on okay, 1200 rpm, and then go down to 10 millimeters and then you know, make sure your angle, they’re looking at the technical, I was looking at it going, “Oh, that’s so cool.” Okay, so he really is just, you know, so I’m looking like I was just looking at a qualitative level different the second time and so with Productive Dentist Academy as an example, when I bring the team there, I’m really trying to the first time, it just blew my mind and now I’m starting to get more comfortable with it, and I think that’s part of the idea of mastership is that you have a recurring education that you’re doing to not just be able to do it to the standard of 1970 but to be able to then do it to the standard 1990 and then at some point 1990 is old school, and you need to learn the newer standard. That’s not true with everything. I’m sure laying bricks is probably pretty, you know, like the same it was 500 years ago, there might be you know, something, but by and large, you know that there’s maybe

Regan 16:30
You have just triggered the entire brick industry, they’re gonna start sending you like all the changes in cement and all the different advances that they have in the materials,

Dr. Chad Johnson 16:39
I am sure they will, it would be something that we could appreciate that, it’s just like, I’m sure on a cursory level that it hasn’t changed much but we understand in dentistry, a lot has changed and I do plan on going back to the Guard course, again, when I was there, I was like, “Man, I probably should go to this every 10 years, just to, just to catch up.”

Regan 16:56
Well, you just really surprised me because I think I have a relatable, for not being a dentist, a very relatable way that I’ve approached education and when I was in college, yes, I went, I was a journalist in high school, then I was a journalist in college as well. I loved writing. I learned the different styles of writing. I learned sales copy, I learned all the different elements and then when I went into the Storybrand, through Donald Miller, you were the one that sent me a book, yes, ‘Building a Storybrand’ and said look into this and what I loved about it was it was a different way of looking at something that I was already fairly proficient in and if you do not approach it with the mindset of I could learn something new, I think you miss gigantic opportunities to expand, adapt, grow, evolve all of the big words, and so going through that program, it made me more efficient in how I write, so I write even faster now than ever before, it helps me get to the heart of the matter the problems quicker. So now all of the, the content that I write is put together more efficiently, faster, and it’s just and it’s more effective. So it’s a more efficient, and it’s more effective. So, so I’ve actually been, I’ve done a hack, and I’m more productive as a result.

Dr. Chad Johnson 18:05
Think about this writing style, you used to put period space, yes capital letter for them and then with computers, they actually did away with that. It was, it’s period space and for the longest time, it drove me nuts and like I really had to train myself, but if you 20 years ago said, “No, I’m educated in English.” It’s like, well, that’s true for now but the weirdest thing is it would totally change. No one in 1997 would say, ‘Hey, can you Google that for me?” No one would even know what you’re talking about. So you’ve just got to keep up with it. So what’s cool is I might still be the same but my team isn’t and it’s changed over time and so just like a, how a river can you know, change course and stuff like that, and you have to remap it and it’s important for engineers to remap it, that we have to engineer our team to calibrate them better and you know, some people come and go and, and so you’ve got to make sure that everyone’s on the same page and let them have those same aha experiences. So actually, this, a couple of weeks ago was my fourth generation of taking the whole team and myself, I think. I mean, I might have been to Productive Dentist Academy workshop, like let’s say 12 times. It might be something like that, you know that, it’s and I love every time and it might even just be the conversations out in the hallway with Mike Rear, right or you know, stuff like that. So there’s different guys and gals that have been so fun to stay in touch with and they shoot me a text, you know, like, “Hey, how you doing?” I just think it’s so cool that Devin Girone, down in New Mexico, like he’ll, he’ll send me a shout out and being like, “Hey, man, how are you doing?” And I actually really feel like he cares. It’s so rare because I’m just flabbergasted that he writes me like that. It’s awfully caring and you know, who does the same with that? Dave Diehl, yeah, Ron Miller and I just, a lot of those guys are, Ryan Oakley sends me, you know, I’m just name dropping everyone here, but we all do though, right and say, “Hey, you know, what do you think about this new HIPAA law? What do you like? How are the kids doing in school?” You know, just stuff like that and it’s not every day, it’s not like a burden.

Regan 20:36
It’s birds of a feather, it is definitely birds of a feather. I think it you know, you, you get addicted to making sure that your piano is tuned as a leader and tuned as a clinician, and you end up attracting those around you and definitely, I love the names that you dropped, because the names you dropped, they are all similarly attuned in their own leadership styles. So they run towards evolving, they run towards, and not necessarily early adoption. I think timing is a sign, it’s a really big sign, like you said, excellent leadership. So you can do all the things but understanding that the timing is right, for you and your team is really important. You know, because you have to balance it, balance it with really, really going back and looking at things that you already know and then mixing in the new as you go forward.

Dr. Chad Johnson 21:24
So this is so cool. Have an idea like with tuning the piano, about three years ago, our piano was out of tune, it was the one that I had played growing up no lie, I think we had never tuned the piano the whole time I grew up, not once. it didn’t even matter to me, I, you know, I was just, I took piano lessons this and that and would play it and stuff. So I thought you know what, we should reach out and get a guy to tune in and it really wasn’t all that much cost but before that, about a month before, I thought to myself, “What if I tuned it myself?” Now keep in mind this analogy is what if I tune my own practice? Yes. So I’m just trying to throw that out there. If people like where are you going with this? It’s it has to do with tuning your own office, you can do in your own office. I went on to YouTube, and I looked up how to tune your own piano and because I thought, “Okay, listen, it’s out of tune,”

Regan 22:16
Oh, boy,

Dr. Chad Johnson 22:16
“If I tune it, and there’s two problems that I’ll run across, I’ll break a string, or it’ll be out of tune. Well, it’s already out of tune, who cares? So let’s just give it a shot.” So I Amazoned some of the little tools to do it and I bought a, downloaded a software onto my computer to, to like, I set up my podcast microphone.

Regan 22:39
You really did this?

Dr. Chad Johnson 22:40
Yes, and I tried tuning it myself and it was super hard and I learned a lot of really cool lessons into, but I actually I really, because I was curious and that curious spirit, you know, is is advantageous, but I thought, well, you know what, so I finally had the guy tune in and it was so impressive that I could appreciate the difficulty of it. So if you in your own practice, and you want to tune it yourself, go for it, but the fact is someone that tunes it, like a professional tuner is going to be quicker, more efficient, and it’s going to sound better. Listen, I’ve played music for 30 some years, you know, just over 30 years, and I can tune stuff. I can tune a guitar, I can, you know, I know how to tune stuff. So it’s not like I’m stupid at that, and yet still, I learned how hard it was to tune your own piano. So having a coach to help you do that, having a workshop to do that, to help facilitate you achieving your goals. My goal was to have a C, you know, a middle C at 440 hertz, you know, like I, that was my goal, I want it there and the other stuff, I just want to say, to have the coaches help me figure out in my practice how to get there more efficiently. We only have so many years.

Regan 24:03
Well, I was just gonna you just tied a bow on that one right there. I think there’s a lot of time that gets wasted with trying to do things on your own and it can turn into years of trying to figure out things on your own because you know, you’re capable, but it points to your topic of mastership and so what in the, in your specific equation, you know, what, where is your time best spent? Is it best spent spending several hours trying to figure out how you can tune it so that you can maybe tune it to the point where you get it where you want it to be and spend how many hours or do you want to go play with your kids and bring someone in for you know, an eighth of the cost and take care of it that way?

Dr. Chad Johnson 24:41
Well, really the first few years I and I after a while because I’ve been with Productive Dentist Academy for seven years now. In November, I think it’ll be seven years and when we first started I think my practice was probably by 200,000 a year with Productive Dentist Academy, so I mean that that makes it worth it. I know, you know, not all results are the same blah, blah, blah, but, you know, to be able to have that kind of growth.

Regan 25:11
That’s a little under-average Chad, but that’s good.

Dr. Chad Johnson 25:19
Yeah. What is average?

Regan 25:20
It’s 75 I think.

Dr. Chad Johnson 25:22
Wow. Yeah. Well, you know, what if I’m under-average with Ryan Oakley and Ron Miller, I’ll take it.

Regan 25:29
This is so gonna get into your craw now, isn’t it?

Dr. Chad Johnson 25:34
No, no, I am completely satisfied with my own race there.

Regan 25:38
Oh, I think you’re phenomenal. I mean, you’re definitely yeah, you’re phenomenal. Well, thank you. I think we just gave, I think we just got some good, some good pearls, timing, take a look at yourself, including your team.

Dr. Chad Johnson 25:51
Maybe tuning your own piano, but maybe get someone to help, but your piano tunes, there’s occasional time to tune the piano.

Regan 25:58
Yeah, I have a group of marketers that I exclusively hang out with and that is our goal is we bounce ideas off of each other. We look for each other’s blind spots and it just propels us forward so much faster. So I think the peer element is a lot to say for it, too. So there’s the Mastership bringing in the coach, super important. I’ve had coaches over the years, swear by it and then there’s the peer element too.

Dr. Chad Johnson 26:24
Yeah, I don’t know what I was thinking, but when I said the 440 Nana, or Hertz, that’s the A, the middle C is 256. I didn’t want any purists thinking this guy didn’t know how to tune his own piano. So if you’re listening to this, it’s 256, you get over yourself. Alright, well, that’s it. Regan thanks for letting me ramble about corn crops and you know, tuning a piano and

Regan 26:52
How are you tuning your piano listeners? How are you tuning your piano? Thanks for checking us out, guys. We’ll see you next week.

Dr. Chad Johnson 26:59
See you next week.

Regan 27:02
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 dentists 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.